Marcus Turns SIX

It has been a few weeks but I still find it a little incredible when I hear myself say 'oh Marcus is 6 years old....'.  

Gosh! My first-born is already six and will be entering Primary school in a few months' time. 

The next immediate thought that inevitably comes to mind - before I realize it, my little poshie will be serving his national service....  going to university .... getting married! Oh no! 

OK, I shall take a DEEP breadth.... BREATHE!!  And return to reality. 

Let's cherish the present while poshie still wants to cuddle me and thinks of me as the only woman in his life. I am still at the center of his universe, so I must treasure all his affections and need for my affections and attention. :>

I love this photo of him, taken when he was 4+. It brings me such joy when I admire it everyday. :>  There was still a little babyishness in him then, but he has since lost most of it and while I was not paying attention, transformed into a little boy. Of course, he is STILL my baby, but nevertheless, the fact is it will never be the same again. 

This year, Marcus had asked for a small party at home with a chocolate cake and just a few school friends over to play Lego with. We dissuaded him for various reasons (though I feel real bad about it, but I also know that we don't have to accede to all requests) and in the end, he agreed to have the celebration in school.

At home, we got him a very low-key cake just for the sake of creating another opportunity to capture the moments of candle-blowing and cake-cutting with the family. 

I would have insisted on a slightly more head-turning cake, if not for the fact that we had to leave in a few hours' time for Hong Kong. Everyone was already too stuffed with cakes that weekend and I was not prepared to dump an expensive piece of confectionery. So the rational mind won and my baby got a lousy 2nd cake. :< 

That said, his first cake was a pretty and yummy choice which the birthday boy had handpicked. He didn't seem to mind much about anything else after that. He is, as always, a very easy-t0-please sweetheart! 

I comforted myself that we will still have so many opportunities in future to throw big parties for him. Besides, the reason for not having a party this year is to splurge that budget at HK Disneyland. It was a brilliant decision with full credit to the daddy. The memories and impressions made on the boys would be so much more long-lasting than those of another party. 

While a big celebration is not important every year, a birthday must surely be accompanied by presents. :>  So the boy received a gigantic Lego box of the much anticipated Lego MindStorms Robotic Toolkit (in picture below) and a compact box of game. 

His recent fascination with the General Grievous character has led to tremendous interest in robotics. He even confessed to dreaming of becoming a robotic engineer in future to create the most amazing robots that mankind has seen. How's that for ambitions, eh? :D 

So the ever-so-doting daddy bought him this very advanced SUPERB set of robotic toolkit (meant for age 10-18) to build and programme his very own intelligent robots that can perform different operations. Totally cool!

He has since managed to build the Shooterbot, Alpha Rex and Robogator on his own, by following the step-by-step instructions. E taught him to programme the robots and when they moved and did what they were built to do, even I, who have absolutely no interest in robotics and Lego, was floored and thoroughly impressed! 

(But don't trust the website for a minute about the 'all it takes is 30 min' crap! It took him hours to assemble one for the first time! 5 hours to build the Robogator, to be exact. And Marcus has a flair for Lego and years of experience handling advanced Lego sets too. So if I were to give it a go, it probably would have taken me 5 days! )

I don't have photos of the Robogator and Shootbot right now but will upload when he recreates them. 

Hmm... we should take videos of him with these robots too..... (Hint, hint ...)