Being Five

This is a loooooooong post to make up for the most appalling lack of photos of the girls all through the summer!

The girls are back in school now. All three. But while two of them are in full-day school, Kate comes home for lunch and we get to hang out for 4 hours before her sisters return. 4 hours every day is beyond fabulous because, for the first time in her life, she doesn't have to keep up with anyone. Or wait for her turn for anything. 

Or try to act older than she is. 

Kate turned five this April, but I'm only documenting that here now, five months later. I documented her birthday party (which we held in June, to take advantage of the nice summer outside weather) here, but that's just the fancy celebration and doesn't capture anything at all of Kate herself and what life with her is like. 

Hence this post. 

I mean, you have to live in our house to believe it. She is a gift. There is no one like her. She is thoughtful, compassionate, affectionate and charming. And a little bit crazy, in the best sense of the word. She operates in 15-minute explosions of energy and activity. 

And not just the physical kind. Like that one time she decided she needed to build a castle. So I gave her sugar cubes and glue and let her invent. 

And she made her castle, added a flag, dug in my kitchen cupboard for blue dusting sugar and sprinkled a moat. Which of course needed sharks. 

Every day is like that at home - full and funny and sweet and exhausting all at once. I thought I'd pick a couple of days this week and really train our camera on her during the four hours we spend together. Then post it all here so Grandma and Grandpa in Singapore can inhale it all (because there is so much to inhale when it comes to Kate). 

So, Day #1 (yesterday) - 

There is a wooden china cabinet temporarily sitting in our living room while we prepare a place to which to move it permanently. It has sliding glass doors. Naturally, it needed to become an oven for baking miniature treats,

which Kate made with air-dried clay, tinted with ink from her markers.

At lunchtime, she had a sandwich, which I cut out using this cutter. She ate the border part and saved the little flower in the middle for Bunny, to whom she is adamant about feeding real food.

This is Bunny. She and Kate are inseparable. Bunny is clearly deeply loved, because this is what she used to look like when she was first made. Anyway, while I was making lunch, Kate found an origami app on the ipad and made some accessories for Bunny. This crown (heavily improvised) was bedecked with gems

and left to set in a round container "so it won't dry rectangular."

That same origami app yielded (with some adult assistance) this hat, which Kate decided was better off as a purse for Bunny

to hold a hand fan.

Then, because it was a gorgeous day, we decided to go to a park after lunch. Bunny had to come, so a stroller had to be found. 

We walked onto the dock

and fed fish. 

And then decided that only one species of animal was boring and we should try to feed ducks too. Which meant a second park. Sadly, there were no ducks (too early in the season) so we played at the playground there instead. 

And then we were peckish, so an eatery had to be driven to, which sold malts. 

Then we ran errands and headed home to meet Emily and Jenna off the bus.

Day #2 (today) -

Kate hops off the bus, sheds her school paraphernalia (backpack, sweater, shoes, etc.), gives me her How School Was report in a stunning 4 seconds, and heads straight to the kitchen table. Bunny has to have a tea party, she announces. Which means more treats. So out comes the clay, and Kate starts a cooking show to an invisible audience,

the result of which is chocolate chip cookies

and peppermint patties, with frosting in flavors of lime, lemon, bluebewwy, owange and stwawbewwy.

Then, a giggle, and Kate slyly says, "There is a surprise waiting for you near your tea cup, Mom."

Then we have lunch - she out of a muffin tin of sandwiches (shaped like flowers), yoghurt, chips and fruit, and I of rice, beef and asparagus.

After lunch, the feast-making continues - a plate of paper fruit and more dessert stands of treats. The ones on the yellow stand were finally done baking in yesterday's oven

and the blue stand has new creations: caramel rolls on the upper tier and, on the lower, pieces of banana cream pie, which Kate explains are made by "cutting out a circle with a cookie cutter, and then cutting it into pizza slices".

Then she cleans up all her clay-making equipment and declares that I have to go downstairs with her. I am allowed to sew, she explains, and digs through our paper supplies, pulling out cardstock (thick paper very much like vanguard sheets) and a cardboard backing sheet.  She cleverly sets me up: "Since I'm drawing on the cardboard, can I color with Sharpies (permanent markers)?"

I say yes, and we sing loudly as we work - she on her art and I on a long-overdue cushion cover for my sewing chair.

Then the sisters are back from school and we run upstairs to welcome them home for the weekend. 

And for the rest of the school year, we get to do this again - four hours every day, five days a week, at the sweet mercy of a five-year-old. Glorious.

Apple Crisp

When one goes apple picking at a real, live orchard and returns with a bushel of tree-fresh fruit, one cannot bring oneself to consume the comparatively mediocre store-bought offerings one has stashed in one's icebox. At the same time, one also cannot bring oneself to abandon those to rot or humiliating desiccation (which is often the fate that befalls forgotten fruit). Therefore, one resorts to dessert. Pies, tarts, flans, cobblers are all wonderful ways to bring old fruit to new life and appease one's conscience while attempting to show off in the kitchen, not to mention turning out the crisper drawer of inferior fruit to make room for their more superior replacements. It is the perfect solution.

Thus was our dilemma resolved that weekend upon our return from apple-picking: we made an apple crisp. It was a step up from cobbler, because we added a secret ingredient discovered on the internet: Grape Nuts Cereal. How absolutely cunning (and delectable).

Ingredients:

For the filling -

• Apples (we used about 5 cups of gala, zestar and possibly honeycrisp - travesty, I know), cored, peeled and sliced.
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• Dash of nutmeg
• Pinch of ground cloves

For the topping-

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup quick oats
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Grape Nuts cereal
• 1/8 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt (more if butter is unsalted)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Put apples in a 8x8 baking dish.
3. Mix white sugar, the 1/2 Tbsp flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and pour over apples evenly.
4. In separate bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup flour, the oats, cereal, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, butter, salt and vanilla until crumbly.
5. Pour over apple mixture - cover apples entirely.
6. Bake at 350F for about 45 mins or till filling bubbles.
7. Serve with ice cream.

Apple Picking

Last weekend we picked apples at our favorite orchard.

Grandma Karen and Grandpa Arne came with us.

We traveled by wagon down to the trees and back to the farmhouse.

And ate. Yum.

School

I'm playing blogging-catch-up after an insanely packed summer. 

In the first week of September, our girls returned to school. Emily started 3rd grade; Jenna, 1st, and Kate, kindergarten. This was Kate's first time going to the elementary school and the first time riding the school bus with her sisters. Everyone was very excited.

Kate is in half-day kindergarten, so when school is over for the day, she leaves her sisters behind at school and rides the school bus home on her own. She has many stories to tell: the names of the kids who played with her at recess, the kind of snack she had, the title of the book that one of the kids has, the fact that nobody had chocolate milk that morning, the competition between her and a boy on the bus (it was "whose backpack's sparkly lights could sparkle the longest and mine won").

And in the afternoon (at "tea time", as we call it), she welcomes her sisters home. All three girls are like homing missiles, the way they explode off their respective buses and towards the house.

And here they are again- different day, same homing instincts. There is nothing quite like a child making for your arms in the wild impersonation of a hurricane. Conveys "I missed you", "I'm glad to be home" and "Is there food? I'm famished!" all in the same collision.

I Ran In Public

This is my newest means of entertainment - running in public. And by "public" I mean "pay money to get a loud Tshirt and a free bottle of water and support a good cause." Fun, huh?

So last Saturday - the 7th - my friend and I signed up to run for a local Good Cause. We ran 5K. So crazy. I kept thinking that way back in secondary school, you'd have to stick a knife in my back to get me to run the 2.4K (the Singapore version of a timed endurance run for school kids' phy ed grade). And here I was, paying other people to let me run twice that distance. Clearly nutters but I did it because I thought it would be a fun way to motivate me to keep running through the unfun months of the year (i.e. winter) and not degenerate into a chocolate-chip-cookie-and-krumkake sort of existence.

This was my first public 5K, so I had very reasonable expectations i.e. "If you finish the race without dying, you get to eat fried chicken and bake all-butter shortbread dipped in chocolate and ground pecans". I did finish the race - I think my time was 35:16 (minutes, not hours), according to the giant digital timer thing at the finish line. There was one wicked hill to climb and not a lot of shade but hey, people don't sign up for 5Ks and marathons to be comfortable, right?

We didn't get photos of the crowd of runners and walkers, which is a shame, because a lot of them came dressed like Cyndi Lauper and Jennifer Beals. There was an 80s theme going on, with songs from TKGS days (who can forget Aha?) and people came decked out in neon and poodle hair and leotards and acrylic leg warmers. Very brave, I thought, considering it was at least 80 degrees out there. 

Dave and the kids came to meet me at the finish line. Yay! 

I had so much fun that I'm going to do it again, with the same friend - this time against the fall colors in October, celebrating Halloween. We might even dress up!

P.S. I did have fried chicken and bake all-butter shortbread dipped in chocolate and ground pecans after. I take my own promises very seriously.