Wednesday, July 1, 2009 ;
11:18 PM
Blogger still blocked...
Text updates again:
My sis and her family are here now!
So we've been busy busy. Mainly busy yakking, letting kids play, cooking and then playing Sims3 together. Cos she bought Sims3 for my birthday and brought it over. Hooray!
Backdated updates:
1. June 11th
Kids had Water Fun Day in school. They enjoyed themselves very much. Even though I reminded them that with the hot summer sun, they should not get too soaked and then still eat the popsicles (given out by the school), cos the last Water Fun Day, ds2 did that and shivered with cold (soaking wet plus the huge popsicle) and got sick.
But when they came home from school, I learnt that they turned a deaf ear to my good advice and went ahead. ds1's excuse was that ds2 had dumped a whole bucket of water on his head right at the start so since he was already wet, he joined everyone in the wet slides and so on.
ds2 had no excuse. Just said "Yup, I ran under the spraying hose and got all wet."
AND they ate their popsicles.
2. June 12th, Friday
Last day of school!
I asked Dh to go cos I was not feeling well. He was tasked to go to the Lost and Found Corner in Nursery, and retrieve all of ds2's missing socks (tons of them not brought home) and other stuff.
The teachers handed the kids all their very detailed student reports too, and they received glowing reports.
They also had a special visit from their school head. She visited each class and handed out farewell gifts to all students who were not returning for the new school year.
Hence, ds1 and ds2 each received a glass or crystal block with laser-engraved logo and name of the school, plus their personalised names engraved at the bottom. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be just an ornamental souvenir, cos once the kids saw that, they proclaimed that it must be a stamp and asked me for an ink pad. They then started using the expensive-looking thing to ink and stamp their names everywhere, on notebooks and papers.
They had a great time hugging all their teachers and Dh did take pics for all of them.
The class lists for next year were up in the foyer too, and well, it is a little sad not to see the kids' name on the lists, cos it meant they would not be together with their friends anymore.
But it is ok, they're still young, they can adapt quickly back to the system in Spore (hopefully).
We had lots of fun reading their portfolios. They brought home both hard copies and soft copies (called the e-portfolio). ds1's hard copy came as a huge black clear holder. So huge, I couldn't fit it into any of my shelves.
It contained a lot of precious art and craft pieces and his quirky works of writing and booklets and other projects. The teachers took lots of pics too, and it went in all over the folder's various UOI sections too.
Both kids' e-portfolios were a DVD with their video files/ speech and music files. And a powerpoint slideshow of what they had done over the past year. It is so precious to see them having so much fun with their friends, and to see how much progress they had made over the 10 months. I enjoyed seeing ds1 dance in PE, and ds2 reading a book with his teacher on the big red comfy rocking chair. Tons of other too precious snippets.
3. The next week passed by in a blur. Somehow when the kids are at home 24/7, I hardly get the time to sit down, check email or blog. ds1 had his home drum lessons and art lessons.
But by now, both are terminated. For art, his teacher had to go to Beijing for an attachment. For drum, ds1 decided he was not interested anymore.
If you ask me how I spent the days with them, I can't recall too. I only know I manage to get all the meals out, they eat, we clean up, they paint, they draw, write, fight, wrestle, jump on the couch, then throw toys around while they play... Then we clean up again, and then read some books, and have some shouting matches, then it's time to shower and sleep at night.
Somedays we really spent the whole day at home. That was not too great. They have too much energy.
Other days, we have to get some things done, like go to Emart and the wet market. And those days we have lunch with H outside. Those days passed more quickly. Weekends were good too, cos Dh would be at home and the kids have another adult to be distracted with.
4. 22nd June, Mon
My sis and her family arrived in Beijing.
She's 6 mth pregnant, almost 7th month, and decided she wouldn't take Xiamen airlines like we normally do and land in Tianjin. Even though it is more convenient, she said she remembered her SIA stewardess friend's training courses involved how to deliver babies in an emergency on board the plane, and she felt it was safer flying Singapore Airlines.
haha. It's funny.
But anyway, SIA was having a promotion, so she took that offer up.
They then decided to stay 3 days at Hilton Wangfujing before coming over to Tianjin.
However, Dh made the trip to Beijing to collect fried fishballs and xiancai and other Spore foodstuff from my sis. And yes, even some tidbits like dried guava, Campbell soups, pasta sauces...
My mom knew I missed the fishballs a lot, and so fried some in the morning and had my sis bring over for me. But it had to be consumed within a day, preferably. So all these dear people made my Mon night's dinner very enjoyable. Our family of 4 missed the fishballs so much, we downed all 20 at once. The kids forgot how much they loved them too.
The funniest thing was, the China security police within the airport had dogs sniffing all the luggage as they came out of the baggage claim and my sis said the dogs sniffed at that piece of luggage with the fishballs.
So that bag got checked by the security personnel and they took out the bags of fishballs. They asked my sis what they were, she said "yuyuan" and they said, "oh! yuwan!", then they looked at her in disbelief and said that you could buy fishballs in China too.
My sis didn't want to say the fishballs tasted different and so she just smiled sheepishly. Thankfully, they were very nice and let the fishballs through. Possibly cos she had my little niece. Fortunately for my mom's (and sis') gargantuan effort, and fortunately for our craving, it was allowed through. Phew.
5. 24th June
My sis finally arrived in my house. She's been in the house till now. They haven't really visited anything in Tianjin yet, and we're really spending a lot of quality time bumming around together, haha.
Others may think it is a waste of air ticket money but actually, family time is family time. You can choose to spend it sightseeing together, or you could choose to spend it at home.
The kids (cousins) have been having a lot of fun together, and they've learnt through crying and laughing over various matters, how to play together despite a wide age range.
ds1 learnt to put his various Lego creations high up, after they got destroyed unwittingly by his cousin. And both of them kept their card games away too, because all Eva liked to do was fling the cards around the whole room. It was just plain funny to me.
Then, ds1 learnt to be more alert after Eva wacked him with a maraca the first day, and a recorded the 2nd. Both times, it hurt him so much (it was squarely, and fully on his head) that he cried. Now he is more careful to be further away from her when she walks around wielding a hard object.
Eva, learnt to cry in protest when the boys wanted to play with her or run with her while holding her hand. Cos they did that once, and she fell over them (cos of course her running speed is not the same), tripped and knocked her lips and teeth on the ground. That caused her to have a bleed on the lips and a scream for a while.
Other than that, they have lots and lots of fun. And the first thing the boys want to greet in the morning when they wake up is Eva. When we go out for meals, they clamour to sit beside her. They feed her their banana, Goldfish snacks, and read her books.
Life is pretty good right now, and all spent at home too. Hmmm...
6. Today.
ds1 had a treat. H had tickets and she brought ds1 out with her sons to the cinema to catch Transformers 2. She treated them to popcorn and then a meal at McD's after that. So ds1 was bubbling with excitement.
ds2 did shed a few tears when he learnt ds1 was leaving home in the morning without him, but we kept him fully occupied and the tears didn't last very long. He was very interested in hearing the Transformers story when ds1 was back, and he was really happy to play transformers-related games the rest of the day with ds1.
They are learning to lead separate lives from now, I guess. We haven't had the resources to spend regular 1-on-1 days or outings with them yet, in their entire duration of their lives. They eat together, sleep together, do almost everything together.
Now they are learning to be separate individuals.
7. Next week, we will head to Beijing for a few days. To spend time together with sis' family for the last few days then they fly home from there.
It will be fun!
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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