…At The End Of Which You KNEW It Was Great But You’re Not Sure When You Really Celebrated

When is it anyway, that one turns a year older? Rockstar once wondered, when we first read how Mercury takes 88 days while Jupiter’s year is a whopping 4331 days long.

The way this weekend turned out I’m not quite sure but I can nevertheless assure you I am now 37 years of age. In Mercury years that would be about 100 and in Jupiter years I’d be not much older than a toddler.

With Kings gone so much I hadn’t brought JD for her long walk at the Peak in weeks so I insisted the circus go up there Saturday morning.

Little Miss feeding herself buttered corn (and later some of Rockstar’s spaghetti bolognese), having had a pretty full meal at home…

The nagging pain in my side gets worse by the time we’re done with the stick-throwing, rock-climbing just-under 3km walk (I know, some of you must be Well, D-uh). But then I was really, really bent on our sushi dinner-cum letting the kids run around outside in the park “celebration” (this is other families’ “normal family time” but it’s celebration to us because Kings is away so much these days) so I insisted on still going. It was still mostly ok too.

If Rockstarring doesn’t work out there’s always mime artist-ing. Little Miss is another one. She’s having tofu cubes (loved), edamame (not so much) and quails’ eggs in a little Miso soup here:

After which at Rockstar’s insistence they put on the neon stick things we were originally saving for Mid-Autumn…

And went toddling/scooting/running about/ just looking cute outside…

(Btw, the red flowered jumpsuit on Little Miss is my old one – my beloved maternal grandmother made it for me; she would’ve loved HK if she’d still been alive – she was a farmgirl from Canton who arrived in Malaysia on a boat by herself when she was just 16 and supported herself as a seamstress – yes I’m actually one-quarter Chinese! haha my other 3 grandparents were totally “Baba-Nyonya” Straits-born though, then when I studied in Singapore I got to see my paternal grandma more often, she even taught me to make Nyonya beaded slippers with the tiny beads… She would get offered good money to make those, but she only wanted to make them for family, so she would show us patterns and make for each of us in turn – I even have a pair made with antique “potong” beads…)

And this is our first and last attempt to have Little Miss put my (de-thorned) roses into a vase. (Another funny thing is how Kings brought home the bouquet AND a vase because he thought we don’t own any since on my own I usually buy pots :D) Little Miss is shaping up to be…… not very girly. Rockstar got his wish haha. She’s still more huggy, a lot more gabble-y than he was at that age, will try on hats/ sunglasses/ Rockstar’s ESF Kindy sports day medal which she is still wearing in the photo – every night she puts that on if she’s near enough to pull it off its hanging place – but she loves balloons, not dolls. Also, she approaches older boys to play with the most often in playrooms, probably thanks to Rockstar.

And then next morning I had to go to Canossa Hospital because I wake feeling fine until I start walking around which is when the pain rapidly becomes worse. The last time we were at Canossa I couldn’t stop throwing up from an inner-ear infection and almost had to be carried; this hospital is starting to be our go-to place for “when-we-feel-real-lousy emergencies” – there isn’t much of a wait, and the staff are sympathetic and efficient. Both times I had to have shots before the doctor could examine me properly, and I would be put on the bed in one of the waiting rooms – I remark that my head is swimming a little from the shot and the nurse immediately disappears before I can stop her, to have the doctor come over to my bed instead.

In between I kind of noticed the statue of Mother Mary, but this time I finally see the notice at dispensary:

 (so sweet right, on their dispensary envelopes)

And then, blessedly, Little Miss has an unusually long nap permitting me (also Kings) a good hour+ sleep (otherwise I never sleep during the day) while Rockstar does some online schoolwork, and then I get:

Rockstar: Mum! I want cake!

Me: You want cake? Oh, because it’s birthday cake.

Rockstar: Yeah!

Me: With lotsa fruit.

Rockstar: Yeah! Yeah!

Me: You realize there should be a birthday song or something right, and Daddy’s still napping –

Rockstar: <sings hurriedly, seriously> Happybirthdaytoyou,happybirthdaytoyou, happybirthdaytoyou-u, happybirthdaytoyou. <looks at me expectantly>

Me: <momentarily speechless> Uh… You really want me to take out the cake, don’t you.

Rockstar: Yeah. 

Uh, so that was how we had cake. That is, we scraped off extra fruit to add to Rockstar’s tiny sliver which he still didn’t really finish it. Kings woke in time to take the picture and finish feeding Her Highness, after which she got to squish up some fruit off the cake. (It was pistachio, I’m not sure how old they are before they can have nuts, I’ll…. ask at her next well-baby checkup, meantime at the back of my mind as a kind of default I’m just avoiding all the possible-allergy foods. I was a lot stricter with Rockstar even, when he was that age – just because I figured being as anal as possible to cut down the risk of developing an allergy would be preferable to having to monitor all foods all the way through pre-school etc. (If they still have an allergy then can’t be helped, otherwise wanted to save a lot more work checking their food for life)…

And for all his earnestness, Rockstar got to blow out the candles twice (not counting when I made my wish). Decided to leave the cake on the kitchen counter so I could re-light the candles easier, instead of hobbling with the abdomen pain in and out.

I guess you don’t have to be all This Was Birthday – Today! To have a good time. Speaking of which, Kings told me to just get something – but I still hadn’t gotten round to it yet (actually I didn’t go and get something last festive celebration either :P), so I’m thinking of getting….. a wedding/anniversary/whatever ring. Yeah I know – we’ve been married almost 10 years. But we never did get proper wedding rings, I don’t think Kings even wants one himself (still wearing the SGD 70-something ring I got him from Metropolitan Museum of Art with the Shakespearean posey “If you have love you have all” from when he was deep in study and family debt when we were both just starting out), and we have no idea when our anniversary is.

Ok, so it shall be The Whatever Ring. Shrugs. For Whenever Birthdays. It’s nice when we can make these things up as we go.