Nat, the artist, loves to doodle around on pieces of A4 paper that we leave on the document tray. It is positioned at a height that is just right for the kids to help themselves to it and I have trained them not to take more than they need for a drawing session.

Here's her latest piece of artwork. I asked her to explain to me what she had drawn, so here goes:

"The orange and green house belongs to mummy, and it's green because I want it to be green. The purple lady in the picture is mummy and the green man is daddy. They are getting married, mummy has long hair and a ring on her finger (wah, check out that huge rock on my finger.) Didi and me are sleeping in the red tent with a black flag (uh, I think the tent is red in commemoration of national day, since she has been pointing out the national day flags hung up along the roadside.) The blue castle has a hole, so the rain dribbled inside. The blue house has pictures hung on the wall. And the picture right at the end shows Didi and nat packing to go Australia for a holiday. (why Australia? because I told her that we may go there for a holiday at the end of the year)". There you have it, my baby sure has a vivid imagination!

Sometimes, with a brood of 3 kids, one needs to do a lot of juggling and balancing. Making sure the kids are well fed, clothed and entertained is truly a full time job. The day passes by in a flash as you try to spend quality time with each of them. But being human, the brain sometimes fails. I forgot about Sam's pediatrician appointment yesterday. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the clinic asking if we were coming down soon for the appointment and that was in the middle of sending Nat to abacus class. Of course, we couldn't make it. While it is something small, and appointments can be easily rescheduled, I felt a deep sense of guilt. Sigh, better start getting a notebook to pen down my kids' various appointments, since the memory seems to be going.

It's been a long time since my last blog entry. Lots of interesting things do pile up along the way, which I tell myself to blog about, but with 3 kids in tow, it's really not easy to do that. Some updates:

My house is finally beginning to look less messy. We recently rejuvenated the living room, with a spanking new bookshelf and a ceiling fan. What a great improvement. The area below the bookshelf has become a reading corner of sorts and every night, the kids gather at the carpet to read books, play with jigsaws and blocks. With this arrangement, the kids choose the books they want to read, as the children's books are all strategically placed on the lower shelves. Gary is pretty pleased too, as he gets to arrange his proud collection of wine on the upper shelves.

Natalie has started on abacus lessons recently. I thought it would be good to get her some understanding in Maths and Numbers, which have never been my strongest suit. So far, seems good, she kind of enjoys the lessons and we spend about 10-15 minutes on abacus homework every other day. This little girl of mine loves to role-play. One of her favourite activities is to play the role of a princess, and she will dance and waltz around the house. Along the way, for lack of anyone else, her baby brother gamely plays the role of a handsome prince. It's quite fun to watch the duo together.

Lucas is still my little baby boy, but he has learnt from his sister's naughty ways. When you are stern with him over bad behaviour, he will cross his arms and say "I'm angry, I don't care about you." Very cute at this stage, haha, and sometimes I can't help laughing but of course, we always tell him that this is very rude behaviour and he always apologises after. He loves building blocks and I have recently added more blocks to his small collection. He loves building high with tunnels in the middle and can be quite focused.

Baby Sam is flipping, flipping, flipping. And she loves clutching on to her pacifier, putting it in her mouth, then taking it out repeatedly. She is a real sweetheart and never forgets to give daddy a smile when he comes home from work.

It's real chaotic with 3 kids, especially when we brought all 3 to the wet market this morning. However, as I always say, the rewards surely outweigh all the tiredness and frustration, and all we need is a kiss from nat, a hug from luke or a chuckle from sam for all the tiredness to melt away.

One of the things that change when you become a parent is how you think about the future. For Wei that means squirreling away for all manner of reasons from education to travel, and doing copious amounts of research on good classes from tennis to abacus to swimming, interesting activity lessons, and assorted thigamajigs/widgets/gizmos that may prove useful when the kids get older.

I'd like to think I plan a bit more pleasurably, and for the longer term :)

An interesting quest that I've been on is birthyear wines. Starting with Nat I have accumulated a number of top-notch 2007 wines that will bear significant ageing and will taste superb at her 21st birthday celebration. It was not a particularly exciting vintage in Bordeaux, so I went for German Rieslings and some Burgundy. This practice became full-blown with Lucas when I invested in a range of 2008 Bordeaux First Growths which have reaped significant gains. So I hope Lucas likes red wine! The 2011 vintage has yet to be harvested but I am already thinking of what to buy for Sam. She looks like she will like sweet wines, so I might go with Sauternes if it turns out to be a great vintage, or alternatively Tokaj or Trockenbeerenauslese. We shall see.

Just don't forget to include Daddy when it comes to finally drinking up!