Irregular school attendance

13 Nov 07

After attending class for 2 days, Kaikai was down with sickness for more than a week. Today is his third class. Papa took 2 hours off to send him to school. Xuanxuan was sick on 29 Oct 07 as well (same day as Kaikai) but she recovered pretty fast yet Kaikai took so long. Sigh!!

I was told that, Kaikai refused to stay alone so 婆婆 has to sit at one side of the classroom while Kaikai played happily.

婆婆said Kaikai was the smallest size among all children in his class. Mommy agreed with the comment after seeing a few of his classmates. Kaikai appeared even “smaller” after his sickness. Now he refused to drink milk, everyone has tried all means to make his golden mouth open, took a sip on his milk. Last night, Kaikai slept without drinking his milk and he reacted the same way tonight. So mommy took out one of the “playdough” set mommy has bought earlier to interest him. He was totally engrossed with using roller, cutter and scissors to cut dough. This was when mommy slowly fed him with milk cereal. Sigh… what a difficult task, more tiring than work. Why he was such a fussy eater…..:(


14 Nov 07

Mommy took half day leave to company Kaikai to school. It was raining heavily so there were only two kids (Kaikai and a little girl named Joanna). Teacher Joyce was on MC so another teacher took over the class. Kaikai refused to let mommy go for the first one hour. So mommy hang around there for a while. When he was more settled down, mommy told him she went out for a while and he said ok. So mommy went outside waiting for him. By the time kai was released from school he was all smile. Hope tomorrow would be a good day too. keeping fingers cross....

Wedding Day N Dinner

11 Nov 07 was mommy cousin’s （建才）wedding. So whole day we hang around 婆婆’s house. Kaikai and Xuanxuan were handsomely and prettily dressed up for the day (tea-ceremony) and evening. I even got a stocking for Xuan heee... so far so good, she has no complaint.

I forgot to bring camera so I didn’t capture any day photo but I managed to capture a few night photo of Kaikai and Xuanxuan. Xuanxuan was fascinated by the balloon and she kept stretching out her two little hands to catch them. I thought my little girl would be scared by the big crowd (xuanxaun 怕生), surprising, she was all smiles and cheery, “shouting” out to people. She didn’t give us any headaches. I’m pleased with her performance

凯凯's first day in a formal playgroup

Picture of Kaikai's first formal school bag and water bottle.
Zekai’s first day in a formal playgroup. Mommy took one day leave to bring Kaikai to playgroup and oriented 婆婆 on the school environment.

Normally Kaikai would sleep until 9.30am and on this special day he has to wake up at 7.45am. A big change to his sleeping time. We spent 30mins to get his off his yaolan then fed him milk and finally dressed him up. Kaikai refused to wear uniform. 婆婆 and mommy managed to get him in his full set of uniform and we thought “work done”, who know, he pulled his pant down and wanted to wear his casual pant. That was around 8.45am and class supposed to start at 8.45am (supposed to be 8am if we wanted him to have breakfast at playgroup but 8.45am if he has breakfast at home. We chose to feed him at home).

Pictures of Kaikai dressing up in his formal uniform, the very first uniform in his life. Mommy must captured all these wonderful memories and showed him when he was older.

Finally mommy, 婆婆and a happy Kaikai went for his school.

Kaikai’s form teacher was called Ms Joyce Lee and Chinese teacher was 李老师 (same surname that’s why婆婆was confused). Teacher Joyce briefed mommy the admin procedure, course curriculum and communication mode. The class started with only 4 children, including KaiKai. It supposed to have 8 of them but teacher Joyce said at playgroup level a lot of the children did not have 100% class attendance and especially in Nov and Dec when it was a holiday season.

Mommy felt that this was a good time to get Kaikai familiar with the place and teacher could spend more time with him since there were lesser children. By next year in N1, there would be 12 children to 1 teacher and I believed at that time teacher might not have that much of time to spend with Kaikai. So choosing to enroll Kaikai at this time was still a good choice.

The whole session goes on well.

1 Kaikai started with playing “outdoor”, then they shift to his playgroup classroom,
2 Teacher Joyce play nursery rhythms, play toys, asked children to pack toys
3 Drinking water time. All 4 children including Teacher Joyce would sit around the table and drink water from the water bottle. Kaikai who normally does not like to drink water follow what other children were doing.
4 李老师 bring out play dough and all 4 children sit around table and start cutting dough

Throughout the session, mommy sat quietly and observed, Kaikai did look at mommy occasionally for assurance and will start playing again.

While playing dough, mommy pretends to go toilet and let Kaiaki stayed with the teacher after telling him. When mommy was back, teacher said Kaikai was doing very well; he sat there quietly cutting his dough. Mommy was pleaseJ))

5 around 10.15pm, teacher Joyce come in again
6 She let the children played toys while checking their diaper
7 Mommy again informs Kaikai she needs to go out. Mommy stayed outdoor till 10.45pm. When mommy walked in, she saw a cute little kaikai, carried a water bottle across his shoulder while another hand dragging his school bag which is about half of his size saying” 回家咯“ give me a shy smile when he saw me.

Teacher Joyce said Kaikai just gave her a hug. One of the little boy “Rayson” thot I was a teacher, asked me to help him to carry bag and hug me. So I gave him a hug as well with Kaikai starring at me with wide eye.

Overall, I’m happy and proud of Kaikai for his performance on his first day. There was no tear but all smile. I hope this will continue. Next week will be a challenging week as Kaikai will be all alone… I will have to keep my finger cross.

P/s : I only saw three out of seven classmates. Out of this three, one is very active, and he pushed Kaikai twice pretty hard while Teacher Joyce was busy. Kaikai looked at me but when I give him an encouraging smile, he was happy again and walked away. Hope the other four classmates would be good to Kaikai as well.

Impact of demolition work

Ever since the demolition work near my mum’s place commenced, Kaikai has been imitating the project with whatever he can got hold of. He will raise his voice as if it was a machine “ Ennnnn king kong king kong…..ennnnn king kong king kong”.

Meanwhile baby Xuanxuan watching her brother with great interest and would follow suit and made loud noise….. wowowo so noisyyyyyy.

another random updates

10 Oct 07

My Off day :I took one day leave today to take care of the two darling as 婆婆（mum) was not free. As usual, I brought them to library, they loved being there. Especially Kaikai, we have been telling him to lower his voice when he was in library, so when we reached library, he would put his forefinger on his lip and say shhhhhh.....

9 Oct 07

Xuanxuan’s porridge :We have tried feeding xuanxuan with porridge in Aug but not very successful. So we waited her to reach seven month and tried again. Think she is not really for it yet as she kept pushing porride away and “blow” it all over her face.

Xuanxuan’s Walker

Papa went IMM and got Xuanxuan a walker. We have been looking for a suitable walker for Xuanxaun 2 weeks ago. After comparison we found that this walker was still the best among all. The only thing Mommy didn’t really like was the colour… they did not have pink colour. But this was a small issue, importantly, Xuanxuan love this very much.

First class at BJG

Kaikai went for his first Baby Jumper Gym class this morning. This morning we have to spend spme time waking up KaiKai for his first class which started at 9am (Kaikai slept at 1pm the night before). Mommy told Kaikai “time to go school” .Kaikai has a beautiful picture of what school was (mommy has been brainwashing Kaikai since weeks ago, hopefully KaiKai will love going to school). Who knows, this little boy said 不要. After trying a few times, finally Kaikai was awake and immediately he looked for 妹妹.

After feeding, washing and changing, Papa drove mommy, Kaikai and Xuanxuan to Baby Jumper Gym located at HomeTeamNS Bukit Batok Clubhouse.

Today’s topic was “School”. Kaikai was familiar with this topic。

1 So Kaikai read happily with the teacher and “read” loudly when teacher read those words his was familiar with. When he saw familiar items such as colour pencils, crayons, he would said “画画, drawing”; when his saw school bag, he would read “bag”, followed by “一样，一样” because he has one at home.
2 When one kid threw plastic clip on the floor, Kaikai picked it up and gave the teacher. Teacher said “Thank you”. Kaikai was so happy and proud. Yes, he was proud. He turned and looked at me with a big smile, then run to hug me.
3 Kaikai would queue up to collect things from teacher. Sometime when he waited too long since teacher attended to other children first, he would look at mommy and want to come back (he thot teacher forget him). But mommy would signal to him and ask him to wait. Finally, Kaikai collected his item, he would run to mommy with a smile again.

Next was Science session, Kaikai was introduced the term “absorption”. Every child was given some tools to play with.

Finally was the “Gym” session where all children were brought to the indoor playground. Kaikai love this most, he was able to recognize the route to this room independently. After the session, we even stayed for another 20 mins for Kaikai to play around.

As this was the first class, it may be too early for me to conclude. But my comment was, Kaikai might not learnt much academically, but, he learnt to socialize, queue up, follow instruction and it helped to develop his courage and teach him to be independent. Mommy was there to watch and guide him along. Hopefully by the time he joined playgroup and all on his own, his would be able to adjust better and faster.