All About Your Child

Finally after clearing up the mess in the storeroom, in the bedrooms, the kitchen, the living room, my house is ready to welcome the New Year!

Starting from my main entrance. My plant, which I managed to ‘revive’ it, is decorated with fluffy-cotton-wires around its branches.

We decorated the house with Mickey and Minnie Mouse everywhere since this year is the year of the Rat, or else we will need to wait for 12 more years before the year of the Rat visits again.

We pasted another Mickey and Minnie on our main door. Mickey’s banner says, “Welcome the fortune that Spring brings”.

Minnie’s banner says, “May million wishes come true.”

The word ‘Fu’ in the centre which Mickey and Minnie mouse is holding, means lots of Goodness and Luck.

The word in the middle is actually a combination of four different chinese words. The four words are ‘Zhao Cai Jing Bao’, meaning inviting wealth and storing treasures.

I guess this is the favourite character during Chinese Lunar New Year. He is the god of wealth – ‘Cai Shen Ye’. And he is holding a big golden antique coin – ‘yuan bao’.

Not forgetting all the yummies. Sweets and Chocolates are must. Egg-rolls, ‘fire-crackers’, pineapple tarts, ginko nuts, peanuts, fish crackers, prawn crackers and ‘nian gao’, the round brown stuff on the bottom right.

And every single item actually comes with a good omen. Either for school or work or health or wealth. Its really amazing how these beliefs from ancient China could pass down to our modern generation.

With all these red and gold everywhere, who can’t feel that Chinese Lunar New Year is here!

15 days of Chinese Lunar New Year celebration is probably the period where my kids will go crazy over their 2nd-love-of-their-little-lives : Chinese Lion Dance.

They are everywhere. We saw these 2 live size lion-dance-head in the supermarket and my boys just kept saying “I want to take photo with the lion-dance.”

Allan suggested at that very point, “Why don’t we just get one for them to play?”

Me, “One?! You must be joking! They will fight for it like hell!”

Allan, “Ok then lets get 2 of them then.”

But deep in our heart we know that to buy this auspicious lion during this season will be paying too much above it original value.

Allan, “So long as they like it.”

So we bought 2 at S$18 each. It was the cheapest we found. Everywhere else that sells the same size were going at S$26 and above.

Its a good buy afterall, we thought. Anyway they were in cloud nine when we paid for the heads.

The moment they reach home, they went crazy with it and started to dance with the head and with the Lion Dance VCD which we bought last year.

See how sweaty they are after the vigorous dance. Good exercise afterall I guess. The shirts were so wet that I needed to get them changed before I bathe them later. ‘cos I know the 2nd dance will start again after a short rest.

Then we spotted these 2 mini size ones in one of the small shops around. “Mummy, I want this, I want this!” Its S$3.90 each, so we thought, what the heck, just get it.

The heads are on spring, so they shake when you touch their heads.They are car ornaments. You know, those springy cutie stuff that you put on your dashboard of the car and when you drive, they starts to bounce up and down.

Lion Dance usually comes with Dragon Dance.

This is one huge dragon that happen to be around our neighbourhood. Luckily the boys are not so much into this. I can’t imagine how cramp our place would be if they insisted to bring even a mini size home. The actual one can go up to 20metres long!