Dentist

A very big milestone took place on Aug. 4, 2006. That Friday, Kayrin, Ivan, ma and I made our way to Dr. Loo & Foo's clinic. It was Kayrin's second visit to the dentist's chair. The big step was that she allowed Dr. Foo to clean her whole set of teeth! The last time, in February, she would only have four front teeth cleaned before she declared she had enough.
And so on Friday morning, she climbed onto the dentist's big blue chair after Ivan had his last fillings of teeth (the fourth or fifth visit for him!).
As soon as Kayrin got onto the chair, she looked up at Dr. Foo pleadingly and said:
"Please don't pull my teeth."
Dr. Foo took it all in his stride and asked if Kayrin would like to have her teeth brushed instead, and to that, she said a definite "yes."
So it went on for about 15 minutes, I guess. Seems to take longer than that because I was more anxious than I'd expected. After the first rinse, Kayrin said she didn't want anymore. But Dr. Foo managed to persuade her to sit down for "a bit more." And hooray, she did. So proud of her!
And Ivan, ever the curious one, asked Dr. Foo for his age. It's 46.

Art Attack

Kayrin and I went on our girls' day out yesterday.
1-Utama it is, cos Shaw Feng said I should let Kayrin enjoy an introduction to arts. A visit to Art Attack at the new wing was an eye opener. Kayrin finished an hour of activities and brought home a mobile fish aquarium. The fish was made of transparency, and painted her favourite colour -- green! When she got back and showed it to Shaw Feng, it was with these proud words:

Happy Father's Day to you, Daddy!

Woan -- One Month Has Passed

A month has passed.
Thirty sad days and many long nights,
where we wondered how you are.
In Heaven, enjoying yourself, of course!
Silly ce, you'd say, Woan.
That's where the days are fair
bright and beautiful
For you to grow all the flowers
and bake to your heart's content.
Close to God
We know we will see you again
One day you will show us what you'vedone there.
Beautiful plants in a row
Plenty of cakes to show!

Kayrin's Ice-Cream Obsession

Kayrin is just mad over ice-cream now. A trip to Petronas to fill up the S40 isn't complete until she gets her Nestle Doraemon ice-cream, which incidentally costs an atrocious 3 ringgit for a mere half cup. The remaining half of the cup is dedicated as space for a Doraemon toy.
A trip to Giant, Tesco or Carrefour won't end till we pick up a box of mini-Cornettos or some 1-liter tub.
I had an inkling how much ice-cream occupies Kayrin's thoughts on Sunday, July 23. Shaw Feng was breaking his half-boiled eggs for breakfast at a Puchong restaurant and was showing Kayrin the egg white stuck to the insides of the egg shell.
"It looks just like ice-cream,'' Kayrin said.

Woan's in Heaven

Just minutes into July 6, or even just before that, Woan passed on. She went home to be with the Lord, with her twin Lyan at her bedside. Woan battled brainstem tumour for so many months, put up such a courageous front. We miss her so. I'll come back to this again when I've collected my thoughts better. For now, these ring true.
This one because it's Woan's favourite:
`For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.' Phil 1:21

and this because it so aptly describes what Woan went through:
`I've fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I've kept my faith.' 2 Timothy 4:7

Woan, ce miss you so. We know you are in a more beautiful place now and that God loves you more than we do. See you again in heaven. Shen.

Kayrin Saves the Day!

Kayrin was playing super-heroes with Shaw Feng a few nights ago, and I was pottering around in the bathroom in my pre-shower ritual, when I heard this amid the jumping around on the bed while Super-Hero Kayrin tries to take off from the bed in her sarong cape:

"I saved you Daddy, I saved the day!" Kayrin shouted.

I stuck my head out of the en-suite, with contact lenses in the palm of my hand, and asked Shaw Feng if he had heard what I just did. Amazing what she learns from TV.

A Letter for Sooz, Kayrin's Godma

Dear Sooz, I've only just developed that roll of film sitting in the Nikon SLR. Yes, I'm still using those old SLR cameras. I only realized it was an `ancient' way of taking photos when last week, after taking a pix of Kayrin, she came running over and said, `Let me see, let me see.' She was totally flummoxed that there was no image to see at the back of the camera where the screen is supposed to be. She couldn't understand when I explained that I'll have to get the film developed before she could see the pix. She kept wanting to `open' the camera to peer inside. I was stumped too.

Two of a Kind (the Singlet Kind)

What We Wear

One thunderstormy evening. And Kayrin insists on going to the playground. So here she is, in her weird colourful garb (not a reflection of my dress sense, of course), and directing us where to head to.

Life's more than just about what we wear,
Life's more fun when we don't care,
But only to a certain extent, wouldn't you say?
Because other times, it's about living life wonderfully our way.

I love putting together words this way. I should gather my little poems into somewhere. Some day, may be.

Happy Father's Day, Shaw Feng

I remember the year you took off work, taking care of Kayrin.
I remember the first few weeks after Kayrin arrived,
you held her till the wee hours of the morning so that I'm not bleary-eyed.
These days, you're her best playmate on the Web
Her teacher on what to do on the Internet.
I see the love you have for her
I see the adoration in her eyes every night.
So from Kayrin and I,
Happy Father's Day and Happy Birthday come July!

Vaseline

My jottings will always start with "One evening," I realize, because that's when I give Kayrin my attention, for all of one hour or less.

And so, one evening two days ago, Kayrin decided to bring a tub of Vaseline to her bedside. Daddy raised his eyebrows at her when he saw her sticking her fingers in. (It's Vaseline mommy uses as lip gloss, really.)

"My lips are cracked," Kayrin said, pouting her lips and pointing to them, for daddy's benefit. "I need to put lip gloss on my lips."

There goes my lip gloss. The following night, it was experimenting with mommy's Clarins shaping facial lift cream. http://my.clarins.com/main.cfm?prodID=603

"What are you doing with mommy's stuff??" I asked, frantically trying to pry her little fingers off the pump.

"My face is cracked and I need cream."

That's my baby growing up fast.

Kayrin, all of eight days old, in Eastern Lagoon 2, S'pore.

Ambition

Michael Buble's CD was playing in the room, and it was around Kayrin's bedtime, when the cheeky three-year old pointed to the CD cover and asked who that was.
`That's Michael Buble, darling,' I said.
`What does Uncle Buble do?' Kayrin asked.
I told her he sings and makes lots of money doing that and that she can sing as a career too. Immediately sensing this an opportunity to talk about ambition and careers, I asked, `What do you want to be when you grow up?'
`A firefighter,' came the reply, without any hesitance.
`Why,' I ventured, while thinking I should have led her down the `right' path about careers before she was even two.
`Because...I want to rescue people in buildings.'
`Wow, mommy's so proud of you,' I said, thinking such a noble cause shouldn't be put down.
Soozhana, Kayrin's godma in New York, got to hear about it over the mail the very next day because mommy was eager to share.

The following evening, upon coming home from work, I decided to get into the ambition talk again.
`What do you want to be when you grow up, darling?'
`A zebra. Bee-cau-se I want to live in Ah-fri-kahhhh.'

So much about noble ambitions. ;)

Pain

Woan, who was diagnosed in October with brainstem tumour, yesterday had one of the worst of her headaches. Ma was sitting on the floor, by the bedside and holding Woan's hand while the pain shoots through Woan's head. That's how Wei and I found them when we got home from the neurosurgeon's clinic. While I was there, Woan had another episode. It isn't throbbing headaches, she says. It is as if the back of her head is about to split open. We can only imagine what she has to go through. We pray that the headaches will go away.

A poem

How odd,
I've got a blog
started from nought,
though I must say
I've not a brilliant thing to lay
on this empty canvass this gray day.