Am back...

I am back from Camp Eden, nicely rested and charged to move forward again, well slowly anyway... have been a bit tardy with the blogsite both the one's on the boy's and the one for my granddad... I managed to read alot, sleep alot, have many nice therapies like SCENAR and acupuncture and they also gave us the chance to zip line down or jump off poles on to a trapeze thing or leap off a 30m (100 foot) tree. Which was quite fun and we had a nice group of people.

So here are some pictures, nate and a friend helping with me collecting a mixed compost from the wired area for the tumbler bin and ike who bumped his head and then took a nap.

The other two pics were taken by loren when I was gone.

The first thing the boys said to me when I got back was, mom I want a haircut... to #1... so am afraid they look like little monks again. I need to improve my hair cutting technique, I missed lots of spots.

Our garage sale weekend

Lilin came to join our garage sale... both families netted about 300 bucks... that sure feels like alot of work for little gains!! I think I am going to pass the rest onto the orphanage.

I gave a presentation to nate's school on Friday to build the children's garden... I met one of the board members. I am quite pleased that a number of teachers have volunteered, now to get their emails and to get stuff moving. Last tuesday I built 3 compost wire areas and now they are starting to fill up.

I have trying to buy a compost thermometer to show the kids how hot the heaps can get, maybe I will swipe the nurses one and see if that works??!!

Here are the boys baking Chocolate Chip cookies... they turned out really GOOOD!

Adam and family in town

Loren's buddy from canada (well they have moved to HK), Adam and Pascale and their brood, were in town over the weekend, there were 5 kids running about, somehow with girls though it seemed alot more civilised. The girls would sit down and draw or do stickers.... Their son, Jackson has very similar mannerisms to Nate, which is strange as they had never met before... is it a boy thing? and it looks like Nate won't outgrow that in a year!!!

We took them to the east coast park for seafood dinner, luckily there was quite a big field and the kids all went off together to play, while we attacked the chilli crab.

On Sunday while nate was in jewish school, I took ike to jonas' house and while he made a puzzle all by himself, I helped Sage make her polar bear a winter coat. Ahhhh.... so nice these arts and crafts. I bought some writing books for Ike yesterday and he is happily doing page after page after page.

I have now booked the kids school holidays in July in China... we are off to Guilin, Lilin and her kids are joining too, so is porpor. Loren takes them to Bali in August when I need to be in Guiyang.

Ike last year

Since I seem to be uploading video's quite successfully I thought I'd try some older clip, have not been taking too many video clips cos its sometimes really hard to upload.

Nate lost his first tooth!

Can't believe his first tooth has popped out... it has been loose for a month but I thought kids lose teeth closer to age 7? Nate was quite happy at his $2 fm the tooth fairy until he realised it does not get him any star wars figurines. He is fast figuring out its more like $1,000 that he needs.

He's been asking me about multiplication and he does addition and subtraction quite well already. Not sure how yet to get him on the chinese multiplication tables which are rhyme like and so alot easier to remember.

I got Ike some triangle pencils and some japanese make pencil grippers.... need to get his pencil grip fixed.... he switches hands when he gets tired... so he may be ambidextrous.

Beijing look see

Loren and I headed up to Beijing to take a look at homes and schools... the weather was a bit strange, they hit a cold spell again.

We saw a very very very very good small school, it was lovely, the headmistress is caucasian woman who speaks perfect chinese. The school is structured such that half the day they do montesorri style English classes, they had their own planners to plan what they need to learn and the "western environment" for school was done in the more creative settings of group tables, mix work groups etc. The kids also get their own mini PC. The Chinese side they have classes where they are lined up in rows, math is taught in chinese (as it is the best language to learn the basics of math esp. multiplication) and they get about an hour's worth of homework in Grade 1.

The school can take in local chinese students and the kids fm this school also have successfully transitioned back into public schools. We got all the right answers we wanted to hear like "no sweets policy" as that just made the kids more wired, why do that in a learning environment. The mix of two systems was like giving exposure to the kids to the "real world" and the more airy fairy environment. They were also building their own vegetable gardens. On top of all that they had a "virtues in us" program as well, where they have 19 core virtues that are universal and are taught to the kids, teachers and parents.

The row of school buses are is from the large large international school, that has around 2,000 kids.

We visited some homes as well.... most places are western like compounds, none as big as dainfern, this one was built in the chinese style which I thought was quite neat.

This big wall of gold and clear boxes is actually the check in counter of our hotel, its a wall of chinese medicine drawers, I should have taken more photos as the hotel is just a green box of varying shades from the outside and quite funky inside.

KL Apr 2010 school break

The boys had a week off last week and yesterday as it was labour day, they are back in school today (YAY!).

Loren and I zipped up to Beijing to take a look at schools and homes, will do that as next posting. On Weds I had 2 meetings and then we drove up to KL for a short trip. As the boys napped in the car, they did not sleep till quite late and then as weiwei wakes up early... they woke up early too!

Here is a large train set that SF built in the living room. She is enjoying her second childhood trying to better her train track designs every time. The boys brought all their wooden trains down to give to their cousins as they have now progressed to Star Wars Lego. The four cousins played really nicely on that big big track, each taking a certain corner.

There is a picture of a nice rainbow from T's house and the school is where H goes to. The boys in the pool with about 9 coconuts that dehdeh plucked from the dwarf coconut trees. After tossing them around in the pool, they got opened for a drink and snack of coconut water and fruit.

On the way back we head to Port Dickson (the KL-lites beach area, an hour from KL) with T and the family (they stayed on the night) and we continued back to Singapore. The picture of the windy road and the picturesque scene is us finding our way back to the Highway, it was a really nice drive and made me feel like this year driving up the western side of Malaysia in a few days (instead of 4 hours) making our way up slowly to KL....

Tardy me

I have been a bit tardy in taking pictures of the boys... my handphone camera has more images of land where the school is looking to start a garden for the kids and so I have been busy figuring out how the garden could look like. I just want to move ahead but I wonder if at the schools pace we are going to get anything done at all?

Here is an image of the compost heap I started at vini's place 6 months ago, she filled it and recently opened it and voila, lovely lovely compost, so I am going to try and do that at the school.

I spoke to Nate's chinese teacher today and am quite pleased with his progress. Next year (if he stays in this school), he can go to the advanced chinese class. He has also been taking on a new attitude to learning to write chinese characters and for english he is starting to put alphabets together for words, his memory works in his favour and can do tang poems as well, though i need to start him on several new ones.

The responses I heard from the PTA basically summarizes that if your child gets into the advanced chinese stream, they will follow the Beijing curriculum and they will have homework but all China parents are happy with their children's progress in that stream. The mid and lower streams... the parents are not too pleased that the children cannot work towards getting into the higher stream. Some parents do not want homework for their kids and it was nice hearing other parents say, if you want your child to learn chinese, there is no other way. The school juggles alot for the kids and maybe at the expense of other areas, like a healthier canteen.

Ike also has a good memory and can do the poems but because it seems the second child syndrome is already setting in. He wants to not compete in the area where Nate is better in. Hmmm....

Boys at the zoo

Here are pictures of the boys at the zoo. Ike has alot more dexterity these days and does not bump into things as much anymore. He is good at building lego spaceships and has decided to pass all his thomas the train wooden set to his cousin. Ike is also very much into puzzles and can build the 24 piece ones without much of an issue. The jump to 40 or 50 pieces is harder but he even at least attempts the 100+ pieces when nate tries to put a puzzle together.

I am quite happy that they play quite nicely together, minimum fights.

Universal Studios

Loren got the last flight out of Helsinki on Thursday before the big shut down of airports.... his flights this week were all cancelled so he decided to take the boys with Uncle Peter to the newly opened Universal Studios theme park.

He wanted it as a surprise so the boys dressed in school uniform and headed to school... only to be surprised! Unfortunately Ike woke up from his nap saying where is his surprise, which he equates with a present...

Happy Birthday Dada...

Loren is 40!

Here is what the boys made for him, nate's has star wars characters in his "card". The boys got dada a lego yoda key chain...

Nate's first love note?

So we found this in Nate's bag... a note he says is from Kara...

I love Nate
Nate loves me too
When he is on holiday I miss Nate....

Topic of Food in Nate's class

Nate's class is now dealing with the topic of food. His teacher says he like everything star wars or rather every conversation out of his mouth is about star wars. So we made some Star Wars Space Balls (tahini balls) as a healthy snack for his friends tomorrow.

Here is another thing they made for dinner - green eggs, ie ground spinach and then in made into scrambled eggs. It was quite yummy, I wonder how much spinach went down this way?

Sunkist orange smile!

Ikey is in lurve...

ok so this is not the best picture of ike and the title of this blog... here I am pulling out the chewing gum he decided to stuff up his nose!

So today as we waited for Nate at his soccer practice, this little girl named olivia came by and gave ike one of her longan. He peeled his and she struggled with hers. He gave her his peeled one and then proceeded to peel the one she had difficulty with. She then skipped off and he diligently peeled it then looked around for her, saw her across the room, placed the longan in the middle of his palm and walked slowly to her presenting it to her (not sure about the cleanliness of his palm...) and how come I don't get peeled longans???

They then hung out on a ramp sitting next to each other talking about stuff 3 year olds say to each other...

Met his mom and I told her my son my be in love with olivia, she says, "I too am in love with Ike"....

We got home and they seemed to be on some turbo stuff as they were bouncing off the walls with Uncle Peter as I ran out for an afternoon meeting. Caught Uncle Peter snoozing on the sofa after I put them to bed.

Bubbi should be halfway back to Montreal by now...

Normal weekend....

as usual a birthday part, though this one was out in Pasir Ris and is part of Gallop Stables, it reminded me of some of the outdoor places in South Africa but here one must not forget the insect repellant. Nate is on the tree with his friends.

Nate on date with gf to disney on ice.

Pistol, who is getting fatter (lower metabolism?) or just not chased by bullet so much. He is blooming, well he now runs and skids around without fear that a bigger dog sees him as a darting rabbit. Loren had an early birthday treat at Mortons and the two dogs got big bones, boy were they happy.

Here is Scully and that other monster... was at the opening of Pixars 20 year anniversary at the science center.

Back in Singapore

The trouble with so many gadgets are that I don't know which gadget I have used to take pictures... we spent 4 days in seminyak by the beach before heading to ubud. In seminyak ike got pulled in by a big wave and he emerged with an earful of sand. It started hurting him a few days later and yesterday I took him to the ENT specialist here who said he saw many cases after the tsunami, so we now have to put eardrops into his ear till the clump falls out.

In seminyak the boys got to swim, we had our own cook, we went to tanah lot which is now a huge tourist area, traffic jams abound... and the boys also got to go to the amusement park and waterbom parks. Ike liked the roller coaster and was so tired at the bumper cars he almost fell asleep there. At the waterbom park, he was brave enough to take the slides down including one where he had to lie on a mat and head down by himself... he seemed a bit dazed at the end but went for it again.

Ike and his henna tattoo, which he showed everyone in school...

Bali still uses alot of organic material like the bamboo for construction and plates made of leaves...