Nesting

I've suddenly gotten a spurt of energy and must channel it somewhere, so I decided to do the convent girl thing. I started sewing! With a machine that went bust a few years ago, churning out too many costumes for a whacky teacher's day musical, I have only my good ol hands to do the job. The inspiration came as I couldn't find a chinese new year dress that i liked enough to buy for Maeve, so decided to make one.



While on a roll, I decided Paige deserved something too, so made her a cutsey top using a hand me down singlet. And while at it, made Maeve a matching bag too! Something to put her Ang Pows!

9 months

The thing with carrying a larger foetus is one gets beached a little earlier. When carrying Maeve, i worked till 38 weeks or something like that and was runnning up and down stairs, sitting on floors in the studio and bouncing back up. Now with a rather large Paige, my earlier gymnastics have been curtailed very early (or maybe its just age catching up) and at 35 weeks, i find myself unable to do the simplest things without feeling like I've run a marathon. I can't get up from the floor easily (which means no jigsaws with Maeve), i can't play dress-up and run around the house without keeling over, i can't even shower my little one as i can't bend very well...which hence makes my helper playmate extraodinaire and me, the useless beached whale stuck to the sofa. Thankfully, my little darling has been taking it in her stride with no accusations of "mummy can't do anything" but rather, with sensible instructions of "mummy, put your legs up".

I'm grateful for the sweet and understanding little girl my baby has become. While I nest and buzz about putting baby things to wash, packing tiny booties and mitts, sewing new pillow cases, my grown up 3 yr old has been helping around the house, changing toilet rolls when necessary, putting clothes to wash, setting the table every meal and just yesterday, helping me to clean up the cot and change table without prompting. I only hope and pray that she continues to be the angel she is now and not regress when Paige arrives (as I've heard older siblings tend to do).

chinese oral

We've (okay, I) have been industriously reading chinese story books to my little one in the hope that she'll be able to be bilingual/won't fail kinder-chinese. So far, while the little lass is keen, she is none too impressed with my reading capabilities, which goes something like blah blah blah..skip, blah, skip, blah..blah, skip etc.so obviously, the story doesn't make any sense and i get regular heart palpitations and awful flashbacks of chinese oral exams. Little one rolls her eyes at me (she knows) and says, "mummy, the pause means you don't know the word right? Shall we ask someone else to read it instead?" The cheek!

Had an emergency conference with my long-suffering chinese tutor (who had to endure me for 7 years of her life while I pawed my way to a pass) who reminded me that i will kill all love for the language the way i was going. "just look at a picture book without chinese words and talk about it!" says the wise one. Theoretically, that sounds good and even doable, for me! But in reality, when little wise-ass asks, "what's this mummy?", what's that?" and points to a gazillion things on the page which for the love of God, i have no vocabulary for, i still break out in cold sweat. Despite this, I persist. Hubby on the other hand, smiles warily and tells me, "don't worry, there's chinese B, besides she only needs chinese if she's in a local school. who knows where we'll be in a few years."

I soldier on because I don't want my children to suffer what I've suffered, that is, to actually have recurrent nightmares of chinese spelling, dictation, oral, and I do so because, some part of me, actually likes the language (although my love for it is sadly unrequited). So next time you hear Maeve trying out mandarin, don't say she sounds ang moh ok?

New year, new beginnings

Here's to the new year
New hopes
New dreams
New life
New challenges

Today was the first day of school. My baby went on the school bus for the first time (we made this decision so that I won't have to juggle a new born AND be chauffeur next month) and a little part of me wept. She looked so small climbing up the gigantic steps of the school bus, but she was bursting with excitement as we've been talking it up for 2 weeks. The send-off party/cheerleading squad consisted of hubby and I, the grandparents, as well as our neigbours who happened to be downstairs. so one kid on the bus, 6 adults clapping hands!

Today was a wonderful day otherwise, as hubby was off work, so we could trot downtown for lunch and spend the time making new year resolutions. I've resolved to print it out this time and paste it in our room. who knows which notebook we wrote last year's resolutions on! and its anyone's guess WHAT those resolutions are. I've pared mine down to a simple one that covers pretty much everything.

Be a better home manager.

I realise that my life is chaotic because I'm way way too lassez-faire about everything. Everything happens too spontaneously. Run out of milk? Go to NTUC now before breakfast. What to do in the evening? How about the library? It kinda throws everything out of whack when no one has a clue what's going to happen day to day, hour to hour and the little one's bed time is whenever I've persuaded her to go to her room. What this all means is, for 2010, I'm going to put myself and my family on some sort of schedule/time-table so that everyone knows what on earth's going on and we can be flexible within that schedule. it makes it easier for little Paige (yes, that's going to be her name) to fit into our routine. That will also ensure that Maeve has the right balance of outdoor activity daily (cycling, scooting, swimming etc) as well as some quiet indoor ones (puzzles, blocks, painting, play- pretend), as well as some, *drum roll* Mandarin time! So the deal is she gets one hour of immersion from 8-9pm in this language (flash cards, music, videos, games, plain ol conversation with her linguistically challenged mother). God help me! Then daddy takes over to do the bed time routine and i'm off duty for the day! Which explains why i can update this blog today at a sane hour.

Tomorrow I'm going to start doing up a time table which the whole family can refer to and hopefully stick to, and start planning more nutritous meals that don't include ice-cream after dinner and cake for supper. yes, sugar-ladened food will only appear on sunday. let's see how i long i can keep to this.