Ethan turns 4 !

We held a simple birthday celebration at home for Ethan and Gong Gong on Sat for lunch and order Pizzas and drumlets from Pizza Hut coupled with salad and sushi with compliments from Ah Gou. The birthday cake was chosen by Ethan as PaPa had shown him the pictures online from Swensens and he decided on Mcqueen car.

This was the 3rd year that we had combined Ethan's birthday celebration together with his grandfather since their birthdays are not too far apart (Gong Gong's one falls on 25th Oct). Ethan enjoyed himself quite well and was most elated during the birthday song and cake cutting segment.

Ethan got his Mcqueen remote control car from his PaPa, a beyblade from his Ah gou and a pair of pants from Ah Pek (Uncle Colin). His grandparents gave him a big ang bao.. I got him something, but cannot seem to remember it now .. (sign of getting really old)

with their presents - Caden gets a beyblade from Ah Gou cos he has been nagging to Sam that he didnt receive any present from his aunty for this year's birthday..





With Ethan's grandparents

the boys played beyblades while the girls were playing ipads

the cake..
















The day before, the school celebrated Ethan's birthday and Ethan was happy giving out the goody bags we had prepared for him

Ethan's dream

Ethan woke up this morning and said," Mummy, gor gor took my silver star"
Then I asked him, " no, gor gor didn't take your star.." He replied, " i dream gor gor take my star last night!"
Amazing a to-be 4 yr old boy knows what's a dream and had a dream..

To go

It has been decided. Tom I will issue marching orders to my domestic helper. It's just not working out since she had been excused and got herself discharged from her tasks in the last 1 week and we don't have any assurance that the condition(if any to begin with in the first place) will improve in the short term.

My second dismissal in the last 10 weeks.. Broke our maid history record in the koh family line.. Both caden and Ethan have not been very receptive of the maid so least it's not too much of an issue for them.

Self-sufficient

We had been maid-less for the last 2 months and my new domestic helper from phino had finally arrived since a week and a half back. Things were again not smooth- sailing, slightly similar to the previous bad incident (maid went on strike on day3). This new helper told us on friday night that her right hand's fingers were stiffened and she had been in pain. Although she couldn't nail down what had caused the problem, we gave her time to rest on both sat and sun and got down to doing the usual weekend cleaning up ourselves (prob why I got fever on Sunday night!!). Today my mil had to bring her to see a Chinese sinseh for a therapeutic massage on her arm and fingers in hope to loosen the muscles. She is still not able to fully carry out her day-to-day duties and it has began to slowly surfaced as being a burden to our family instead of help - I got to check in her welfare everyday in the afternoon, my mil has to take care of her on top of jaga-ing the 3children. We had to packet her meals from downstairs before we leave for our weekend errands outside and the list goes on, coupled with the fact that she gets full pay during this self-declared illness..

Sigh, the word burden has been hovering in our minds these days, we are even thinking of terminating her employment with us if this goes on for the next 5 days- I cannot afford to continue to let her take pay should this self-declared prob of hers last for months?! We had discussed and decided to go maid-less perpetually after this one as I had enough of managing problem maids (these days phinos come out with lots of pattern) and engage a part-time help if need be..

Steep learning curve

One of the piano exam Grade 1 task is to read an unknown score on exam day and play the notes shown in the score. As I know Caden has been relying so heavily on the Do Re Mi abbreviations which I painstakingly penned down during his every lesson, I decided to start playing piano together with him from this term onwards by just reading the music notes off the book and play after deciphering the tune.

To be honest, I think age is gradually creeping up on me, besides struggling to carry out my role in my new work place through applications of numerous frameworks, policies and getting involved in giving formal trainings, I am finding it slightly more difficult than I thought it would be to practise piano with Caden. But I had to somehow find a way to teach him to read notes in a quicker way rather than counting from the first note 'Do' which is located right at the lowest line of the score. So now I tried to make him remember that the note that falls right into middle/third line denotes 'ti' and the note that falls on the top line indicates high 'fa', so he gets 3 different sets of base points to read the notes that fall in between these range.

I still have abt a year to get him used to reading the notes off the music book and play the song by looking at the score. Hopefully I can pick it up real fast on my end to find better methods for him to acquire this skill set.

I stand by my belief that I need to learn with my children to fully maximize what is being taught to them.. But it's going to be one tough journey to hang on..