I have stopped visiting Chinatown CNY market for years. However, I was back there again, it started last year, when the baby was still in my womb. The urge to go just came naturally. Must be some unexplained maternal instinct again. Anyway, the crowd was mad on an extremely hot Sunday afternoon. Our arms almost broke carrying the baby. No strollers, only the brave ones have the courage to push a stroller in the jam packed market. We warmed up at the shops before heading to the stalls, but gave up after walking less then ten metres. Never mind, I would go again another day, one trip there is not enough. I finally understood why some people keep returning there. When you start your family, those silly festival preparation take on a totally different light.

Having a kid in the family totally change our sentiments towards the Chinese New Year. I love the CNY when I was a kid; red packets, sweets, fire crackers, house visits, love them all. I still love it during my teenage years; red packets, buying flowers, decorating the house in a sea of red, but no more fire crackers and starting to dread going to relatives’ house. I still love CNY when I started working, love the happy and merry atmosphere, but I hated house visits, almost stopped visiting all relatives. The excitement of the festival has diminished, there wasn’t much anticipation. If there was any preparation needed, they were done more of a routine and a tradition.

But I felt my youthful yearning for it again. I am totally preoccupied with it. CNY is different with a kid at home. I want to decorate the house gaudy red to inject some New Year spirit. I am going to buy plants to pretend spring has arrived. I will buy some sweets, cookies and the bah kua to fill up the coffee table. I am getting ready the red packets. I even feel very happy thinking about distributing the red packets. With a kid, there is this urge to bask myself in this unexplainable frenzy of cleaning, shopping, decorating. I know I want the kid to enjoy this big festival as much as I did, just like when I was a child. Children love and look forward to festivals and celebrations. I could have treat CNY as another public holiday, stay at home, chill and watch TV. But wouldn’t it be better if we create some merry atmosphere, make it a special occasion worth waiting for, and make the children enjoy the moments of preparing the CNY as a family, I am sure the children would appreciate this festival better and have a better sense of pride belonging to the Chinese culture.

What does the bright red paper dolls with chubby faces hanging on the walls, the mediacorp artistes on TV and the silky terrier with the punky hairstyle have in common during Lunar New Year? Yes, they all greet us with gongxi gongxi gesture. Ok, to be fair, some of my friends who always try to be funny do it too, and also those MPs who go constituencies visiting to distribute ang bao do it too. And mommies too!

I found out that mommies are all fervently demonstrating to their kids how to bring their little hands together, clasp them, then move it up down up down, hoping that the little ones would learn that action just in time for the Lunar New Year. I have been to many mommies’ sites and the gongxi gongxi classes have sprung up everywhere. It is definitely on the to-do-list of ushering the New Year.

Of course, how could I be left before this fun. Since I couldn’t get her to say gongxi gongxi, must well teach her the action for some amusement. We are almost there, should be just in time to get it 100% action on demand on the actual days. That should make the old folks happy. And if some uncle or aunty pretend to forget about giving Yauyau a red packet, some gongxi gongxi would remind them not to act blur.

I wonder why the shoes found in HDB shops comes in sizes like 22, 23, 24, whereas those in shopping malls are size 2, 3, 4. Anyway, I finally bought the first pair of baby shoes for my girl. It is actually a pair of white colour open toe sandals with a yellow tweety bird. Sandals for her this time; I won’t have to worry about missing any cardboard inside the shoes anymore. Not very pretty, which is an important factor; so that I won’t have to bother about dirty black oil stains and resort to carrying her to avoid dirtying the precious leather, maybe never need to wash them at all. And yes, the sandals don’t squeak. I guess only parents find the “squeak squeak squeak squeak” sound amusing, everyone else probably gets a bad headache and tries to flee from the haunting sound.

And I bought her back to the same shop we went some months ago for a haircut. It was a total disaster. I specifically told the barber(ess) that she only needed a trim; I want to keep her hair long. But she snipped off so much of them. The front is so short, it further enhanced her “kok kok” forehead (like a big bulging bun). The back is short too, no way to try tying her hair this Lunar New Year. Damn ugly! And last of all, I don’t understand why she must insist on layering her hair. I thought I told her I wanted to keep the hair long, why create problem for me by cutting away all the longer hair! Argghh! Angry! Should have found a photo of those china doll hair style bob look to explain my point, she probably needed visual instruction! Won’t step into that salon again. Now I got to dig out those cute girlie hairclips to add some girlish touch to Yauyau.

My sister-in-law prophesied that Yauyau would probably becomes a shoes fetish in future, because she has been trying to touch and play with shoes lately, especially the more fancy looking ladies ones.

I thought the kid’s sudden interested in shoes is most likely because she has been seeing the adults wearing these strange things on their feet and go about walking on it. Yah, for the past 11months, she has not been wearing any shoes. She cannot walk yet, wear shoes for what!? Ok, I admit, I am just lazy to take out the shoes and put it on for her. What if she dirtied the shoes and I have to wash and scrub the stains. So much trouble, must well let her go bear footed and save the effort. To those who have bought her size 2 shoes, I am sorry to have wasted your good intention, the shoes you bought were too small for her to put on now.

No more excuse now, time to let her wear shoes when we bring her out. She is wearing kid’s size 3. When I helped her wear shoes for the first time yesterday, I realised I have only one pair of socks to help her complete the girlie look, and that pair of sock was rather small too. No choice, I just pulled and tugged the sock, hoping to extend its length and squeezed her feet into the socks, then squeezed the socked feet into the shoes. Yauyau didn’t complained or tried to remove the shoes and managed to balance herself wearing them, so I concluded that the shoes weren’t too uncomfortable to wear.

After a tiring day out, she finally got to relax her feet when I took off the shoes. To my horror, I found a piece of cardboard in one of the shoes; those cardboard used for shaping the shoes. What a muddle headed mom I am, never checked properly, must be squeezy tight for her.

No shopping trip is complete without bringing home a prize, I bought two pairs of socks to commemorate this important day.

I have also decided to pack up the ABC rubber foam mat for good too. It was well loved in the beginning. The padded protection gave me so much assurance that the baby won’t fall down and end up with a big ba-lu-gu on her head. After the novelty wears off, it was just a piece of eyesore and a headache to me.

The baby just kept scratching the mat and trying to dig out the letters. And babies nowadays are not gong gong (stupid stupid) like what we used to be. She tried digging different letters and remembered the ones that were loosed and diggable. I hated it when she chewed on them. Although the carrier for the mat stated it as non-toxic, I refused to believe it. Those are synthetic rubbery stuff, must be made from some funny chemical product. Well, correct me if I am wrong, I would be happy to get that reassurance. Then I heard rumours saying that they could really leech toxin and cause cancer, unless you wash and sun them before use. I live in apartment, how am I ever to get them sunned!

It is such a headache when I want to clean the floor. The jigsaw pieces just broke down into their simplest form, with the letters dropping everywhere. Got to fix the puzzle after every cleaning session. It was such a pain to wash them, so I didn’t bother to do it. And just looked at the awful lot of grime it collected! So dirty. I am somewhat guilty of this. I found that I have unconsciously used it as a floor mat. You see, the tinny ridges on the foam mat are perfect for removing all those dust and irritating stuff that stick to the feet. Disgusting, right?

Back to the faithful thin, firm and foldable mattress we bought from Jusco, JB. Not the kind of thin foldable mattress we find in pasar malam or NTUC with sponge like foam, it uses material somewhat like a thick layer of batting for quilt or comforter, compressed together to become a firm piece of futon like mattress. It can be folded into a quarter of its size and the cover can be removed for washing. Yah, this time I can simply throw the cover into the washing machine for it to do the job for me. I can’t machine wash the rubber foam mat!

Oh yes, Ye Chin introduced me to the Bumper Playmat^TM from smallsmallworld, looks very colourful and child friendly too.

The Playgroup Handbook - The complete, practical guide to organizing a home playgroup, by Laura Peabody Broad and Nancy Towner Butterworth.

This book doesn’t give you the step by step idiot proof instructions on how to set up your own playgroup like The Stay-At-Home-Mom Complete Guide to Playgroup does. It focuses on issues like organisation, size, facilities, material and activities.

The book provides tonnes of interesting and detailed structured activities that parents could carry out during playgroup session. The activities are planned through the year, categorised by 12 months, including art, cooking, games, music, exercise, science, trips, woodworking, storytelling, etc. The many useful activities definitely make this book worth buying, especially for parents who are running out of ideas what to do with the kids. It also list down all the materials needed for art, cooking, craft sessions as well as songs lyrics, which saves the parents a lot of work!

Unlike the other book mentioned earlier, this book focused on setting up playgroup that tends to be more formal and structured, more like a babysitting facility, rather then the informal home gathering type where kids and moms mingle in a relax atmosphere. The activities in the book are meant for children 2yrs old and above, so wouldn’t be too useful yet for me until sometime later.

“If children over-eat as babies, it could boost their fat hormones in the long term, regardless of their adult diets, a Melbourne study has found over-nourishment from a young age had long-lasting effects on hormones made in fat.” Fat babies grow up to be fat adults, TODAYonline

“A Chubby baby has been seen for years as the epitome of good health, but new research on the way children grow is set to overturn the belief that big is beautiful.” Why big babies are not so healthy, The Observer

Just as I thought my kid is getting thinner and want to fatten her a bit, the researcher said that big is not necessarily beautiful and might have big impact on their body weight. So the bean poles might be the one having the ideal weight after all.

Are formula fed babies generally bigger? But I have seen equally huge and chubby breastfed babies everywhere. What about overfeeding with breastmilk? I have to control the intake also? I was formula fed, but I was perpetually underweight. What if I was breastfed, maybe I would be so thin the wind would have blown me away.

I remembered the days when nurses came to school and said I was too skinny and had to go to the polyclinics to get those little yellow tablets as supplements. I took those pills for a few years and had no effect at all. The nurses should have just certified me healthy and spared my parents of those worrying agonies about my weight.

It was a very big affair for my family (clan) today. I wanted to take more pictures of the paper bunglow with blinky lights and all the heaps of paper treasures, but was afraid to be scolded. Could only take this simple picture showing the folks busy folding paper money in the background.

As true pure bred Taoist Hokkien, my father and uncles decided to engage a sai-gong (Taoist priest) to appease the souls and send them to the west.

The sai-gongs begin their ritual at 9am, chanting scriptures, blowing the 唢呐 (a Chinese trumpet like instrument), and hitting the 锣 (Chinese gong). It was a noisy, I felt sorry for the neighbours who must have been disturbed by the comotion at 9am. In the old kampong days, this used to be a huge joyous event, with a whole day of praying, followed by a big banquet inviting almost the whole village, with the grand finale of burning the paper mansion, cars, money, servants. I found that there were also gold ingots, Amex card and many other valuable items. And there were two smiling pig heads, scary.

I was told that today’s ritual is a small scale one (the villa I saw during my younger days was at least 10 times bigger) and will probably end in two hours. Guess what, it ended at around 5pm. I was lucky, I had a clingy baby and could escape upstairs to look after her, feed her, nap her….actually I was surfing and blogging. The rest of my siblings, cousins, uncles and aunties ended up standing and kneeling, walking in circles, as the priest need to complete about 9 rituals. Tough time, everybody was complaining.

I hope this put an end to all the unhappy three years when one family member left us each year. I know my mom’s greatest fear, she was afraid that no children will offer incense to her. I will leave that job to my brother. When I am gone, I hope my children won’t arrange such elaborate event for me; I would be a happy soul. Just remember me as the dear person they have known. Aiyo, and no paper money for me please, the inflation rate down there (or up there) is too high!

A Stay-At-Home Mom’s Complete Guide to Playgroups by Carren W. Joye provides a very practical and common sense guide to setting up and maintaining a playgroup.

It clarifies many of my misunderstanding about playgroup. First, I always thought playgroup is essentially a group for children to play. It could also be a mother centred group which provides an avenue for mothers to meet and interact while the children play in another room. And of course, the “all must have” attitude Singaporean like me would prefer the combination of both.

Then, I always thought playgroup should be very structured and fill with useful and purposeful activities. Must be seeing too much advertisements by the various RC, children care centre or kindergarten about how their playgroup will help to nurture a bright, confident and independent child. The playgroup is not a preschool, and it is meant to be relaxed and informal. So it might just be a session where mothers (or the primary caregivers) get together and mingle around, while the children engage in free playtime, with or without any other structured activity. One year old babies probably won’t be able to take part in structured activity like craft or colouring.

There are also suggestions on overcoming problems like unruly children, low attendance, hosting and useful ideas for setting up guidelines or rules and tips for craft and games sessions.

The Introduction and Chapter one already covered everything that I want to know, the rest of the chapters are just more detailed elaboration. Actually, most of its content can be found on the website onlineplaygroup.com. It is a very encourging book, I feel more confident in setting up a playgroup now.

I have gotten my books on organising playgroups from amazon.com, still finding time to finish reading them. At the mean time, I thought I could warm up the engine by thinking for a name for the group.

This is as difficult as naming my girl. I roped in my sis to help me. She is a reporter, suppose to be good coming up with names just like writing sensational headlines.

How about Chucky, Ju-on? Not funny!
Then Cutie, Sweetie, Honey? So sweet I felt my teeth decaying.
How about Little Tots, Tiny Tots or Happy Tots? Sounds like spoke-person for those X Tots schools.
Ok, then Kinder Love, Kinder Mom, Mommy Love, Playmates, Angles, Precious, Fun Time, Fun Babies…? Cheesy, anything fresher?
Neverland, Little Rain Drops? Getting there, but what is the rationale?
Strawberry, Blueberry, Orange Tree, Durian Tree….Ok forget it. We will have another naming session again in future.

She is afterall a reporter who is still single and has no affirnity with all things kidish. I will come up with an apporiate name myself.