My ever supportive admirer

I'm starting to get the feeling that my little 3 year old boy doesn't just love me. He is completely in love with me. He sees the need to tell me that he loves me a couple of times a day. It often begins with a hug, then he looks at me in the eyes with the most tender, loving expression and tells me I love you Mummy. Then he will finish off with a kiss. Isn't he just so deeply in love?

And that's not all. He also tells me that I'm pretty. Sometimes cute. It doesn't matter what I am wearing for the day. I can be dressed up and putting on makeup, or I may be sweating in the kitchen in my ratty home clothes making dinner. He will just come up to me out of the blue and tells me that I am pretty. And of course finish it off with his grand gestures of hugs, kisses and confessions of his love for me.

I don't know when he will grow out of this loving phase but I am trying to savour every moment. After all, I cannot imagine him doing these when he is 14 and will be too embarrassed to be even seen hugging his mother. But this morning, my husband and I were telling him about how his little girlfriend in Perth (yes he already has a girlfriend and is maintaining a long distance relationship) has been saying that she wants to marry him someday, he suddenly got all teary and upset. But I want to marry Mummy! I love Mummy! That was all he kept saying. And he wouldn't hear a word when his dad tried to explain to him.

Well, all I can say is, his future girlfriends indeed have got a lot to contend with.
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Photo taken in Febuary early this year when we were on our way to Nikko for skiing.
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A new title!

Has anyone noticed that the title of this blog has been changed?

Yes, my blog is no longer known as "Simple Pleasures, Beautiful Life". The web address remains unchanged of course but for the benefit of my friends who are not very tech-savvy, I'm telling you now that you don't have to do anything if this site has already been bookmarked and saved in your favourites.

When I first started this blog, I wanted to write about things that I am passionate about. I enjoy life, and I wanted this page to have a strong force of positive energy. I try to steer away from negative content but I don't believe that life is just about unicorns, sunshine and rainbows. I want to keep this real and this means I will occasionally ramble about stuff that have angered the bull in me (well, I'm a taurean). This blog is meant to be a journal where I mostly document everything that interest me and that includes my love for cooking, music, good old movies, parenting and early childhood education (which explains the posts on montessori and purposeful play). As for the negative stuff that may occasionally come up on this site, well, I call them the little imperfections in life and I promise to do so with a sense of humour.

There you have it. Welcome to my beautiful journey where life is all about simple pleasures and little imperfections!

I hope to continue writing. So I hope you will continue reading.

Oh, has anyone also noticed that I have changed the description in "About Me" on the right of this page??
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La vita e bella (Life is Beautiful)

La Vita e Bella (aka Life is Beautiful) is one of my all time favourite classic movie. The story is about a man who won the heart of a lady with his funny and charismatic character and built a beautiful family together when they produced a son.

Guido (the male lead) loved his family more than anything else in the world. He was a young, poor guy when he met Dora (the femal lead who is also his wife in real life) who came from a wealthy family. Despite the differences in their class status, Dora fell in love with Guido who has a very kind heart. Between the couple, there were always lots of laughter and admiration for each other. Their love story seemed even more like a fairy tale when they got married and had an adorable son. Their lives, however, changed overnight when World War II broke out.

Guido (who happened to be a Jew) and his son were caught and taken to the nazi camp. Dora wasn't jewish but she insisted on following and was taken to the women camp. During the entire time they were in camp, Guido managed his 4 year old son by coming up with the idea that they were playing a game with the Nazis. The rules were that the boy should not cry, complain about hunger, or ask for the mother. If he broke the rules, points would be deducted. And the final prize of the game was a ride in a Tank. With this, Guido continued to create fun for his son amidst the chaotic living situation in the Nazi camp. At the end of the movie, Guido died but not before he made his son laughed one more time by pretending to march like the Nazis.

I strongly encourage anyone who has not watched this movie to give it a chance. The entire film is in italian but there are english subtitles. This story will bring you tears of laughter and sadness at the same time. The love that Guido and Dora had for each other, Guido's determination in staying positive for his child as a father in a life threatening situation, his ability to find pleasure and humour in everything that he did right till the end of his life, and his commitment to protect his family in all aspects. If you are not moved by this beautiful story after watching the movie, you must not be human!
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Boy, Girl, or Other?

I came across an interesting article in a magazine I picked up in Australia recently. It was titled "Why I won't reveal if my child is a boy or a girl" and was an interview of a 31 year old single mother who has been keeping the gender of her 1.5 year old toddler unknown. Except for herself, the child's biological dad, her own mother and a few friends who help to babysit occasionally, nobody knows if the child is a boy or a girl. Interesting?

According to this woman, she wants the child to grow up unhibited by the social expectations of the gender. She does not want him/her to be defined that way and she believes that this is liberating. To practise this non-gender way of parenting, she allows the child to have access to all kinds of toys from barbie dolls to trucks and trains. She also dresses the child up in a dress one day and shirt/trousers in another day. Even when she has to open up a bank account for the child, she hand-draw another box and write "other" instead of ticking "boy" or "girl".

While I can understand the reasoning behind her unorthodox way of parenting, I cannot bring myself to agree with her. Personally, I believe that it is important for a child to grow up with a strong sense of self. An identity to be exact. We cannot change the fact that a child is a boy if he is born that way, and it is necessary that he knows that too. In addition to that, the physical differences between a boy and a girl. I do agree that children should have full access to a wide range of toys but to dress a boy in a girly, frilly dress is, well, just wrong. My 3 year old has a good number of soft toys and he plays with a kid size kitchen. He likes to help out in the kitchen and I am aiming to have him master a simple 3 course meal by the time he is 8.  He wears pink and red too. But he knows he is a boy and can differentiate between a man and a woman.

The woman in the article says she will hide the identity of her child for as long as she can and that it is the society, not her child, that she is experimenting with. I just hope that this will not result in serious repercusions in the child's personal development. That the child will really grow up feeling liberated and not totally confused about his/her identity that may have negative impact on his/her self-esteem.

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What's for dinner?

I used to prepare a dinner like this once a week. It is usually organic brown rice, assorted vegetables steamed and served in a chinese bamboo steamer, miso soup and a steamed/panfried/grilled fish or chicken. But my usual weekly dinner routine has been disturbed by our recent travels so it has been a while since I prepared this healthy dinner.

The other day I found several types of vegetables lying around in the fridge so I decided to make this meal to use them up. Before living in Japan, I used to just buy instant miso soup packets that are sold in the supermarkets but now that I know how to cook miso soup from scratch, I no longer rely on those instant satchets that are packed with msg. Home cooked miso soup really do taste sooo much better. And healthier too. I also had some frozen scallops in the freezer and decided to throw them into the soup together with some diced zucchini and shredded chinese cabbage. The scallops and cabbage were a magical addition and made the soup a lot sweeter than usual. My 3 year old loved the soup so much!
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My busy busy life

Yay...I'm back again! It's nice to be home. Even my 3 year old said "I'm glad to be home mummy" the moment he stepped into the house on Saturday afternoon after almost 18 hours of travelling (flight, bus, taxi etc). For me, I'm happy that we won't be flying again for another 6 months at least.

Since arriving home, I have been busy with chores and working on my evergrowing To-Do list. Despite feeling exhausted from lack of sleep (I slept a little on the overnight flight but was definitely not enough), I had to unpack all our luggage and get all the stuff sorted out. Although I'm definitely no neat freak, there's something about unpacked suitcases lying around the house that disturbs me terribly. Everytime I come back from travelling, I just have to unpack the minute I get home. Immediately.

In the last 48 hours, I have managed to get the following done:
- 4 loads of washing
- grocery enough to feed our family of 3 for the next 3 days
- made 1 breakfast, 1 lunch and 1 dinner
- made a litre yoghurt (I make our own yoghurt with a yoghurt maker at home)
- sorted out Aiden's wardrobe for the change of season (his clothes were in a mess and scattered over several drawers)
- sorted out Aiden's old clothes (the ones I want to keep go into a box and the rest in a bag ready to be dumped)
- confirmed a new cleaning lady and organize for her to start her weekly services tomorrow (yay!)
- plan out the schedule for the cleaning lady for the rest of the year
- register for my japanese course to commence on 16 November (yay, I'm finally gonna pick up the language!)
- plan the itinerary for our friends' visit in December and ourtrip to Hiroshima and Osaka together
- plan the itinerary for Richard's grandfather who will be arriving next Saturday
- make changes to my friend's itinerary (she will be arriving 30 Nov) to accomodate my japanese class schedule and my weeekly domestic help
- caught up with a good friend over emails

Am I efficient or what? So much accomplished in the last 48 hours. I'm damn proud of myself... hee. Oh, and I even found time to update this blog. But now I've got to go put my 4 loads of washing that have been dried away. I will find time to update this blog again if I am not buried alive under that humongous pile of clothes...


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On the road... Again!

I'm leaving for Australia tonight. Looking forward to the nice, cool climate, which is the same as Japan at the moment, in temperature, but minus the gloomy, wetness of fall. It's spring in Oz!

I will be back in 2 weeks. This blog will be updated after 16 October 2010.

Oh, before I leave, here's an ikebana I did sometime back.

Have a good week ahead!
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Purposeful Play - Homemade Fun

I haven't done a purposeful play entry in a while. Here's something my husband did with Aiden sometime back.

Aiden pretending to be the driver of Thomas the tank engine and pulling along his 2 coaches, Annie and Clarabel that were made out of shoeboxes. I just realised that Annie and Clarabel appear to be really small in the picture here so you may not be able to see them clearly. It didn't cross my mind to take a closeup and well, I can't be bothered doing it now.

It all started when Aiden threw a tantrum (typical behaviour) at the shops when he wanted to purchase Annie and Clarabel and I refused to give in to his demands. I explained to him that he already has got too much toys at home and he wasn't even playing with most of them. Tears, whines and rolling stunts started and I just sat on a seat at the shop, waiting for him to finish his silly tantrums. And by the way, this happens preeetty often :). As you can imagine, I am fairly numb to the embarassmant in public. But I am not the type of parent to give in to silly demands of the child just because that is the easiest way out. And Aiden knows I mean what I say.

That night, I related the incident to my husband. Him, being the creative one of the both of us, suggested that we create Annie and Clarabel with stuff that we have already got at home. In this way, Aiden gets what he wants and at the same time learn about recycling things and how we can be creative. The little boy was of course very excited about the project that he and his dad were going to do. And in the end, my husband even made him the face of Thomas out of a cardboard and hung on his beck so that he could imagine himself to be the driver.












The proud moment.

My husband is great. I'm not a creative person and it didn't occur to me that we could have a project like this at home. It was cheap, fun and educational. The little boy was happy and learned something out of it. Win win!
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