A Night Out

First Date...

My husband and I haven’t been on a date for at least three and a half year, since Malakai was born.  Although we have trained our kids to be in bed, in their rooms, by 7 pm, we would never leave the boys at home without an adult present.  We have been quite content with our plenty of movie nights, 3-course-dinner nights, and game nights, always done at home.  (It is cheaper too!)

Staying at our parents’ home during this trip clearly has its advantages.   Not just we simply always wake up with a banquet of our favorite childhood food laid out on the table; we also get to sneak out at night after our children’s bed time.  Most of the times, all we do are just errands and supermarket grocery shopping.  Tonight, we decided to pass shopping for milk and go to the movies instead.
It is our first movie day out in a really long time, and we were behaving like giddy high-school-ers on a movie date: taking photos of ourselves and giggling all the time.

Prince of Persia is obviously not a romantic movie, but I would never really go for mushy romantics or dramas in cinemas.  For me, why not make most of the big screen and the sound system by watching some action packed movie with hot actors?!

Bukit Sion Playgroup

Amazing 3 year olds...
During our visit, we are very privileged to be able to take Malakai to attend a week of playgroup run by a  National Plus school called Bukit Sion in Kebon Jeruk, Jakarta.

We find the two and a half hours a day, five days a week playgroup was excellent.  The teachers are well versed and delivered instructions to the children in English.   The programs were well prepared to keep 3 year olds busy, interested, and develop their various skills.  The children who had been attending the program from the start of the school year are very engaged in the activities and I was amazed to witness three year olds recite prayers, songs, and dance routine.   They have a small indoor playcentre area for the kids to play in during their day, and once a week, they have swimming session at the school’s undercover pool.   Even more amazing was seeing the 3 years old children recite, trace and write letters of the alphabet!

There I was, accompanying with my son in the classroom as he tries to settle into this new learning environment.   I shrunk in awe watching all this amazing studying process around me, so much a child could accomplish at 3 years old if given the training.   A week ago, I was so proud with my homeschooling methods for my son, and now I realise that I have achieved very little compared to this standard. 

   

Glenn Doman Method

Can Toddlers Count?

I was very intrigued watching my cousin flash a set of cards to her 15 months old daughter with a very fast speed. “Flash”-card, she explained that each card is meant to be shown for only one second.  I have never seen anyone uses flashcards this way, and so she introduced me to the Glenn Doman method.

This teaching method, which was initially developed to help brain damaged children, apparently helps normal babies and toddlers to read and count. 

For counting, Glenn Doman also has methods to teach numbers and equation to babies and toddlers using flashcards only consisting of red dots.  This will help the child to relate the number to the amount- not the symbol.  I was certainly very intrigued by this method and went to research more about it.   The key method here is, apart from having the correct materials (which you can make yourself following the recommended specifications) is consistency.  As parents we will have to make time to plan the activity and flash these cards three times a day as part of a play routine for children under the age of 3.

One of the testimonials wrote:
Infants, up to age 2-1/2 years, have the amazing ability to instantly recognize quantities (or dots). An infant can recognize the difference between 78 and 79 dots (or whatever) and point it out to you. Not only that, this amazing ability can be used to teach math. The dot quantities can be shown to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. These children grow up with this ability to instantly do math and the instant quantities. The ability to instantly see how many cows are in a field or birds are flying together in a flock once existed in all of us; we just never had this ability exercised when we were very young. It only takes a few seconds to do an exercise so you only spend about a minute a day showing your infant or toddler. This truly is amazing and a great lifetime gift for your child.


So here I am, with a set of stock cards with red dots on it.  Ready to try them on my bouncy 19 months old boys.  I hope they will be interested... and I hope I can be consistent...

Flying with Toddlers

The First Flight...

This is the day.  For the first time, our family got on the plane together.  The last time we planned a short plane trip didn’t quite work out as our little Niel got sick with Kawasaki.  This time, praise God, all is well, and we are returning to attend my brother’s wedding celebration.   I can remember my anxiousness for this trip a week ago.  How will we manage?  I can’t keep my kids to sit still during a one and a half hours of church service, let alone a seven hours daytime flight.

We have selected to fly Garuda direct flight from Melbourne to Jakarta.  That means no transiting time to worry about, we don’t have to worry about changing planes, taking our luggage out, and worry on how to get our 3 children moving together in the airport without strollers.  Purchased our tickets online through zuji.com.au, and everything was in order.

I have packed little containers of cheerios, sultanas, almonds, apple chips, and plain dry biscuits. I’ve got little boxes of UHT milk, little boxes of juice, bananas, and apples for snack.  I hope those will keep my younger two busy.  For my preschooler, I got sticker books, colouring and dot-to-dot activity book with coloured markers, and a couple of toy cars.  These should keep everybody busy, I thought.  But nothing beats a new toy. 

All my three boys were fully engrossed with the little inflight touch screen entertainment monitor and its joystick on a spring back cable.  Ethan and Niel enjoyed touching all the icons and waited to see what will happen.   Malakai was very impressed with the inflight toilet flush system.  He spends a lot of his time visiting the toilet and watch the device sprinkle a bit of water, and suddenly with a big whooshing sound, the valve in the bottom of the cistern flung open and sucked everything into it, and closes back. All is quiet again. All is dry. 

Our first plane trip together.  Not as scary as I imagined it to be.  No screaming drama of kids rolling on the aisle.  No plane food were thrown and smeared all over the seats.  We were ok.  Phew…!  Hope we are as lucky on the overnight flight home.

About me...

Ten years ago, if you were to tell me that I will be a stay-at-home mum running after three children in a suburb, I would slap you in the face.  I was all for travelling and adventures, I was a cosmopolitan girl, I was a Web and Graphic Designer, and I would never spend time with children more than two hours a week, let alone entertaining children under 5 years old.    I even told my parents that they should not dream of having grandchildren from me, as it would only be wishful thinking.

That was me then, but here I am now. For the past three years, I have left my career, and am now a proud full time Mum raising my little M.E.N. (acronym of my boys’ name: Malakai, Ethan, Niel).

Still in the process of learning on the dos and don’ts of parenting- while striving to balance life between my children and my various interests in life.  I am not sure how I find time to blog, I suppose by neglecting a bit of housework now and then wouldn’t hurt anyone. :p   

One day, I would really love to run a business and work from home close to my children.   I am still in a motherhood survival mode, so until I am a thriving Mum, I am simply a wannabe blogger and a self-professed internet geek.

So, as a geek, I really should spruce up my blog site.  That will be my next project.  For now, I am focusing on the holidays I am about to have.

Holiday Plans

Martin and I are very excited to visit the country we both grew up in.  It has been a long while since we’ve left, and we are keen to return and see our family and friends once again.  We reminisce on the fond memories of family members gather from dawn till dusk around banquet of food laid out on the table since breakfast time.  I can’t wait to sink my teeth into old favorite childhood food of chicken satays, fried gurame, salted fish, chunky chicken noodles, lemper, pepes peda, and the lot. 
There were only the two of us when we left six years ago, now we are coming back as a family of five.

Mmmm, how do we manage on the 7 hours plane trip with a 3 years old, and two 1.5 years old toddlers?

About Blogging

When I was a little girl, I have always kept a diary until half-way into Uni.  I would write about anything, from movies that I saw, the dreams I remembered from the night before, to silly crushes I would have for boys who knows have a band, have long hair, races motorbikes, or can speed drive cars through traffic.  I had many interests and hobbies then, from drawing, sewing, teaching Sunday School, movies and animation, I would memorise phrases from the cartoons I watched. 

Then I grew up.  Journaling seems more of a handicap, as it documents information about myself that I may not want others to know about me.  But I have a very soft spot for my memories, embarrassing as they were, and still keep all the diaries I wrote from when I was 9 years old.  I have vowed to burn them the next time I go to mother’s house (hopefully soon!).

Now blogging comes along, and I loved the idea of getting back to put my thoughts down.  Worst than diaries, this is published to the net and is public.  Yet, I have been using my complete full name.  How silly of me.  I will certainly fix this, as I have just realize this now.

Then there is blogging, and there is good blogging.  One that is informative, gets traffics from visitors, and even ones that makes money.  There is certainly an art of writing good blogs, which I am not quite there yet.  In the past year, I have created three different blog sites for different purposes, but the others are not working out too well. 

I enjoyed this one the most, as this is my personal-journey blog.  When all is asleep, I would try to spend some time researching the net or blogging to unwind (I should also fit in time to finish my studies, but that is certainly not to unwind).  So I apologise for jumping all over the place with my blogging topics.
It takes a while for a new blogger to get a hang of where they want the blogs to go.  

Distance Learning

Back to School

I opened my e-mail-box few days ago to find a ‘gentle reminder that my assignments are due’ sent from my Student Adviser.
I have a Student Adviser? Apparently I do. Few months back, six months back to be exact, I have enrolled myself to a distance-learning program. I am not so sure if it was such a good decision, as if I do not have enough on my plate!
Yeah, but I am a nerd at heart.
Another year… or two… or four if I am very distracted, of studying and assignment nights wouldn’t hurt anyone much would it?

I do not know what had gotten into me at that time, I wanted to learn something new.
As always, predictable me: I choose something new, something not me, something that I have no previous interest in.
I started out getting a degree in Graphic Design, and then I went on to get another one in IT - which is so different to my artsy-nature. I sometimes think IT killed the creative in me.
So this time, I am getting my teeth into a bit of bookkeeping and MYOB.
Everybody could always use some knowledge in bookkeeping right?

So here I am, after six months into the course, handing in my very first basic bookkeeping essay assignment. One down. Eleven more to go!
Who knows, it may be my prep to get me back to work later, or even start my own business! :)