Monthly Archives: August 2015

Nap time efficiency & ripe banana anxiety

Posted in Humour, Motherhood, Recipes by

Does anybody else get that? Ripe banana anxiety? You see them getting closer and closer to their use by date, day by day, and you know you’re dangerously close to rotten banana territory. So you think to yourself – “I should cut and freeze those for smoothies/I should bake something/I should get greener bananas next time” but more often than not, they go to the dark side and must be thrown out. Wasteful, really.

The issue with living in Singapore’s delightfully hot and humid climate is that bananas will generally ripen at an *alarmingly* fast rate. Not good for the more banana anxious amongst us. Yes, I’ve tried “the banana bag” and all those tricks to slow the process down (you better believe I did a search on Pinterest for that), but frankly – I’m very discriminating when it comes to bananas. I will meticulously peel every last stringy bit off and slice off the parts that are even the lightest shade of beige. I don’t know if it’s a pregnancy thing, but lately, if a banana tastes even slightly overripe it actually makes me gag. A is not fussy in that regard, but his daughter seems to have inherited my discerning taste in fruit. She has recently started rejecting any below par banana with a very disapproving frown. It means that we have to pretty much buy fresh bananas every. single. day. That girl makes me proud. Continue reading →

The mental/physical gymnastics of eating out with a toddler. 

Posted in Humour, Motherhood by

A has some fancy black tie affair tonight. Consequently, I decided that I was going to make things easier for myself and take Tuna out for Thai. You know, a sweet mother-daughter Saturday night date type of thing.

All you veteran mothers are all cackling away at me, I know.

It starts with the peace talks that must ensue prior to actually getting out of the house.

“Sweetie, where’s your nappy? Can you go get me your nappy?” This is our new thing which I’m trying to get her used to in training for becoming a big sister. Usually she goes into her room and triumphantly emerges a little while later with a “mappy”, often accompanied by some alarming item of baby first aid which escaped my childproofing efforts. Continue reading →

Tonight, I’m thinking about my mother.

Posted in Humour, Motherhood, On a More Serious Note, Tuna's Most Popular Posts by

As tonight’s insomnia started settling in, all I could smell was the sweet scent of my Banana Republic Rosewood perfume which always makes me think of my mother. It’s one of her favourites, and always reminds me of the time she travelled across the world to see me get admitted to the bar, and then nonchalantly left a bottle of this perfume in our guest room, so that every time I missed her I would smell it and feel like she was close.  Poetic as this all sounds, the reason my senses were treated to this luxury is that earlier this evening, Tuna decided it was necessary to pull down my perfectly organised little shelf containing all of my favourite choking hazards and uningestable substances (jewellery and perfumes, and actually, no joke –razors [WHAT WERE THEY DOING IN THERE?!]- she clearly saw that the entire set-up was a health and safety violation so actually, I owe her for bringing this to my attention). She is totally fine, but my Banana Republic perfume is not.  The glass bottle shattered everywhere, and its contents spilled across my bedroom floor.  I managed to clean it all up but the scent feels like it’s going to linger for a while.

So it got me thinking. About my mother. And how, after becoming a mother myself, I am starting to understand so many more of the mother-daughter dynamics which I previously took for granted.

The dynamic I’m particularly aware of at the moment is the one where I act like an inconsolable toddler whenever I’m with her. Or a moody teenager.  Or basically any stage of a child’s life that a parent finds more challenging than others. My dad doesn’t get much of this. It’s all smiles and jokes and laughter with him. I actually remember a Skype conversation, pre-Tuna, but not that long ago, where I spent the first half of the call crying and complaining like a little baby, and then the instant my dad appeared, he started cracking jokes and managed to make me smile. Mama actually commented on this and asked me what she had done to be the lucky recipient of all my grumpiness.

I was never really able to answer her. Continue reading →

My child will *never* eat sugar.

Posted in Humour, Motherhood, Recipes by

And other famous last words.

No but really – for a while, I genuinely thought that if I really tried hard enough, Tuna wouldn’t even know what sugar was and would reject anything sweet because it’d just be so unfamiliar and abrasive to her untarnished palate.

And so, to that end, when I started thinking about planning her first birthday party earlier this year, I spent an alarming amount of time on Pinterest desperately searching for *the* perfect smash cake. Really, I wanted to give the kid a salad but that doesn’t make for the greatest photo ops – I mean look, the idea of shreds of lettuce in the hair sends some parents into hives (how ever will we get that out?! I just don’t think her organic, paraben and sulfate-free shampoo is capable!) but A and I both accepted that we needed this girl to have some fun and get messy. Even if it did go against every mess-phobic instinct I have. Continue reading →

Pregnancy insomnia gave birth to this blog.

Posted in Humour, Motherhood, Pregnancy by

Well, that and the apparent bowling/high jump tournaments the upstairs neighbours have become fond of at approximately 10pm every night. Ah, apartment living. They should really schedule apartment viewings around this time of day so you know what you’re really getting yourself into.

I’ve been trying to train myself to be okay with ear plugs for the past couple of nights but frankly, I don’t see how anyone doesn’t see them as some kind of torture device. Instead of being kept up by various noises, I now find myself focusing on quantifying just how much the decibel level of a certain sound has been decreased thanks to these horrible little foam contraptions.  Short answer: not enough. Continue reading →