My exploration in life… (diary for baby!)

It’s finally the end of the 10 weeks (or my first term in school)!  The highlight of the term was of course YEN’s safe and successful delivery of FELIX.  We ended this term with the Teachers’ Day celebrations just now.  I’ll write more about this day later…

First, let me write more about FELIX.  We went home after YEN and his discharge on Monday, 20 August 07.  I was really wondering before FELIX’s arrival about how RACHEL would take the new addition in our lives.  Boy, did she react!  She kicked up a fuss and threw a tantrum, presumably due to jealousy - there is now one more person to vie for the adults’ attention.  Luckily for us, we reacted quickly by separating the siblings, and the jealousy, if there was any, died down quickly and faded away.  No, it doesn’t mean that RACHEL accepted the situation better.  It was just that she now sees more of my mum and sleeps with my mum at night.

I’m not sure if I’ve managed to win the hearts of the children I teach in this short span of ten weeks so far.  I chide them for every wrong thing that they should not have done, and I feel that I have yet to give them enough encouragement.  I know that children need encouragement, but yet, they keep making me so angry that I hardly have enough time to finish my syllabus.

Though I am not the form teacher of the class (4 GANNET) that I teach the English language, I have been seeing them quite a bit (about sixteen periods a week out of the thirty-three I teach).  I definitely see them more than their form teacher, MRS TAN, and thus, I have been undertaking a lot of the class’ administrative tasks. 

Considering the amount of scolding I give the students, it is indeed surprising that I received almost twenty Teachers’ Day gifts / cards from them.  That’s almost half the number of children from the class.  What’s more surprising - I received gifts from two boys whom I have reproached quite a bit.  Perhaps it is true that children bear no grudge??

The week that follows is a long-awaited break from school before we go into the last lap for the school year.  Not that I can look forward to a lot of rest anyway - the one week holidays open with a half-day course I signed up for, and a two-day incentive trip for children who did well (but had not had many chances to go on trips with the school) to Malacca in Malaysia.  I have to worry about keying in physical and health education grades (plus remarks) for the students of the two primary six classes I am teaching.  I’ll have to do it before school reopens, so that doesn’t really leave me much time.  Sigh - so much about the "rest" I look forward to!

YEN and FELIX got the all clear to come home yesterday.  For me, it was a week of lows, punctuated with a big high point for the past week.  It was like this…

I had been waiting patiently for FELIX to come knocking on our door to say hello since the start of this month.  I was so eager with anticipation - some many have cited old wives’ tales that the second baby, and a baby boy at that, would normally mean that the child would be delivered one to two weeks earlier than the expected delivery date.

We waited and waited until the expected delivery date.  Still, nothing happened.  So much for old wives’ tales.  Whatever that happened the way the tales reported, were probably coincidental, I decided.  On the day before YEN was expected to deliver, I got a piece of sad news: my ex-colleague and friend LIEW CHEE HOU was back in the hospital for his fight with cancer.

He had been in hospital once a few months back, and that was already discovered way too late, in its advanced stage.  He, being a non-smoker and a once-supremely fit soldier, was one of the last persons I would have expected to be lying in the hospital bed, thinning and wasting away by the day.

I got the news and went to see him the next day with JOYCE SEAH,  my ex-colleague and a gem of a friend - DORA.  This time, he was even thinner than I had ever seen him.  Sigh…  I recalled the days when I was still in the SAF, and I would sometimes see him put in extra work to run after office hours.  How fit was he then and what a contrast to the CHEE HOU lying in bed now!

I met up with YEN and we went home.  I told her about CHEE HOU and how bad I felt.  Near home, we witnessed the aftermath of a traffic accident.  A motorcyclist was lying in the middle of the minor road, obviously flung off his motorcycle.  I wanted very much to stop the car to offer our assistance, but could not because although YEN is a nurse, she was pregnant and it was probably unwise for us to be with the injured man.  I felt bad at not being able to help too…

Now to the high point of the past week - YEN went to work as usual last Saturday and I went back to school while waiting for her.  She went for a scheduled scan after work and I joined her after I was done.  Our plan was to go for lunch after her scan and go home to rest.  We were told by her doctor that we had no time for lunch as she had to be admitted straightaway - FELIX was ready to meet us anytime within the next twenty-four hours!

Whoa!  We were caught off-guard and by surprise again, just like how we felt when RACHEL came to us more than a year ago.  YEN was admitted at two in the afternoon, I went home to pick some things up for her and joined her in hospital to await for the "moment".  Being tired, we both fell asleep while waiting and at about eleven, YEN woke me up, saying that she felt contractions and was ready to "push" then.

Well, she took about an hour.  FELIX arrived to meet us at 0001 hrs, 19 Aug 07.  He is the third person in our family to have the birthdate on the nineteenth of the month.  YEN recuperated a little faster than when she gave birth to RACHEL this time, so we came home on Monday.  It has been an eventful week for me, the past week!  =)

FELIX was born early on the morning of 19 Aug 07 - the same day (but different months) as RACHEL and me!

I will write more on this when mother and baby are home on Monday.  =)  Hurray!

We wondered if FELIX would decide to say hello to us on National Day and mummy’s birthday.  He must have decided he did not need that much limelight and shied away from us.  So we continue to play the waiting game for now.  =P

RACHEL has been waking up quite frequently at night nowadays.  We continue to wonder if it is nightmares that keep her away from sleeping through the night, and in the process, keeping us up to care for her.  YEN hopes that it is really because the fact that she can sense FELIX’s imminent arrival into this world, and wants to have as much attention from us on her.  She needn’t worry, really, as we will love her all the same, we promise!

On to my teaching @ ZHANGDE, I sometimes dread PE lessons as classes I have are a little difficult to handle, especially that I come in from the middle of the year and they have not spent enough time with me.  The P4 class that I am teaching English language continues to baffle me as I do not know how they can see the importance of taking studies seriously and continue to want to have fun and pass time, not caring if they passed or failed, not to mention to excel.

At their age and level, some of them continue not to be able to write proper sentences and use the correct tenses.  It is really a challenge trying to find ways to entice them to learn, with the short span of time we have, having to complete the many formative assessments we are supposed to.  Though my Vice-Principal has, again, affirmed that the school’s management has seen potential in me and asked me to be ready to accept bigger responsibilities / roles (who knows what?), I just feel inadequate as I am just beginning and do not have the necessary acedemic qualifications (i.e. a degree) for anything bigger that lies ahead…  ("_)

I met up with STEVEN LUM (my former collegue in the SAF) last week to borrow an IPPT stop-watch / printer and just returned it to him last night.  I got it with help from DORA and WINNIE too.  They are so nice about helping me out!  I just cannot thank my friends enough and just hope that I have the chance to help them out in the same way when the need arises…

In the same ways, I have been blessed to receive so much help and advises from my friends.  I really count myself very lucky to still be able to call friends whom I have not constantly kept in touch with and talk to them like we’ve not spent long periods living our own lives.  Thank you, all my valued friends!

I just met up with a good buddy of mine too.  I got to know from him that he got into some kind of problems with one of the students in his stint.  I shall not elaborate more until more developments of the case is settled and hope that everything will be alright for him.  I sincerely hope that things will turn out just fine…