Caden's 11th birthday celebration

Caden turned 11 years old late last month and we brought him out for a Swenson's dinner at Waterway Point.

Given that it's a Thursday, we couldn't do much but to just have a nice dinner outside. It's also my first attempt to drive to the shopping mall and thankfully everything went so smoothly.

The boys as usual had some arguments amongst themselves and were not on good talking terms during dinner. Nonetheless, Caden is always happy when you put nice food right in front of him.. and on that day,  we saw so many other kids celebrating their birthdays in Swensons too!

His version of 'Topless 5' Ice cream

As Caden wanted to make a birthday wish out of a cake, he has asked for a mini one (cos we were all too full after dinner) to go through his favourite routine of the year:

 

And he managed to gobble up this mini cake in no time! what an appetite he has..

 

I wish my dear son good health and happiness always. And hopefully he gets more sensible and mature soon!

Kallang Ice World

On one of the long weekends last month, we met up with Brian's family for a session of Ice-skating!

We reached Kallang Ice World early, I think it was just 30minutes after 9am. There were already a few kids on the rink but the crowd was still manageable.

The 4 boys were very excited. They helped each other to wear their skating boots and went off to the rink. As it was the first ice-skating experience for both Caden and Ethan, we decided to just hold onto the bar along the circumference for a start.

Little did we realise that the children's metal bar is actually made available for kids below 1.2m and there are only 20 pieces on loan (for free!). First come first serve. By the time we realise we needed 2 for our boys, the metal bars were all snapped up by the later crowd...

Subsequently we found a few metal bars 'abandoned' in the skating rink, so finally the boys got some help.. Ethan enjoyed it a lot more with the help of the metal bar.

Caden was too tall for the bar but nonetheless, it's easier with the support

Most of the times, PaPa helped by giving him the support.. Skating is not for me so I ended up watching them instead.. hiak hiak..



 

After getting the hang of the sport, Ethan decided to let go of the bar and skate on his own without help.. Children really can pick up things fast!

Just 20 minutes before the 2 hour block, he's skating like a pro...



All the boys had a good time, they even spoke about when they can make a second trip here to skate again.. fees are not cheap.. It cost us $17.50 per pax for 2 hours (adults) and $15 per child. So for a family of 4 like us, total bill came up to $74 (including 4 pairs of gloves).

So to cut costs, we need to bring our own socks and gloves next round!

Hanging out with one of their best friends - Cherson

Cherson used to be Caden's best friend in P3 until his parents transferred him out to Temasek Primary school due to the long distance and time spent in shuttling Cherson to and fro eversince they moved to Bedok.

Cherson misses his friends so much that his mum has to organise gathering once in a while to bring Kesler and Caden over to catch up and have fun..

Gathering 1 (at Cherson's house): Last year

Gathering 2: Cherson's birthday celebration in May last year (2015) when he invited the whole of P3-8 ex-class to this event!

Some captain's ball game was played

Although Ethan wasn't part of the class, he mingled in quite seamlessly

The 3 best friends - Kesler, Cherson and Caden

Caden with a very 'round' face :)

 

I suppose Cherson will still continue to make an effort to get his mum to organise an annual catch up with his ex-classmates so this friendship will definitely continue for at least the next few years!

Patience, Endurance and Air

I am getting upset with a fair share of behavioural issues from my boys lately.  Caden has started to want to get things done in his own way. In the past,  I don't have too much of a problem getting him to work on my assignments or getting him to get things done before he rest for the day. Ever since he started his P5 journey,  or perhaps since end last year,  he becomes more complacent,  thinking that he's good enough with his studies and doesn't need to do more to reinforce his understanding.  Especially during this CA1 week, it was so hard to get him to stay focused to do his own revision,  he was easily distracted by stuff he wants to do ( like playing buddy fight, watching TV, or doing his own sketching). I always emphasize to him that he should complete the tasks with higher priority first, before spending time on his own interests.  He will always respond by saying that he already know the concepts so there's no need to revise.. and even when I went through his wrong answers with him, he will defend his own answers with a strong stand and refuse to listen from my perspective (or the model answer's view). I told him that if he's insistent with his own level of understanding,  I hope he can defend his own answers to his teachers should they mark his responses incorrect.

Ethan, on the other hand, started to throw tantrums almost once every two days. He goes on hunger strike during lunch if I don't lend him my phone to watch his you-tube videos. He stops writing his journal when I didn't allow him to use his reward to buy ping pong ball. He refused to eat his breakfast to show his displeasure.  He refused to do my assignments when he doesn't get his sweets. .. so the list goes on.

My ah lou's stand is just let them be- let E starve, let C do badly for his exams and let them take responsibility for their own actions.  I guess I probably cannot expect both of them to be as self-motivated as me when I was young.  These days, I have to take a step back,  learn to breathe more, and to have more patience, endurance and hopefully,  I can get through this nonsensical phase somehow...

Daily Journal

Ethan came back from school one day and updated me as follows:
 

E: ' Mummy, we got back our composition scores today. Highest score in class is 13/20. Rest are all below 10 marks. Lowest score is 3/20!.. Heehee...'

Me: ( frozen) ' So what's your score?'

E: "You guess?" 

Me: "Please don't tell me that you are that 3!"

E: "I'm 6! Hahaha.."

Me: "oh gosh.. why so bad???"

E: "my teacher said I wrote too short, no expressions, no relations made to another character,  and many more.. "

I know that E doesn't make much effort in terms of writing. It's surprising to know that he actually reads a lot of books but somehow, the strength of language has not been translated into his school work as yet.

I have started something last week, in getting both the boys to write a Daily Journal (aka diary) and write about whatever happens to them during the day. Each of them will earn themselves a dollar each, after 5 journals have been recorded. This seems to work out for them, as they seemed to have something in mind that they wanted to buy badly.

It's quite a good start, both of them have been writing diligently for the past few days, and Caden went a step further to have an additional component 'News report', which covers some news updates that he has watched on the News each night. Although it's just 2-pages of write-up each day, I guess this will help to cultivate them to write better and be more attentive to the writing styles as they read more.
 

大年初二: 9th February 2016

On second day of CNY, it's a tradition to visit my side of relatives.  However, this year we are missing my Aunt as she had passed on with cancer last July. My cousins can't celebrate this year so we don't have to make a house visit to their house.

We had our kueh lapis breakfast before going over to my parents' temple and the boys really love this cake so much..

80% gone in no time!

Somehow the temple was not too crowded on that day so it was rather peaceful.

After we are done with praying, we decided to pop by IKEA for a quick lunch as I needed to get some stuff from their kitchen departmart. Ethan asked to play in the indoor playground although his brother can't join in given his height now:

I think this boy has another 2 more years to enjoy the Indoor playground facility:

I felt so cold and sick all of a sudden, and it turned out that I had fever by the time I reached home.  And it also turned out that I had a continuous attack of the fever for the following 6 days which had also kept me out of school. What a virus! I hope this is my 1st and only illness for this year of Monkey!

大年初一 : 8th February 2016

It's the first day of Chinese New Year and the boys finally get to wear their long awaited soccer t-shirts which they had been looking forward to for the past weeks.

As part of the tradition, we had our usual vegetarian breakfast at the boys' Grandma's place. The food that we always look forward to is the sweet sauce Tou Foo which was rather appetising to start the day.

About 45 minutes later,  the lil boy is still eating his share of rice :O  

Aunt Peggy and family members were off to Penang to visit Uncle SK 's mum so we don't always have their company during this first day of CNY. Nonetheless, we had our reunion dinner last week before they set off to Penang:

After breakfast, we left mum's place after Ethan was done and proceed to pay respects to their Grandfather at the temple to 拜年.

As it was too late to hop over to my parents' temple, we decided to do a stopover at Waterway Point shopping mall to see see look look and get our light lunch..

Both Ethan and Caden had just recovered from a bad fever virus and cough so they didn't have much appetite the whole of last week.  When they saw Ding Tai Fung in Waterway Point,  their eyes lit up and we decided to have something light there. Overall the quality of food is good in this outlet so we will definitely come back here again next time!



My sis happened to be nearby our place in the afternoon so the cousins had BIG and crazy fun playing hide and seek in the house!

The boys were so tired by 7plus at night and they went into slumber land by 8pm!