Smile!!

The twins are at the stage where they know how to smile already and sometimes if we are lucky we might just catch them chuckle too. This is a little hard to achieve for we need them to be in the right mood.

The babies' smile is really something that is very heartwarming. No matter how tired we are after a hard day’s work their smile will somehow take it all away. So what we do these days is to pop our face close to theirs and then call them by their names with an animated tone of voice of course and they will give you that sweetest smile. With Hayley I always call “Baby Hayley! Hayley Baby!” whereas nothing much rhymes with Luke so it is just “Luke Luke!” Pronounced as “look look”. Although simple but it works just as well on him.

Besides evenings, their smile will also brighten our day when they flash it at us first thing in the morning. It is a very nice thing to see them stretch themselves, yawn and then when they see you they’ll flash that toothless smile. It is mornings like these that make me want to skip work and spend more time with them. No wait…….. that could be my lazy bug actually.

For whatever reason I seemed to be more successful in getting the twins to chuckle and coo with me. Sometimes I will change them after their night feed and while they are lying on the changing table I will make funny faces and play with them. This will sometimes lead to them chuckling. The Mrs while feeding the other twin will stretch her neck out to see what is going on and how I managed to do that.

Just the other day she was wondering aloud why is it that I can get them to chuckle while she can’t. She concluded that it could be due to the fact that she is more concerned about how much milk they are taking whereas I am happy just feeding and playing with them. Typical man? Perhaps.

From my observation there seems to be this jealousy / competition thing going on between parents. Things such as which parent the child will learn to call first or who will the child run to first when both parents come home together. This is happening to friends and family around us hence I believe this applies to you all too. I’m sure it is all done in good humor. For your information we sometimes do this with Dino too.

Honestly I may tease the Mrs a little here and there whenever I succeeded in making the babies laugh or do something different but I really will have no issue if she can get the babies to do stuffs that I can’t or even if they learn to address her first. Take for example she taught Isaac to point to his own head whenever we ask “Who is the bad boy?” and also shakes his head whenever we ask “Is Isaac a handsome boy?” What she taught him is still providing us with hours of fun which is the key thing here hence it is not really important who taught him that. If only he is more consistent and not get distracted so easily I’m sure more people will get to experience and enjoy it.

Speaking of Isaac he is still having that infamous cheeky smile of his and in fact he is getting more mischievous although he is still a good boy most of the time. It is just that it is getting harder to bring him along whenever we meet friends for lunch or dinner. He just wouldn’t sit still for long. In the past we are able to pacify him with food but these days this method will not last long. Before you know it he wants to be off the baby chair and move about on his own. As a result if we have to bring the kids out with us then more often than not we will bring the twins instead of Isaac.

I guess we will just have to wait for him to turn older and maybe can reason better and then it will be the twins’ turn to stay at home while we bring Isaac out for meetings with friends.

In case reading this post does not bring that smile to your face then I have the following video that might just do the trick.

Needs??

It is the exciting time of the year again. The Great Singapore Sale!! Not sure if you all noticed but the commencement of this sales period seems to be getting earlier with each year. Some shops are even offering pre-GSS sale.

Anyway the Mrs seems to be quite excited this year now that she has 3 babies to fill those clothes with. What’s even more exciting for her is this year we have a baby girl to doll up.

Babies aside this is usually the time when the Mrs looks around for a bargain on some of the designers bags that she has been eyeing for some time. Credit to her for she has no problem waiting for such sales before committing on the bags and wallets. I definitely cannot say the same about me. I am the typically impatient male where I will not even wait for another day if it means a saving of 10% by borrowing a membership card from friends. I’ll usually look at the price and deduced that the saving of 10% is not worth the wait so more often than not I will end up paying for the retail price.

Anyway the Mrs already proclaimed that she is on the prowl for 2 designer bags which she intends to use for work. She has already gotten one from TOD’s and she is still on the lookout for a second one although not too wholeheartedly. This is the ‘problem’ with her because once she has spent a certain amount of money it is harder for her to commit on another item. Knowing her character I will usually be more encouraging whenever she wants to buy anything.

I was having this conversation with my bro, Mike the other day that the same usually cannot be said for the wives. Case in point, I have always wanted to buy a home theater system but due to the lack of wireless speakers I have been putting it on hold. That was until recently when I came across a promotion on a Panasonic one which includes a Blu-ray player. There was an almost 37% discount and I was getting really excited but the Mrs’s response was “Do we really need it? You seldom watch your movies in the living room anyway.” To be fair to her she was pointing out the truth but I imagine that scenario will be easily changed once I get my hands on the system.

Back to the conversation with Mike;

Mike: How? Are you buying the Panasonic system?

Me: The Mrs asks if we really need it leh. She commented that I hardly watch TV in the living as it is.

Mike: Ya but that is because you don’t have the system there mah.

Me: Somehow we husbands are more supportive when it comes to encouraging them to buy whatever they want.

Mike: Ya but we are so supportive because we hope that they will in turn be just as supportive when it comes to our purchases.

Me: Imagine if we ask them do they really need those new bags, shoes or wallets.

Mike: Ohhhhh…. Bro, you don’t want to go down that road!

Both: Hahahahahaha

Mike is experiencing pretty much the same thing with his intention to purchase. He was using the buying of more camera lens for his new hobby and DSL as an example and he knows for a fact that Kat, his wife will definitely ask does he need so many lenses.

The four of us were out having lunch and shopping when I told the Mrs that most of us buy stuffs base on our wants and only a small percentage of our purchases are really based on our needs.

Speaking of lunch I learned another thing about wives and purchases. I commented the other day that actually I was hoping to buy us both a new pair of wedding bands so we were looking around and I told her that I actually like the Bvlgari classic B.Zero1 ring for sometime now so if it looks good on us both then we will buy them. We went ahead to try but it looks better on me than her so we did not purchase them.

She encourages me to buy it for myself first while we continue to source for another ring for her. The strange thing here is it actually costs more than the home theater system that I wanted to buy. Then I came to the conclusion that maybe with the system we are not speaking the same language but with jewellery she understands my want much better!

If you think this post is about our voicing our dissatisfaction towards our wives then nothing is further from the truth. At the end of the day our wives will not really say no to our needs and wants since they know how hard we work and they understand that sometimes even guys just want to pamper ourselves a little. I believe in every marriage they are there to be our check and balance and we all love them for that.

Now Honey can I buy the home theater system and the ring?

Courageous?

Wow!!! Has it been more than 2 weeks since I last posted here?!?! How time flies especially when you have 3 kids and work as well as other stuffs that you have to work on. I know my bro has always been reminding me whenever he meets me that my blog needs updating but it never quite occurred to me that it has been this long.

Besides the usual excuse of being busy I guess there is nothing much worth updating from the Tan family. Everything has been pretty much same-o same-o and mundane.

As parents I believe the Mrs and I are pretty relaxed and courageous (some say stupid) at the same time. Most people would have agreed when they see that we tried conceiving so soon after Isaac but I have different thing in mind.

About 2 weeks back when the twins turned 3.5 months we brought them to Dr B for their routine check up. She has always been the rather relaxed doctor and the instructions she gave was for us to bring the twins to her when they are 3 or 4 months old.

Hmmmm…. Now which should it be? 3 months old or 4 months old? Finally I decided to bring them in when they’re 3.5 months old. Typical of a dad right? That was an easy enough decision.

So on that fateful day both the Mrs and I took childcare leaves and the Tan family headed to Dr B’s clinic. Isaac and Ani came along of course. Isaac was due for his 15th month checkup and we were already late for that. Blame it on the government (typical of a Singaporean right?) for not giving us 6 days of childcare leave for each kid. As a result we have to time their visits to the doctor to be on the same day.

Bringing all the children to the PD for their routine checkup at the same time is all good and fine but what we forgot was Isaac was also due for his jabs. Now don’t ask me what he had because if there is one thing I am not following, it is the injections. I have totally lost track of what he had and will be having. I normally leave it to the good PD and the ever reliable record book.

Anyway imagine my surprise when I learnt that besides the twins Isaac needs to be jabbed too. While the twins were required to have their 6 in 1 jabs, their big brother needed 3 jabs!!! Dr B said that there were 3 outstanding jabs for Isaac but she would only recommend that he takes 2 of them that day leaving the 3rd one till when he comes back in another few months time. The best part was the silly old me was thinking “Sure! What is a 2 in 1 jab when the twins are having 6 in 1 right? I mean come on, while we’re at it why not give him all 3 in 1 and get it over and done with?”

When things were finally explained to me and after I had my blonde moment I actually looked at Isaac and felt sorry for him. I wondered if he will be traumatized by this episode considering some adults already have problem with handling a single jab to the arm let alone 2?!?!?!

The next wave of awakening hit me and I suddenly realized that with all 3 kids are getting their jabs on the same day, we will really have a handful should all of them develop fever. We were smart enough to always arrange for the jabs to take place on a Friday so that we have the weekend to take care of the kids but no weekend is long enough should all 3 of them develop fever!!

Being the relaxed and courageous (again some say stupid) parents that we are we went ahead with all jabs for all kids.

First up was Isaac and being the big brother that he is he showed his younger siblings how it should be done. I was wondering how were they going to administer both injections because Isaac will probably reject the second one right? The answer became clear when I saw Dr B and a nurse holding one syringe each. One of them aiming for Isaac’s arm whiles the other the thigh. They synchronized it to perfection (in my opinion definitely a gold medal is due) and all we heard from Isaac was “erh!” and then Dr B quickly shoved a toy in his hands and he went off playing! He took it like a real man there! I couldn't have done better myself. Really!

Luke faired better than Isaac when he had his 6 in 1 because he did not cry at all but Hayley being the girl in the family and the manja one cried a lot more but she too forgot about the pain in a couple of minutes.

For the rest of the weekend we were very vigilant, patrolling their rooms armed with our trusted Cadi thermometer.

Maybe the kids know that their parents are inexperience and courageous (some say stupid) they decided to be kind on us for they did not have any side effects of any kind. Either that or they took pity on us for the damage to us were probably more severe than them as the bill came up to about S$700 for that day.

After this experience will we have all 3 kids take their injections on the same day? ABSOLUTELY!!