One year of no helper!

I was sitting in front of the TV on Wednesday night, 21 Dec, when I suddenly realised that we had survived one year without a helper! I checked the next day and found that I was wrong by one day; I sent off the helper on 20 Dec 2021.

It seemed that the year had passed very quickly, more quickly than usual. Maybe things move at home - toilets get washed, food gets cooked, bedsheets get changed. At work, things may not move - discuss abc to death, revise xyz for the nth time, haha!

Well, what has changed in the past year? Nothing too major. I was already working part-time prior to this so I still keep my afternoons available for the kids. I think the three most major changes are as follows:

1) The kids learn to do their part

I remember in the beginning, when I started doing laundry after dinner, I had to hang the clothes up at close to 9 pm. Yu wanted me to lie in bed long long time with him so he asked me to get a kakak to do laundry! When I changed laundry habits, he stopped saying that. 

Due to the weird hours I do laundry, they don't get to help me hang up clothes. But starting from I think the second half of the year, I got them to fold their own clothes. At first, I gave them a small chopping board to guide them to fold. Now they just fold. Very ugly but they fold. When I see a neat drawer, I will compliment them in the hope that they continue to improve!

They also make their own bed. I don't like to make the beds right after getting up due to the warmth and even sweat. The kids can sweat buckets even with aircon! So they don't make their bed on school days. On non-school days, they make their bed after breakfast. They are more accomplished in this as they started on this earlier.

They can always keep their own toys. Just messy but I can handle that. 

This past week, I also got them to do some spring cleaning of their toy drawers. Got rid of dust balls (!) in Kai's room, reduced the number of loose Lego bricks in Yang and Yu's drawers.

I want to get them to wash their own dishes too but the way they use water.... Maybe next time...

2) The kids eat more varied food

Kai once said my cooking was bad, should get kakak back to cook. Wait a minute - thought you didn't like her food much too? Guess what he said? Her cooking was bad but still better than mine!! Hmph!

I hope I have improved by now...

Anyway, I think my dishes are more varied. We used to have different types of sliced meat in the same weird brownish sauce, stirfried with onions. Now, we may have simple panfried meat, or bulgogi, or salmon and vege stirfry, or Yu's fave 糖醋排骨 :) I even put lady's fingers into fried rice. 

Sometimes, I make noodle soup for dinner. The easiest is meatball macaroni soup, or bee hoon or kway teow - so easy and yummy! So long as I don't add prawn paste to the meatball coz Kai doesn't like prawns or fishball texture.

More importantly, I try to make simmering soup at least once a week. Ok, this started only towards the end of the year but better late than never? The kids don't like soup days but I think they are getting used to it. Kai and Yu can drink very fast now. And Yang, well...

Once I made radish soup. Yang said that he preferred black bean soup. The next time, I made black bean soup. He said he didn't like it *.* But later, he told Sito (I was in the shower?) that he had got used to soup. I must be consistent! So even in school holidays when I try to cook less, I still try to make soup once a week.

3) The house is cleaner, I think...

Our robot mop AKA Robot-kun does most of the floor jobs on a near daily basis. I steam the floors once a month. Or less frequently coz I don't do it during school holidays. So I think our house is cleaner!

Oh, but the balconies are less clean coz the floors are no longer scrubbed once a week! I scrubbed once and steamed once this year. The rest of the time, it's just our trusty Robot-kun - due to a drop in height, I have to bring it to the balconies manually but it's so worth it. 

We went out for breakfast on Wednesday. Something different from our usual Yakun. When I realised our one year anniversary that night, this seemed like a celebration? :) Kai had a breakfast platter but didn't want the toast; Yang, Yu and I shared the yummy toast; Yang and Yu also had a croissant each! My fried cheese sandwich was a reward for scrubbing toilets more than 100 times haha!