Christy @ Kidsrsimple, Author at Kids 'R' Simple

5 Indoor Places to go with your kids

Here are my 5 simple indoor places to bring your kids to.

1. Indoor Playground (Fidgets)

This is located in Old Turf City at Bukit Timah Road.

Like many indoor playground, it has all the play areas. But what we like about this place is that it has a separate area for below 2 years old, a separate one for 2-4 years old and the main play area for all ages. The large main play area has many play themes that kids will not be bored with. The cafeteria and sofas are just beside the younger play areas. Parents will be able to enjoy a cup of coffee while keeping a lookout for their young ones.

Admission fees: $19 (2-10 years old), $10 (under 2 years old), free (adults and babies under 1 year old)

2. Time zone Arcade

We like the Time zone Arcade at Compass Point. It has many games appropriate for younger kids. The popular ones are the small bowling lanes, basketball throws, Percussion game, roll up balls into holes, and Air Hockey Table game. After the games, kids can have the joy to redeem the gifts using their e-tickets.

Fees: A pre-paid Timezone card to play the games

3. Safra Yishun Swimming Pool

This is our favourite swimming pool so far. Safra Yishun Swimming Pool has 1 long slide and 1 short slide that all ages can play. There is a man-made waterfall where you can stand under to enjoy the pitter-pattering of water on your shoulders. (However, recently the slides have been closed for renovations.) There is a baby pool, a learning pool for kids, an Olympic size pool and a pool with Jacuzzi. Music is played throughout the day and on some weekdays evening, they play romantic songs and soothing music while you soak in the pool.

Another attractive feature of the pool is that there is warm water for shower which is important when you have kids. You will find that bathing them is a breeze. The luxurious space in the shower area and separate changing area is definitely another draw for us. You do not need to bring along shampoo and shower gel as each shower room has a shampoo cum shower gel dispenser unless you prefer using your own.

Admission Fees: Free for Safra members, $3 for guest on weekends

(This place is actually outdoor, but I find it such a cozy setting especially in the evening, I have decided to add to this list.)

4. ChangiAirport Terminal 3

Amazingly, Changi Airport Terminal 3 is SO kids-friendly, tourists or passengers in transit would have mistaken the terminal as a shopping mall rather than an airport. Weekends are packed with families with young kids. What’s fun is an area with big stencil tracing blocks where kids or adults can colour on with the crayons and paper available. Also, there is a 12 metre tall jumbo twister slide and a shorter one for the less adventurous. There is an area for television viewing tuned to Cartoon network where you can deposit your kids there while you shop around the vicinity.

Not only that, there is an indoor playground located in Terminal 3 , B2 as well. It’s called Singkids. Check out this Japanese designed PlaySystem as they called it!

Admission Fees: Singkids – $18 per 2 hrs (off-peak), $18 per hour (peak)

5. Ikea Tampines

Ikea is a famous kids-friendly furniture mall. Over at Ikea Tampines, there is an indoor play area for kids while the parents shop around or enjoy the famous Swedish balls at the cafeteria near it. Even the cafeteria has a small round play area for kids while the parents eat and watch their kids beside it. Kids above 4 can sign up as members of småles kids club where they can have a sticker with each visit and use the stickers to redeem small gifts.

Shopping at Ikea is a pleasant experience. The kids can’t wait to reach the kids furniture area where all the things are kids’ size. There are toys to play too. Everything is so adorable even to the eyes of parents; it’s hard not to get something from here.

Admission Fees: Free

Do you have other interesting places to bring kids to?

Deciding when to get married

You will never imagine how life will be after marriage. Loving a person and staying together are two very different things. You think if you love that someone, you will be able to accept his or her everything, including weird or intolerable habits. But when the wedding fanfare is over, and both of you start to stay together, reality kicks in and you will regret not having written more of “I shall do this and that for my partner” list before your partner signs on it.

Life after marriage: fantasy

1. “Clink” your glass of wine with your partner as you seep slowly, looking into each other’s eyes with soft music in the background.

2. Your partner creeps up to you from the back and gives you a surprise kiss while you are cooking a lovely candlelit dinner.

3. Watch a favourite movie as both of you sit back and relax into the designer couch.

4. Before your partner goes to work, plant a kiss on his cheeks as you see him walks out the door OR hug her when she is back home from work.

5. Both of you finally can see each other everyday and be with each other till death do you two part.

Life after marriage: reality

1. Household chores – Dishes pile up in the sink; floor full of dirt and fallen hair; laundry basket overflowing with unwashed or washed clothes – both of you fight over who wash what and who “won” the toilet bowl brush stick.

2. Household bills – who pays for what, who pays utility bills, groceries, children’s school fees, tuition fees, school bus fees, who tops up car fuel, and… the car ends up in the car park and you’ll rather take the public transport to work.

3. Home-cooked meals – You cook, he washes, or he cooks, you wash up, in the end both of you decide to eat out and no dishes will need washing = peace

4. Time after work – each will be looking at your own smartphone, checking out other people’s lives. What was that about seeing each other everyday? Checking out what you wife bought during sale? You’ll rather “like” your ex newly bought Hermes bag.

5. Chilling out – “What??? You’ll be back late? I make the kids sleep 4 nights in a row!” The 5th night will be your turn to “revenge” on your partner.

Oops! I must have made marriage sounds lousy. But reality is reality, you’ll never know until you stay together as a married couple, with responsibilities over your love nest and eggs. Cohabitation will not be a good practice session because simply, it doesn’t have the responsibility in the equation. So, why would anyone get married in the first place? It has to be L.O.V.E. that brings both of you together to want to grow old together. Only a mature and responsible attitude towards your partner will see you through a happy marriage.

Being married to each other = Being married to each other’s family as well. You have to be prepared that your actions and considerations include parents or even extended families. Learning to live with each other is already an uphill task, let alone learning to live or understanding each other’s parents. Just remember, both of you come from different backgrounds with different habits and upbringing. It will take some years to understand and compromise to staying in harmony.

Before you get worried about all these talk on responsibility, ask yourself if you want to grow old by yourself? Can you picture living alone in a nice home but with no one to talk to and just watching tv alone, sleeping alone and walking alone in the park? When you want to find someone to talk to, everyone is busy with their own families and probably can spare you some minutes on the phone or if you are lucky, few hours over coffee, but definitely not everyday. Which gets you more worried? Married with responsibilities? Or loneliness?

When you find that someone you love, you will want to be with him / her forever, nurture your little ones together, have emotional support during life’s ups and downs and grow old together, hand in hand to the park. And I always believe that when both of you go through life’s predicament, and stay by each other steadfastly, this relationship will emerge a tough and loving one. So, before you decide to get married, mentally prepare yourself for the not so lovey-dovey part, face what may come with a positive mindset and handle them responsibly and patiently. Life has its ups and downs and so does your marriage. If you truly love your partner, everything is worth it. Lucky for me, Kel and I still do ALL the “fantasy” part of the marriage I mentioned above. We have our share of the not so lovey-dovey part like the household chores of course. At the end of it all, we still love each other very much to make all the effort worth all the more.

What’s your take on marriage?

My baby’s 9th month achievements

YT is 9 and a half months old now. He is a cute little baby and we always look at him and say “You are the cutest baby in the world!” He loves to clap and never fails to win strangers’ smile.

At 9 mths old, he can crawl finally! He wasn’t too successful with crawling before this month. I was a little worried that he may miss the crawling milestone all together. I always believe that crawling will stimulate the brain as it needs some intelligence and working of the brain to work out the arms and legs coordination to make crawling happens.

He can sit up without help, though not all the time, but improving! In fact, he is starting to discover standing from a sitting position with the help of my arms.

He is now much wary of strangers as stranger anxiety sinks in. He will hold on to me tight and turn his head away whenever someone unfamiliar approaches him too fast. Then he will peep at that person again and again turning his head repeatedly. He is very clingy to me too. When I walk out of the room, he cries immediately. If I walk past him without carrying him, he cries too. When I returned home from work, he opens up his arms wide, waves them in his signature wave and literally flies in his walker to the door for me to pick him up and hug him. At such moments, all tiredness dissipates in the air.

He is eating well with 2 meals and about 4 milk feeds a day. For weekdays, he eats brown rice cereal and fish porridge. On weekends, I give him pureed sweet potato with avocado or sweet potato with steam apples. For his milk feed, he drinks 180ml each time. My breastmilk is dwindling ever since I recovered from my fatigue. Stress really cut down milk supply drastically. Kel says 9 months of breastfeeding should be very sufficient and I have done my part to give YT the best milk already. Now, he only latches on twice a day. I know I will miss the breastfeeding and so will he. Well, I will just document here to remember this.

My baby still wakes up in the middle of the night. Some parenting advice suggest that the baby misses the mummy’s presence in the day and compensates at night by waking up for milk feeds and cuddles. I don’t really mind and just let him be. It feels good to be needed.

YT’s favourite toys are toys that can be chewed on (sounds like a dog). He chews on anything that is within reach. This must be a baby’s way of exploring new things. He chews on toys, chews on books, chews on his favourite bolster. He likes to turn an object upside down and explore at all angles too.

His sister and brother play with him everyday. They simply love playing with him. This is great joy to me. Each time I encounter some depressing incidents at work, I will always think of my baby’s smile and my children’s laughter. It always soothes me and I feel much better after that. My children are truly my life!

I look forward to YT’s next milestone and look forward to every evening. Will update again on his next milestone!

Sibling Rivalry – an important phase of growing up

My first 2 kids, XX and YH, are 2 years 2 mths apart. They are of opposite gender, they do almost everything together. They play together, eat together, snack together, sleep together in the same room, bathe together (sometimes), go to same pre-school and next year, same primary school, learn the same instrument (piano), watch the same cartoon, etc. This may sounds like they are the BFF (best friends forever) and you would have thought they are the perfect siblings anyone would love their kids to be. However, the truth is, they are just like any other siblings, they squabble most times too!

Because of their close age gap, they quarrel over almost anything. They fight over who has the bigger cookie, whose cup has the higher juice level (adults would never have noticed such microscopic difference). They fight over who sleeps beside their mummy or even which direction my face turns to while I sleep beside them! They fight for the same toys. You would have thought they play different nature of toys because they are not of the same gender. But apparently YH likes pink, likes Hello Kitty, likes girlish plushies or whatever his sister likes. That irritates XX and there it goes with complaints and squabbles. They fight over who play the piano first, whose turn to give their baby brother biscuit…and on and on they go.

This sibling rivalry can start early in the morning when they are hypersensitive to slight disturbance (or not). They kick up fuss on the slightest increase in decibel when the other kid talks, on the slightest touch on their body even though it may be just touching the hair ends. It got worse in the evening, especially if they miss their afternoon nap during the weekends. These squabbles get on my nerves particularly when I am busy with the baby or just got home from work. On days that I lose my cool, I will shout out from wherever I am, and sometimes, that doesn’t work as my shouts got lost as my voice travels across the house.

I have tried many ways, from shouts, punishment, trying to find out whose fault it is to following parenting advice of bringing myself down to their level, look them in the eye and let them feel I empathize with them. Although some of the ways above may work, I cannot keep up with the speed new squabbles start as soon as the previous one ends.

My takeaways from handling years of sibling rivalries:

1. Leave them to solve the squabbles themselves

No matter how hard you try to listen and be fair, you will never find out who started what. So, it is best to leave them to solve the problems themselves, provided the problem is not a serious one, like attacking the other kid with a sharp object. You can suggest ways to help them work it out themselves. For example, asking how they can resolve the problem, whether taking turns will work, or throwing dice to decide who goes first.

2. Acknowledge their bad feelings

This works quite well as far as I have tried. When your child comes running towards you, stop whatever you are doing, look them in the eye, show him that you are really listening to what he has to say / complain / pour, and tell them “I know you are feeling upset because your sister did not want to share her toy……” By acknowledging how upset he/she is, this would help to end the bad feeling fast and the child would be in a better mood to handle the conflict, or divert to doing something else.

3. Re-visit the squabbles after the incident

I don’t do this frequent, partly because the kids are not interested and the incident was over and they forgot how they felt earlier to want to hear much about it. But for those that warrant high attention like hitting or kicking or attacking as a reaction to solving the conflict, I would need to reiterate my point and discuss ways to prevent such things from happening.

4. Controlling emotions

Sometimes one kid can be so emotionally overwhelmed, he may resort to hurting the other sibling with violent means due to loss of control. This happened a few times with YH, which started as young as when he was only 2 years old. It is not frequent, but at times, he finds it hard to control his anger and can act out really badly. It is important for me and his dad to recognize this as not a case of naughtiness, but a reaction which he cannot control. When this happens, the first thing to do is to hug him tight, really, really tight to calm him down. It works all the time. And then come the part of soothing him, acknowledging his emotions and then letting him know we object to such behaviour and help him learn how to manage his anger.

All in all, I feel XX and YH, at this age, are BFF. They learn more about each other, care for each other and grow up with each other through “fighting” it out. I am sure as they grow up, they will fight less, each living his/her own life as they get busier with school and all. At least, they will look back and laugh at their childishness and reminisce their childhood days spent together be it happily or angrily.

Oh dear! My boy likes pink!

Prior to YH turning 6, he has been liking everything his sister likes. Ranging from the colour pink to Hello Kitty toys to cute girlish plushies. His sister XX pulls a face every time he follows her in choosing something she has chosen, which is usually something girlish.

Since he was a baby, many strangers would mistook him for a girl. The last we heard such comment was when he was already 3 years old! It doesn’t help much that his lips are red and always wet with his saliva. His kisses are wet too. That probably explains the misunderstanding.

At school, YH plays mostly with girls. He says the boys are too violent, which puzzles me because he can be rough too.

While YH insists on wanting the same girly thing as his sister, most times, we let him be. Kel and I are not overly concerned as we believe that such a phase will eventually pass. We do not make fun of him nor discourage his preferences. Pink is just a colour and a sweet colour too. Only social norm defines such colour to belong to girls, and blue to boy. That does not sound quite fair to designate a colour to a gender. Why can’t boy likes pink and girl likes blue?

As for liking Hello Kitty and plushies, who can resist the cute cuddly cat? It’s just a preference.

Now that YH is already 6 years old, he sheds off this preference of pink and Hello Kitty gradually. He likes to play with his favourite mammoth and dinosaurs, and recently, plays transformer toys and chooses an “Iron Man” shirt. He even said to me just 2 weeks ago, that Hello Kitty is for girls! (It was just last year that I bought a Hello Kitty for him!)

It’s interesting to see this change in him and it just goes to show that his earlier girly preference is really a passing phase. He still prefers to play with girls in his pre-school. His teachers even feedbacked that he is a “ladies man”. Apparently, a few of his female classmates have gone to express their love for him! Haha! Yet, he only has his favourite “girlfriend” and it has always been this girl since Nursery 2 (4 years old).

Well, Kel and I are not too worried about this “girlfriend” thingy. It might as well be another passing phase too. Err.. actually I have secretly done a screening of this “girlfriend” of his, she is a mature, caring young lady who passes her hanky to YH when he sweats under the sun. Kel and I wouldn’t mind if one day YH brings back a girlfriend who happens to be by the same name. 😛