Emily you are 1!

Finally she is 1! time flies! Love you bubbly girl!

We had a mini celebration with our church family fellowship at Googong Dam picnic area..haha. I made a applesauce cake with creamcheese and yummy oreo cheesecake muffins, not that you bothered. haha..Eliza was so much more excited and she couldn't wait to celebrate. She's a party gal! 

Will post more when i feel like writing again...meanwhile i don't find i have time on my hands to do much writing...soon i hope! 

On our own soon!

Sitting in the car with sleeping Emily after sending Eliza to school. It's one more week before my mil leaves. I'm very very grateful that she was here for 3 months, helping us so much while Ww was away doing his field work. At the same time I'm looking forward to her return to SG.

This is different from the first time she was here. Then I worried whether I can handle it myself. But once we got into the groove of things, it was really enjoyable. Of course there were days when I just bummed around with Eliza or when I just lost my cool with Eliza cos Emily couldn't sleep well. But we learn. And I enjoyed the freedom and independence I never had.
Just like H said, that I will enjoy being on my own. No one to impose their ideas n ways so that I can find my own way of doing things. Certainly I learnt much from my mil and we enjoy her food but I didn't have the freedom to do things the way I like (without a comment or two). Well, we were saying we'll be back to our routines n groove once my mil leaves. I will have one less person to watch the girls but I'll work around that. It is possible :)

Also back to cooking my simple meals and hope I can squeeze time in to make extras n desserts with the girls. Looking forward to more outdoors and walks with Eliza too.

Finding time

I wish i have more time to do craft / read / play with Eliza. Sometimes she's so engrossed with her stuff that i don't want to interrupt her. Sometimes i have chores to do. When my mil leaves, i also need to learn to put these chores aside and be there for them instead of doing the 101 chores. Then again, there are things that need to be done in the day which i can't do when they have gone to sleep!

It is great that Eliza has joined us in helping with the laundry, be it folding, or unclipping or clipping or passing me the clips. Letting her join in the chores helps though there are things that she's still too short to do or it's not the way i want to be done (like clipping the clothes on the dryer which she arranges in the most interesting way -_-).

Sometimes i wonder what keeps me so busy throughout the day which of course....getting Emily to sleep is one big amount of time taken!
- Then it's 1 hour meals
- changing Emily's diapers
- bathing the kids (i'm teaching Eliza to soap and rinse and dry herself so it does take longer depending on how much time i have that day..and she dresses herself after i have creamed her)
- meals? (for now my mil does most of it)
- playing :)  (leaving the girls to play too is nice..Emily loves join in whatever Eliza is doing though Eliza doesn't always appreciate the company)
- feeding Emily
- going out for some playground play, walks or fresh air
- bedtime with Eliza (my favourite time of the day)
- reading with Eliza whenever Emily's asleep

Wondering where my chunk of time for doing activities with Eliza went to.
I'm wanting to do more craft activities with her now that she has so much fun doing these things, even though sometimes i do all of it and she watches.
We have been busy this week going out that we have put our activities on hold for a while. I need to get back to the flow of preparing her 'lessons' with more interesting craft work. And also when i feel more like it in the evenings (having 2 tough nights with Emily waking and playing...let's hope it's a phase and that she's not overtired cos she's up so much at night)

So far for our 'homeschooling'
We enjoy the singing (which includes the verse of the week song & character song)
- reading the bible story (i try to read the kid version one as the real bible words seem to slip past her, but i try to read direct from the bible at least once or twice a week)
- she's reading her sight book really well, and colouring them now! (wow to my non-coloring gal)
- kid writing (a bit slow on that because i have yet to digest how to do it)
- calender (we are writing the twenties and i think the concept of larger numbers is still new to her)
- phonics (she can name most of the letter sounds which i talk about on and off even when we are not directly learning it...and she's learning about rhyme, which a very important skill for learning reading..to listen to the sounds. For now i think she somehow reads English like Chinese, by memory)
- writing (we are at letter R already...though she still loves to write words like E, O, I)

I love you, mummy!

Eliza: I love you mummy. Even if you are old, I will still love you.

*melts*

Happy new year!

Mil: tomorrow I will give you a big angbao!
Eliza: I think...i can't carry it. I'm only a kid. I ask mummy to help.

For the first time this year, Eliza understood the meaning of the angbao. Last year she just put it in her bag or gave it to me. Yesterday she received one, opened it and in a surprise discovered money inside! Wow! Haha. The innocence of a kid. This time she understood that money is needed to buy things and we get money when mummy or daddy works and that she's still a kid and can't work yet.

Just nice J bought her a little Elmo purse and she could put it in. At first she said, that she has money but no wallet to put it in. Time to teach her how to divide her money and save/spend it wisely. :)

Missing the festivities and food and family in SG. It's quiet here but we'll be going out to the National Museum of Australia for some kid activities n shopping after that. Hope Emily will take a good nap later. It has been a struggle getting her to sleep this morning, 40mins! With almost 20mins of screaming and struggling. And then she's only going to nap 30mins. Time to get her to nap without me in the room. Grrr.

Oh well. Happy new year too! :) 7 more days till Ww come back, finally!

The sleep issues

I love it that Eliza's sleep is a lot more manageable these days...essentially we tackle only the bedtime sleep. More or less no naps anymore unless she's really tired and falls asleep in the car.

Well it's not that she is difficult to fall asleep...in comparison to Emily, it's that we can do more fun things with her in the day without worrying that she'll get too tired. And if she does, she'll catch a short nap in the car. The moment i carry her to her bed from the car, she wakes up. The good part is also that she goes to sleep much earlier which is about 8pm till 7am the next morning. The other good part is that when my mil wasn't around, she learnt to fall asleep on her own, in her room and wake up happy. It wasn't a easy thing to learn for her, as sometimes she'll wake up at night calling for us (usually Ww cos i'm the grumpy one if i go to her room), and then it's learning to wake up without someone beside her after sleeping with us (although in a different bed), almost all her life. I anticipate some adjustments when my mil goes back, but at least the bedtime part is still consistent (as in my mil doesn't stay in the room until she sleeps). Learning independence, not that easy eh? but so essential. It was something we didn't quite teach her till we are here, on our own, without grandparents.

Then it is the lil monster!! There are good days as much as bad days. Last week she was doing so well falling asleep on her own in 10minutes! I just sing her naptime song, put her in her cot with something to play and she'll be tired (rubbing forehead and face) and eventually fall asleep! i was like super wow! Even though she slept like 30minutes only, be it morning or afternoon nap. I'm still in the room with her till she sleeps, 'hiding' beside her cot and erm...iphoning, and trying not to look up (else she'll see me and want me to carry her).

Then this week things took a slight turn for the worse..partially cos she was waking up so early at 530am and still not sleeping at 7am her rest of the day is a bit upside down. So her milk time clashes with her naptime and she ends up falling asleep nursing. Opps. Bad habit. And it happened at least once a day these few days. Opps. Encouraging the bad habit...oh dear. Good habits are hard to make and bad habits...just once or twice and she's stuck...have to unlearn it.

Past few nights she was waking up at 9+pm after her bedtime at 7pm to cry and can't be settled till i feed her! I guessed it might be that she's not eating enough for her mealtimes and i have since increased her food for her lunch and dinner. Since i nurse her, i can't quite tell how much milk she takes but there are times when she's either too distracted to drink or just too full to drink and i can't get her to drink more in the day. Then again, it could also be because she has dinner and milk so early; dinner at 5pm and milk about 6pm or earlier if she is too hungry for milk to eat dinner. So i hope it gets better the next few nights.

Her bedtime is really quite early compared to Eliza, which is also because of our lifestyle here that encourages it. Most books i read also recommend the 7pm bedtime which is something i really can't do in SG. How to, when work ends at 630pm, and it takes me 1hr to travel home. Plus, SG has such a lively night life to go out for supper and dinners and shopping with friends, that it's just a lifestyle thing. Still Eliza adjusted ok with that, maybe with sleeping more in the day, i guess. Cos she'll generally sleep from 9pm-7am and naps in the day, even when she was a baby.

I've been checking out over here on how much a baby needs to sleep and it helps to know that it's ok that Emily sleeps only 2hrs in the day, considering she generally sleeps about 10-11hrs at night (including night wakings/cryings though). on good days, she manages to sleep till 7am...else she's usually awake by 6+am. On bad days when she is overtired, she wakes up at 530am!! :O Still i push for her to sleep longer if i can or bring bedtime earler, if i can. Well...i try. Then it's up to her to fall asleep. Else she's fighting sleep, wanting to get out or wanting me to nurse her to sleep.

I'm also reading that the early naptime is good for babies, which i think works better for Emily i guess. We did try to get her to sleep later where she starts bedtime routine at 7pm but i can't remember what happened, whether it was good or not anyway. Still starting it early doesn't hurt. Plus i sent Emily to bed at 545pm today (cos she last woke from her nap at 2pm), and then she took so long to fall asleep..and eventually did at 645pm. phews!dunno if she'll do better tonight..cross fingers!

Motherhood

Have been reading blogs and posts and parts of books.

From The Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches by Rachel Jankovic
"As you deal with your children, deal with yourself always and first. This is what it looks like and feels like to walk with God, as a mother."
"It is no abstract thing- the state of your heart is the state of your home. You cannot harbour resentment secretly toward your children and expect their hearts to be submissive and tender."

From Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson
"“In the end, the measure of my success as a mother will not be how well I have taught my children or cared for them but whether I have been faithful in helping them respond to God’s call on their lives. Seeing my children develop a heart for God’s service and begin to find their own place of ministry in the world is a reachable goal for me as a mother, because God has designed me to fulfill this purpose. The is the true ministry of motherhood–to usher my children into the living presence of God, to nurture in them a heart for Jesus and the Great Commission he has called each of us to fulfill.”


Time for reflection