Our baby is in preschool!

Sounds cliche, but time really zooms by just like that. Our little Kiefer has started Nursery 1 at Trinity Methodist Church Kindergarten since Wednesday (5 Jan 2011). Just like that, he is making a transition from a play-all-day childhood to one that involves "studying"!!

Kieran started the school year 1 day earlier than Kiefer. And on Kieran's first day of school, Kiefer insisted on wearing his uniform and following gege to school as well. So I allowed him to do so and he was so happy to be carrying his backpack and water bottle and "attending" school. He had a great time in the 1/2 hour we spent at the kindy.

Followed Kieran to school. "Unofficial" first day in school!

He had fun playing with the train set there, and he didn't wonder why there was nobody in the class!!

His real first day of school went pretty well as well. He was happy to be wearing his school tshirt and go to school. He was one of the few in his class who did not give any trouble (i.e. not crying and yelling) and was very independent in playing and eating his snacks. :) He was also very participative, always sitting right in front of the teacher when they are asked to gather for activities. However, I also did observe that he is always trying to grab things (i.e. puppets) out of the teacher's hands all the time and always trying to fiddle with the CD player!! :P

Singing songs and playing with friends.

First to be seated when asked to gather.

 
Day 3 and 4 wasn't as smooth-sailing. Though he is always happy the moment he reaches school, it was difficult getting him into his uniform in the mornings! On Day 3, he was in such a bad mood that he was crying and refusing to put on his blue uniform! After much struggling, bribing and scolding, we managed to get his uniform on!! And then he refused to put on his shoes to leave the house. Finally, after telling him that I was going to leave him at home and send Kieran to school, he then put on his socks and shoes!! And yet, he was happy once he was at school. He even dismissed me by saying "Bye, Mummy!" when I went into his classroom asking if he was enjoying himself!!

Got up on the wrong side of the bed on Day 3!!!

So darn unhappy about having to wear his uniform. He was just saying "NO!" to everything!

I left the sending the boys to their Gong Gong on Friday as I have to be back at school for a meeting. I received a message at 8am saying that Kiefer refused to wear his white polo tshirt (they have a schedule for the 2 sets of uniforms in the week) and was wearing his blue one to school! This little fella is simply in such an oppositional behavioural stage!!! The school teachers were already "complaining" that he refused to sit down when told to do so and kept wandering all over!! *shakes head* Even Ah Ma complained about him being totally uncooperative when told to go bathe!

Still I'm glad that he always answers "School is fun, fun!" whenever I ask him about it. Just glad that both our boys enjoy school and I believe that is the most important factor in facilitating learning. This was also the first consideration we made when choosing the preschool for them. That they will have fun and thus learning would come naturally after. :D

Happy New Year! (This includes the christmas post)

It is 2011 already and I have yet to post about our Christmas! Gosh! How behind time am I and what a way to start the new year!! :P I guess I'll have to do a 2-in-1 post right here, right now.

Christmas:
We had a simple family gathering on Christmas Eve this year. We would always host the Christmas dinner in the years that we are not holidaying (read: almost every other year we are in the US). Christmas eve was a working day for most of our family (with the exception of the retirees and of cos the teachers! :P) I literally cooked up most of the food for the dinner that day. I was really surprised to find that I actually had a very relaxed time cooking this dinner. I kind of remember previous years where I'll get hot and sweaty by dinner that I can' eat anything anymore!

Anyway, this was the dinner menu that I prepared:

• Tossed pre-packed Garden Salad
• Roasted Turkey with Gravy
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes
• Ikea's Swedish Meatballs with Lingonberry Jam and the meatball sauce
• Mac & Cheese
• Apple Pie

This is ALWAYS the staple at family dinners cos they "old folks" just can't do the "ang mo chiak" :P And this was prepared my MiL.

• Curry Chicken
• Fried Rice

Other stuff brought by people:

• Chng Tng by the Ah Kor
• Log cake and Mince Pies from Cedele by Big Sis

These are the only pictures I took of the food that night. Everyone started eating as we brought the food out and I didn't have the chance to snap pictures at all!!

The Roasted Turkey

The carved turkey

On Christmas morning, the kids had fun digging into their stockings to find little gifts in there, and of cos, open up their presents under the Christmas tree. They already knew about some of the toys that were wrapped up there and they were already asking to open them everyday for 2 weeks prior to Christmas!

Look at all the presents under the tree and they all belonged to the boys

!

Small Fry was so excited over the tube of jelly beans he got in his stocking.

See that blue tower on the table, that was the new airport set from Fastlane that the boys got for Christmas. And that was the one toy they really wanted to open for the entire 2 weeks. We bought it at Toys 'R' Us HK and lugged the huge box back to Singapore.

It's been a great Christmas this year, nice and relaxing. No rushing around. And even though I did last minute shopping for presents for the children, it wasn't too bad. All I did was to pop into the Popular Bookfest and grabbed bargain books for everyone. I think these are really thrifty and wonderful gifts for everyone!



New Year:

The kids eating Christmas candy for the New Year! :P Just a note, these jelly candy lollipops are really darn sweet. Both our boys didn't finish theirs. Both of them went through about half of it and threw it out. :D I took 1 bite of their leftovers and found out about the sweetness!! I'm glad that our 2 boys are not huge candy eaters!!

It was a quiet new year's eve for us. We went over to my Mum's for a steamboat dinner, the children had a fun time playing with each other and then we went home. Kiefer fell asleep before we heard people counting down to the new year and the fireworks going off. Kieran didn't really know what was happening and simply wondered what that loud sound was. I put the first load of laundry of the year into the dryer at 12.09am (yes, I checked the time :P) and then send Kieran back into his own room again (I need to post about this soon too! It's been more than week since the boys moved into their own room) to sleep while the 2 of us watched Little Fockers till 330am. So this was how we started 2011. :P

'tis the season of NOs!

#2 is at THE stage now. The stage where his answers to everything is a resounding "No!" :(
Although he loves to accompany gege to school in the mornings, he's been saying no to going school these few days. He will be starting Nursery 1 next Wednesday, I hope he starts on a good note, with no crying! *crossing my fingers!*

Hong Kong 2010

This year seemed to be a long year. We've worked really hard and we thought we'd deserve a good break. As we did not really make plans to go anywhere (tho' there were some talks of doing a road trip to Penange, which didn't materialise), hubby looked around for somewhere to go and chanced upon a great deal on Jetstar Asia. And thus, a late booking and off we went to Hong Kong!

The last time we went to Hong Kong was in 2008, and it was only a short 2 day transit on the way back to Singapore from Shanghai. On that trip, we didn't do much, except for some shopping and eating. 5 days (12-16 December) in Hong Kong this time around meant that we could do some sight-seeing.

We arrived in Hong Kong at about lunch time. After dropping the luggage off at the hotel, we set out to look for food. The first meal we ate had to be at Cafe de Coral. That's like Hubb's favourite place in HK. He simply loves the Pork Chop Baked Rice.

The boys had loads of fun taking the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour almost everyday. It was definitely a cheap and good fun. They enjoyed the breeze and looking at other ships out at sea.

This time around, we did some touristy stuff like going on the cable car ride at Ngong Ping 360 and also took The Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak.

On our cable car ride across to Lantau Island, we met with a fog and it was so misty and foggy that the cable had to stop moving for about 5 minutes! We were left dangling on the cable. It actually felt a little scary initially, but when we looked down, we realised that we were actually very near the ground as we were just above the slopes of the mountain! :P

Super misty halfway across to Lantau island

View from the cable car

The boys enjoying their cable car ride.

 And we definitely had to visit Disneyland Hong Kong this time around. In 2008, we brought the boys to the entrance, took some photos and we left! :P This time around, we spent a fantastic one day in the park. The park is rather small and most of their rides are really for small kiddos like them. It is suitable for the boys, for older children (like ourselves!!), there was really nothing much for us there.

Look! We've got Donald with us!!

The favourite Disney character for the day has to be Buzz Lightyear. They enjoyed Astroblasters immensely and went up on it umpteen times! They also took photos with Buzz whenever the opportunity arises.

Last but not least, some photos of the yummy food in HK:

Roast duck @ Fuk Yuen (Mongkok)

Tau Huay (竹筒豆花) in a barrel at the dimsum place near the hotel

Super yummy spring rolls at the same dim sum place

Did I mention we flew Jetstar? It seems that at the Hong Kong Airport, Jetstar does not have a walkway for passengers to embark and disembark. We arrived in Hong Kong and disembarked on the tarmac, we left Hong Kong the same way! However, the day we left, the temperature was a freezing 8 degrees celsius! The wind was blowing and it was really, really cold! It took some time for everyone to walk up the steps into the plane, so much so that Kieran actually had the chance to pop into the cockpit for a chat with the pilots! However, I must say that the service on Jetstar is really pretty good. Very friendly and helpful flight attendants. It's just that the plane itself is rather old and doesn't seem to be cleaned well (you see crumbs when you lift up the hand rests) and the toilet really smells. The seats were really quite cramp too. My knees almost touched the seats in front of me and I am not really very tall. Maybe it's just the planes for the Asia are smaller? We were not allowed to bring food up the plane, but they didn't really check as the boys brought 1 pack of cereal each in their backpacks. I think they are quite ok with children's snacks. Even then, the food on the plane is not too expensive either. I saw on the menu that a portion of chicken rice was about $8, although it is not standard-sized portion but it's pretty decent. I think it is fine to fly budget on a short 3-4 hour flight, but I really wonder how it will be on their new 11 hour flight to NZ??!!

Look at my crazy wind-blown hair!

As usual, our seasoned frequent flyers are just so comfortable in the plane! The small one knocked out and was asleep a little while after take-off! :D

Watching Jaws on the iPad

Munching on his snacks

It was almost 1am by the time we touched down at Changi Airport and collected our bags. The boys missed their toys so much that they immediately started playing with their toys when the got through the door! They were energised by the nap they took on the plane itself! It's the poor mum and dad that are darn tired! :P The next morning, we literally left the boys to their own devices while we slept in for another 2 hours or so!! :P Still, we look forward to our next trip out of Singapore!! :P

Merry Christmas!

Been busy and haven't been blogging at all. And here's a belated Merry Christmas to everyone! Will be back to blog about our Hong Kong trip and Christmas!!

Meeikito bite

Me: Fer, look at mummy's leg. What's that? (pointing to a red bump on my knee)
Kiefer: a meekito bite?

hehe..

Mum's 60th (59th) Birthday!

We just celebrated Mum's 60th birthday on Monday night at Yan Palace. Well, according to her year of birth, it is supposed to be her 59th, but according to some Chinese tradition, we had to celebrate her 60th a year earlier!!

Anyway, we all had a really fun time eating and singing. And I'm sure Mum was really happy that night too because she had some of her good friends celebrating with her. For many years, I've always missed her birthday because I will definitely be out of the country on my holidays. So this year, we made it a point to stay in Singapore for her birthday.

The cake was from Pine Garden. I thought to try a new flavour "Apple Martini" that they had. Well, the kids weren't crazy about it. However, I love the prettiness of the cake. :P 

Today is her birthday itself. Happy Birthday Mum! Hope you like the flowers. :)

Hippopotamus!

Haha.. Kiefer can say "HIPPOPOTAMUS"! I don't know when he started being able to do that, but it was rather cute when he said it this morning when we were reading a book on animals!

Just to record, yesterday, at the zoo, he saw a peahen and he said," Hello peahen, what you doing here? " in his little childish voice!! :)

so what have we been doing?

Hubby is out of town for a couple of days and so it's just the boys and me for these few days.

Yesterday was a rainy day and so we stayed indoors, playing with toys, watching DVDs and made some little knick knacks for Christmas.

The boys were really quite good at this but both crafting sessions probably only lasted 20 minutes. Just had to find more things for them to do.

So, we woke up this morning, checked the weather forecast and yipee, it said cloudy! Cloudy is good. Means no rain and yet not too sunny. And so, off to the zoo we went.

We reached to zoo fairly early and we managed to catch the Splash Safari show. The boys were very well behaved. I made a "deal and promise" with Kieran that he had to let Kiefer sit on the stroller and he stand behind it at the zoo. He kept to his deal and didn't whine whenever Kiefer sat on the stroller. :) I think they are always well behaved when they are only with either one of us. When both of us are present, they know that there are more hands to cater to their wants!

Here are some photos from our zoo trip today.

Just arrived at the park, all nice and alert.

Kieran had fun feeding and patting the kangaroos. Kiefer was really enthusisatic about going into the enclosure,  but decided that he didn't like the kangaroos all that much. :P

 

 

Well, he wanted to take pictures with the macaws too..

2 very hungry little boys by lunch time.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I decided to have a little Thanksgiving dinner by ourselves this year. Not that we are pilgrims or anything, but I'd thought it'll be nice to be a little festive and to be thankful for this wonderful year for our family.

I didn't make an entire turkey for dinner, but we had 2 roasted chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and corn instead. The boys didn't eat much of the meat, but gobbled up all the potatoes and corn. Well, it was nice having thanksgiving together as a family.

I wanted to have an apple pie for dessert actually but Hubb already ate the dessert the night before. So let's just say the dinner spanned 2 nights. :P It was an apple pie that I made and I have to say, it is such an easy peasy recipe from LifeasMom.



Now that the dishes are done, I'm trying not to be worried about the big interview that I am having tomorrow. I will just sit down and enjoy Sorcerer's Apprentice with the boys first.

Kieran's 2nd concert @ TMCK

It is the end of the year again. And we just attended Kieran's year end concert yesterday evening. It was so eveident that he was enjoying himself so much. The spotted us at the side of the hall the moment he came on stage and started waving to us. Throughout the 2min song, he was just jumping and smiling!! I'm so happy that he is enjoying this!

The concert had a Christmas theme and Kieran's class was dancing to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer in Japanese. It was funny as he was singing to us the last couple of weeks and we thought that it was just some Japanese song. He sang something like "Doowah. .Doowah.. sakura.. ina mashita!" I was still wondering why he called it the reindeer song earlier.

This is how this little fella has grown in 1 year. This photo was taken at the same spot that he stood last year!

That's so fun!

The daddy did a high speed sharp turn on the road, after which #1 commented:

"You can do that?
That was so fun!
Like a race car!"



- Posted from my iPhone

Universal Studios Singapore

SIL booked 2 hotel rooms for themselves and ILs at Resorts World Sentosa, and the rooms came with USS tickets. And if ILs were to go, there'll be no one to take care of the kiddos. I don't feel comfortable with them bringing the kiddos out to a theme park like that on there own and thus both Hubb and I applied for leave and joined them at USS for the day.

We left at 9 in the morning, and surprising, it does feel like we were on some holiday. The same excitement, as though we were going on a road trip. :) I had a bag packed with extra clothes, water and snacks, and we brought along our trusty Peg Perego. This stroller hasn't seen the light of day for eons!! :P

I would think the $66 price tag on the tickets was a little too steep. The park was small. We went in at about 1030am and we were done by 4pm. And that was including lunch and dilly-dallying. And it was rather disappointing that service wasn't fantastic there. The first bummer of the day was that our e-tickets were rejected at the entrance and there was this whole commotion about the hotel already printing the tickets out for us and so on. (Nothing on our booking told us that we needed to pick the tickets up from the hotel, and who would wait till check-in time at 3pm to go into USS?) Blah.. anyway, I'm sure that had that happening a lot cos people behind in the queue also had the same problem. And if that were the case, shouldn't they already have rectified the issue? And while we were waiting for the Guest Relations to settle the issue, and while the queue was building up, this other staff member came up, trying to alleviate the problem but did a real lousy job. He saw me standing in front of the counter waiting for the solution, and yet asked what my problem was. Well he got a "so do you really want me to repeat the entire thing?" and then he backed off!! :P He was simply bad at customer service and got a couple of scathing remarks from people in the queue.

Anyway, the entire park is just full of bad, bad English. When I say bad English, it is not just the usual slips of grammar, it is just bad-sounding English blaring at you all the time. While we were at the Special Effects sound stage, this uncle enthusiastically introduced Steven Spielbert to us and welcomed us to Universe Studios and to proceed to the next Special (effects) Soundstage. urgh.. !! While queuing up for Shrek 4D, we kept hearing this lady staff yelling and people to move in. Yelling. And, I think the seats were either busted during the show, or someone cranked the effects such that the seats moved asynchronously with the show. Not just the seats we were sitting on, when I looked across, there were sections of seats that were not moving. And no, they were not the stationary seats that were meant for the elderly/ disabled people.

The USS staff were seemingly not trained in politeness. You hardly hear them say please or greet. I even overheard this guy tell 2 kids to "'sit down!" as they were boarding the rollercoaster, in a tone that I would usually reserve for the boys when they run about during dinner!! There was no "please" or "thank you" either. At that moment, I was thinking, "if that guy used that tone with me when I get on, he's going to get an earful from me!!"

Before I went USS, I read/ hear people raving about how great Mel's Drive In was. Even in LA, Mel's Drive In was ok.. the great thing there was that we always had the food band so we could grab whatever we liked. The burger was not fantastic there but good enough. Over at USS, the burger patty at Mel's was so darn dry and rubbery. The cheese on the cheeseburger? It was dried up till it looked translucent!! Ok, Hubb said that the chilli dog was not bad tho'.

So what's the fun at USS? I guess that's just cos we were there with our boys. Kieran got on the Rapids ride with the 3-storey drop at Jurassic Park and Kiefer rode on his first rollercoaster at Shrek! :)

Despite the cloud cover, it was still really hot to be out the entire day. By the time we were done, we were really all tired out. I couldn't even keep my eyes open after eating dinner. I fell right asleep while the boys were watching The Mummy that night! The next morning, it was as though we were jet-lagged. Kiefer woke up at 5ish (am) and proclaimed that he has "finished sleeping"! and Kieran woke up at 630am and said that "it is sunny already"!! Hubby and I were so tired out that we simply turned on Playhouse Disney and we both fell right back asleep!! So the boys were on their own till 9+ when we next woke cos the kiddos wanted their milk. After that, again Kiefer was getting tired, so in the midst of putting him down for a nap at 10+, I too, went back to sleep with him till noon when Kieran started asking me for lunch!! :P Thus, had to wake up to get lunch for him. I was so glad that I had freezer meals ready so I could get his lunch ready in 30min. :D Gosh.. the one day at USS really knocked us out for two days!!!
This was the "Shrek's Castle" that the boys were bugging us to bring them to, ever since they saw it while we crossed the causeway into Sentosa last August.


Kieran went up on the Rapids Adventure ride with the 3-storey drop at Jpark with the 2 of us!! Bravo! Kiefer couldn't make the height limit. :( 

 
























Only the carousel was open at Madagascar. :(

Kiefer's 1st real rollercoaster. He barely made the height limit, he may actually have missed the height limit by 1cm. This was the Enchanted Airways (we call it the Dragoncoaster:P) at Far Far Away. It was really quite fast for a kiddy ride! And he loved it and wanted to go on it again, but we didn't think we should cos it was really quite a task to hold on to him cos he was so tiny on the ride and I could feel him swinging about in his seat even though I clutched onto him tight!!

Signs of growing up

Kieran is really growing up. He is asking to do things himself these days, like taking a shower by himself and wearing his clothes. Now he'll also know how to pour a cup of water for himself. He would climb up a stool to reach for a cup drying on the washing rack. I'm afraid that he'll fall or things on the rack would just fall on him. Thus, now I will always leave a couple of clean cups on the kitchen counter for him. But now I will always get a full cup of water sitting on the counter belonging to no one?!!




This is the cup of water that always appears mysteriously on the counter.


- Posted from my iPhoneq

Kiefer says...

Me: what did you do today?
K2: work
Me: work? (beams) what did you work?
K2: Barney
Me: you sang with Barney?
K2: yes
Me: you danced with Barney?
K2: yes
K2: I also play toys!

:P

K2: Mum? (since when I also became mum and not mummy to small fry?)

Me: fer sleep awhile
K2: I not sleepy?
He used to just yell "No!" versus him being able to express himself with a "I not sleepy" now!

SAHM vs FTWM

Saw a comment on someone else's facebook status that triggered this post. A person commented on how a SAHM only rests after the kids goes to sleep while the FTWM's work ends at 6+ . Hmm.. so I wonder, where are the FTWM's kids? Don't these FTWM have kids too? If they do, wouldn't they (generally) only get to rest after the kids go to bed? If that doesn't happen, then these would be FTWW (women) not FTWMs!!

Having been a SAHM for a while when both my boys were born and then returning to work when they were about 8 months old, I do see that SAHMs have really really busy days. SAHMs do not have an easy time at home cos they are practically on call ALL the time, tending to the needs of their children. However, I think it would be really unfair to say that FTWMs have it easier. FTWMs do get some reprieve during the hours at work, however, because of the time away from their children, many would try to use whatever leftover hours to make up for time lost with their children. They finish their work at whatever time and then continue to be mums to their children till their children go to bed.

For me, I think being a SAHM is a lot easier than a FTWM as I only have my children to focus on. How difficult is that? I don't have anything else to worry about other than my family. I would gladly return to be SAHM any time. Still, deciding to return to work was a lifestyle choice. I am a FTWM because I see the need to be able to comfortably provide the material needs (and some luxuries) for my family and I do have a good family support to take care of my boys while I'm at work, so why not?

Whether you are a SAHM, a PTWM, or a FTWM, at the end of the day, you are a mum. I don't think whichever gets it easier. Each would have their own challenges and dilemmas. These are all simply choices in life and how one goes about executing the actions in life.