Random thoughts

Triggered by an impromptu trip to the prata house, we have been mainly wearing orange (aka curry t-shirts) today.

Mum is here from the USA and we're having a lovely time. It's Pippa's last week of school holidays, Paul has the week off and we've taken Tasha out of school for a week. Lots of fun planned! Here are a few photos of last week's fun.

Brynn is the most contented little baby I could wish for. He sleeps a lot, eats well, smiles a lot and now even sucks his thumb to get to sleep. He's getting stronger and more fun every day. I can't believe he's 4 months old already.

I picked up this awesome tea pot and cup today, just perfect for a brew of my current favourite of lemongrass and ginger tea. Delicious!

Happy boy at 6pm every day, he cheers up as soon as he gets in the bath and splashes enthusiastically for 10 minutes or as long as I'll let him.

The kids have all been sick for the last couple of weeks, so we've not been doing much other than resting, listening to Brynn cry and nebulising whichever child's cough sounded worst. All three are on the mend, but Pippa's excema has flared up terribly, so I've put her (and me) on a trial gluten free diet to see if it makes a difference. I'm sure I'll be posting a few gluten free recipes before long. I've just made brown rice muffins.. look good, but I haven't tasted them yet.

The girls were just watching hi-5 and came away inspired to make a dream catcher. So here they are, we used pipecleaners, string, sellotape and other random bits and pieces in the craft drawers. Lots of fun and quite effective.

The girls chose this train craft as today's project. We're starting early on this one (8am!). Pippa even got a bit clever with a toothpick on her blue paint. Next stop - the butterfly park on Sentosa. I love school holidays.

I suggested still life drawing and the girls suggested Zoobles (the latest plastic toy craze of theirs). Here are our attempts, I've put the Zoobles on the paintings for reference. Can you guess who's is whose?

One of life's great joys, teaching the kids to cook pizza on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We're starting Brynn early.

I first posted about these trees back in 2006. After 8 years living here they are still an oddity to me. The seed looks like a cannonball hanging off the tree trunk. The flowers have an odd, distinctive shape and feel like rubber. The inside of the cannonball is purple. I love them and will miss them when we finally leave Singapore.

I love it here, this was a particularly bright and breezy day last week. I'm appreciating days like this even more since the recent haze.

If you ever want to draw attention to yourself in Singapore, then can I suggest an afternoon sketching in the flower dome at gardens by the bay with my three kids. Tasha's idea was to take pencils, pens and paper, set ourselves up in the dome and do some drawing. We ended up being the main attraction, with me shooing away anyone trying to photograph us. Pippa ended up wearing a headscarf made of Brynn's blanket to try to avoid some of the attention that her blonde curls inevitably draw in Asia. Despite all of this, time ran away with us and before I knew it we'd been there for two hours, and we had a stack of lovely drawings to show for it.

A lovely family trip on Saturday took us to the north of this little island to visit the mangrove swamps at sungei buloh. This time we saw a crocodile in the water, some mudskippers at low tides, several large monitor lizards, cranes, herons, mud crab hills, wasps nests and more blood - starved aedes mosquitoes than I'd ever like to encounter again. Apart from being eaten alive, it was lovely to be in the peaceful surroundings of the mangrove swamp. I love it up there. Lunch at the quirky bollywood veggies was great, with the kids happily using the tree trunk mounted can crusher to flatten an entire crate of cans.

Summer holidays present a plethora of opportunities for creative entertainment. Yesterday my friend Lucie and I grabbed the bull by both horns and decided to take 5 small children bowling. It was brilliant. Lucie won; I discovered that bowling with a three month old in a sling is tricky; Tasha's balls rolled so slowly that one stopped five metres short of the target (6lb balls are heavy for a three year old) and  this morning I could feel that there are muscles in my shoulder and arm that I had long since forgotten about. A f un afternoon was had by all.

Here's a photo of a typical Tuesday afternoon. It's a good life!

I love the things they say sometimes, and I'm not always good at writing them down, so here's a few. Tasha : Mum, Brynn's filling up with smiles Tasha : The refloatable burst Tasha : Mum, do I need to put my leoform on for gym now?

Another relaxing morning at the botanic gardens.

I finally got round to putting Brynn under his play gym, up until now he's mainly been asleep or feeding. He seems to love it, and Cassie the beagle is looking on with great interest.