Autumn came and went. The trees are now almost bare, but for that short two weeks, what a glorious view we had everyday.

Went to Papa Rich and had Ais Kacang. Twice.

Diggers are fun.

Keira had a school Sports Day where they all had a 500m “Fun Run”.

Caught the sewing bug again and made K a sparkly circle skirt.

Asked her to twirl around in the skirt.

Made coconut and raspberry cupcakes.

Got bicycles for the children.

Hung out with friends in the playground after school everyday.

So life has been rather… busy? lately. I have a question mark there because I don’t really know what it is that eats up all the time in my day.

I mean, I don’t go out to work all day, I don’t have to take care of my own house, I don’t sign the kids up for lots of after school activities, and yet, from morning till night, there’s always something to do.

Maybe I make my own work abit. I try to make home made snacks and food for the kids, so there’s alot of going out to buy ingredients, coming back to bake something and then cleaning up the aftermath.

Then there seems to be never ending feeding, washing and cleaning up after one child or the other. If it isn’t the toilet, it’s something to eat, or read or explain, or guaranteed at least once a day - break up a fight.

And then there’s also alot of playing. I’d be really happy with this, if the kids played with each other. Unfortunately I continue to have two clingy children, who insist on having me play with them. The only time they leave me alone is if they are on the iPad, and because I don’t want them to spend all day staring at a screen, I have to play with them. I mean, the moment I get up to say, “ok, mummy is going to do something else now, you guys play on your own, ok?” A few minutes later, one or both will come and find me, start asking for things, and eventually end up on the iPad again.

But anyway, I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I’m loving the two rascals This is just my excuse for why blog entries have been so rare lately.

So I want to talk about accents. The Aussie accent. As Keira goes to school, her english is slowly changing. From the “lahs” and “mahs” of Malaysian english, to the long, twangy vowels of Australian english. Do you know how she pronounces “Smile” now? It’s horrible! I would just say it straight up - short and quick - “Smile.” She says, “Sss-my-yoll”!! OMG. I’m not sure if I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of me speaking one way and my kids speaking an entirely foreign way. Its like how can you be my kid when you sound like that ?!

Hai. At least Sean is still talking like me for awhile more.

Onto the next topic. Swimming lessons. We started Keira on a 5 day intensive beginners swimming class over the school holidays, just to get her more confident in the water. Two of her friends from school also decided to take the same class, and if it weren’t for them, Keira would be complaining everyday about having to go.

Luckily, they were there, and she went along, if not happily, at least with friendly company. With the added bonus of not wanting to look bad in front of your friends -  If they tried something, she went for it too. It was great! At the end of the 5 days, she is at least a little better at floating, with a float, and knows how to kick her legs properly. Their teacher, Tom, was a young man who was so patient and nice and encouraging, all the girls, small ones and big ones (ahem) liked him

Some pics:

Finally, the last thing to update is the arrival of our new car! Yay! Now I can go out anytime I need for groceries or to run errands or do whatever I want. It’s great.

Sean turned three years old last week. We didn’t do a party for him, but just had a small celebration with a cake, balloons and cousins.

So, at three years old, Sean is fascinated by lion dancing. He runs around the house jumping and shaking pretending to be a lion dancer. He pulls the sofa apart to make lion dancing platforms, and jumps from one platform to another. He makes lion dancing figures and poles out of blocks and Lego. He can watch lion dancing videos on youtube for ages.

Sometimes he wants me to be the back of the lion, while he is the head and we have to run up and down the house together. Sometimes, I have to bang drums, while he jumps from chair to sofa.

If I could find a kid’s lion dance costume, I would buy it for him

He is also into monsters, dinosaurs and Peppa Pig. And quite fascinated with diggers, mixers, police cars and fire engines. His favourite colour is dark blue, favourite fruits - orange and grape, favourite flavour is chocolate, favourite food - noodles.

Vocabulary is expanding nicely. But doesn’t pronouce “k”, “c”  and “s” properly. Knows his numbers and alphabet. Can count, spell his own name, sing a few songs, gobble up his dinner in five minutes when he’s hungry.
That’s the quick update on Sean. Now, on to the birthday pics.

I ordered some helium balloons:

Let them play with sparklers:

And made him a Jelly cake. Sean wanted a Mickey Mouse cake. I took the easy way out and ordered a MM edible cake icing topper from eBay.

Underneath is a crushed biscuit base, condensed milk layer and a grape flavoured aeroplane jelly layer.  So easy to make! And yummy too.

This was one cake that we had no trouble finishing. And that’s it for Sean’s birthday. I continue to have lots of fun with him and really enjoy his company too

Keira has started her Prep year here in Melbourne. Its actually not kindergarten, it is an official primary school grade before Year 1. So ever since the start of February, she has been going to primary school from 9am to 3.30pm every day.

I no longer have monopoly over my first born’s time. I don’t have first hand knowledge of what she does half the day. Friends and school will slowly take over my girl’s interests and I won’t be her favourite person in the world anymore! I miss her:(

On her first day, Keira started off a little shaky and shed a few tears. Mainly because Yong Hao was in a different introductory group from her. But when the whole group came together, she was totally fine. I mean, the cousins are in the SAME class! Keira and Yong Hao are very pleased about that.

Now our holiday is officially over. No more sleeping in in the mornings, no more playing all day and staying up late. This is our new routine:

Every morning I wake up to prepare Keira’s snack and lunch for school, then get myself ready, then wake the kids up and get them ready, eat breakfast etc. CY goes off to work, and Sean and I walk Keira to school (it is only 10 minutes walk from my parents house).

After dropping Keira off and we get home, Sean, who is totally not used to being on his own (no more jie jie to play with!), starts pestering me - he is very naughty now, wants to play iPad and eat sweets all day. Luckily, we can go to my sister’s house down the road and Sean can play with Jae Hao. And that’s what I have been doing. While he plays, I manage to sneak in some work on the computer too. I am still doing the same work I was doing back in KL. So lucky that I can work online. If only the exchange rate wasn’t so horrible.

At 3.15pm, Sean and I walk to pick Keira up again. I’m finally getting the daily exercise I need. haha. The road to the school is uphill, and pushing Sean in the buggy all the way does give me abit of work out:)

We get back home, I let the kids eat snacks/watch TV/play iPad/relax etc. Around 5pm I start cooking dinner and Keira and Sean will play/fight/cry/play. Pretty much in that order. By 7pm, my parents, brother and CY all come back from work and we sit down to eat dinner together.

By 10pm, kids are in bed and “me” time starts. Ahh…!

Weekends are really busy too. Keira now goes to Chinese class on saturday morning (my mum takes them), while CY and I actively look for the next two big items on the list needed to settle down here. Car and house. At least these are enjoyable things to do

So that’s life here so far. We hardly did anything for Chinese New Year. So far, only had reunion dinner with my aunts. No public holidays, no lion dances, no tong tong chiang music at the shopping centers…

Here’s some pics of Keira’s classroom. It looks like one big toy room to me. So many books, and soft toys, and things to do, they also have two little budgies in a cage.

Wishing everyone a prosperous, healthy and happy year of the snake!

ps. I am just waiting for K & S to start speaking with an Aussie accent. How weird will that be?!

I have great memories of the sea from my childhood. I think some of my best memories are of holidays my parents took us on where we got to dig wet, sandy holes in the beach, grow a collection of beautiful sea shells and float on the gentle waves of a clear blue cove. Us staying near Penang Island for a number of years certainly helped build up some lovely beach experiences.

So, I’ve always felt an affinity to the sea, and beach holidays are my favourite kind of holiday. I really wanted city born and bred - Keira and Sean - to love the sea too. I think this is a good start:

We went to Torquay, a town about 2 hours out from Melbourne and spent a few lovely days with Liem and family, staying right next to the sea.

It was beautiful.

The weather was hot - we had a 40 degree day in which we stayed indoors and only went to the beach after 7pm, but the kids had so much fun.

After we returned from Torquay, we still didn’t feel like we had finished scratching that holiday itch. So the next week off we went for a short trip to Mornington Peninsular, on the other side of Melbourne.

The weather wasn’t as nice this time round, it was really windy:

So we did alternative beach activities, like having fish and chips by the sea.

And taking tube rides on very long slides (@ the Enchanted Maze Arthurs Seat):

All in all, great times Must go again!