Girlfriend!

Teachers tell me that he looks after her all the time in school.
Seeing them together is just oh-so-sweet!! He likes her a lot and so does she! :P
Thankful that he's also found a best girl friend in school. Think he just loves having somebody to take care of!

Kieran has graduated from kindergarten!

4 years flew by just like that. I can still clearly remember the first day I dropped Kieran off at the kindy. He cried whenever he didn't see me. I'm glad that he has grown into a much more confident and mature boy over these 4 years!

Orientation at Rosyth (Kieran)

Rosyth had their Primary One Orientation really early. That's was probably a good thing to get out of the way so that we can enjoy the rest of the holidays and slowly purchase all the things we need for the new school year.

First thing we did when we got into the school was to go to the name list to have him find his name in his allocated class. He looked up and down (past his own name) and just didn't see it until I had to point it out to him! Blur!!

One of the things that I worried about would be that he'll not find food that he would eat. Luckily, the canteen does serve a very large variety of "Kieran-friendly" food! :P He knows that there's a stall that sells all sorts of chicken rice. He was pretty excited that there was Japanese curry chicken and spaghetti sold in the canteen. And, worse case? They even have nutella bread at the snack stall. We asked him to try buying something. He walked up and down and originally wanted spaghetti, but because it was orientation day (Saturday), they didn't sell that. So he settled for a hotdog instead. 

And then it was off to the multipurpose hall (?) for assembly. He was rather excited about the welcome kit that he got. I think it is pretty thoughtful too, the things that they included in the pack. I particularly like "An eraser: It's all right to make mistakes - that's how we learn." On top of these items, they were also given a small pack of animal biscuits and a bottle of drink.

That's him. First to arrive (hopefully we'll stay punctual throughout his entire school years). 

We were entertained by a concert put up by the lower primary students and I must say, the string ensemble and the wushu troupe were rather impressive. 

After the concert, we finally meet the principal and after a short speech by her, the children were sent off on their school tour. The briefing for parents then started. 

The briefing is a usual one that included housekeeping stuff and school Vision, Mission, Values. It almost felt like I'm back in one of our own parent nights. :P I must say though, I have gained more confidence and assurance after I heard the P's talk (not that I had no confidence for the school initially, but I was plagued by the crazy thoughts normal anxiety of a first-time parent.)

By the time we collected him from the classroom, he was enjoying himself, watching a DVD cartoon (or a story) with his classmates. He didn't even want to follow us. So we went round trying to see if we could get books/ uniform (which we didn't buy in the end because of the long queue) and then collected him for the second time.

So, looking forward to 2013!

Speaking Mandarin

I'm just glad that the boys are attempting to speak more mandarin at home these days. Small fry more so than the big one. They aren't fully conversational yet, but I'm really proud of the effort that they are making.

Some of the phrases they are using these days include:
妈妈是我的 女孩子（女朋友）
我要妈妈帮我穿裤子。
我爱妈妈。
 我过马路要上（举）手。

They have some random substitution of words and I think that's really fine. At least they are trying to express themselves and I think that's wonderful. 

The rest of the Melbourne trip

This is getting way too long and overdue to be posted. Enjoy the slideshow instead! These photos are the proofs from the photobook that I made of the trip. :P

This photo slideshow generated with Smilebox

For the record

Kieran
weight: 17.9kg
height: 118cm
Still lightweight I know, but I'm glad it is steadily increasing in the last couple of months.

Kiefer
weight: 16.7kg
height: 107cm
Probably heavier than Kieran was at the same age, but I think he is getting lankier. He's losing all his baby fat!

Phillip Island Activities (5-6 Sept 2012)

After Puffing Billy in the morning, we drove on towards Phillip Island. We arrived at Phillip Island at about 530pm. It was just about right as the Penguin Parade begins at about 630pm. We were told that the penguins will start coming in at about 639pm that day (cos they did that the day before). As we were entering the park as a family (and that we also intended to visit the other attractions on Phillip Island), we had a pretty good package deal price. The tickets that we got for the penguin parade got us "grandstand" seats and from where we were, we saw hundreds of penguins come in to shore that night and as they waddled towards there burrows, we could literally walk side by side with them. If we were to stretch our arms our of the boardwalk, we'll definitely be able to touch them.

Photography was not allowed. So all I had was this photo of a taxidermied penguin.

See the egg?

Yes. They were safely back in their burrows.

The next morning, we were off the the Koala Conservation Center and the Churchill Heritage Farm.
The first sight to greet us was this really old, old tree. It is supposed to be about 200 years old. Ain't it magnificent?

Love the woodland of tall eucalypt trees. Though we were in the woodland, surrounded by the eucalypt trees, I didn't smell the distinct eucalyptus oil.

 

Love how the bark peels off the trunk.

Spotted a mummy? koala with its baby. Koalas eat such an indigestible food source that they spend most of their time dozing while their body detoxifies the eucalytus leaves they ingest.

I think these are the inflorescence of the eucalypt trees.

Love, love, love this picture of the 2 of them.

After the Koala Conservation Center, we drove off to Churchill Island Heritage Farm. It is not exactly a working farm, more like an exhibit farm. We didn't stay there for long as we were trying to make the 530pm Serranto Ferry. The boys had fun there nonetheless.

It was just nice to be away from the city for a while. Really lovely to be just seeing trees, grass, sheep and cows.

The Puffing Billy (5 Sept 2012)

We landed late in Melbourne. After a late dinner (at Stalactites) and a night's rest at Rydges, we drove off the next morning towards Phillips Island. On the way, we first went by Belgrave to the Puffing Billy.

We left Melbourne CBD a little late and thus would miss the 1030am train. So we detoured a little and stopped by Pie in the Sky for a light brunch. In our opinion, erm, the pies were just ok. I found them a little too dry. Or maybe we ordered the wrong stuff. I had an Aussie meat pie while hubby chose the mushroom one. Kieran didn't like the mash potatoes either. However, it was a nice a quaint little place.

Loved these beautiful "weeds" as we walked towards the train station. 

See the little rascal's cheeky face? He was getting ready for his next stunt!

We didn't know he was climbing the rails until we saw it on the photo!! 

 

We stopped at Emerald Station and the boys played at the playground for awhile. I think they really do love the playground in cold weather. They can run all they want and yet remain nice and cool. Not smelly and sweaty like back here.

 Silly boy got himself stuck in the swing!

 After about an hour at Emerald, we were back on the train back to Belgrave and then continued our journey to Phillip Island.

Meeting up with the Daddy in Melbourne

Hubbs was in Melbourne on a study trip for a week and we thought it would be nice to fly in at the end of his trip and have a short family holiday. On Tues, the boys and I flew on the SQ A380 to Melbourne. It was a pretty "fun" 7 hour flight with the boys. I remember saying that I don't think I want to fly alone with the boys after the USA trip 3 years ago. This time, they are much older and they could pretty much entertain themselves. Only kiefer kept wanting to use the bathroom and kept wanting me to change movies for him on the flight. Between the 2 hour nap they took, the movies and the inflight meal service, we arrived in Melbourne in no time. Once we got out of the arrival hall, tge boys were so excited as they spot their daddy waiting for them. I guess their happiness was worth flying solo with them. :)

Hello Mr Chaplin!

Had an early birthday celebration for the daddy today. The cake was an Awfully Chocolate fudge cake and as usual, he was his messy self as he gobbled slice after slice of the cake. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to swipe some fudge on his lip and there he is! Mr Charlie Chaplin!

Cycling

The boys didn't have swimming class today and so we went down to East Coast Park to cycle. The original plan was to get them the four-wheel car-like vehicles but we found out that they didn't rent that anymore. So we put them on kiddy bikes with training wheels and got ourselves on a bike each too. We rode for about an hour and throughout the entire hour, there was just yelling at the boys (especially Kiefer) to keep their bikes straight and not crash into anybody!

Sty in the eye

Still as rascally even with the bothersome sty.

The sty started as just a small little reddish inflammation when we were going to HK in June. Kieran had it too but Kieran's one subsided after a week's application of an antihistamine. This little fella's didn't and it eventually developed into a full blown sty about a month ago.


The sty already looked pretty small in this picture. It actually became much larger in the last couple of days but it simply refused to pop. After a $100 instructions were given advice at an ophthalmologist clinic yesterday, the sty finally popped and partially drained out. We repeated the hot compress today and more pus came out. I think it's finally going to heal. Poor little babe.


That's him at the ophthalmic clinic getting his eye checked. On the bright side, the doctor said that he has very good eyesight. And that the sty didn't affect his vision and we could just leave it to s.l.o.w...l.y heal. She suggested using hot compress, which worked wonderfully! At least now he will look good on our photos when we are in Melbourne!

Beautiful sunbird

Saw this beautiful sunbird while I was at a nursery yesterday. I hurriedly dug my iPhone out of my bag to snap a picture of it. I daren't go too near in case it flew away. Zoomed in on the phone and thus a rather grainy picture. But it was beautiful nonetheless. The pretty yellow bird against the bright yellow flowers. Beautiful.

Hermès - The Gift of Time

Brought the kids (and cousins) to the Hermès Gift of Time exhibition at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. It is a small exhibit with installations meant to define time.

I'll hold your hands.

Caught this picture 2 nights ago. Even though we yell at them all the time to stop talking and go sleep, I still love it that they'll spend some time every night talking to each other before they fall asleep.

They always talk a lot before they fall asleep at night. I sometimes find them snuggling against each other at night or have their legs over each other in the morning. I hope that they'll see this photo in years to come and recall the love and fun they have with each other now.

We are in!

A sigh of relief that this is done. Now to rest easy and enjoy the rest of the year. It's gonna be a whole new ball game when we start Primary 1 next year.

Primary 1 registration completed

Primary 1 registration is such a huge affair over here in Singapore. Parents start preparing for their children's entry into choice schools even before their children are born. Parents start queuing up for infant care, kindergartens and then applying to participate in parent volunteer programmes at primary schools, hoping to get their children into the the Phase 2B of the registration phases.

We are just so fortunate that we were eligible at Phase 2A2 at a "good" (by Singaporean standards) primary school because hubby was an old boy. However, I think we would not have participated in Parent Volunteer Programme even if we didn't.

I myself came from a neighbourhood primary school and I don't think I fared any worse than my counterparts who were from "top" schools. So our consideration for our boys' primary education was really  a decision made primarily (pun intended haha) based on convenience. We were already at Phase 2A2, and the school is quite near to where we live. We would only be at Phase 2C for any other nearby schools. (Most schools have limited places by the time the registration reaches this phase, and very often, there is balloting for places at this phase.) Really a no-brainer choice for us.

What are my thoughts on choice of primary schools?

1. There is no selection of students at primary schools. Everybody starts on a same level. Top schools may seem to produce more top students at PSLE, but when you look into percentages, they may all produce similar percentage of top scorers. Of course, I don't deny that they will be exceptions.
2. Proximity is a very important factor. Making small children travel long distances tire them out. Where then is the energy left to concentrate on their studies?
3. ALL schools would have both great and not-so-great teachers. Good schools, lousy teachers, not-so-good schools, great teachers. All luck of the draw. We'd be blessed if our boys meet great teachers in their lives. These teachers can come from anywhere.
4. Schools only provide one facet in education. There are many other facets of education. Parents, society etc..
5. Academic excellence is not everything. Life is not just about As.

We are just glad that we are done with the registration so that we can quite fretting and get on with enjoying the rest of the year before we have to start figuring out how we would maintain our sanity and not be trapped  in the mad race.

The day has come..

Tomorrow is the day. In a blink, it's time for us to register Kieran for Primary 1! Gosh!

Update on growth

 
Kieran finally crossed the 17kg mark!! I remember that it took very long for him to go from 15kg to 16kg. I think almost 2 years! I think he was in the 16kg range for closing a year or a year and a half.

Here are the stats:
Kieran
Height: 117 cm (75th percentile)
Weight: 17.1 kg (5th percentile)


Kiefer
Height: 104 cm (closing 90th percentile)
Weight: 15.8 kg (about 50th percentile)


Update:
Kieran came down with a slight fever the next day (27 June 2012) and now he's back to 16.8kg again. So much for the excitement. :(

Reading programme (or not..)

We aren't the most "on-the-ball" type of parents when it comes to academic pursuits. We didn't really do flashcards (tried for maybe 2 days and we gave up). We are also not the most consistent bedtime readers. We'll go through phases of reading every night to periods where we hardly read to them. We do believe in loads of unstructured time for the boys to play and thus to learn independence. Most of the time, they'll be playing with their Legos (Kieran) or having some imaginary play (Kiefer) by themselves.

Having said that, we do understand and believe in the importance of reading. I was a reader when I was small. I love Enid Blyton and I'm sure I've read most (if not all,) of her books. Thus with our boys, we do attempt to get them to learn to read.

We've been using Ladybird's Peter and Jane series. As boring as the books are, the repetition in the books really helped the boys to pick up words. We have been taking it slowly and Kieran has just completed Book 5b (I'm not sure what the standard pace is, but I know he's not the fastest reader around). Considering we only really started him on the P&J books last year, he now recognises many words by sight, though he still has a lot of work to do in the area of spelling.

He has gained much confidence in his reading that he was comfortable enough to help Kiefer read his Book 2a. He even helped Kiefer sound out the words. A very big step taken indeed.

Lair-lo!

This is how Kiefer says "yellow" when he talks and does not conscientiously remember his pronunciations.

Lair-lo = Yellow
When you ask him to say it properly, he'll go "hair-lo", then when you ask him to do the 'y' sound, then he'll properly do "ye-llow".

didlit = did it
When reminded, he'll say, "it's not didlit? didlit (delete) means no more? Like delete the show (from the iPad)?"

Fi-ow-nd = Found

Illogic

Meals are only meals if they are eaten, seated down at a restaurant etc. Small meals or snacks throughout the day are not meals.

If you don't give the children dinner (i.e. by 7pm), you are starving them, even though they have been eating throughout the day.

You'll have to eat at 12 noon even though you had breakfast at 11am.

You are getting skinnier. Eat. (Of cos, they are growing so much taller).

Let me give you another bowl of colouring intense, sugar filled jellies.

The children drink their milk too slowly from the cup. (So? I don't get that problem).

You'll have to eat rice for dinner. A bowl of grapes doesn't count.

Can you put your dirty laundry into the laundry bin if you can? (Yes we do. It's someone else who doesn't. Takes them off the kids, leave them on the floor and walks away. So go complain to the right person.)

On my Tuscan Bean soup: Of cos the soup is watery.  You added too much water. (Obviously) You should add mushrooms (it's bean soup. not mushroom). Of cos not nice. The canned campbell's are better (of cos! full of flavouring and msg, oh yes (sarcastic tone).. canned always beats wholesome, made from scratched stuff).

Friends of the zoo, again!

Brought the boys to the zoo on Tuesday and with both the boys at a paying age, it definitely made more sense for us to buy the zoo pass. Tickets for the 4 of us for a single day pass would come up to $82 (including the tram ride). The annual pass for just the zoo is $180 (excl gst) and this means that we'll break even in about 2 visits.

This zoo visit feels a little different from how we used to visit the zoo in the past. For one, we didn't have to bring the stroller anymore! The boys walked the entire time we were at the zoo. We didn't really check the show times and we really missed most of the shows. Only caught the last 10 minutes of the Splash Safari.

What a mischievous face!

The highlight of the day would have to be the water park at the children's world. The park is amazing. There are slides, water shooters and there is this huge bucket that would empty whenever it got filled up. Kiefer didn't like that one. On the other hand, Kieran would go sit under the bucket, waiting for it to tip.

Paid $6 for the pony ride. It was a very short ride. I don't think it even lasted 3 mins! Here's Kiefer going Yee-Ha!

We went into the fragile forest and saw this magnificent  iguana. It looked like a wise, old man sitting at the top of the stairs. I didn't really dare to go near it but the boys did. There was a young man there that encouraged them and held their hands as they stroked the iguana's belly. It even turned around and looked at Kiefer. At that moment, I was a little scared that it would snap at Kiefer. But then again, iguanas are vegetarians aren't they?

Ain't it a gorgeous creature?

I'm looking at you boy!

I'd like to move it, move it!

With our zoo pass, we'll definitely be visiting the zoo loads this year. We may just pop in for a tram ride or just for the water park!