Author: Christy @ Kidsrsimple

My little princess’ score card – progress in Primary 1

 

It’s been half a year that my dear princess goes to Primary 1.  Her score card in my eyes has been almost perfect so far.  And how happy am I to give her a near perfect score.  Taking into consideration that her Primary school is a well-sought after SAP (Special Assistance Plan) school (which means they place high emphasis on Chinese and it is mandatory for all students to take higher Chinese), she manages well with her school work and enjoys school so far.

 

She relates happenings in school to me and I am too glad that her teachers seem to be very passionate teachers especially her Chinese teacher 黄老师.  They tell interesting stories and crack jokes in the fun of learning to capture the children’s interest.  And her school makes sure parents are involved and know what their children are learning by making us sign on their assignment and textbooks frequently.  Academic-wise, I have totally no worries on her school’s model of teaching and guidance.

 

It’s a relief and “gift” for me that she does her homework after dinner on her own without any nagging from me and Kel.  She shows independence in passing me her school letters and making sure I sign on her worksheets and books without fail.  As a working mother, I could not spend time with her in the morning before school.  Hence, I mark out pages on her assessment books for her to complete in the morning so that I can mark and go through with her at night.  She did the assignment I gave her with no adults reminding her.  It saves me from what I would have otherwise experience stress and worries on her academic learning.

 

In XX’s first MA (Modular Assessment) test for English, she got full marks.  For Mathematics and Chinese, she got 23 and 24 out of 25 marks respectively.  I couldn’t ask for more.  Now in the second semester, her 2nd MA test, she got full marks for English again but careless mistakes and lack of focus on the questions cost her marks and she got 17 out of 25 for Mathematics.  Well, so to say, she has lots of room for improvement in her focusing skills and practising patience to read questions carefully before jumping to write answers.

 

XX’s first parent-teacher meeting has the same response from both teachers (Form teacher and Chinese teacher).  She day-dreams in class.  This observation has long been commented by her Yamaha teacher.  I feel attitude is extremely important for learning and doing anything well.  I know it will take lots of effort by herself and time to correct this day-dreaming problem, but I will help her and by her character, I am pretty sure she will improve sooner or later.  As for her attitude, if you were to read my earlier blog on “Learning Piano – from dread to love“, you will know that she has come a long way in improving her attitude.  Sometimes, if she seems to be relying on me to feed clues to questions in assessment books, I feel I have a guilty part to play.  I may be too obliging to give clues too quickly and just last night, I realize that XX seems to be lazy in reading music scores.  She has a good memory and for new song pieces, I spoon-fed her on correcting her fingering and wrong notes by reading the score to her while she focuses on memorizing what I say and what she remembers on the positioning of fingers on the keyboard.  That was a wake-up call for me to not be too involved and let her have a free hand and time to figure things out on her own!  It all points to the fact that this mummy is too impatient.  My girl must have picked up this bad trait from me.

 

XX had just experienced a long one month June school holidays.  I signed her up for a 3 day academic camp which she says it’s boring.  Kel sent her to her cousin’s house to play for a day every week.  I took leave on and off to keep her company and brought her to my gynae check-up in June as well.  Places we’ve been to during the June weekends includes the National Museum of Singapore for the Children’s Seasons, Yakult factory, taking part in the Safra Sprintkids Competition, Marina Barrage for kite flying with their cousins, Wild Wild Wet and Madagascar 3 movie screening.  Since we are not going overseas for the holidays, I thought this holiday for her must be boring.  But she seems to prefer boredom than to go school even though she enjoys school and she did not have much to do except to read books to finish her many book reviews homework.

 

Now that the holidays are over, she is back to school.  She asked to be signed up for Wu Shu （武术）and she has to wake up early every Saturday for this class.  It was tough on her to wake up early since she sleeps late at night and her school is in the afternoon.  Even then, I praised her for being such a good girl to fight sleep and wakes up without much violent protest.

 

Xuanxuan, mummy is so proud of you.  Keep it up my dear princess!

 
 

Preggy at 7th month

My energy has come back and so does my appetite!  Each gynae visit will see my gynae Dr WK Tan’s surprised expression, “2.5kg! You have gained 2.5kg! Your appetite sure is good!”  Oh… I have already tried very hard to limit my carbo, why does it still gain so much in a month??  I am expected to gain only 12kg in all, I am already half way there and I still have 3 months to go.

“You can only gain 2kg per month and you owe me half a kg for last month,” says the wise doctor.  Ok, I will try my best.  Next week will be my gynae visit.  And I can already see I had tipped the scales with what seems like 3 kg more.. oops.. sigh..  The problem is the more I try to control eating, the more I think about food, the more I eat!

At this 3rd trimester, my sleep is very much disrupted.  I have more frequent visits to the loo only at night, and it doesn’t even happen in the day time!  Plus my baby has kind of developed a sleep pattern, sleeping more only when I walk about in the day (rocking him to sleep), and kicking vigorously in the middle of the night, I can easily wake up more than 5 times in the night.  And I still have to wake up at 7am for work the next morning.  Hmm.. all working pregnant women should have pregnancy leave to stay home and sleep.

With my tummy so big now, I have limited comfortable clothes to wear.  Dressses are my favourite!  No waist band that feels tight underneath my bump.  And I have started to waddle like a penguin.  I have been trying not to though, especially when I am outside.  The waddling really makes a preggy woman ugly.

I need to be more careful of my extending circumference of my waist, taking careful judgement of more space needed when I move around corners and around crowds.  One lovely thing of my big tummy now is that I can see my tummy protrude with sudden kicks by my active baby!  XX and YH loves to feel and see my belly moves in and out!  Both of them often stop me in my tracks, “STOP!“, and they will plant a lovely kiss on my belly again and again.  My kids have been truly amazed with my pregnancy and I have taken them to my gynae visits, studying the ultrasound scan images and questioning about anything.  They exercise with me, laugh at me being the burping monster, curious about my changing body, and ask about how baby is delivered.  Kel on the other hand, is used to my pregnant state, and I love how he taps “morse code” to the baby through my tummy.

Just like the previous 2 pregnancies, I feel pain occasionally beneath my bump and at my pelvic area.  The doc says it’s due to heavy weight.  It’s going to get more uncomfortable with growing tummy which really feels tight especially after meals, and more restless nights.  And I am preparing to go through the night feeding sessions with the baby and tiredness of breastfeeding, lack of sleep and at the same time to spend time with XX and YH so that they do not feel neglected.  Routines with my kids will be affected for sure, but me and Kel will try our best not to have too much disruption.  Most importantly, I have to learn once more to balance my time with 3 little ones + a big one (Kel) + myself (me time).

Mums are great, aren’t they?!

 

5 Fun Places to go with your kids

“Where shall we go today?” This is a question that comes to my mind every weekend morning. I have come to realize that the places kids below 6 would enjoy are places that they can run around and put their curiosity in place.

Hence, I have put together some great outdoor and indoor places that my kids enjoy.

1) Lower Pierce Reservoir

This is a great place to bask in the ambiance of nature’s smell, feel and look. We drove slowly along the way leading to the reservoir while we kept a lookout for monkeys. We did not wait long and monkeys came out of the trees and stayed by the road. We stopped our car, and the monkeys came closer. Obviously they were waiting for us to throw some bananas or food to them. But many road signs advised against this for many reasons of upsetting nature and creating danger. We took some photographs. The kids were having fun distinguishing the sex of the monkeys. Continue reading “5 Fun Places to go with your kids”

Baby Number 3

Finally, the dreaded morning sickness is more or less gone.

My belly is manageable, appetite back to normal, energy back to usual, still can fit into 1/3 of my normal size clothes, can walk fast without waddling like a penguin, but nose power is still around and few pimples still popping out.  I can play with my kids as I used to without feeling extremely cold in an air-conditioned room, without feeling nauseous, and can do some simple household chores (Kel must be secretly glad the dishes portion is taken half from him for now).  Sleep wise is a little disruptive though, with my bladder calling several times in the night, sometimes every hour!  And there is almost only one sleep position that I can stick to for the whole night, that is sleeping on my left (which is the best position for the baby).  No more sleeping on tummy and even on my back.  Still, I would say 2nd trimester is the best time in pregnancy!

XX and YH are looking forward to their baby sibling.  They pass me by and will often stop to plant a kiss on my belly.  They greet the baby with a simple “hello” and kiss again.  It’s so sweet.  The last pregnancy was when XX was one and a half year old and she did the same too.  What a perfect picture of love.

This pregnancy seems to be more of an educational one for my little ones.  And in a way, more like a gift for them.  I had always wanted 3 kids simply because I grew up with 2 older brothers happily.  1 is no-no for fear of being too self-centred, 2 is somewhat not enough as they only have each other for company, 3 is just nice and makes “family of five” sounds good!

Like all my previous pregnancy, I will tell my baby that Mummy and Daddy will definitely give you lots of love and a loving family to grow up in.  That’s our pledge dear baby.  We love you.

The dreaded MORNING SICKNESS

Morning sickness truly brings out a woman’s contradicting behaviour to the ultimate.
1. I feel sick to the core and nothing can make me feel better.
2. I feel very hungry without warning, yet I have no appetite.
3. I totally do not feel like eating, yet my mind is constantly thinking of what food would make you feel better.
4. My nose power is better than animals. I can smell oily fried food from miles away. And that makes me puke.
5. Everyday at 430pm, I dread the smell of coffee my colleague will make a cuppa for his tea break.
6. Everyday I pass by my favourite bread shop, I will use my mouth to breathe simply because I find the supposedly fragrant a trigger for throwing up. I could no longer walk into that shop.
7. I crave for porridge, yet after eating my favourite hongkong porridge from my favourite restaurant, I now boycott it.
8. All food that I like became food I avoid now. That means I hate crabs and sotong (squid) now.
9. I can’t go near unwashed dishes as I must avoid smell of food.
10. Every dinner, I have to throw up first before I can eat a tiny portion of rice which is even less than what my kids are eating.

Those who do not have morning sickness are really really lucky. Everyday I am counting down to the end of this first trimester and hoping I can find back my normal appetite and energy come the 2nd trimester. My kids have been neglected as my battery is always in dangerous beeping mode every evening. I could at most read a story to them on my bed. And I have to read to them in a stuffy room because I am scared of cold. I could have worn my winter jacket to sleep with no fan and still pile up with my blanket. What am I becoming to? What makes it worse is I have so much gas inside me, I burp non-stop. I can’t burp too loud in public so when I am back home, I am a terrible “Burping Monster” with no image concern!

This post was really written on the train one morning when I was surprisingly feeling quite alright, and continued weeks later on another night which is today, when I feel unusually better than normal nights.  I could no longer function normally and all my favourite things like blogging, has been cast aside for some time.

I am waiting for the start of the enjoyment of my 3rd and probably last pregnancy.  Right now, I am simply too tired and unwell to even remember how life was in normal mode.  Let me quickly enjoy the process of seeing my belly getting bigger by the day and feeling extremely motherly loving to my little one inside, yes, minus the morning sickness memory.