Eat, drink and be married!

When C was slowly approaching his big One, I thought we got down to serious business on having a proper schedule for classes. Granted children these days are attending classes earlier and even earlier, I still maintain that until school officially starts for him at 18 months old, play should still be the bulk of his schedule.

Through word of mouth and several positive experiences from the mummies I know, I was really keen on Julia Gabriel's programme and hooray to their summer camp that allowed us a peek into their programme proper and also act as a trial before we decide to sign him up for good when term commences.

Having experienced GUG, 90 minutes at Julia Gabriel was not so daunting. 

First Day



His first and clearly parent assisted craft work - a hat!

Second Day

Sensory play with bubbles

Third Day



Painting with balloons

Fourth Day

By this time we got used to the drill of free play, story telling, song and dance!

Fifth and Final Day!

Carnival day with game stations, plenty of snacks and song and dance performances throughout the 90 minutes.

 

Photobooths! 



Snack booth's a clear favourite of his.

 

Game stations too!
 







A juke box that performed at regular intervals. 




Fish in the pond!



His favourite teachers :)



And the rest of them!



The prizes that he loved so much. 

The teachers took the effort to know everyone by name by the second day of class. I probably sound like a noob here but this was really impressive.





We loved the fact that the teachers encouraged children to roam around during class. As silly as it sounds, as long as they display interest doing something...they should not be forced to sit down and listen to the class with the exception of story telling. Similarly for painting class, there is not right way of painting, if he does not like painting with the balloon? No problem, use his fingers to explore the textures of the paint and sponge. For early childhood (while neither of us are experts in this), we wish we did not have to implement 101 rules, do's and don'ts and have to stifle their progress.

At this point, the commitment level for classes twice a week is challenging for us as full time working parents. Unless of course his G-parents decide to lend a helping hand, this is high on the list of programmes I'd enrol him in.

Alright. So I loved my Kiinde Kozzii and until now I'm not sure how it even failed on me. It could have run dry more than once and the timer was ticking away but water levels were barely budging and I was upset that it failed on me less than a year in possession.

I realised the importance of a warranty though everything else was for another Kiinde Kozzi.

So after an hour of clicking through what was available locally and exhausting our means for a discount code, I caved into a Tommee Tippee on Pupsik.

Now, I should have just youtubed how to use it but at the eleventh hour (literally at 11pm we made this purchase), none of the practicality questions would have rang any alarm bells anyway.

2 days later and swirling of the bottle in warm water, it arrived promptly at my doorstep.

Perhaps it was a bias and a preset mindset how convenient Kiinde Kozzi made life for me, Tommee Tippee was everything but that. If KK were Apple, I was definitely dealing with TT like Nokia in the 1990s.

What was wrong?

 

No timer feature. 

Given my oversight, I was almost irate that there was no timer and all youtube videos provided a hack (use it with a timer). I could've just rolled over in frustration with this suggested hack, how does that even qualify as one??



Anyhow, I need to monitor the timing on my own. Boo. Already not a fan.

No water reservoir. 

Which means, the water does not drain anywhere and stays within the catchment area. Mozzies? Maybe. The only benefit is I will remember to replace it every other day. Hurhur.

No memory? You're done for. 

Since the bottles are not recommended to be warmed for longer than 30 minutes, it almost renders stage 1 and 2 useless since I need approximated 12 minutes at stage 3.



So our bottle warming has gone from ABC to ABCDEFG -

Fill warmer - Turn on to stage 3 - Set manual timer (in my head or the clock or a kitchen timer) - Bottle warmed, turn knob back to stage 1 and off warmer

All these when the baby is wailing the roof off and threatening to disown me.

Clearly I am displeased because we have gone back in time and the old folks have decided swirling in warm water is way much easier. Pupsik refuses an exchange because I unboxed it and yes, I am stuck with a near useless warmer.

I hope this serves as a reminder NOT to bother with TT if you are still researching for a warmer. In this situation, having a lifetime warranty would be as good as zilch to me as well.

TCM.

Where do we start? I grew up on western medicines and probably overdosed on them growing up so I'm at a point where chinese medicines work like magic whether its herbal jellies or sea coconut concoctions or herbal teas. I am a fan.

The Hubba on the other hand's closest shave with TCM is their bone breaking massages every now and then to reset things.

Otherwise, TCM is as foreign as chalk is to cheese.

Given our fertility situation, I contemplated consulting one but was really put off by the waiting time both for the appointment and on the day itself. It ranges anywhere from weeks to months and definitely in hours for the latter. Turns out waiting for a popular fertility specialist at a government hospital was still shorter than the physician (how ironic).


C came down with a bout of dry cough which morphed into a phlegmy chesty one, mild flu and alas, diarrhea all within the week. Western medicines were not quite working for him so I floated the idea of TCM, googled, cross checked with my 247 Mummy friends and landed ourselves at the premises of Yu Guo (YG).

4pm on a Saturday was considered "optimal" time to arrive as advised by the one who took our call.
No appointments nor reservations.
You turn up, register, take a queue number and wait either within the claustrophobic clinic or loiter outside (that's when the chinese enrichment class opposite caught my interest).
We even took the chance to get ourselves seen by the physician for adults, reconnected with friends whom I've not seen in years before we were called in.

The session is short and completely communicated in mandarin (I seriously wonder how do the non-chinese even get through these consultation sessions). Stethoscope was placed all over before the physician declared C would proceed for a massage and issued herbal packets to be strapped on his belly button for 24 hours each dosage. There were 2 dosages and announced that he should return for massages the next two days as well.

The general reaction of the babies getting massaged can be categorized into -

• Chill and shiok until doze off
• Mostly alright until the tummy gets rubbed
• Cry like blue murder

C fell in the second category and those 15 minutes were not the best for any of us trying to keep him distracted and still enough to complete the massage.  We  were advised to return on Sunday to get a number earlier...around 830am? All in that fateful Saturday we spent a good 1.5 hours at YG which is considered "short" by the YG fans.



Sunday came and I had a light bulb moment, why not go earlier since I had to expense 90 minutes of my time anyway waiting...might as well do so with fewer people and more peace? Plus, opening hours are way shorter on Sundays so that may mean more people cramming to get a slot.

How wrong because when 8am arrived for 9am opening time, I was already 27 in line. So wait begun with aircon (heng ahhhh) and soon the numbers started disappearing with a ton of babies and toddlers and adults.



By 845am, we all got in line to exchange our queue numbers for another laminated card with the same number. I hope I even make sense but the long and short of it is, this queueing is for registration of new patients and old ones to secure their slots.


Now, if one decides to take the number go jiak roti and lim kopi it's fine by YG's management EXCEPT the number only guarantees you a slot from 9am - 930am, if you return later than the 30 minutes grace period, please re-queue.

After another 90 minutes, we were done with seeing the physician and another round of massage.

Monday came and I was bright at early at 8am to get a number and even at 8am, I was 14 in line. Same routine goes and physician declares that C should be put on a complete plain porridge diet and since they're closed on Wednesdays (Hallelujah), we should return for another session on Tuesday (making it 4 consultation and massage sessions in total).

I thought we could beat the crowd and get the first numbers when they close their shutters after 830pm but turns out, they only stop accepting patients at 830 and clinic continues inside. Meaning...by the time they close the shutters for the numbers for the next day to be taken could be anywhere from 11pm onwards. So the early birds either wait till midnight to claim these numbers (assuming the building does not close) or are legit early birds rising at 6am to be the first in line.

Unbelievable indeed when I thought queueing for food was possibly the biggest achievement to date.

By Tuesday, the diarrhea hadn't improved and infact gotten worse, cough was slightly better and flu gone but with the amount of money spent and time waiting, we headed straight to the paediatrician nearest our place.

I'm not completely against TCM but the waiting puts me off. In the face of stretching my patience, I lost.