11 Aug 2013 - All about PLANTS

This semester, the childcare centre's curriculum is All about Plants.  No wonder Jerlene started to recognize many different types of flowers every time we were outside.  At home she also started to draw the different types flowers.  When I ask her to list down all the flowers that she knows, I am surprised that the list is pretty long:  Rose, Morning Glory, Sunflower, Ixora, Bougainvillea, Tulips, Daffodil, Daisy, Chrysanthemum, Water Lily, Water Lotus, Hibiscus etc etc.  Some of them I never even heard of....for eg. Lily of the Valley and Snowdrops.  Initially I thought maybe she only knows the names.  So I started asking her what's their characteristics such as colors and shapes and she actually got all of them correct.  I had to search on the internet to verify what she said.

Since she's interested with plants now, I decided to let her experience planting green beans at home.  Within a day, the roots of the green beans started appearing.  She diligently watered the beans whenever she felt the cotton wool started to turn dry.  Let's see if the beans are able to grow.

10 Aug 2013 - "Make-up" trip to Legoland

If you remember, our previous trip to Legoland almost "failed" as we were caught in the massive jam.  We spent 3 hours on the road and the kids only got to play for 1.5 hours.  As such, we decided to make it up by bringing them there again.  The journey was extremely smooth this time round.  We left home at about 2pm and reached there before 3pm.  We did not tell the kids where we were going initially and they fell asleep in the car.  When they woke up, they were overjoyed as they realized we were at their "dreamland".

As usual, they went straight to their favourite spot, the shipyard playground.  In October this year, Legoland Water Park will be opened.  We had a quick glimpse of the water park from Legoland theme park.

We also saw the Legoland Hotel which will be completed next year.  The exterior seems to have been fully constructed.

We then went to another playground made up by wooden structure.  These playgrounds are my childhood dream but I never had a chance to play in it.  Really envy the kids nowadays........

As we took out the park map, we suddenly realized that there is an area which we had totally missed out from all our past visits.  It's the Lego Technic zone.  Jerlene and mommy enjoyed the Twister ride, similar to the usual teacup rides in other them parks, except that this one seems a lot FASTER.

We then went for the new 4D movie, Legend of Chima.  In the evening, Lego characters started to appear around the parks to take photos with visitors.

By 7:30pm, most of the rides started to close and we slowly walked towards the park exit.  Javier was very tired after a whole afternoon of running around and kept asking to go home.  Jerlene on the other hand was still full of energy and wanted to play more if possible.  We are now considering whether we should renew our annual passes, which will expire by end of this year.

9 Aug 2013 - 48th National Day

Happy 48th birthday to Singapore!  From afar, we saw three "Super Puma" pulling a gigantic flag across the parade ground at the Marina Bay floating platform.

 We were also able to see some of the aerial display from our roof terrace.

6 Aug 2013 - Stress ends today! P1 Balloting Successful!

For those primary schools which are oversubscribed for phase 2C registration, balloting will be conducted today.  As I've mentioned in my earlier post, I decided not to be present as I thought it's all fated.  :-)

Balloting for Rosyth School started at 9am this morning.  We tried calling the school after 10am on the outcome but nobody answered.  The website did not post the outcome until 5pm.  We were overjoyed when we saw Jerlene's name on the list.  In fact, she's the 2nd one who got picked out of the 120 applicants. Furthermore, her Ballot ID is 88 (发发).  Perhaps I should buy 4D with number 0288.  :-)

Below are some stats compiled by Kiasu Parents website.  It shows that Rosyth is the third most oversubscribed school.  So we were really fortunate to be successful in the balloting.  

Now we are really relieved and need not have to worry when it's Javier's turn two years later.  Yay!

1 Aug 2013 - Primary One Registration for Phase 2C ends today

Primary 1 registration for Phase 2C ended today.  There are a total of 120 applications "fighting" for the remaining 31 vacancies for Rosyth School.  In other words, the odds for the balloting will be 1 out of 4.  Balloting will be conducted in the school on 6 August.  I believe most parents will be very eager to witness the actual balloting process but for me, I'm still considering whether to be present.  I'm thinking it's all fated and the result will be the same whether I'm present during the balloting or not.  Well.....keeping my fingers crossed.......

29 July 2013 - Primary One Registration

Time flies and Jerlene will be going to primary school next year.  Primary One registration for 2014 intake had started few weeks back for Phase 1, Phase 2A1, 2A2 and 2B.  Jerlene is only eligible for Phase 2C which starts today.  We actually applied for parent volunteers to Rosyth School, which is the nearest school from our place, two years back but got rejected.  After Phase 2B, the number of vacancies left is 31, out of the total 300.

There have been hot debates about the registration criteria for the first few phases, especially phase 2A and 2B, whereby children are given higher priority if their parents have some form of connections to the school, either through clans, parent volunteers or alumni.  In fact most of these children do not stay near to the school and it deprives the chance for those who stayed just next to the school.  This has been happening year after year and nothing got changed after tons of feedback from parents.  Now I am one of those parents who just have to take the slim chance and go through balloting for a school that is nearest to our place.

As at today, there were 93 application for the remaining 31 vacancies.  As the registration still have 3 days to go, very likely the number of application will go beyond 100.  Anyway, all I can do now is to pray, and at the same time, we are also planning for contingency.

28 July 2013 - Javier trying to drink water from cooler machine

During our visit to the airport, Javier tried to operate the water cooler machine.  The machine was actually operated by sensor which Javier did not realize.  It was so funny to see him trying different ways and angles to get water out of the machine.  And when it worked at times, he was so comical trying to stick out his tongue to have a taste of the water.  Haha........see for yourself.......

28 July 2013 - Singkids Playsystem at T3

Since both my angels did not play enough in Legoland yesterday, we decided to make it up by bringing them to some place where they will enjoy today.  When I asked if they wanted to go airport, both of them exclaimed:"Yes, yes, yes......we want to go Disneyland!".  Daddy:"............."

When we reached Terminal 3, Jerlene and Javier started "choosing" their lunch on a food directory.  Butter Studio was what they had chosen and we had cupcakes for lunch.  Next to it is an indoor playground, SingKids PlaySystem.  Initially, we thought of buying an hour admission tickets for them to enjoy but after weighing the benefits of buying in large quantity, I decided to buy a bulk of 16 tickets.  These tickets allow us to share among any number of kids.  The playtime is 2 hours instead of the usual 1 hour.  Validity period is one year.  Furthermore I had a further 10% discount with my pass.  Once Jerlene and Javier entered the playground, they totally forgot about daddy and mommy.  We told them that we will be going away for a while and come back later, they just said ok and continue playing.......sigh.......  Anyway, they happy I happy.

Two hours had passed and it's time to pick up the kids.  As they still did not feel like going home, we went to the Slide at T3 where Jerlene and Javier had another round of "happy hour" sliding down.

We wrapped up the day by taking the SkyTrain to Terminal 1 to view the Kinetic Sculpture whereby over a thousand copper raindrops dance through the air with precisely choreographed movements.

27 July 2013 - Night at Legoland

We received newsletter from Legoland regularly and in the latest newsletter, it mentioned that Legoland will extend its opening hours till 10pm on every Fri, Sat and Sun for a limited period of time.  As such we decided to go there late afternoon today, hoping that the traffic will be smooth and there will be lesser crowd in the park.  However, things did not turn out to be what we had expected.  We left home at about 4:30pm and were expecting to reach Legoland no later than 6pm.  And guess what, we were caught in a massive jam at both Tuas Checkpoint as well as Malaysian custom for more than 2 hours.  Eventually we reached Legoland at about 7:30pm.  Sigh......we spent 3 hours on the road and only got to play 1.5 hours in the park.  When we asked the kids what do they want to play, they simultaneously said "PLAYGROUND"!  Sigh....we come so far just to go to a playground?!?!??  Anyway, as long as they are happy, I'm ok.

By about 9pm, the park staff started to tell all visitors that the park is going to close.  In fact, most rides will stop operating at 9pm.  We quickly went to the horse ride and fortunately managed to catch the very last ride before it closed.

The mini structures built from millions of Lego blocks look great at night with all the lighting.

Jerlene and Javier did not play enough but no choice, we gotta leave the park.  We will probably come back again real soon.

22 July 2013 - Cycling in the park

It has been quite a while since we last visited a park.  Today we decided to bring the kids to Sengkang Riverside Park to cycle and fly kite.  We had recently bought a bicycle each for Jerlene and Javier.  So far they had been cycling along the corridor outside our house.  This is the first time for them to cycle in a big open space.  They really enjoyed it.

In the meantime, Tracy and I were busy trying to get our new kite up and flying.  This kite is much bigger than all our previous ones and it seems like bigger kite is easier to fly high..........

We left the park just before the sky turned dark.  We all had a wonderful time and should probably do this more often.

20 July 2013 - Removal of stitches

It have been a week since Javier fell and it's time to remove the stitches.  As any GP can do it, we decided to go to the clinic opposite our place.  The removal procedures looked simple and easy.  I can probably do it myself if I have those surgical scissors and pincers.

Here is a closer look at the wound after the stitches had been removed.  The doctor said that most likely there will be a scar.

He recommends to apply scar cream (strataderm) on it, which will help to lighten it.  Tracy happened to have one when she last visited the doctor for insect bites, which also left some scars on her leg.

13 July 2013 - Closer look at the stitches

The stitches on Javier's forehead can only be removed after a week.  From now till then, we had to apply an antiseptic cream on the wound three times daily.  I decided not to let Javier go to childcare for this week as I'm afraid the other children will accidentally injure his wound again.

Here is a closer look at the stitches.

Javier seems to have forgotten about the entire incident because he still continue to run around the house.  All of us were busy stopping him........sigh.........kids are kids.

12 July 2013 - Poor Javier with forehead laceration = 5 stitches

Tonight while we were watching TV, we suddenly heard a loud "bang" coming from outside of our room.  It was followed by Javier's cry and my helper's scream!  We quickly ran out to see what happened and OMG, Javier's face was covered with blood!!!  Everybody was too panic to figure out what to do next.  I quickly carried Javier to the sofa and let him lie down while I try to clean up the blood to see where's the wound.  It was on his forehead.  I then use a sterile gauze and pressed it softly on the wound to stop the bleeding.  We decided to bring Javier to KK hospital A&E for further treatment.  As we were leaving our house, Javier suddenly said he wanted to change clothes because there were blood stains on it.  As we wanted to hurry to the hospital, we told him don't need but he INSISTED!  Sigh.....is this called "Ai Sui Mai Mia" (爱美不要命)?  In the picture below, you can still see some blood stains on Javier's face.

The triage area was packed with people but after registration, we got to see the doctor almost immediately.  Once the doctor saw the wound, he said that it definitely requires stitching.  We followed the nurse to another room where she applied a so called "Magic Cream" on Javier's wound.  The cream is cold but it will cause the area around the wound to get numbed in half an hour's time.  Before the stitching started, the doctor actually asked us whether we were afraid of blood.  I went in with Javier to the operation room because Tracy definitely cannot make it.  She has phobia with blood.  The doctor said that he had encountered some parents who actually fainted after seeing the blood.......  The cream was really effective and Javier did not cry throughout the entire stitching procedures.  In the end, he even received a Bravery Award certificate.

By the time we reached home, it was about 1am.

2 July 2013 - Like sister, like brother

This morning when I woke up, I saw both Jerlene and Javier sleeping in exactly the same position.  I found it cute so took a picture of it.  :-)

1 July 2013 - Hong Kong and Kuantan 2013 Trip Summary (in "Gangnam Style")

I know this production is much delayed......but better be late than never, right?  :-)

This may not be as "professionally" done as the previous Perth Trip video, I think it's good enough to share.....  Hope you'll enjoy it.