My exploration in life… (diary for baby!)

Other than Physcal Education and English language, I teach Health Education in school as well.  In the syllabus, we talk about students physical and mental growth, etc.  Dental health is one of the topics I talk about.

I haven’t been taking too care of my own teeth really.  The last time I went for treatment of teeth?  Think it was in primary school…  So I thought it was high time I went to get my teeth looked at.  When YEN booked an appointment to visit the dentist during her leave last week, I asked her to get me an appointment too.

I visited her dental clinic on Thursday.  To my surprise, the dentist turned out to be an ex-secondary school classmate, whom I had not kept in contact with for years, ANGELA KHOO.  Wow, talk about how small Singapore is, sometimes.  It was nice speaking to her after all these while.

I did some "community service" on Friday before the last and on the past Monday.  I did it with a non-government organisation called HOME (Human Organisation for Migration Economics).  It was an eye-opener, really.  I helped to input quite a few past case sheets onto their excel sheet and saw the plight of quite a few foreign workers who had came overseas to work.

The problems ranged from simple homesickness to great misdeeds done to them like verbal and physical abuse (by employers and even their children!), violence and one to the extreme of getting raped and even bearing the child of the rapist.  It had reminded me that these foreign workers (construction works or domestic helpers) are also human beings.  Their being away from home because of circumstances made me feel so sorry for them and we could help them by being kind to the and making them feel at home…

I received a first Fathers’ Day gift from RACHEL without the help of YEN.  I love the picture YEN took with RACHEL last Fathers’ Day, and love this one made by RACHEL’s play-school and her (though I think she had a minimal part to play in its making).  =)

FELIX has been reaching his milestones of growth slowly, taking his time.  He is crawling okay, grabbing things (he has a tight grip).  He is learning how to stand and we are teaching him how to walk.  He i an adorable, handsome boy when he smiles, but totally scary when he cries.

After she attended play-school, there has been slight improvement in her responding to things around her.  She seems to understand more of what we are saying to her.  Though she is still a little cranky when she wakes up, she is silent most of the way to play-school and cries only a little when we drop her off.  She is able to jump a little too!  She gave us a scare early this week when she held on to two coins (one ten cent and one five cent).

I just lost sight of her for a few seconds, only to find the ten-cent coin in her mouth (which YEN managed to get it out of her), and the other one missing.  We searched high and low for it, but were not albe to retrieve it.  We suspect she swallowed it.  We observed her overnight and lucikly, she slept well, was able to swallow other food and wter, and seemed nothing seemed abnormal too.  We haven’t found the coin in her stool.  It remains a mystery where the coin went to…

The family visited the zoo on Tuesday morning for half a day.  The weather was good, though there was a strong hint of rain which did not materialise at the end of our walk.  I had always been apprehensive about bringing our children there as I had doubted they would enjoy it too much, much less remember the day for the rest of their lives.  Still, at YEN’s insistance that we break out of the norm, we went ahead.

I must say that I’m glad we did!  Though I still doubt they’ll remember too much of it, at least it didn’t seem that the trip did our children any harm!  FELIX was clueless, I think, about the trip as he enjoyed the scenery and the greens from his pram.  RACHEL wanted to be carried around for much of the trip, and enjoyed the stops that we made by her prancing around.

I think she did appreciate the animals as she went "wah" at the majesty of them, for most of the animals we stopped at.  I think he enjoyed the polar bears, nevermind that she couldn’t understand what the announcer said.  She waved back when the mother bear waved towards the audience.  If only I had caught that on camera!

Although the school holidays have begun for more than a week already, today is the actual first day I get to do my own stuff, or just laze around.  Teachers still went back to school for a week of workshops, meetings or administration, and I had to go to Sentosa with a group of children yesterday.  I was among a group of about ten teachers.  You have to count me lucky as my immediate superior (my HOD) shielded me and got me off the hook in needing to attend all three days of the camp, based on the fact that I had two young children myself.

So I spent quite a bit of time catching up on lost sleep this morning until the afternoon.  You can’t actually blame me as I was exhausted after walking with them in Sentosa for almost the whole day.  We returned to school only at nearly ten o’clock last night.  I stayed on for the teachers’ debrief / students’ reflection and reached home on the stroke of midnight last night.

I wanted to accomplish much today but things didn’t go too well to plan.  However, I did a little bit of research for my work in the upcoming semester, as well as called up a volunteer organisation (or something along that line) to try get some volunteer work I have to complete for this year (school’s requirement).  Well, at least I had something going today…

I hate Barney.  I think he (it) is silly.  It probably looks that way and carry himself that way too.  Little did I know I would lose to him so thoroughly.  You see…

RACHEL had the series "POCOYO" to contend with since she was about one.  This animated ‘boy’ doesn’t really speak, and have a few good friends in a bird, an elephant, a dog and a duck.  After a while, YEN and I were quite worried about RACHEL not speaking as she was coming two years of age, and reluctantly followed the advice of my good sister, SHIRLEY.  She thought I should try BARNEY and others.

So against my wishes, I bought a few DVDs / VCDs of BARNEY AND FRIENDS and HI 5.  Sure, HI 5 wasn’t that bad.  At least they are human.  I was really against this imaginary friend (or fiend) of ours, bumping up and down with his dinosaur friends.  Still, in our hope that RACHEL would learn a thing or two watching those series.

Sure, she had learnt a few things, mostly from HI 5 (I am adamant of that!).  But from the imaginary dinosaurs?  I think not!  However, I found out how our much princess liked them when I was buying her some casual clothes at a roadside push-cart in JURONG EAST.  She held on to the BARNEY pants so tight she wouldn’t let go to pay for it.  We bought two BARNEY t-shirts and that pair of pants for her.  Sigh!  Seems like the imaginary friend (more like fiend to me) is going to take over my place in our girl’s heart.  Grrr…  =(