terrorliza@play

some of my friends have commented that i'm rather mean by giving my kids unflattering nicknames like 'monsterina', 'rascalrella' and 'terrorliza'.

coincidentally, most of these well-meaning friends don't have children of their own (yet) so perhaps they haven't experienced the frustration and realities of dealing with young children who can be oh-so-adorable-and-angelic one moment and evolve into a nightmarish creature the next.

sometimes, they're so unpredictably impossible i don't know whether to laugh or cry!

anyway, here's proof of how baby wei *is* a little terrorliza but at the same time, a really cute one. the next few photos were taken on a long weekend. wen was feverish and ill, so the hub slept in the girls' room to watch her while xian came over to sleep with wei and myself:


HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAAA!!!

i carried wei to the bed in the morning and she didn't waste any time in trying to wake her eldest sister up to play with her!

it's always a joy to watch the girls play together. :)

party @ haven @ arif

back at work after a loooooooooong day of entertaining. had relatives (mine and hub's) over for lunch yesterday and another dinner function for our friends.

remind me NEVER to EVER host 2 functions on the same day. it's back-breaking work even though we catered food that set me back by 1k. come to think of it, i didn't even have the chance to eat dinner since most of the guests in the evening were my pals and spent most of my time as a tour guide, showing them around my new home.

our last guests left at around midnight. xian, was on a sugar high after consuming all the new year goodies and the two girls were still up at 1am. they were just about to snuggle in when the power on the first floor tripped. blackout. hub suspected that our old refrigerator had short circuited. he waited for about 10 minutes before switching the power back on.

but the damage was done as the kids were suddenly wide awake and didn't knock off to bed till about 2am. and just as the hub and i were about to turn in, the home security siren went off.

it was W-A-I-L-I-N-G and S-C-R-E-E-C-H-I-N-G and the blue light was flashing. this time we shut the power down for a longer time. the hub thought maybe it was the outdoor lights that were problematic and switched those off. we got some eye-shut...till about 5 am when the cisco alarm sounded again.

^#&#*(@

WTF!!!!!!!

hub called up cisco to ask for assistance. this time we suspected the alarm itself was short-circuiting the ground floor. the cisco guys told us we had to disarm the alarm by removing the battery. so i held up the torch light while my poor groggy hub had to unscrew the metal box to figure out which was the battery. this is only a temporary measure to drown the sound. the cisco folks told us a technician would drop by to inspect the system for us later on in the day.

what a way to end our day. or start, whichever way you look at it.

this morning i woke with a jump at 7.05am and tried but couldn't get xian up. hub mumbled that he would "settle her" and i went off to work. (last i checked, xian was an hour late for school). as you can very well imagine, my head's spinning from the lack of sleep...and YES, i'm back at the office trying to finish my assignment. not very successful because i'm still zonked out, which is why i've taken to blogging about this while waiting for my brain to kick-start...

think i should pop in 2 panadols and get on with the essay.

haven@arif blessed

it is done.

my haven @ arif has been blessed and we can officially move in! woooo-hooooooooooooo!

it was a simple ceremony although there were lots of preparations before the day started. we'd invited Lama Thubten Namdrol Dorje of Thekchen Choling to perform the house blessing, Tibetan Buddhism style. He'd also been pivotal in advising us on the Feng Shui of our home as well as hub's office.

hub's been brought up in a mainly Taoist-Buddhist-Chinese folk religion environment, which suits me fine. on paper (i.e. my birth certificate), i don't have a specific religion but have been exposed to Taoist and Buddhist practices (family influences) and 10 years of catholic school education so i have learnt to respect other people's religions. my philosophy has always been the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

we had a short ceremony to consecrate our beautiful Green Tara copper statue now sitting in the altar. the hub had spent the early part of the morning running around buying fruits, flowers and other local snacks like ang ku kueh (紅龜粿), huat kueh (发糕) and nian gao (年糕), sweet soup, tea etc. mil cooked her signature vegetarian vermicelli and two other vegetarian dishes.

it's quite an experience for me as my parents' home never had an altar so i'm supremely ignorant about praying rituals, practices and significance. from now onwards i have to learn how to take care of Tara and the altar properly. (Below pix taken with my N73 early in the morning before i left for work.)

our family of 4 stayed overnight at our new home for the first time. the girls bunked in with us in the master bedroom as we wanted them to get used to the new home first before sleeping in their own rooms. it was so breezy we opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fan. honestly it was great NOT to have the air-conditioned for a change and we could enjoy the fresh cool air. over at the IL's place, we've to sleep with the aircon on every night because of the massive construction works (mrt circle line) and swamps of mozzies.

unfortunately, FIL was also admitted to the hospital the same day we moved in. he'd stayed for the house blessing ceremony but BIL picked him up after lunch to SGH. we're all now hoping that since he'd receive some blessings, all will be well.

where's the bed sleepy head?

i've FINALLY got cable and broadband at my haven@arif! whoooopeeeeeeeeee!!!

one of the first few things i did was to download a couple of podcasts from mr brown’s site. the speed amazed me. i was speechless.

apologies if i seem so excited about mundane things which 95% of Singaporeans already have. it's been excruciating to live without cable TV (especially since my folks subscribe to cable and i've had the pleasure of surfing through the various channels) and i must be one of the few mountain tortoises left who still use a dial-up line to access my email from home (in-laws' home, that is).

only dampener is that i've yet to move into my haven@arif. yeah, horrid right? our moving-in plans hit a snag. we'd already made arrangements for the house blessing, but missed a crucial piece of furniture: our bed. that's extremely important as the bed symbolises matrimonial bliss and harmony, and without the bed, the blessing is incomplete. unfortunately the bed will only arrive next month, earliest on 20 december. and i'll be shifting in only after another auspicious date has been selected so that could be months from now!

and yes, it's no "ordinary" bed. the hub's been dreaming about owning a king-size 4 poster bed for ages, and we've scouting around for quite a while for the "perfect" bed. we both fell in love with one at ierus living (kaki bukit road) which costs about 3k+ after a generous discount. the staff did tell us that it would take 3 months for the bed to be ready because of the intricate hand carvings on the head rest.

this means, of course, i'll only get to enjoy the benefits of massive downloading and speed surfing during the weekends when i'm relaxing and unwinding. the kids can enjoy disney playhouse channel and this big kid couch potato mumsy can watch cartoon network with them too.

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! i so WANT to move in now... :(