The weather was wonderful today! It was 15 degrees but the sun was shining bright and strong.

I took the opportunity to bring Soph out for a sun bathe! She played in the sand pit with Toby and Eli for a long long time before lunch. We spent most of the day outside. It was great fun.

They are not babies anymore!

It's so great to see them all grown up and having their own characters. What a blessing it has been to grow up together.

We're going to miss all of you. Thanks girls for being such good friends over the past few years. We promise to bring more mamee the next time we meet.

We live in NZ. My dad works in Brazil. My sis goes to Uni in Brissy. My bro just moved his family back to Singapore from Brissy last year. So, to get everyone in the same country at the same time is almost a miracle in itself!

We almost made it this time. Only person missing is Rachel, my sis.

To make full use of the occasion, my mom booked all of us in for 3 days in Bintan Lagoon Resort. Bintan, Indonesia is only an hour's ferry ride from Singapore. Very doable for short holidays for those with young children.

We had fun, even though it rained everyday! Sophie had fun at the pool and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and little Janice. Sophie hasn't seen Grandpa for a year and a half so she was really thrilled to hang out with him.

We even bumped into our distant relatives. They too were having a big family gathering – 2 grandparents, 2 kids and their other halves plus 6 grandchildren! They invited us to their villa for BBQ. I haven't seen them in ages although we are about the same age and grew up together. It was really good to catch up.

I love family holidays!

We went to Universal Studios on Monday. This is the first time in history that Singapore has its own international theme park! How exciting! It's not as big as most in other countries but I guess it's proportional to the size of our country!

Over the past few years since we've had Sophie, we've been to 3 theme parks – Hong Kong Disneyland, Movie World Gold Coast and now Universal Studios Singapore. Comparing them, I think the first two are more suitable for kids under 7 and Universal Studios is more for older kids and adults. It's probably coz Sophie was more familiar with the the disney characters and Looney Tunes characters. US only had Shrek and Madagascar. Most of the shows were quite scary too. Mostly effects and monsters.

That said, we still enjoyed it very much. There were lotsa of shows like the Shrek 4D movie, a Monster Rock Musical, Madagascar characters dancing live show (the girls enjoyed it a lot). Sophie sat on only 1 ride coz she is still not big on rides. But Skyler who's almost 3 went on the carousel, a dinosaur ride and a shrek ride with her daddy. The guys enjoyed most of the roller coaster rides. Sue and I were happy just walking, enjoying the shows and sights and hiding in air-conditioned cafes while the guys went on their rides. It was so funny how the staff told us that if we need to rest, we could sleep in the baby's changing room! Apparently some pregnant women had fainted in the queues coz it was too hot! We had to remember to drown ourselves with water throughout the day.

It was really fun to go with another family coz we could keep each other company while waiting. Even on a Monday, we spent a good amount of time in queues. I think it's going to get worse during the school holidays! For the month of May, 3 of the rides are not available so they have compensated us by giving us a $10 food voucher and $5 retail voucher.

The kiddos have all grown up! They are all in preschool and speaking like bullet trains and very expressive and their personalities are all shining through.

But when it comes to taking photos, nothing's changed. They still can't sit still and smile at the camera all at the same time.

P/s R tried to hide his face with a bag coz he was tired and wanted to sleep in the pram but James snatched it away and he got a shock!

Meet Princess Towel.

Chris, my godson turned 8 last wk! He had a Star Wars party, complete with a Darth Vader suit and lightsabers.

Sophie also wanted. So we got her a towel and she was a princess.

Sometimes I really wonder who she’s taken after Neither James nor I am so flamboyant! She’s really into dancing and shaking the bum bum now.

Kwang How tried to test and trick Sophie with the "What do cows drink?" question.

She looked at him long and hard and said "Water".

And then he asked her, "Where does milk come from?" and she said "Cows".

And I asked her "What’s a baby cow?" and she said "Calf".

She sees them everyday. She knows. But it was so funny when Kwang How tried to trick her.

This was Sophie after 10 mins at the playground. She looked like she just had a shower. Nowadays, her hair is perpetually drenched!

"Can we go to the library now, Mummy?"

Ok I tried. I tried to bring Sophie to the playground to run around. The previous trip back (May 2009), I couldn’t bring myself to go downstairs even though the playground is just below the block of flats where we live. It was just TOO HOT. But this time round, I felt so bad keeping Soph in the house. So I thought I’ll bring her early in the morning and then hop over to the library next door to cool off.

We survived about 15 mins and had to get a lime juice at the library cafe and breathe for a moment.

One of the best thing about being a mum is to dress up your own kid. It’s like having a doll!

Except that when they grow up and decide that PINK SPARKLY SHOES are the prettiest things they’ve ever seen!

Yes we have moved into the dark… no… pink… side.

We went wild at Cotton On Kids in Aus. Sophie is like a Cotton On Kids ad – almost everything she wears esp her casual stuff are from Cotton On. Well, because for 5-10 bucks I get a really decent soft t-shirt with nice prints. There’s NO WAY I can get that kinda price even here in Singapore. Esp not for trendy prints and designs and most importantly, soft.

In the end, we made a compromise. The shoes were 2 pairs for AUS$15 so she got to choose the sparkly pink ones and we chose an understated match everything super practical black pair for everyday use (I wanted blue patent coz I love patent but James says matte black. Alright… )

On a side note, one of the things I love about coming home is looking through all the stuff that we left behind. It’s like Christmas all over again – oh! I didn’t know I had this/that?. Anyways I found this lovely trendy blue jacket in Sophie’s size and thought that my PILs got them for her BUT then I found out that it belongs to James! And his mum made them! Oh my! They are SO CUTE! Vintage some more… must keep must keep.

As mentioned in the previous post, I had in mind a daily plan but as I implemented it, I decided to improvise and added daily chores into our early morning routine.

Now that we do not have to rush out of the house for classes/meetings in the morning, it gave us some time to do some chores like washing the dishes, cleaning the house etc. At first I was doing it by myself but then I thought "Sophie can wash dishes!" so I got her to help and she’s amazing! Over those couple of days, she helped to wash up our breakfast and lunch dishes, with some supervision from me. Of course she uses too much detergent, figures out that putting a spoon under the tap makes a fountain and that squeezing lotsa soap makes it all the more fun and she leaves the water running BUT BUT overall, she gets the job done! While she does that, I can wipe the dishes and put them away! So so cool! Best part is she enjoys it! It’s a bit stressful for me I must admit at times when she handles the glass plates but I’m thankful she’s rather careful.

When we are done, we try to do one chore a day e.g. vacuuming/cleaning the windows. I try to assign her something that she can do like spraying soap and water and cleaning tables or silly things like wipe the doors. While I do the real work. Of course she doesn’t really know she’s not doing much but she loves it!

I hope we can keep this going because I doubt we’ll ever have a maid in our lifetime and I’m hoping if we start young, she’ll see that doing chores is what a family does together and not something that only mum does or a kid must be given a reward/paid to do it. Also I’m really hoping that she’ll be a good help when baby comes along. Hopefully the novelty doesn’t wear out! Will let you know

I like Charlotte Mason’s homeschooling philosophy but I don’t think I have fully grasped the fullness of it yet. This is how the Simply Charlotte Mason website describes it: – "A method of education popular with homeschoolers in which children are taught as whole persons through a wide range of interesting living books, firsthand experiences, and good habits."

There are essentially 3 parts to the education she prescribes – living books, experiences and good habits.

Living books are books that are usually stories written by an author with a passion for the subject and the subject comes alive. For example, Sophie has a book called "The Little Rabbit" (It is part of the Before Five In A Row reading list. She’s almost read it to death! The edges are bent and slightly torn.) It’s a story about how a little girl’s pet bunny gives birth and the life of the bunny. It’s a really simple story but the pictures are real photos. From it, one can learn about the life cycle of a rabbit, differentiate a pet bunny from a wild bunny, know what rabbits eat etc. It’s not a dry textbook or encyclopedia. Sophie loves encyclopedia type books as well but reading living books triggers her love to know more and understand more. 

Experiences – Charlotte Mason believed in providing a child with real life experiences. Reading from a book is not enough. Experiencing nature and culture is also needed. Sophie gets that a lot here but not sure how to fully implement that when we return for good to Singapore.

Lastly, teaching good habits - I’ve not figured out how to incorporate this fully into our lives yet but we’re getting there. Charlotte Mason has a whole list of how to do this and it’s a pretty hard read and almost seem archaic. BUT BUT so much truth to it. Just needs real discipling and vision to implement it.

Well, we’re starting somewhere. Not every book we have in the house is a living book but we pay a lot of attention to the kind of books Sophie reads. The Sonlight P3/4 books that we bought somewhat subscribes to the Charlotte Mason philosophy but in comparison, I much prefer the Five In A Row books and manual. There are some stories in the Sonlight books that are repetitive (e.g. the Fairy Tales) and Fairy tales, I find, are rather gruesome! E.g. stomping giants, ugly witches and magic potions etc.

Nonetheless, for this season, we’re reading Fairy Tales, for exposure sake. It’s quite fun re-reading these stories for myself too! Just to share some stuff that we’ve been doing with these stories: -

Jack & The Beanstalk

We painted some plants and planted some herbs. I meant to do a little booklet with Sophie about parts of a plant and life cycle of a plant but the internet failed on me so didn’t manage to get materials in time.

Sleeping Beauty

We made a castle out of a tissue box, toilet rolls and egg carton. I sewed a pillow for "sleeping beauty". Took out the lovely princess dress up cut outs that Steph gave Sophie for her birthday last year and she played dress up with them for a bit.