爱心餐

Thank you husband for my tasty dinner! 

Movie date

Civil War

Grandma visits K @ recess

K's classmate + her mom, K + her Grandma

 

 

Last week, the school invited parents of primary 1 children to visit the school during the children's recess time. This time will allow parents to interact with their children, and observe how they are during their break-time. Unfortunately, the husband and I were unable to attend, but thankfully, my Mom could and the beloved Grandma attended this recess session.

 

While I do not imagine the session to bring much surprises (K did not bring her waterbottle to recess so she bought a drink. Typical.), my intent of asking the Mother for help was because I wanted K to feel the love from us. As a child, I remember parent-attendances of certain things quite clearly and it is this love that I wish to pass on to K, for her to know that we are interested and wish to be part of her life.

 

For the record, K had chee cheong fun that day and received bonus money from Grandma as she wanted to buy some gummies. She was also very interested to be with her friends (uh, this famous friends-are-best-phenomena has begun!).

 

I'm thankful too that the Mother took time off to be as part of our lives as she can.

 

Thankful for a lovely school, a lovely child and a lovely Mom who is always willing to lend a helping hand.

Realities of school-life and #proudmommymoment

I do not consider myself a Tiger Mom. I am more of what I call, a "reactive" parent. I pretty much allow my children to lead their lives how they are, with no push to engage them in multiple enrichment classes, etc. Two years ago, I signed K up for our (I say our because when a child is engaged in classes, it's not just him/her. It is a collective effort of the parents too) first enrichment class. I did so, because I found her lacking in her knowledge of the alphabets/reading. And that began our "enrichment" journey (oh, the irony of how these classes are meant to be enriching at the expense of real life).

 

Approximately a year ago, I signed the boy up for Mandarin classes. This was from the horrifying discovery that he had zero mandarin vocabulary, and it'd be of true value for him to learn mandarin.

 

In the past 6 months, since K started primary school, I have discovered that these so-called "enrichment" classes that so many parents sign their children up for, are no longer seemingly enriching. They seem to become a basic norm and necessity, as it prepares the child better for the gruelling school life. It's not easy, I say, not at all.

 

Since Jan, K has been put on 2 extra classes - a mandarin class, and I also hired a home tutor to help her with her work. It's extra coaching, but it's also necessary to help me alleviate the need to supervise K as she starts to learn discipline and initiate completing her homework unguided, or with a tutor (for days when both the husband and I are busy at work), or with this tutor.

 

In this discovery and process, I started to buy more workbooks for K to attempt, in a bid to expose her more practise in hope that it'd help her along acadamically. While I was at the bookstore about a month ago, I decided (on a whim) to get some books for J too. Not so much that he needed any homework, but to inculcate the discipline to sit down to clear something in concentration.

 

An observation I made, is that the children - at moments - do begin to work on their stuff. When they do, I feel so happy and relieved that they have initiative. That is a skill that I cannot enforce (there is a limit, at least to how much I can really do). J, in particular, is spurred to practise his ABCs himself on occasions when I sit K down to do school work.

 

Yesterday evening, we chanced upon a moment where I asked J to write the letters he'd been practising. To my absolute delight, the work he's put in has paid off. I am one proud mother! 

 

A to V

While I am going through this stage, I am mindful that I wish to (a) accomplish the minimum so that my daughter can pull through and learn, expand her mind so that she is educated and knowledgeable; (b) learns discipline and understands routine, responsibilities and fulfillment of her tasks (c) that we do not have too much negative energy around the bad word "homework"... and a reminder had been circulating around social media lately about how children today are constantly under pressure to over-perform.. and truthfully, I do not need K to be that over-achiever. I wish for her to be a fun-loving, kind, sensible child who does what she needs to and becomes the person she will become.

As for J, he's fortunate in the sense that we are learning from the 'slackness' of K, and he's exposed to more 'work' earlier. How this will benefit us in the long-run is that he is more up-to-speed with what's expected of him in the curriculum (case-in-point his amazing A-to-V!) and will less struggle, should be more comfortable to absorb and perform.

Whichever the case, it's a learning journey for us as parents, for me as a Mom, and for them as children. We will calibrate and make the best we can with one another along the way... we will be fine!

A visit to Pasir Ris Park

This little boy decided that he wanted to go to Pasir Ris Park to cycle. He decided this early in the day and told me of it. The weather had been erratic lately, so I told him that we'd have to see how the skies hold up, before I commit to bringing them to the park.

 

Saturday rolled by with passing showers, and by the time we were done with our must-dos of the day (classes), the skies still looked slightly overcast. I was honestly reluctant to hit the park because it seemed so much effort and far away... but a determined person is hard to distract and despite countering options, the request for the park was still high and strong and because it truly was not raining at that point in time (at about 5.30pm), I made the call to "let's go!"

 

I decided on a whim to drive by to get dinner so that we'd all not starve, picked up the girl and my helper so that we could have an impromptu picnic... and when we hit the park the kids realised their desire of renting bicycles to cycle.

 

View from my mat

 

Honestly, I did not move from the mat once I settled on it. I was tired - had been from the past weeks of work baggage - and I did feel guilty that I wasn't truly engaged in activities with the children. But I sought comfort from their happiness in sweating it out through cycling... and indulging them in play plus junk food (when Mommy gives them Maccas, it's a rarity!)

Happy Meal-time

 

Happy kids

 

An observation I made, was that the food was not as exciting to them as cycling. Perhaps they were out of breath and unable to eat properly, but it seemed that they came back to the mat to drink water and have some nibbles, but seemed more keen to move on and continue cycling than indulge in their fries & burger. Anyhow, the hour's rental was perfect because it was enough to give them the physical expension they needed, while not tiring them out completely if it was more than an hour.

 

Sweaty cyclist

Relaxing alone

After they returned the bicycles, they sat about and made a lot of noise... and I thought it was sweet to capture a pic of them hugging, so I asked them to pose for me.

Sight for sore eyes

That resulted in a collapsed heap of giggles as they started to tickle and feel all gigglish... and with that, I end off with my favourite moment/picture of the day.

Giggles

Kate earns a reward

Drawing inspiration from a friend, I came up with a reward system for K. After 5 weeks where she successfully scored full marks for her spelling at school, I rewarded her with $5 to buy a treat. She went to Smiggle to pick a stationery of her choice.

 

Little Miss Grown-Up

My observations are that this reward system does work with K. She put in more effort in her weekly spelling, and it's most apparent of her fulfillment when she proudly announces her scores to me week after week. She was also keeping track of the number of times she scored and she was definitely looking forward to the treat as she gleefully reminded me several times that "today I am going to Smiggle!"

It was a pleasure watching her go amok in the store, testing out what she fancied and it was also endearing to have her check the prices of the items, to see if they were within budget. I am going to continue this form of reward system, because I do see its benefits; plus I am not giving her a big amount of reward (in my opinion).

Let's see if this is a sustainable way to motivate this little one to continue putting in good effort.

Mother's Day 2016

I was invited to J's school for a celebration. I accepted - how could I not? The event was simple. The children sang some songs (my boy did more hand actions than sing the song, complete with smug/over-compensating his shyness face), and the school organised games for parent and child to interact. It was simple, a modified version of "musical chairs" where instead of sitting on chairs, we stepped on sheets of paper; and there were some blindfolding involved where child/parent had to identify each other.

 

While the activity and entire morning was not spectacular, what stood out for me was that J was enthusiastically requesting for me to join in the activity at school because he had something prepared for me. There was no way I could refuse and I am so happy that I made time to attend it. I believe it's not the activity per se, but the memory that can be filed away that Mommy made it for Mothers' Day at school that will go a long way. 

A card that J drew with a 'flower'

J told me that (the pink man) was me and I am surrounded by balloons, heart-shaped, no less!

 

The inside of the card - simple messages are the best.

 

For the extended version of our Mother's Day celebration at home, we had a steamboat lunch where the siblings chipped in their own parts; and the result was a busy morning of me shopping for food, and a lovely lunch where the family got together to feast. It was nothing elaborate, and we met our intent of having a cosy, non-rushed meal (which was probably the outcome if we had gone out to eat at a restaurant during this occassion).

 

To end off the afternoon, we engaged in several rounds of board games.

Monopoly Junior, and dessert

Sometimes, it's the simple things that really makes things lovely.

 

Things have been so hectic this month and I only had time to write about this that took place 2 weeks back, but it's nice to think back on that lovely afternoon where I was surrounded by love.

 

Happy Mothers Day to my supermom, and to me.

Thanksgiving

When: 6.50pm

Where: A park

What: Dinner by the waters, picnic 

Who: My 2 munchkins and I

Just like that, a day has gone by. 

Time waits for no man to mope so no point wasting energy on that. Today and been good as I spent time with each child at some points and I also hit the gym. Right now, as I soak in the lovely cool weather and the beautiful skies, they are gallavanting about on their bicycles. Junk food is appropriate for such moments! 

Reminding myself to always be thankful. It is a lovely Saturday. 

Content

When: 10.14am

Where: Town

What: My favourite meal of the day

Who: Me

Savouring some quiet time alone #countmyblessings

Finally.

When: 9.28pm

Where: Opposite my office building 

What: Dinner 

Who: Me

It has been a rough week. 

Gotta savour the weekend and practise being in the moment.

Breathe. 

My two superheros

Last weekend, we went for a party. There was face painting, a favourite activity of the children and I delighted in seeing how happy they were that they could get their faces painted. They had full autonomy to decide what they wanted to be painted into, and one of the best moments for me was when I watched them both get along.

 

 

That beautiful moment when the big sister allowed the little brother to
go before her even though she was in line first, and having her help him with his hair.

 

Little Batman

 

Pretty princess

High on fluffy sugar

A nice long weekend

And just like that, May rolls around.

 

Besides the fact that we're hurtling through the space of time at lightning speed, it also means that some things are also more settled, as we get into the groove of routine. In the second month of this year, I wrote about our new routine (because primary school) and 5 months in, the routine has pretty much stayed the same. We still gotta wake up at an unearthly hour, but everyone's gotten more used to that and I've also kept to my me-time in that magical hour just as dawn breaks.

 

The last two+ weeks have also been slightly rough with the husband being away, but as with all things, when the pain goes away (just for the record it was extremely painful with the girl being very sick and homebound due to the damn virus) things seem to be fine again (hooray), and besides missing the husband a great deal, the household was pretty well-oiled with us getting used to being just us, and the nightly routine of chasing sleep seems to have gotten slightly better... I guess all things need time to be settled and it's about time that we've calibrated well.

 

I stumbled into a routine the past 3 weekends with me hitting the gym on Saturdays (window period while baby boy is at class) and attending yoga on Sunday (window period while the beloved parents take the kids for breakfast). I think as I age, I definitely crave routine as it gives me stability. I captured this shot on Sunday morning, after my yoga class.

 

Singapore's version of cherry blossom. Nice weather, post workout. Bliss.

 

How has it been the first 4 months of the year? Has it been well, can it be better? I'll say that considering all things, it has been pretty decent. It's not been easy, and things have been hectic, but I am choosing to be thankful that things are settling and while I imagine that nothing will become easy, it does become easier to cope with a healthier mindset and an optimistic attitude.

 

We just came back to work/school today with the long labour day weekend past, and there are plenty of exciting and fun things to look forward to always.

 

Hope you had a refreshing, happy, rested and lovely long weekend too.