Caden's Swimsafer Bronze test - 26th May 2015

Caden has been slotted to take up Swimsafer Bronze test by his swimming coach this Tues night (at 8pm) which was quite a bad timing for us. He was down with fever on Sunday and Monday and only managed to recover on Tuesday morning. So we were rather apprehensive about bringing him for the test and the weather before 8pm was pouring with thunder and lightning!

Somehow,  the thunderstorm didn't hit in Tampines area as we called up the swimming complex to check if pool was closed (our dear coach wasn't responding to our calls or text messages to confirm the test given the weather conditions). Anyways, we went ahead with the test as Caden maintained that he's feeling alright then to attempt it.

It was quite a relaxing experience for him as he has some of his old swimming buddies scheduled in this test as well - Randy, Kelly (Wendy's children) and Renee (Laifong's daughter) plus his ex-swim mates from the 2pm class.

We were there watching the entire process and felt that these kids were really lucky to have passed the test eventually (as some of them didn't perform up to standards!)

At the start of the test, the kids lined up in 2 rows

 

his turn to jump...

 

here he dived!

 

after swimming for 2 laps

 

they moved on to do some life-saving stunts

 

throwing a rope to the victims...

a different method of life-saving skill where you jumped into the water to pass the float

 

Caden partnered with Randy

Randy's turn to 'save' Caden!

Mission accomplished!

Eventually, the tester announced to us (the parents) that all the kids passed this test! (really kelong ah.. hahaaa)

Labour Day - 1 May 2015

As this year's labour day falls on a Friday, we decided to get some treats for the boys. They have been bugging us to bring them watch 'HOME' so we decided to bring them to the cinema for this. The original intent was to watch 'Avengers' but the seats were all rather fully booked so we have to shelve this for a while.

For the first time, they get to watch a movie alone.. we decided to buy only 2 tickets for the boys to watch without our company.. they were happy with this arrangement. They even get to enjoy a box of popcorns by themselves!

After the movie, we brought them for a Chinese themed lunch and also bought them a cup of bubble tea (from Gong Cha) as part of a holiday treat..

At Crystal Jade, Caden enjoyed the wanton noodles and dim sum thoroughly so this is considered his birthday treat!

Ethan was so happy the whole day and jotted down his feelings in this little book which looked like a poem:

I feel happy because I watch movie
I feel happy because I eat popcorn
I feel happy because I drink Gong Cha
I feel happy because I play soccer!





 



I don't know why he wrote 1st number in an opposite direction!

Ethan's first tooth extraction

We always have a lot of issues with Ethan's teeth since young. Besides having a few decays, he had a dead tooth since he was 3 (when his cousin accidentally knocked him down and the nerves were dead since that incident). So finally, this dead tooth became shaky about 2 months back but it didn't fall out naturally after this while.

So bleeding occurred occasionally as he fiddled with this shaky dead tooth once in a while.  We decided that it's time to get this tooth extracted so he won't have any more bleeding occurrences.

But, he cried dearly when his PaPa attempted to pull out using a dental floss... to be honest, if the same approach is applied on me, I would have been terrified as well. I called up the school dentist to make an appointment for an extraction and he was so nervous with my arrangement.

Luckily, the appointment was scheduled to happen after his recess time last week, so I assigned Caden to chaperone his younger brother after they had their food to the dental clinic in school.. I heard from Ethan that Caden just dropped him to the clinic and went off to play with his classmates, so the poor boy was left alone facing his deadly task.

I think it turned out to be painless for him as the dentist applied a gel on his gums before the extraction (I remembered that it was always an injection for me during my time!). He texted me a picture of his toothless selfie once he got home:



The dentist has scheduled him for another visit today to do fillings.. I am sure this time round, it will be painful for him...

Our 10 year old boy

Time flies. Caden has turned 10 years old last week.  It also marks our milestone as being parents for full 10 years!

Before his birthday, Caden has been talking about inviting his closer friends over. His intent was for us to organise a birthday party so that his closer classmates could to our place and play Nerf with him. We were not too keen because we don't like to interact with the classmates' parents should they decide to stay in our house during the party.. My ah Lou is not a sociable person so I will have to do most of the talking when situations require me to.. So we managed to convince Caden that we will just get his play buddies to come over on Sunday for a mini-gathering.

Brian's family came over and the boys had great fun playing for almost close to 5 hours playing Nerf, soccer and Beyblades. Caden was very happy that day when his play mates celebrated his birthday for him...

Putting 10 small candles for this round

His BFFs

 

Family Picture



They sang the birthday song for him



Asking him to make a birthday wish

Ethan helped him to blow out the candles

On the night before he slept, he told me that it was the happiest day he had... having so much fun with his brother, Aidan and Elliot on that day (I guess it was priceless to him!). We also got him a new Nerf gun as his birthday gift which he had picked for himself.

On his actual birthday, I went to grab him a mini-personal cake since we did not have a chance to have an eat-out dinner this time round. He was nonetheless happy with this little surprise...

 

With the same mango cake that he likes

another chance to make a wish

I must say, it gets easier to celebrate their birthdays as they get older!