Hip to be Mom

Okay, so our reunion dinner is done for another year… and just in case you’re wondering what we ate, well, I’ll let the picture do the talking.

Scrumptiously moist roast turkey with brown gravy, roasted carrots and potatoes, a simple salad of lettuce and mandarins and red wine

Simple and refreshingly different. Our ancestors are no doubt frowning down on our bold deviation from tradition going, where the heck is the food with auspicious names y’all? With all due respect, somewhere along the line, someone must’ve been born with a non-conformist chromosome!

Long story short, my girls loved our Christmas turkey so much they got me to go out the week after Christmas to grab another frozen turkey for the reunion. Which is a very simple affair as there’s just us chickens at our dining table at home.

For the next 15 days, we’ll be avoiding Chinese restaurants like the plague, unless we get invited out and someone else is footing the bill. A girl friend of mine started this tradition and I must say it’s a darned good one. If you can have Chinese on any given day of the year, why pay double or triple to eat half the regular portion of the same, probably poorer quality food with souped-up auspicious names? Makes no sense.

On that note, here’s to good food, good health and a fantastic year of the water dragon .

Valentine’s Day is just a couple of weeks away. It would be nice to give the ones we love a little gift of love. I know when my kids were younger, they often looked forward to getting a little something, no matter how little. And even mothers and grandmothers appreciate a gift from the heart, if for nothing else, just for the fun of it.

Fossil Jewelry Heart Wrist Wrap (Silver)

This would make a great gift. I love how funky it is, and with an adjustable wrist length too so it’ll fit any size wrist. It even has the key to my heart .

Dillon Rogers Jewelry Love With Heart Bracelet – Medium (Bubble Gum)

I love leather accessories so you can definitely count me in on this one. Suited to teens whom I’ve noticed are really into multiple bracelets.

Bling by Wilkening Jewelry Couture Heart Earrings (Silver)

More for the discerning woman, this one! Very classy and can be worn with practically any outfit.

You can check out more of my Valentine’s Day gift ideas for him and her here.

Raine is taking a Public Speaking class at college this semester. I’m so excited for her because it was one of my favorite classes in college too. In fact, she’s preparing her first 2-minute speech, even as we speak.

What’s even more exciting is that she has to dress up in a suit. Pretty cool, huh? As I was rummaging through my collection of suits from my corporate days, I couldn’t help but smile. My sweet baby in a suit? Who would’ve thought?

I mean, when I was wearing them to work, she was just a toddler playing with her Lego and reading fairy tales, and now she’s going to be wearing my suit jacket and standing up there in front of her class, giving a speech!!

In a few years, she’s going to be sitting in her office with one of those fancy desk name plates on her shelf. What a proud day that’ll be! It’s amazing how quickly kids grow up. So hug them and kiss them every day, and take your time to enjoy them because before you know it, they’ll be wearing your suit.

More and more, I’m observing that moms (not everyone, of course) seem to be leaving kids to their own devices these days and keeping mum when their kids behave badly. And why is that, I wonder?

Last weekend, we were seated at a table next to 2 moms and their 2 daughters aged about 5. We were trying to have lunch (key word trying). But with these 2 little girls singing and shrieking on top of their voices, at a super-shrill super-high pitch, non. stop, it was impossible to have a meal without being driven up the wall.

We would’ve moved to another table further away but since it was lunchtime on a weekend, there was no escaping. All this time, the 2 moms are sitting there, eating and chatting, completely (repeat completely) oblivious to the ear-piercing shrieks and how everyone around them was grimacing.

Pretty soon, those 2 girls who incidentally were dressed like little tarts (hate to say this but are little girls becoming more sl*tty or what?), were yoyo-ing between other tables disturbing the diners (yes, they even climbed in and sat with the other diners) while their moms said and did absolutely nothing. at. all!

After the meal, the 2 very modern, dressed-up mothers got up, gathered their shopping bags and promptly started walking away. The little girls, noticing this, skipped and danced after them.

In another incident the same weekend, a balloon that a toddler of about 3 was holding had gotten away. We picked it up and were about to hand it back to him when his father came up, took the balloon off our hands and gave it back to the kid. No word of thanks. No eye contact. No acknowledgement. I would think this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to train his toddler to ‘thank you’, for instance (no brainer).

At these young ages, parents should be guided and taught simple manners and courtesies. In the case of the 2 girls, they’re old enough to be made to understand that it’s not okay to go around disturbing other people and acting loudly.

I think there’s a fine line between giving your kids the independence and freedom to grow and develop, and allowing them a free hand. And when they overstep that fine line, someone (and hopefully it’ll be their mom, not me!) has to put them in their place.

So why are we so afraid to reprimand our kids if we notice rudeness and other socially unacceptable behaviors? If the moms are not correcting them, who is going to do it? Should we really be surprised when our kids turn out into young adults who have no respect for others?

The red post

Posted by Clairity No Responses »

Jan 182012

The traffic jam this morning was exceptionally horrendous. Aren’t they always? Yes but not nearly as bad unless some vehicle has broken down in the middle of the road and needs rv repair pronto. My usually short commute took me a full half hour.

This is the Chinese New Year rush, folks! There’s less than a week and counting before we enter the Year of the Dragon.

I guess I have it easy. Folks rush out to buy new clothes. We don’t. No big deal, we’re shopping practically all year and our last shipment from Macy’s and Forever21 arrived over Christmas.

Folks decorate their homes with lots of red. We don’t. Being a karma believer, I am less than inclined to believe that putting up red ornaments, red lanterns and lucky plants, and eating food with lucky names is going to change anything. If that’s all it takes to attract wealth, we’d be a worldful of raving billionaires, right? Oh well, to each his own.

Folks rush back to their hometowns. We stay put. There’s no way we’re making a road trip during the holiday season. We’re just happy to own the roads when everyone and their cat leaves the city.

I do, however, buy mandarin oranges which we love to eat, and some cookies for the odd guests who show up. Lesson learnt: I don’t buy a lot of cookies because they end up sitting there for months afterwards. I bought 4 crates of mandarin oranges this year, and that’s it, I’m done.

Yeah, I know, we’re different and we’re boring. But that’s just us!

What a Sunday! The girls and I were up early and we got to work right after breakfast. Yup, 5 hours in the kitchen baking up a storm. Nevertheless it was a long morning well spent. We baked granola bars, 2 huge loaves of wholemeal bread that’s going to last us a week and chocolate chip cookies (recipe here) which I was planning to give away as a gift but we’ve already munched through half the container.

The bread and granola bars are for my girls to munch in school. Homemade bread is much more substantial as a breakfast food than the airy bread sold at the store. The granola is to tie them over the long school hours.

Saturday, we trawled the mall. I know, I know, we have nothing to buy and we really should try to avoid the malls on the weekends from now on because Chinese New Year is next week and the malls are busting with folks trying to get their last-minute shopping done.

But when you live in this city, there’s practically nowhere else to go on the weekend except… the mall. We just need to get out of the house for a few hours. So that’s where we had both lunch and dinner out Saturday.

And now we’re ready for another crazy week ahead. Bring it on!

By the way, what was your weekend like?