November 2016

A few weeks ago I wrote about Jay’s 8th birthday and how he had a small party with only his best friend. And being an expat family that’s how most of his birthdays are spent, with SO, my wife, and I, and maybe one or two of his friends to help celebrate.

You see, the problem is, my parents and one brother are back in Australia, and my other brother and his family are in Canada. SO’s family, on the other hand, are all in Indonesia, Jakarta to be exact. Which creates the peoblem that we have to travel internationally to celebrate events with family. So as a result we tend to celebrate our birthdays a long way from our families. Except for Jay’s first couple of birthdays anyway. Christmas and Chinese New Year (SO is ethnically Chinese) are other times that we try to travel to see family, but I’ll write about them elsewhere. read more

A little over 4 years ago, my 3 year old son, Jay, decided he needed to clean our iPad 1. And if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was so cute and adorable, and my wife holding me back, he may not have seen 4.

So how did we get to that point? I bought the iPad about 2 years earlier because I could see how much it would help me with my work and I could become much more productive. Okay, okay, the truth is I had spent some time playing on one with my wife’s nieces and nephews and I wanted to play the games at home by myself. read more

So Jay’s turned 8. Which seems strange to say because he’s exactly the same as he was when he was 7. Okay, he’s changed a lot in the last few years. How could he not? He’s getting bigger and learning more and maturing. But on a daily basis, we don’t really notice those changes. It’s only when we look at how our kids are different than they were a year or two earlier that we really notice how they’ve changed and grown.

Not that that is what I’m writing about today, but it seemed the right way to start. What I am going to write about is Jay’s birthday. And more specifically, how we celebrated it. read more

Jay can be sneaky when he wants something, and this is a story of how he tricked my wife, SO, into giving him an answer and access to something he wasn’t supposed to. This happened when he was 4 years old, and he’s only gotten better at tricking us since then.

For a little background, we are a fairly techy family. We have a couple of iPads, a tablet, desktop and laptop computers, and of the wii, PS3 and PS4, and an old PS2 that doesn’t work anymore. This story involves the first iPad we got and which we had installed several apps/games for Jay to play that would help him with his learning. You know, like the alphabet, spelling, counting and simple math. read more