Milestone for Kai and Yang

Following the helper incident, I walked Kai and Yang to the bus stop this morning, and waited for them to board the bus before going home. First time going to school on their own! Big boys! :))))

We went through many what-if scenarios - what if there's a jam on the way (just stay on the bus), what is it starts to rain and the bus is super slow (just stay on the bus), what if you miss the bus stoo (walk back; Kai and I did this before). As I type, I realise I have a couple more - what if it is pouring when it's time to alight, what if the bus breaks down etc... Will talk to them more...

So anyway, I told helper last night that I would send the kids today. I didn't say to the bus stop. When I got back, the door was closed! By right, it should be open - we leave it open the whole day. I went in quietly and found that Yu just started on his breakfast - he woke late today, maybe coz he slept quite late last night. So I guess that usually she closed the door and left him alone when he woke early. Poor boy.

Yu and I played robots and tic-tac-toe etc for a while before I sent him to school. He's such a sweet boy :)

I was very busy with work. But back of my mind was - gosh, I hope they got to school alright! I suppose no news from teachers means good news? :p So it was with relief that I welcome them home! Still had helper fetch them coz they need to cross the road near their school... But of course, I had to hurry them to wash up and eat while I finished up work. I only finished when they were done with their afternoon snack :(

Yang had homework and then we started drawing! I happened to buy plain drawing paper of a good size - not too big or small - last week so Kai used that while Yang opened up his art class book.

Teacher is online!

Kai's Minecraft spider has little skulls on the face *.*

Yang's spider looks fierce!

Yang continued to draw another Minecraft thing while Kai made boomerangs

And now, they're playing Nintendo coz it's raining so no playground. I should go pick Yu early and have an early Friday :)

Child care centre, not helper!

Yu has been waking up early in the past couple of weeks. It coincided with Ramadan so I suspect he saw light in the early morning and thought it was time to wake.

On Tuesday, he woke before 6 am and didn't go back to bed. He was ready for school by the time Kai, Yang and I left at 6.30 am. I told helper to bring him down in 20 min since the school opens only at 7.00 am. But he checked into child care only at 7.40 am. The same thing happened on Wednesday and I remembered to ask helper when she came back - how come he was ready at 6.30 am but only got to school at 7.40 am? She just smiled and walked into the kitchen with groceries.

??

Maybe she didn't understand? There were many things that she didn't do as I asked... So I decided to ask Yu in the evening.

mf: You were carrying your bag when I left with your brothers. How come you didn't leave until much later?

Yu: *a little coy* Kakak sleeping.

mf: Huh? Then where were you? What were you doing?

Yu: *super coy* I don't know.... You'll scold me!

mf: I won't scold you. I just want to make sure you're safe. Just tell me, please?

Yu: I play game on Kakak's phone...

Wa, I was livid. I don't mind if she wants to sleep. There's time to nap in my household. But to give Yu her phone to play some game that Yu couldn't even describe, I was very pissed! I don't even let them play known games on their own phones!

I confronted her and demanded to see the game. She immediately said she had deleted the game. Of course I didn't believe it but no point pushing it. I told her no more such thing. Just go straight to school. I told her I know exactly when the kid reached school coz the check-in photos get sent to my phone.

Immediately, I told Sito. Sito worried if she had scolded or hit Yu before. I asked Yu - thankfully, no. I also checked with Yang whether she let him play games on her phone last year. He said no. With previous helper, they got to school at about 7-7.10 am except on the rare occasions when one or both kid slept in or decided to nua in bed. With this helper, timing suddenly became consistently 7.40 am onwards. I thought she was just slow. But maybe she has been sleeping in all this while but last year, Yang and Yu could play together so there was no need to give them a gadget. 

I also told JY who said she would sack her immediately. I wanted to. But I'm still working. Sito is in Malaysia. Agent - I also messaged him - said it would take a month nowadays to get a helper. I'm very much stuck.

Our original plan is to keep her until March or April when I quit (after PB! :p) if she is ok to stay. If she wants to take home leave at the end of the two years this December, we would just terminate. We could get a part-timer in for a few months before I take over the household full-time. It looks like no point changing at this moment too. 

So I decided on a 权宜之计 - let her send Kai and Yang while I send Yu. Very safe. 

But Yang wasn't very pleased. He said he doesn't like kakak. I think he felt that I was ditching him for Yu :( I had to remind him that on Tuesday, I was already discussing with them about whether they could go to school on their own. Both could. But Yang said cheekily that they would fight on the bus! So no go. But I never saw them fight - just chatting or quietly sitting there. Anyway, this thing came about and I had to transit quickly instead of gradually.

So this morning, helper sent Kai and Yang while I sent Yu. But when Yang was changing, he told me that he wanted to go to school on his own tomorrow morning. Ok! Will go through details with them later today.

Yu was ready by 6.30 am again but he knew I was home so he didn't hurry to get his bag. He brought out toys and an activity booklet. I prepared bread and butter pudding (need to modify recipe) while he was drawing on the booklet. Then we played toys a bit before going to school. 

He wanted me to take pictures :)

On retrospect, I'm so grateful for that piece of work on institutional child care back in 2007-2008, which made me decide to send kids to infant care rather than hand over to a helper. More ex, more viruses, but so much peace of mind with more eyes on the kid and fellow carers, social interaction with other kids and general immunity by primary school! :p

TCM for nose, round 2

Back in September 2009, a colleague recommended her TCM to me for gastric problems. I ended up seeing her for my allergy. By our wedding in December that year, I was off nasal spray and did little to manage my allergy.

Then Evanston happened and my nose didn't take well to the cold. Then kid and I couldn't go back to the nasal spray. I only restarted the nasal spray in December 2018 after a particularly nasty bout of allergy/cold. Then this happened so I decided to go back to TCM to 治根 instead of relying on nasal spray forever.

My first appointment was on 8 April. I had reduced the dose of my nasal spray for a couple of weeks by then and I was suffering quite a bit just before my appointment so I was really looking forward to it. The medicine seemed a little different - spicy and taken only once in the morning instead of morning and evening. 

For the first week, I was sweating at night despite the aircon. In the second week, my symptoms got worse. I think the nasal spray had totally left my system. Sometimes I couldn't sneeze. Sometimes I sneezed madly. Early morning and late evening onwards, my nose dripped madly and was badly blocked. The rest of the day was manageable. 

I had my second appointment yesterday. Did acupuncture. I lost count but I think there were around 20 needles all over me - head, belly, limbs. I tried to stay awake but of course I dozed off! Thankfully, I woke in the same position :p Last night, I didn't drip as badly. But I'm still drippy now. The medicine seemed a little different. 

It is early days. I think it might take another month or so to feel significantly better as I'm probably still suffering from withdrawal of the nasal spray. I must persevere!

Excursion to the Science Centre

We haven't used our rediscover vouchers. Yang had been saying he wanted to go to the Science Centre with his brothers so ok, let's go! But turned out that we could get only packages using the vouchers so we ended up buying just the regular tickets without using the vouchers... Anyway, it's only $24 for five of us, way cheaper than cable car or flyer or zoo.

Watching our home choo choo away at the back of the LRT

We left past 1 pm coz of Nintendo, but the train route turned out to be quite fast so we arrived just past 2 pm and could maximise our 3-hour slot there! And this was despite various distractions along the walk from the train station - ice cream man, playground and an outdoor fountain near the Science Centre which reminded me of the time when Yu fell into the water at our staycation in November; he was wearing the same shirt that day!

Yang started his tour guide duty here

He was excited to have spotted this "hypnotising circle"!

Yang had many photos here - his third time now!

Yu could barely peek through

I later saw him tiptoe :p

Yummy Kai begging not to be eaten?!

The giant chair illusion didn't work well for three kids...

Can see Yang walk into the ghost pianist room :p

Let's flush in!

Of course the kids dashed ahead. They never stopped to read anything. I wanted to examine some poo poo but had to go after them, heh :p

King of poo poo coz he's always using “大便” during our Chinese revision *.*

King of no 大便 coz he's always constipated... But he did a big one that evening, woohoo!

Simply, king of 大便 coz he can go all the time and takes his own sweet time!

They spent some time at this game

Oh, oops - that's me :p

Kai and Yang managed to reach a cylinder together by adjusting the length of ropes in their hands!

Creating things for the wind table

Kai did a random one, followed by a really good one after spotting a sample :)

Yu wasn't pleased when told that the tape holder would not fly..!

Mirror maze!

I was wondering how Yang could spend almost the whole day there before COVID-19 shortened each slot to only three hours. But the place is huge. And you can play one thing repeatedly, like the mirror maze and the cannon ball. We also spent time experiencing earthquakes, shooting cannon balls, playing with sand and other random things. By the time we left, we hadn't even gone to the second floor!

And we left just before 5 pm coz the kids were hungry. We had our usual porridge for lunch, and the snack I brought turned out to be quite tiny. We still took time to reach the exit coz too many distractions inside :p

Bear bear family says bye to the Science Centre!

Dinner was Astons coz the boys kept asking for "seared gourmet steak", no thanks to Zelda!! Kai said he has many of those in Zelda. Come, boy - time for some real meat instead of virtual!

The last time we went to Jurong East, we also had Astons but this time, we got a seat by the ice rink, yeah! They didn't spend as much time looking at people iceskating though.

We ordered a medium ribeye among others. Kai liked it. Yu had some but his main was half a burger. Yang didn't like it and ate Sito's fries and sausages coz his pasta was late; still had quite a bit of pasta coz hungry! I had a mix of steak - Sito's NY strip and the tougher parts from the ribeye, haha! - and leftover burger. Yup, mum's life :p

The kids wanted ice cream so we got a hot fudge sundae from Macs and a chocolate block in a cup from the ice cream man outside. I got a bag of roasted chestnuts too - so yummy!

My chestnut and me :p

This time, Yu seemed to need less supervision at this playground - 又长大了！ We just stood nearby and made sure they were all sighted. We left after getting some bubble tea. This time, we took the train instead of taxi, and it was really quite fast!

The kids were tired by then and all were knocked out by 9 pm, yeah! We had supper - noodles and chestnuts - and two cups of bubble tea :)

$5.50 in all, cheaper than a large Koi! And there was a free third cup thanks to a voucher.

It's so good to do something together like this, different from our usual playground and dinner routine now that Sito's Saturday work is less frequent. Now I'm thinking what we can do next weekend :)

They made me smile :)

Two things made me happy yesterday.

After dropping a spoonful of chilli onto my noodles, I wanted to dig for a piece of green chilli. Then I caught a look from Sito, who was sitting across from me. We had an agreement that he would watch my chilli intake coz I almost always ended Sundays at Mum's place with a stomachache. I was thinking green chilli would not be so bad...? I guiltily covered the chilli jug anyway.

Later, I really had a bad stomachache before we went home. Could have been worse if I had had more chilli. Thank goodness for Sito!

We went home later than usual coz we started dinner later and Yu had to poop during his dinner. It was 8.25 pm by the time we got in bed. I had Kai and Yang down quickly, and went to settle Yu. He pulled his blanket around himself and stared into space for a while, making this cute little face with his upper lip pulling over his upper teeth - probably itchy nose. Then, he blinked a few times. And he was out. 

I lay right next to him watching him fall asleep. It was a most beautiful sight. Couldn't help but give him a few kisses before leaving his room...

Yup, these two :)