Taiwan 2014 Day 2 - Baby Boss

Cabbed down to Baby Boss early this morning. This was one place which we have heard so much about and after so much fun at Kidzania (Jakarta) in June, Jill was definitely looking forward to this one. Best part was, Jen could finally take part with his sister as he has turned 3! Reviews on forum were mainly on how crowded this place was going to be etc but to our relief, we had picked the right day to go! A Friday morning! Place was relatively empty and from 10am to 3pm, we could do 6 / 7 activities which by my pov, was good enough. I remembered that Kidzania in Jakarta was soooo crowded (add dark to that as well, lighting was bad), we had to jostle with so people and so little time to do anything as every work station had such a long queue!

They started off being an astrounaut, a natural choice since it was just at the entrance. I've no idea what was happening inside as no parents are allowed in. All we could see was them donning spacesuits, go in and exiting a spaceshuttle, landed on the "moon", analyzed some rocks, attended a short tutorial and zipped back to earth. Whole experience took them about 30 mins... gosh, litle kids in spacesuits, ultimate cuteness!

This was soon followed by a farmer at a cow ranch where the kids were taught all the tasks and routines that a typical farmer does in a day.

The fire fighter, A&E assistant, gas pump attendant, airline crew and ended off with Jill's last stop as a hotel chambermaid! Jen was fast asleep by the last one so it was just Jill alone. On hindsight, we could have extended our half day pass to a full day one, given that Jill wanted to do so much more and Jen would have regained his energy after his seista but we didn't. In any case, the afternoon session had many more kids who probably have just ended school.

The kids had their share of fun, definitely beats shopping aimlessly and were rather bummed that we ended the day at Ximending *mummy sniggles*... but that was really the last night market that we headed to for the entire trip.

Taiwan 2014 Day 1

Just came back from a week's holiday in Taiwan.. great fun but equally exhausting. As usual, we have our ever little rascal Jen running all over the place and having his silly tantrums at times when we least expect and we have Jill who is always saying she's so hungry (again). Well, being hungry is good in Taiwan, both of them with their daddy enjoyed all the snacks like Spring Onion Pancake, Fried Chicken, Octopus balls and me.... my all time favourite, Strawberry Shaved Ice.. yummy!

The night before, Jen came down with high fever and I was like all so disappointed but through God's blessings, his fever subsided and stabilized with 6 hourly panadol feeds and by the 2nd day he was doing great! We are really thankful that we were able to enjoy ourselves tremendously! It was double relief that we also had fantastic weather throughout our trip so we didn't need to have to rearrange any of our schedules or to fuss with raincoats.

And so we arrived in Taipei on a sunny Thursday afternoon, grabbed some lunch, rested a while then headed to Shihlin. As expected, the kids didn't take too well to purely shopping so we had to bribe them in between with kids stuff purchases, funfair games and food!

Empowerment and Positive Discipline

SL: We were just discussing this on Saturday night!! And an important take away from this session is.... NO SPANKING!! Uh-oh!!

Anyhow, first things first, do this:
Close your eyes. Have a vision of what you would like your child to be in 10years, 20 years and even 40 years.

Do I get a Doctor? A hope that most parents have for their children.. (admittedly I secretly harbour that hope too .. blah)

or
Do I get a firefighter? That's what Jill wants to be when she grows up!

Julia, Founder Director of Julia Gabriel, told us to do just that. Picture them in their teens, them as adults and them as parents. How they grow, what they grow up to be very much depends on how we as parents, bring them up. At the end of the day, regardless of what occupation they are in, regardless if they are enjoying singlehood or DINKs (dual income no kids) or parents, we need them to have values that will see them through life, compassion, determination, motivation amongst others.

It's up to us to decide how we want to deal with the discipline of our children. We can spoil them rotten by giving them everything they ask for or we can be very autocratic and insist they only do things the way we want. But we all know that either is not ideal and we should always seek a balance between the two.

Easier said than done definitely. Nobody is perfect and there are many occasions when I lose my self control and scream at the kids when the noise they are making gets unbearable, when the results are far off from expected.

But now, I'm reminded to put myself in the shoes of my children and to understand that each child is different and has his/her own temperaments. Close friends know that I'm often lamenting how Jill & Jen are as different as chalk and cheese! One is loving, obedient, yet often requires a lot of guidance in her decisions. The other, is boisterous, mischievous yet fearless by deciding on his own what he wants to do and how he does it. Needless to say, our role as parents, is to discipline and NOT punish them. We need to help them understand that misbehaviour is not acceptable and to learn the consequence that comes with it and by being aware of their individual characteristics, we learn how to guide them, to get them to cooperate with us by giving them choices. Praise them when they make good decisions that warrant positive acknowledgement.Through empowerment, we hope to inculcate in them, respect, responsibility, independence and self-discipline and to encourage them further to want to do more good.

Positive discipline happens at home and even outside. We need to be consistent, to send across a firm message to our children that whining. As many may know that Jen is as that age where it's almost impossible to reason with him! He throws a tantrum when he deems fit and no amount of cajoling helps unless we give in to his demands which can range from having the iPad immediately or wanting to buy a toy. Obviously this works well to shut him up immediately but long term wise it's not going to do us any good. As discussed with Julia, we have slowly learnt to leave him alone when he's not at his best behaviour and slowly walk over, but turning back to make sure that the boy's safe. And we're proud to say that this has worked! He learns ( and is still learning) that we parents are the bosses and he needs to listen to us as much as we listen to him. This is pretty much still at the beginning stage and we are certainly looking forward to more reforms as we progress!

Once again, many thanks to Julia and team who have painstakingly organized this session for us to learn and share the many methods of helping our children grow up positively. Because of their efforts during the session to engage our children with story telling and crafts, we were able to focus our attention, knowing our children were well taken care of!

 

Turning 6 & 3!

Another year has passed, how time flies. the kids are now a year older
and starting new phases in their lives.

 Jill is starting primary school next year, a new experience for her, new
school environment, teachers, making new friends, more activities in
school and after school.

Jen will now be alone in Seeds, without his big sister around to watch
over him. I am sure he will do fine being the more independent one,
but he does have his moments especially when he does not get what he
wants.

We always want the best for both of you and just want both of you to
be happy, healthy, study hard and be the best that you can be.

 The days are long but the years are short, both of you are growing up
so fast and we treasure each and every moment we have together.

My daddy & my son

Recently Jen has been sticky to my dad, wanting only him to hold his hand, wanting to drink milk only on my dad's bed with my dad lying next to him... I think it's incredibly sweet and I hope both of them will continue to share a strong bond together...

Postive Parenting - Developing our interests in Reading & Writing

We all know that reading is essential for us to hone our language skills and cultivating this good habit will inevitably influence the way we write. Creative writing is a strong focus in our schools and I have seen some of the compositions that our Primary school children have written. And I tell you, they completely BLEW my mind! I'm half wondering if I should start my K2 girl on Enid Blyton's books but deep inside, I know that she isn't ready for that yet. Nevertheless, it does no harm to instill good reading habits at a young age and just how do we go about that?

Developing your Child's Reading and Writing, part of a series of Positive Parenting workshops organized by Julia Gabriel Centre really helped solve the many doubts that I had and I appreciated the opportunity to be invited to attend it. Julia Gabriel and her wonderful, chirpy daughter-in-law, Aggie put Dw and my minds at ease with their various methods of engaging children and developing a literacy rich home environment. This is the start to building the foundation for reading and writing, something which will follow our children for their lifetime. 

The no. 1 rule which was stressed to us at the onset was: We, as parents, have to be readers if we want our children to be readers! Totally true! Go take a look at Tom and Pippo Read a Story to know exactly what we are talking about. So, start reading! Newpapers, magazines, novels, they all work!

 

 

We were given time to role play. We took turns to read to each other, pretending the listener was our child. It was quite awkward initially, given that we had to constantly change our voice pitch to suit the mood of the book and had to be very expressive to gear to the tone that will retain the interest of the child. Apart from simply reading words, we should also give attention to the pictures in the book and elaborate on them. Afterall we are talking to little children and these pretty, colourful pictures are more than likely to catch their attention then just plain, black words which probably do not make much sense at their age!

We all know as well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy... so yes, PLAY! Use our imagination and creativity to create fun games by taking the concepts from our favourite childhood games like Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly!

 

A natural progression from reading is writing. We were shown the different tools used by Julia Gabriel Centre for their Pre-School education classes to help children of various age groups develop their writing skills. Finger paints, fat pencils, pencil grips, these were just a few of the many instruments introduced to us. Kids have it lucky these days, don't they! I certainly didn't have this luxury when I was in Pre-school!

 

 

 

So with fat pencils at 3, we get scribble writing... like Jen's master piece:

 

 

I look forward to the time when he gets to N2 next year and goes on to the 2nd stage: emergent writing, which essentially means that he will be drawing pictures that depict a story. Something which Jill still enjoys doing now, at K2! She will draw and tell us why she drew the bees, the butterflies, the flowers and what were they doing prior to flying etc. 

 

With these little steps, it will eventually lead to the 3rd stage in K2, whereby our children will then write for a reason. They write to tell a story on why recycling is important and what they do for recycling. They write recipes, how they bake cookies. They write grocery lists, they write rules of games they play. The list goes on, you get the idea... 

I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the workshops, especially Critical Thinking on 24 Oct, which is an extremely important skill that will benefit our children in many aspects of their lives. Lifelong skills like effective analysing, reasoning, evaluating and creativity are all parts of Critical Thinking and are the building blocks for problem solving and communicating rational solutions. If any of you are keen, do contact Julia Gabriel Centre to find out more and you are definitely still in time to enjoy the 10% if you sign up for your 3rd workshop!

Legoland Malaysia

Laval (Legends of Chima) - the 1st mascot we met

Yeah, title is bo-orrrr-ring. Thousands have been there & hundreds have blogged about it. I'm one of those sua-ku ones who have not been there & HENCE, I WAS FREAKING EXCITED about this overnight trip. In fact, on Friday, I kept telling my colleagues that I was so - oh going overseas the next day.. hahahah and yes, they were all rolling their eyes (make that  x 1000 times) at me.

Anyway, I think it suffices to say that Dw was 1000 times MORE excited than me, because it was his 1st time driving into Malaysia & he was so darn hyped up that he couldn't even sleep the night before. My turn to roll my eyes 1000 times... but that's okay, I still love my dear to the max for his "cuteness".

And so we drove in, 2 kiddos behind, Dw at the wheel and I, the passenger with eyes peeled to street signs. It was just a little congested at the Tuas checkpoint but other than that, it was a smooth and uneventful (fortunately) drive in. The kids started screaming when they spotted the infamous Legoland colourful hotel and all the adrenalin kicked in from that point onwards. Didi had a ball with all the lego pieces and rides that he refused to nap and ended up nodding off during our early dinner at KFC. That episode was really funny and we couldn't resist taking a video of him.Totally adore this little boy of ours!



our 1st glimpse of the hotel

view from our room

Playing with mini legos at the hotel lobby

We were lucky that it was not that crowded last weekend, possibly due to exam period in Singapore and Saturday was the end of the weekend for people of  Johore. So that effectively also meant Sunday was crowd free and that also meant that we could take the rides consecutively, sometimes without even needing to disembark if there was noone else in the queue! Somehow, whilst Jill enjoyed going round & round in Project X and the Dragon roller coaster, Dw & I were... er... can we stop, our heads are spinning.. It's age. We're aging. Damn.



selfie on project X

the dragon apprentice



the dragon

Then Didi had the whale of his time, easily satisfied sitting in the Duplo Express & at the Boating School. Again, Dw and I were.. er.. can we stop, it's making us sleepy. zzzzzzz....in another sense, it was rather therapeutic.


choo choo... slow & steady

@ the boating school

All in all, we had good fun, the kids had more fun so it was a simply fabulous weekend, just the 4 of us spending time together as a family. Service was great at both the park & hotel with friendly, smiling staff over the 2 days. One thing though I did wish the hotel had informed us in advance that hotel guests with combo tickets have the privilege to gain access to Leogcity at 9.30am so we could have gone in much earlier on our 1st day. So now YOU know... it's great especially when you have kids who wanna have a go at the Nissan Driving school which I've always heard is often one heck of a long queue!



nissan driving school

ending our little vacation with souvenirs from the retail shops