Mummy Diaries Archives - Page 3 of 19

Ending Feb 2017 with …

February has come to an end and so many things happened in this month! Ever since the December holidays, each and every weekend is filled with numerous activities and I have to decline social gatherings and blog events so that we can all have some downtime! Finally on the last Sunday of February, we were able to rest and relax and kids were able to meet their friends from the next block to play on a lazy Sunday evening.

On the PSLE kid…

Revision progress with my Missy 12 was kind of slow due to her Volleyball tournament. Her team has entered the Nationals and while I cannot wait for her training to end, it seems that all these intensive training sessions will only end 2 more months later. I cannot have any complaint since Volleyball is her passion and she has proven on being disciplined to do her homework on time and self-motivated to study for her CA tests despite her busy schedule.

Her results are still pending release and we are eager to know if she has improved with our daily English revision, although I do not expect miracles within such a short time frame.

On Master 10…

Master 10 has some unfair treatment by me lately. The hub reminded me that I have to be consistent and have good reasons for certain actions. I agreed, felt guilty about my actions and compensated Master 10 in some other ways like reading the newspaper that he brought home from school together. He seems to enjoy listening to my talk on economics, on news like Donald Trump’s presidency, to how Giraffes are attacked when they drink water. He is so different from my girl who tends to drift off when I talk about world news to her. Spending time with Master 10 this way makes me very happy. I have neglected him and I know I cannot make up for the lost time. I need to start now to spend more alone time with him! Gosh! I have said this in January’s wrap up post too!

I have not managed to keep up my 1 – 1 date with each of my children. It is not easy to plan for 3 kids especially when I need to conserve my off days for the year end holidays. March is coming and I already have plans to date Master 10. As for Missy 12 and Master 5, they will have to wait for their turns and hopefully, it will not be a long wait. Luckily I have my short 1 – 1 alone time with Master 5 every Sunday morning when I do marketing, if that counts!

On Master 5…

This boy grows up so fast! He is able to recite the 2 story books that I read to him every night (奇奇乱丢垃圾 and The Sausage Went For A Walk). He is also able to recognize some Chinese Characters and simple English words. I am correcting his grip of the pencil too. He is able to draw very decent picture of people, spiders and Police cars! I love to look at him when he is concentrating on his doodling. I cannot capture enough of his cutie face and I know very soon, he will grow up and I shall miss smelling, kissing and hugging little children. Hence, every milestone that I see in him will be the last time that I will see in my own children. I am starting to feel melancholy.

On my life…

This month sees myself being tested on my EQ greatly. Something happened at work that have made me reflect on how I communicate my intentions to others. A series of misunderstanding had occurred that have led to an unpleasant email directed to me. That mail was copied to my superior too. In the end, I was glad that I kept my cool even though I was greatly affected. I did not reply to the mail and that kind of saved the day. The misunderstanding was clarified and I was even praised by my superior for handling the situation well. Nevertheless, I decided that I have to work on the way I communicate and be more careful in understanding different working styles. This episode has given me chance to handle a tricky situation well although it also cost a friendship. Being a person who values friendship tremendously, I am very sad indeed. Perhaps it is not so easy to find friendship in the workplace even though I had forged several good ones in my previous company. Or perhaps it takes time.

On another front, my own children have been giving me good reminders on my behaviour too. I find that they have been telling me “Chill, Mummy! Chill!” very frequently! Haha! I find myself frowning easily for small things and raising a pitch unnecessarily. If only someone takes a video of myself, then I will know how ugly I have looked and how uncool I am behaving. I need to change!

On happy times…

Master 10 and I have gone on a day’s filming and it was an awesome experience! I find myself not so natural on camera and even tongue-tied during interviews too. It is a Chinese educational show which will be releasing a few months later. Don’t laugh if you see me stuttering in Chinese. I am usually more fluent in Chinese but somehow I was too nervous to speak properly. I shall shout out very soon when it is aired on TV! Hopefully I do not look too bad! Stay tune!

On the 2nd volume of 新列车, the kids appeared on the cover together with their friends! Yeah!

We celebrated Missy 12’s birthday this month with an Ice-Skating party with her friends. It was a cosy gathering and guess what, this was also her first party with friends. We hardly spent too much on parties and this is quite an exception, but I am glad she enjoyed herself and we all think she deserved a good party with her graduating friends.

We turned up to give Missy 12 support in her Volleyball competition too. Surprisingly, only her school has a good turnout of parent supporters. I cannot fathom why there were no parent supporters in the rest of the schools. Are they too busy to make some time to watch a match? Could it possibly be ALL the parents are not able to spare an hour to support their children? My girl and her friends are all too happy to have their mums and dads to turn up for support. I believe our support has made a difference too. I am sure we will see even more parent supporters from her school in the Nationals competition.

So, my February ends with… making time for the children and working on better communication. I hope March will be a better month!

How did your February go? 🙂

Ending Jan 2017 with …

It is 930pm and all the kids are in dreamland. It is a rare early bedtime in our house. And I should really be happy to hit the bed so early for the longest time. But in the end, I decide to use the precious silence at this moment to think and look back into January 2017. Call it learning from the past, or simply organizing my thoughts on what I did that I could have done better. As I am being carried away by the quick passing of everyday mundane life, it is good to pause to recollect, reflect and learn.

On the PSLE kid…

Ever since my girl jotted down the school’s schedule counting down to PSLE, I must say I am starting to get more than a little worried about how to help her do well in PSLE. I was at a dilemma and even self-doubt if I had made a right choice in insisting on no tuition for her. But after talking to the hub and drafting a revision plan, we trust that we are the best tuition teachers for her. Simply because we are totally focus on helping her and know her weakness better than others.

Since we are not engaging external tutors, I find myself totally responsible in giving her academic help. For the very first time, I bought the entire Top School papers. I visited the Popular bookstore more than 5 times to get the right assessment books for her. Many times, I fought with myself on this obsession with PSLE. This is not the kind of parent I want to be. This is not the kind of stress I want to subject my kids to. Didn’t I say I was determined to make PSLE a less ‘un-enjoyable’ year? While I thought I had only want to bring her up to a level of her own target marks, I begin to think that I may be overdoing it. You bet you will read the same dilemma and challenges I face when I recap at the end of the next few months. I am struggling and learning hard to juggle between giving my girl her rightful childhood and focusing on academic help, knowing we do not have much time left to catch up. Such tough decision affects how we spend our daily short nights.

On other 2 kids…

I am seriously neglecting the other 2 kids because each night with the short 1 hour, I spend a good 3/4 of the hour on my girl. Thank goodness, I am able to spend some time with Master 5 in the morning and walk him to school everyday. That leaves Master 10 with really little time to bond together. I know that, but I am not able to find a suitable time to spend with him. From now on, I shall designate a 15min time to do an activity with him every night before dinner. I shall update you if it works out.

On myself…

January is my favourite month. It is a month of celebration with New Year and Chinese new year and most importantly, my birthday falls in this month too. As I get closer to the big 4, family ties matter greatly to me. I do my best to teach my kids respect, contentment, and important values. While I am proud that I am being brought up well and proud that my kids live my values by their simple innocence, I do have areas to improve on. I need to learn to accept that I cannot teach other people respect and values. I can only teach my own kids these. Everyone lives his own life and I should not bother to change perceptions too. Life is a learning journey. I find myself so much more to learn and improve on, especially on relationships. I do hope to inspire and be a good listening ear and adviser to my kids in future when they face similar grown-up problems.

On a happy note…

Both my kids received the Edusave awards. It is a great encouragement and we are really proud of them!

Missy 12 and Master 10 appeared on the school’s subscribed newspaper 新列车Volume 1! They participated in the filming of Primary School Oral Video last December and the editor used the footage photos. Their friends and teachers were pleasantly surprised to see their appearance in both print and video. We are expecting to see more on Volume 2 too, I can’t wait to see!

On a different engagement, Master 10 and I got selected to participate in a filming of a kids’ show! This is going to be exciting! I will certainly share the details once it is aired on TV!

On a 3rd opportunity, Master 10 and I almost had a chance to appear on social media advertisement, but the client had decided to choose another family. Nevertheless, we were a little overwhelmed at these few opportunities all around the same time. I think all these are terrific experiences for us and I do hope that they keep coming!

So, my January ends with… lots of self-reflection…and I am glad that there are many exciting happy moments too! I hope February 2017 will be one with improvement and more kids bonding activities!

How is your January? 🙂

Ending 2016 with Contentment

It is interesting to read my past resolutions and then reflecting on where I am at the end of each year. My past resolutions usually revolve around the same common things like:

Cut down social media
Live in the moment
Slow Down

I think it is alright to repeat some resolutions. Life changes with each year and sometimes life events prevent us from keeping to our targets. For some resolutions, they need more conscious effort and change of personal habits. Most importantly, we need to reflect and check on what we have done correctly and let them continue; or for those that we did not handle so well, we need to learn from life’s lessons.

As I realized that I had not really done up any goals right in the beginning of the year, I shall reflect upon the following areas that kind of sum up my life in 2016:

1) Health and fitness
2) Hobbies
3) My Life
4) Family Life
5) My random thoughts

1) Health and Fitness

Getting in shape and maintaining good health have always been a priority for me. I need to be in tip top condition to mind little children and run the household. No wonder a friend marveled that mums are the BEST EMPLOYEES because we can multi-task super well within a very tight timeline! Don’t you agree?

Exercising

I have signed up for the National Steps Challenge and synced it to my Samsung Health app on my mobile. Ever since then, I have been diligently checking my steps. For the first few weeks, I was tracking my meal calories too, but eventually gave it up as it was quite a tedious tracking. I was not sure if the represented meal that I chose from the list was correctly matching the calories that I was taking in. Plus I was not going to succumb as a calorie tracking servant. However, tracking it for a few weeks helped me to understand that a bowl of dry mushroom and pork noodles has a calorie of 500cal! My usual jog of 3km only burns 160cal! I need to choose my options carefully and remind myself to eat in moderation of everything.

This app motivates me to walk more. For the second half of this year, I have been walking to and fro the MRT station everyday to work and back home. Most days, I clock about 8000 steps. On weekends, I can clock more than 10k steps because I need to run after the kids and ferry them to and fro playgrounds, classes and running errands.

I am doing Pilates once a week. But I have stopped jogging due to the school holidays. I have to sleep more while I can. Once school starts, I will have to wake up at 615am everyday, then jogging or brisk walking can resume, yeah!

Eating

A recent medical report showed that I have tipped the scale and now officially “OVERWEIGHT”! This is the first time I have fallen into the unhealthy range in BMI and you bet I am super upset. I am determined to shed off 3 kg by Chinese New Year which is in a month’s time. I have already shed off 1.5 kg with the following changes to my diet:

Eating salad with minimal dressing twice a week for lunch.
During dinner time, I will cut down my rice intake to 2 tablespoonfuls and eat more vegetables and drink more soup.
On weekends, I will still eat as per normal with my family. But, I am consciously choosing healthier options even during this feasting period.

Sleeping

I find it challenging to go to bed early. The night is so short and I have so many things to do with the kids. After the kids sleep at 10pm, that is when I have my own me-time to do my own things. I will need to work more on getting adequate sleep, perhaps sleeping early and waking up an hour earlier than usual.

2) Hobbies

Reading

This is probably the only thing that I am consistent in. To date, I have read 10 books this year with a couple that I was not able to finish due to library date due or simply it was too depressing. I have never had such a thirst for reading in my school days. I will certainly be reading into 2017.

1) Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
2) When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3) It’s Easy To Cry by Subhas Anandan
4) Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph
5) 最美的一课 by 杨红樱
6) Charlotte’s Web by E. B White
7) Your Time-starved Marriage by Les and Leslie Parrott
8) When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us by Jane Adams
9) It’s OK to Go Up The Slide by Heather Shumaker
10) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K Rowling
11) Harry Potter – The Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Baking

I have been baking more frequently these days. While I am no master in baking, I enjoy the baking moments with the kids and even with their friends when they come over. It is encouraging when the kids have all praises for my cakes, cookies and ice-cream.

3) My Life

Working Life

This year is a year of career change. I have never thought that I would quit my job of 11 years and change to a different industry and different role. It was a rare opportunity that came knocking on my door and I could not have left at a better time. This new company is a true “Work-Life Balance” company that I need badly. It has flexi-work arrangements and is pro-family. Next year, I will need to spend more time with my eldest as she will be taking her PSLE exams, and at the same time spend more time with my young kids.

A few days ago, Master 4 decided that I would not be going to work anymore. He told me,”Mummy, you are not going to work anymore.” in his simple and limited words. But I totally got what he meant! He is such a cutie, isn’t he? He wants to make a decision for me to quit my work!

With the acceptance of this new job, it means my SAHM dream has to be shelved off too. Perhaps it will never come true if we never come to the day when we can live comfortably on one income. Giving up financial freedom is a big consideration for me now that the kids are older. I love that I can buy gifts for them, sometimes on impulse and bring them to restaurants during our 1-on-1 dates. I can bring my parents to hi-tea and pamper myself from time to time. Having 2 incomes will also not burden my spouse too much and lead to unnecessary stress and tension in our daily interaction. Money is important, but I believe in going through thick and thin with my spouse as long as we are healthy and happy.

After work hours

I am determined to spend quality time and do more activities with the kids just like a SAHM if I were one. I manage to make an Advent calendar to surprise the kids every day till Christmas. During school holidays, I take off from work to bring them out, sometimes for 1-on-1 with each kid. On normal days, I try to read to Master 4 every night and spend some alone time with the elder 2 before bed. Most days are challenging due to homework and academic coaching, so we will spend more time on weekends together.

For what I could not do as a SAHM during day time, I try my best to make up for it in the evening and weekends. This is also made possible when I have a good helper to save my time from doing chores. When my helper goes back to her home town next year to get married, I may return to helperless days. I am pretty sure we can manage alright to split the chores in the family as we had done before.

Connecting with family and friends

On connecting with family and friends, I am keeping up nicely with friends on girl nights’ out, perhaps a little too frequent. I do have many good friends to catch up with. I will have to work on dating my mum and dad and hubby more frequently next year. Although I had a couple holiday trip with my hubby this year, I feel that I am still not spending enough couple time with him.

4) Family Life

…on BIG FAMILY TRAVEL TRIP

This year, we have brought the kids on a road trip to Malaysia in June and a staycation in December. Compared to last year, this is a much humble year in family holiday plans. We missed our big family trip too. Time is not on our side. It is my wish to bring both my hub’s parents and my own parents on a trip every year while all are healthy and able to walk and travel. I am a little disappointed that we could not do it this year but we will definitely plan one for next year after Missy’s big national exams.

Many of my friends around me are surprised that we bring both sets of parents on holiday trips every year. First, the expenses are high and it would be much cheaper to travel as a family of 5 instead of 9. Second, most parents and in-laws cannot get along but we are lucky to have ours on very good relationship and are good travel buddies. Third, the itinerary is challenging to cater for old and young at the same time.

Everyone in the family looks forward to a BIG Family Trip together. Our kids love their Grandpas and Grandmas’ company. Kel and I love to bring our parents around the world. Such happy family moments are to be cherished and so what if we do not have much savings left after each big family trip? Money can be earned but family moments like this are hard to come by and we wish to continue our annual big family trips as long as our parents are able and healthy.

…on Family Bonding

We have lots of bonding opportunities throughout the year. We brought the kids to many places to play. I find that the places we are going are gradually taking a shift towards catering to bigger kids. One good thing is that the elder 2 still enjoy playing childish games with the littlest one. Recently, I got a toy car garage for Master 4, and the elder 2 played on it with cars till midnight! It is amazing to know they are enjoying simple toys and games rather than technology.

This year, my elder 2 have been on very good sibling relationship. They had their phase of non-stop squabbling and fights, so it is heartening to know they are on such good terms now. For this, I am extremely pleased and can’t ask for more.

5) My Random Thoughts

Contentment is really about being happy with what you have in your life. We are not a well-to-do family, but that does not mean we cannot give our kids a happy family. Who doesn’t want to be debt-free and have loads of money to spend? However, as what my hub says, if you earn more, you spend more.

Right now, I am contented with staying in our cosy HDB flat. I am contented that we can spend time with our kids every evening. I am contented that we have home-cooked meals to eat. I am contented that our kids and their grandparents have strong bonding. I am contented that we can still afford to use our savings to travel as a big family. I am contented that we are a happy family. Most importantly, I am contented that we are all healthy.

There are so many things to be contented about. I would like to end 2016 with feeling contented about my life even though it is certainly not a bed of roses. Perhaps it is about reaching a maturity in life when material things do not matter as much as good health and family ties, and making do with whatever I have and owned. Somehow I am treasuring my current life more than ever and I am really, really contented.

At this very moment, I am a happy woman, a happy wife and a happy mummy. I hope everyone is happy and contented at where they are now and able to find happiness in simple things in life.

2016 is a happy year. Toast to many happy moments in 2017!!!

Mommy’s Guilt for Travelling Without Kids

When it comes to travelling without the kids, I am not that cool. I have my guilty moments. It was hard when I first traveled for my business trip solo to the US and Canada, braving through the tears of the little ones every night counting down to the trip, so much such that I did some preparatory work before and during the trip to make me and my kids feel better. You can read about what I did over here.

Recently a conversation with my mum brings out the guilt in me which I was trying so hard to suppress. She told me that times have changed. Couples nowadays (she is referring to me and my hubby) will choose to travel on holidays without the kids while such couple trips were almost unheard of during my parents’ times. If parents in those days were to travel for holidays, they would bring their kids along. Not that my parents did that since we were not well-to-do to travel. But you get the idea.

We were lucky to have supportive parents even though they may not agree on our couple trips. In fact, we have been to several such trips in the past:

After my first born, Kel and I traveled to Taiwan for a couple holiday.

After my second born, Kel and I traveled on a cruise and a couple more short trips to nearby Batam resorts.

After my third born, we stop travelling without kids because we think that it will be hard on our parents to care for 3 young children. Hence, we decide to wait till the youngest is older and easier to care for before we resume our couple holidays.

In between, we travel separately for business, incentive and girls’ trip, but there will always be one of us at home with the kids. And knowing that one spouse is at home with them, the other one can travel with a peace of mind without worrying if the grandparents are coping well with minding the little ones.

When it comes to travelling without the kids, I am definitely no cool mama. I have my guilty moments, and plenty of that. It was hard when I first traveled for my business trip solo to the US and Canada, braving through the tears of the little ones every night counting down to the trip. I had to do some preparatory work before and during the trip to make me and my kids feel better. You can read about what I did over here.

For the first couple trip, it was not easy for me to leave my eldest with the grandparents, and I had to bring along one of her two favourite bolsters and hug it every night in the hotel. We called home using the calling card every night (those were the days without facetime and internet calls). It was a little harder on the second and subsequent trips when we had to leave 2 children at home with one more little one to miss. It is even harder to leave 3 kids now to do the same.

So after a hiatus of about 6 years, Kel and I have finally decided that our kids are older now and easier to leave with the grandparents, and about the right time to have a short getaway to recharge, reconnect, enjoy a holiday which is really planned for ourselves. Well, we only booked our trip after we had our parents’ support to take care of the kids.

Choosing the getaway dates

There was much consideration this time round. I had to choose a period when the elder kids had finished their examinations as I wanted to be there to help with their revision during their papers. I had to ensure the dates are during school days because if they are in school during daytime, they will not miss us too much and caregivers need not handle 3 kids for long hours. The dates should not touch weekends because I want to spend time with them on weekends, ferrying them to their art and piano classes. This means that I have to take weekdays off from work.

Every aspect was taken care of, including ensuring school pocket money was topped up in their wallets, breakfast preparation, lots of pep talk to the littlest one, etc, etc.

Reactions from the kids

And so we left for the getaway and back to see the following reactions from the kids during this period:

Missy 11 was wishing us an enjoyable trip and looking forward to many gifts for her and her brothers. But on the morning of departure, which she told me later on, that she silently wept after I saw her to school.

Master 9 asked me why we did not bring them along for this trip. I felt a lump in my throat at this question but I tried my best to explain that Papa and Mummy wanted to have some couple time to ourselves. Subsequent days of calling home, I felt worse when he showed no interest to talk to me through facetime.

Master 4 seemed to understand when I told him for 3 nights, he would have 2 grandmas to take turns to keep him company during bedtime. But when we were overseas, every evening, he would asked his grandpa why Papa and Mummy had not returned after 7pm.

All these tore at my heart.

If it is so hard, why do we still do it?

Benefits of couple retreat

Some will say that we are selfish, but I believe on the benefits of reconnecting with my other half for a short time.
1. We believe that we can do things we love as a couple without waiting for the kids are older to pursue our interests.
2. It is important for us to rekindle the fire in us without minding the little ones. When the parents are happy, kids will be happy too.
3. It is also a good chance for the children to bond with the grandparents every night.

The benefits as written are not a long list, but really, the main reason is to reconnect as a couple free of little ones’ screams, naps, restricted itinerary.

Now that we are back from our 4D3N Bangkok trip, I realized that I really missed them very much. Every interesting thing I saw on the street, I would think of bringing them to the same place to see what I saw. Every shopping trip was really to buy gifts for them to make them happy and compensate for not bringing them with us. I realized that I had to be extra careful and take really good care of ourselves so that we return safely to the kids. And on the last day of the trip, I was looking forward to seeing them back home.

While we were away, the elder kids wrote diary entries to me. I had told them to do so if they missed us. What they wrote touched me very much and it was really sweet to read their thoughts. And Master 9 was really sweet in his penned down words even though he did not talk much to us when we called home.

If you ask me if I would travel on the next couple trip without the kids, I may really hesitate. Perhaps, it would be good to wait till the kids are in their teens before I can travel without guilt.

Do you feel guilty like me when you travel without the kids?

Decluttering, Slowing Down and Being a “Controlled” Kiasu Mum

declutter-poster

I have been out of action from my blog for 2 months! The main reason for my absence on the blog is because I was stuck in migration of my blog to self-hosted WP… Finally!! While I thought it could be as simple as giving my password to the Bluehost support and have them do for me while I sit back, I was flabbergasted to know I had to do it myself. I am an IT idiot for your information and struggled much with the migration of 2000 media files (this huge number surprised me!) Anyway, while I thought with the eventual migration, I could relax and that’s it, but the next step was to design my own blog theme. That took another 3-4 weeks and several sleepless nights. Oh, I lost my momentum many times and stop-start-stop-start till I could no longer bear the itch of writing and decided to get the blog up first and tweak it along. So, pardon me if you see the tweaks here and there each time you check in my blog. And if you do see any broken links, please help me by giving me a shout on it!

Many things happened in this period too. I quit my job of 11 years…. but no no, in case you think I have realized my SAHM dream. As fate has it for me, a job opportunity came knocking on my door. So, I passed interviews and am starting a new out of comfort zone venture to a new role and new industry. I pray for good colleagues, good boss and enjoyable challenges.

While I am busy with job transition, blog migration, I am resuming my tuition teacher role to my elder kids. I realize that I perform best when I have an overflowing plate. I just cannot sit back, relax and DO NOTHING. So in the midst of all these changes, I am also looking into ways of decluttering our house, and indulging in more hobbies.

Decluttering

A good friend said to me that many people profit out of buying and selling their lived-in houses when what a house should be, is a home which your children grow up in and contains precious childhood memories. I can’t agree more. Perhaps, investment should be done only on extra properties and not the primary property. As we shall be staying in our lovely home for good, I had better declutter things and make it as minimalist, simple and cosy as can be. It is not easy to declutter and re-decorate when the house is in such a lived-in condition. I have started throwing things I thought I would use but never. Whenever I sieve through the bags and boxes of pre-loved stuff, I would ponder over an item on my hand, pause for a few seconds and ask myself questions like:

Will I ever use this again?
How long haven’t I touched this thing?
Is it worth keeping for memento?
Do I have many of such items in the house?
Can I live without this item?
Has this item passed its days of honour?

Besides throwing things, I am putting simple decorations around the house. Similar to my blog theme tweaking, I am taking really small steps to turning our home to a cosy and eye-pleasing one that is easy to maintain. That is my target and will take months to achieve. It is also to pave way for helperless way of living in the future. I will need a home declutter plan to start with.

“Controlled” Kiasu Mum

As much as I pride myself as a laid-back mum, I can no longer be as laid-back as I used to be, not when my girl is in P5 this year, a year where she learns 80% of the entire PSLE syllabus. The reason that I am pulling up my own socks as a “tuition teacher” to my girl is the hope that she can get into a good school, not elite school, but a good school where peers are motivated to study, a good school with higher chances that peers come from a nuclear family, lesser bullies, peers with lesser disciplinary problems, you get what I mean. This concern is very real. Peers are more important to teens at the secondary school age and it is easy for them to fall into the creaks if we are not careful. I don’t believe so much that every secondary school is a good school, sorry, but not at this moment.

A couple of weeks back, I had a good chat with a few fellow mummies and Meiling from Universal Scribbles shared her experience with us on the PSLE preparation. She is selfless in sharing resources that her son is using and we gained lots from her sharing. She has similar thoughts as I do regarding entry to a good secondary school. As much as I do not believe in mugging for the examinations and do not believe that academics means the world, the thought of getting into a less than good school with disapproving peers worry me too much to be hands-off. So, I am going to be a “controlled” kiasu mum from now on to ensure all academic basics are reinforced. As my children do not have tuition classes of any kind, they will still have plenty of time for a balance share of play. So, by being “controlled”, I am leaving them room for a breather. As for whether they will enjoy PSLE year, unless PSLE is scrapped off totally, no kid at P6 will enjoy any bit of it anyway. And I do not think I can make PSLE year any enjoyable for my children too. Since it is so “un-enjoyable”, a big part of my role is to moderate the stress off my girl and, myself. Either I end up blogging lesser closer to PSLE, or I blog more to destress. Stay tune to my woes! (Some good PSLE blog posts from other cool mum bloggers are here and here!)

Hobbies and learning new things

To destress during the preparation for PSLE is to engage in healthy hobbies. My girl does craft work and enjoys lots of outdoor play during her free time. My boy reads, plays Weiqi by himself, plays my handphone games (if I am at home) and goes for outdoor play during his free time too. For me, I am happily reading one book after the other and into my 9th and 10th book together at this moment. Here are the books that I have read this year:

Besides reading, I am running and brisk walking to keep my body and mind healthy to run the household. I am also much motivated by our group of Racy Mamas and more mums are joining us for this common interest. Sometimes we need like-minded friends to push us along. It is wonderful to have these friends.

Slowing Down

Whenever I walk too fast or hurry the kids along, I am reminded by my kids on why I am rushing like this. Often times, it is the kids who reminded me to slow down. I like being led by my youngest. Our one on one time are usually on my off days or Sunday mornings. I like to stay half a step behind him and let him lead the pace. When he stops to marvel at an earthworm, I stop. When he strolls, I stroll. When he walks backwards, I do the same. When he hops, I hop. It is wonderful to have unhurried moments like these. What’s the hurry anyway?

So, each time I hurry my pace, I would remind myself to WALK SLOWLY. I really have lots to learn from the young ones.

I am glad that the blog is finally up again. I certainly miss writing and sharing my thoughts here. I miss the interactions with readers too! Do leave me some ideas on decluttering and your take on PSLE preparation or experience! I would love to hear your thoughts!