It's so true that the days are long but the years are short. Gabriel will always be our chilli padi. We had a very difficult first year with him when he cried a lot! I remember thinking I'm so thankful that Gabriel isn't our firstborn, because he might very well be our last!
Fast forward 6 years and he has just started elementary school. He's truly excited about joining his older brother in school. Having a 22-month age gap between them really paid off. They experience milestones so closely together and can go to the same kindergarten and school. I pray that they will have such a wonderful relationship that lasts the test of time and they would be each other's closest supporters and encouragers in life!
For myself, I always feel the pinch that I don't have more one-on-one time with my second-born. He's one who thrives on personal time since he's not much of an extrovert like Sam is. He was also breastfed the longest of all my kids - so far. I think he could even say "boob" when he wanted milk! Lol. Before he started kindergarten, he would be a night owl like myself and we would fall asleep together, with him holding my hand.
This year, we decided to throw a kids birthday party just for him instead of doing a combined birthday party with Sam in August. Reason being that he would not see most of his kindergarten friends anymore and we were in Singapore in August.
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Dear Gabriel
You have turned six! We are so proud of the person you've become. The past year saw you growing as a child because Isabelle was born. Somehow, having a 5-year age gap with Isabelle, you've really blossomed in your role as an older brother. Yes, you have a younger brother in Liam but you and Liam seem to be at loggerheads, whereas you really love being the older one towards Isabelle. Well, that's not entirely true. You and Liam play AMAZINGLY well together a lot of times too. You love playing lego and chess together. Chess! You actually taught Liam how to play Chess. I think you secretly enjoy winning all the time, while Liam does not seem to mind losing since he just enjoys being able to play chess at all!
You love to talk and have the wildest of all imaginations. You looked up in the night sky once and claimed that you saw an astronaut! You express yourself in drawing. Honestly boy, you draw wayyy better than anybody in the family! Your pictures are so creative and they capture your imagination! I need to take some photos and post them here!
You have officially started elementary school for 1.5 weeks now. It has been a huge change for all of us. Your kindergarten used to be a stone's throw from home. Right now, your school is a 10-minute drive away. Our final goal is to get you to go to school with your older brother by public transport. We are still figuring out the logistics of it all because you and your brother have different starting and ending school times. It's been nothing short of a headache.
Personality-wise, you are more reserved and introverted. You take more time to familiarise yourself to a new environment and find new friends. That's totally fine baby. We pray that you'll find close friends who'll encourage you to be the best version of yourself. You love doing your homework, but need help to finish a task once you've started it.
Your love of craft and design continues to shine through. We think that you might be interested in creative art or design when you grow older. Swimming continues to be your favourite sport, mainly because that's the only sport you can do. Hah. We are all trying to take things slow now that we have 2 school-going kids and 4 kids in total.
Seeing your brother at the brink of being a tween, I'm too aware that time with you will fly by too quickly as well. We pray that God will give us wisdom for parenting you all.
Organising your birthday party was a breeze! You had about 4 friends on your invite list, so we had a wonderful children party! Daddy and I decided to plan some games for you guys. However, all but one game went bust.
Your birthday is right in the middle of summer so we wanted to milk that by doing some water bombs. Unfortunately, we were not able to fill up the water balloons with water! What a bummer! The water balloons we bought were too small to fit into the tap! Try as we did, it was seriously to no avail. Hence, there went our first game!
Our second game was newspaper game. You all had to dance to the music and as soon as the music stopped, you would have to stand on the newspaper - 2 people to one newspaper. With each round, the newspaper would get halved, then quartered and even smaller. It was so fun watching you children have a blast!
Our third game was passing the balloons and when the music stopped, one child would have to burst the balloon and do the task written on the paper in the balloon. This game went bust as well because we were not able to execute it! It was too windy downstairs so the balloons kept flying away! We decided to salvage the remaining balloons and continue the game in the garden next to our house. Unfortunately, as soon as we threw the balloons over the fence, each balloon starting bursting after the next because the grass / shrubs were too sharp for it! You should have seen Daddy's face when that happened. He looked positively pissed. Lol.
That was when we decided we would call it day games-wise and just let you children play at the playground. That was really the best idea really. You children simply wanted to have fun having unstructured play. After that, it was presents opening time and you kids spent a full 30 mins just playing with the lego that you got! You could choose some presents that you wanted at Müller (a drugstore) so your friends could get them for you. Needless to say, all your presents were legos! Nothing else!
We love you so much our beautiful second boy. You had so much fun at your birthday! We pray that you'll adjust well to your new primary school and make like-minded friends who would encourage you to be the best version of yourself!
Love
Mummy & Daddy
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| Gabe and all his friends - 4 from kindergarten and 2 from church |
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| Clowning around |
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| I must say he hangs out with cool, well-behaved kids! |
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| We had simple kids-friendly food - fruit salad, chips and a Russian Zupfkuchen (cheesecake with chocolate!) |
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| Look at that grin! |
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| Newspaper game - starting off by dancing to the music on a big piece of newspaper |
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| The newspaper gets progressively smaller |
Getting creative with limited leg space
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| Trying the balloon game before the balloons started to fly away |
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| Ready, set, go! |
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| Before finally deciding on playground time instead |
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| All the fun just running around with a ball |
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| Ending off with lego time - pardon the mess! It's our office / housework space |
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