Archive for November, 2009

Today is the officially the first day of school holidays for the kids. So…….

• After a full day of activities with the kids
• After hearing their constant non-stop appeals of “mummy, please play with us” (yunno, the kind that leaves you guilty if you don’t and busy if you do?)
• After one whole day of breaking up fights
• After taking them out to water the plants only to have a huge dead lizard drop in front of me when I opened the door (the man must have accidentally wedged poor lizzy on his way out to work this morning)
• After discovering a host of huge flies hovering over some stray cat poo near the flower pots (Oh Kitty! Why can’t you catch the partying rats on my roof instead of leaving your smelly poo behind?)
• After the kids danced around near the cat poo and large flies and watered the porch floor and themselves instead of the plants
• After spending nearly an hour trying to fix the batteries on their trains for their train set and almost breaking the trains in the process (Can you tell that changing batteries is not included in my normal tasks? Its usually their dad’s.)
• After one full day of shouting and nagging

I have decided that the school holidays is waayyyy too long. In my earlier post I had thought that it would be too short. Oh how wrong I was!

Its the last day of school for the girl today and the boy tomorrow….. which means that I shall be very, very busy in the next 6 weeks…. being……

• referree to settle fights between a 5 year old and a 7 year old (this will probably be my main role)
• a tuition teacher (since we’ve been given next year’s text books, might as well start looking at some of them)
• an art teacher (still want to learn some oil pastel techniques to teach the kids)
• a scientist conducting science experiments
• a chef…. well, no, just daydreaming …… actually, I’d really like to bake with the kids, but I still don’t have an oven
• a music teacher (theres a piano concert to prepare for)

We’d also really like to go for a day trip or two … or perhaps to the cinema… if its not too crowded… we musn’t get too complacent as there is talk about an H1N1 second wave.

We also need to make all those yearly dreaded appointments to the dentist, the gynae for a pap-smear, perhaps the neuro for a third opinion. Sigh. I’m not looking forward to those.

Gosh! With so many activities, I believe 6 weeks will just fly by! I wish the school holidays is 3 months otherwise tak puas. Its too short!

Today my girl had to keep on adjusting the straps on her school shoes because they keep coming off! This is the second pair of shoes that are still fairly new in appearance but the straps are lose and the shoes are very uncomfortable and can even be dangerous since it keeps coming off!

These days the kids wear school shoes with velcro straps instead of shoelaces. There are pros and cons. Velcro straps are easy to manage but like my girl’s shoes, the velcro straps have worn off (after less than a year) whereas the shoes are still new and they still fit.

My girl has 3 pairs of school shoes. Somehow, the shoes look very black and dirty after being worn for just one day so I have to wash them either daily or on alternate days. Fortunately I have kakak to help me. Even then we scramble to wash and dry them and we have to crack our heads to plan ahead to make sure the shoes are dry and available on time.

Does anyone know where I can buy velcro straps to sew on the shoes myself?

It won’t be easy though because the straps are thick and the space for sewing is small. I’ll have to use a really big needle.

Does anyone else have this problem? Do you have a way round this problem?

I’ve started receiving them. The tuition center brochures. Some of the brochures are sent to the house, some are handed out to us as we leave the school. The brochures are for tuition during the school holidays on various subjects. All starting at the start of the school holidays till the end of the school holidays! Oh my goodness! And they’re not for fun extra curriculur activities like baking, drama or whatever. They’re for the languages English, Malay and Chinese as well as Maths and Science. Gosh! What sort of a holiday is that?

I went to enquire at an Art Centre because I was so enthralled by the way the children are taught to use their oil pastels. I didn’t know how to teach the kids that. I thought maybe if they learn the techniques then they will be able to create their own beautiful works of art.

The holiday program costs RM160 for 4 lessons. Gulp! You better hurry too as it is very packed during the school holidays as parents scamper to find activities to occupy their child with. Hmm…. I think we’ll pass on that.

I haven’t decided what to do with the kids yet during the school holidays. I may give them some home schooling, do some crafts as usual, go for a day trip or two. I’ll probably learn the techniques of colouring with oil pastels myself from the internet, teach it to the kids and do a home project together and save RM320 for two kids. lol.

What are you doing during the school holidays? Do you support tuition during the school holidays?

I haven’t played around with my blog templates for a very, very long time. Just like my slowdown in blogging, the first thing to slowdown is playing around with templates. I used to spend so much time changing things around and customizing my templates. I was also on a learning curve at the time. So it was all very exciting. Then I stopped.

Anyway, yesterday, I decided to include the RSS Feeds from my other blogs and place them on the sidebar of all my blogs. Its easy to do this if you are using blogger. Its just one click away with the widgets. However this blog is using wordpress and I don’t know how but I managed to yesterday.

My Parenting Times blog is still on old blogger believe it or not. I’ve been terrified to make the change! So I included the RSS the hard way too but Mothering Times is easier.

Now you can access my other blog posts from my other blogs easily from any of my blogs. See? See? There on my sidebar? Points to the right. What do you think of the colours? Should I make them blend in or should I make them stand out?

Psst. You should do this too if you have several blogs. It’ll make it so much easier for us to follow your blogs.