Does he look like a Mr Macho? :)  He is into wearing sleeveless top these days as he thinks he has lots of toned muscles to show. He thinks he is very strong too!  He really makes me laugh.

We take turns to pray at bedtime, and tonight it happened to be Athan’s turn. This is what he prayed:

“Dear God, please help ‘gor gor'(Calvin)and me to be good and not be bad, especially me. Please help ‘gor gor’ to be in Jesus Christ and me to be in Jesus Christ. Please protect us from the evil. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.”

Amen, indeed! I am proud of my little guy who is able and willing to say a little prayer all by himself now. I was giggling quietly to myself when he prayed to God to help especially him not to be bad. He seemed to know he gets into trouble more than his brother. 🙂 Keep praying, little man!

This is Calvin when he was about 3 years old (plus).  He still look slightly babyish and had chubby cheeks.  He loved his toy cars then.

And this, is Calvin nearly age 7.  He has lost all the baby fats, including his chubby cheeks!  He is now tall and slim — not much fats at all.  One thing still remain the same — he still loves to play with his toy cars.

He will be turning 7 on Sunday, but we will be celebrating his birthday in advance with lots and lots of people tomorrow!  Many are his classmates who have invited him to their birthday parties earlier this year.  There will also be friends from church.  At some point, I am regretting my decision to have a party on such a big scale!  Anyway, Calvin has told me “its too late mum, to change your mind!”.  He is so right.  I just hope everyone will have a good time tomorrow (public holiday).  I endeavor to share some pictures of the party in the near future. Stay tuned.

The other morning when I went to collect the boys from their room, this was what I saw:

Actually, Athan was lying next to Calvin with his eyes closed when I arrived.  When he knew I wanted to take a picture, he gave this cheeky grin.  Anyway, what I found out was that Athan has asked Calvin to read his “star wars” book to him while he enjoyed the story lying in bed (with eyes closed). 🙂 How nice.

The  boys decided to build a “dinosaur world” one afternoon. They took out their Lego blocks and dinosaur set and sat on the rug for about an hour playing together.  They were playing very beautifully together and having lots of fun building their little dinosaur world despite several moments of disagreement. The end result was great, I thought.  Full of imagination. I like.

The boys love dinosaurs. Rrrrahhhhhhh …….

One of the things that we do before we go to bed each night is to check on the boys.  I particularly love to see their peaceful little faces.  Occasionally, we find the boys sleeping in funny positions or have funny expressions on their faces while asleep.  The other night was one of those occasions ….

We were so amused by how they were sleeping that night that the husband said we ought to capture the moment and share it with our friends and family. Enjoy.

It was 5 – 10 minutes after I have tugged the boys in bed when we heard the “clanging” sound of lego pieces.  Somebody must be still playing with his lego pieces! I walked in and found Mr Calvin trying to fix his lego spaceship in the dark! I warned him to stop and went out.  Well, I do let the boys take a couple of their favourite toys to bed but they are not allowed to play with the toys until morning.

However,  Mr Calvin was so determined to fix his ship before he could sleep that he defied my warning and continued with his lego advenure.  The husband went in.  *serious stuff*  He removed all the lego pieces from Calvin and told him to sit outside of his room since he was not sleeping when told to do so (and disturbed his brother).  The guilty boy sat outside the room without a sound, all by himself.

Several minutes passed and we heard Mr Athan crying his room.  The cry sounded like he was very very upset.  The husband went in and found the boy sitting in his bed crying away, inconsolable. We tried to ask the crying kid why he was so upset but he said nothing.  At the end, I asked if he was scared to be sleeping in the room by himself.  He nodded and added (in between sobbing) that he was worried that his brother was outside and some bad people would come and get him. This might sound very terrible of me, but I really wanted to laugh then. I found it so cute!

We showed him where his brother was sitting and how his brother could not possibly be taken away by bad people.  Eventually he stopped crying.  Calvin discipline/time out was over. The two boys went to bed together. Happy to have each other again.

After thought: We probably do not know the real reason why Athan was so upset.  He could be telling the truth about his worry for his brother although the husband felt that I could have prompted him to say that…. Anyway, no matter what the real reason was, I believe that the boys have developed a brotherly love for each other (from sharing the same room, doing things together, fighting for the same silly piece of lego, wrestling and playing games).  If he were telling the truth, Athan has shown some ability to empathize with his brother. He’s growing up.

Oh well, I do hope very much that the boys will grow up to be best friends/brothers.

On another note, Calvin recently took part in a lego construction competition organised by a toy shop.  He build a police station and a plane.   He did not win.  He was disappointed, but I think it was a good experience for him.

Today, he wanted to be “Bob the builder” while just yesterday he wanted to be a “spaceship driver” and the other day he wanted to be …..Well, he’s only a child and he can be anything he so wishes! 🙂 Its quite cute to see Athan running around with his toy tools and helmet pretending to be “Bob the builder”. He kept asking me if there’s anything broken in the house that needed to be fixed. I almost ran out of things! Anway. I am actually glad he is getting back to his normal cheerful self.  Why?  Because this boy had and still has “hand, foot and mouth” disease (hfmd).

Yup, he has hfmd.  It’s a terrible disease to have, I kid you not. He only has the lesions in his mouth and I think that’s all he can handle.  The ulcer-like lesions were all over his mouth — at the side, top, bottom, tonsils and even tongue!  It was painful.  He had a fever too. Poor boy. The doctor said there was nothing she could prescribe except for panadol and bonjela and lots of fluids and of course TLC. She also told us that hfmd is very contagious.  And so Calvin is at risk.

Well, it turned out that Mr Calvin has caught the hfmd bug from his brother.  His symptoms are the same Athan’s.  And so, I have put both boys on porridge and ice-cream diet.  They are having a time of their lives having ice cream without me stopping them. 🙂

Both boys are much better now especially Athan as his symptoms showed up first.  It has been a tough week for me having to care for them.  There were times when they were miserable from the pain and I had to be extra patient. The good thing is that they can still play and fight. 🙂 That’s a good sign.

The boys are actually due back to school this coming Tuesday after almost 2 weeks of holiday.  I doubt very much Calvin is ready for school on Tuesday as those ulcers takes time to settle.  We just have to wait and see.

I can’t wait for the boys to recover fully from hfmd!

Just in case you are missing the boys …. here they are :).