I survived!

Yay – I’m back! To the good old days of blogging again. Ok, I guessed I won’t really spend too much time writing about ‘past tense’ stuffs here. If not, I won’t be getting anyway near ‘present tense’. Unless for those things that I felt are really important for my own records.

Ok, I really wanted to blog about this because it will motivate me later, when the going gets tough again – even though it’s a past tense. Ah well, we normally blog about past tense yes? If it has not happened, then how to blog? Ok ok, let me clarify. I have a habit of blogging about really old stuffs and back-dating them. So I will minimize them starting now, in order for me to keep going.

This happened recently – exactly 1 week before CNY. MIL had a fall and can’t walk much after that. Luckily I have a babysitter so I have no worries for Sze Juin. But I’ve stopped Sze Yi from going to school since the beginning of Jan. At first, I’m thinking of starting my CNY leave 1 week earlier, but I’m afraid I might need to take ‘forced leaves’ later due to the bad economy situation. So I called up Sze Yi’s ex-school’s principal and asked her if I can leave Sze Yi there for 1 week – full day. She’s been very nice to say yes. And I even asked her if I can have her dinner packed as well – because I didn’t feel like going home during lunch time to cook (I used to do this when I sent her for full day at school last time). I still have a lot of other last minute stuffs to do this time – and I haven’t done my CNY shopping yet. So I have to fully utilize my time.

Ok, so here’s how I managed to survive – handling the two kids alone. Even though it’s not really a great accomplishment (I know many SAHM or Stay At Home Moms would think that this is just kacang putih job), but I still feel very proud of it because my kids are not trained to be so ‘kuai’ since small. I’ve had people helping me all this while – either MIL or hubby will take care of one while I take care of the other one. That's why they are used to getting full attention most of the time.

After work, I will crawl (yes, the traffic is really bad at such peak hour) all the way to Greenlane to fetch Sze Yi from school. I normally ate my dinner on the way before I fetch her and tapau for hubby. It took about 1 hour for me before I finally reached home. I would quickly took my bath and tried to either feed or bathe Sze Yi before I went to fetch Sze Juin from the babysitter’s place. Normally, I couldn’t accomplish all this in just half-hour’s time, so after I fetched Sze Juin back, I would continue feeding Sze Yi (she takes ages to eat, run here, run there and mess the whole house with her rice, etc). I have to run after her to clean up and coaxed her to quickly finish up. I will leave Sze Juin in the play tent, of course. Sze Yi also went in and out too, in between feeds, so I have to be very careful in case Sze Juin fell out when Sze Yi opened the zipper of the play tent.

Sze Yi enjoying her packed dinner from school so far, I managed to make her sit there for about 10 minutes before she ran around again.

After that, I would proceed to bathe Sze Yi. How? I would wheel Sze Juin in her stroller, positioned her exactly in front of the bathroom so that she could see her sister in full view, and convince Sze Yi that her sister would love to see her taking a bath (it’s really hard to get Sze Yi to bathe, she’ll scream and yell, esp when it comes to washing her hair). So with both girls excited with these ‘new’ experience, I managed to bathe Sze Yi while keeping Sze Juin entertained.

Then, there are the floor to clean (from Sze Yi’s mess during the feed), the dirty piles of laundry to wash, bottles & pump to be washed & sterilized, etc. I would either carry Sze Juin while doing this, or put her in a stroller until she lost her patience. I would also play with them in between when I'm folding the cleaned laundry. Nope - ironing will definitely come later.

So, by the time hubby came home, it’s about time to put them to sleep. My, I think they have never slept so early before. I made them sleep by about 10pm++ the latest, which I considered was my greatest accomplishment. Of course hubby helped after he had his dinner and bath.

I guess we tend to be more alert when we know that we have to do more. Even though I have to wake up earlier to prepare for the day, I still find that it’s not as tiring as I thought. In normal days, I won’t be able to wake up this early. I also felt that I accomplished more than normal days. I managed to prepare nutritious breakfast for hubby, myself and Sze Yi in the mornings, which I hardly did last time. I even managed to slot in some flash card sessions with Sze Yi during her feeds (I hardly read flash cards with her in normal days). But I can’t deny that I’ve neglected Sze Juin a bit – didn’t spend so much time with her, too focused on getting the chores done instead. But in a way, I’ve trained her to be more independent – can play on her own which I think is very important for her own development as well.

Well, I guess when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. I can now pat myself on the shoulder and say Bravo Mommy! Just like how Sze Yi would say it :)