A List Of Happy Vs. Stress

Happy

Our new place has rooms for everyone, including guests, and the kitchen is big enough for us to take our meals in.

Our place is nicely furnished and we didn't need to buy a stick of furniture, except for a couple of fans as the boys can't take the air-con blowing through the night.

I really like our neighbourhood. Not too busy, and everything necessary is within an easy walk.

We have a home.

We have a car!! It's really a piece of peace-of-mind for moving about with 3 boys everyday. I drive them and my sister and her kids Mon-Fri, to school and back, and Gadget-daddy does all the other night and weekend outings.

I am renewing my cooking skills which were left asleep in some lost shelves of high-school days.

I can hang out with my older sister Mon-Fri while the older kids are in school.

Stress

The kids are left on their own while I'm cooking (and I only do breakfast and dinner). Sometimes I get Myron to sit on the highchair with a few biscuits while I cook dinner, but that means spoiling some of his dinner.

I really feel the loss of my quality time spent with the boys, now being crowded by chores and more chores.

I can tell my boys are bored/ lack of adult attention, because they love coming into the kitchen and driving me crazy there with their constant opening and closing of doors (fridge, microwave oven, cupboards), and fighting over everything (who's first, whose more, I-can-you-cannot), and baby Myron seems to have so little of my time compared to the two older ones when they were his age. :(

Doing Chinese homework. It especially drives Micah and I crazy.

Not stress... but I miss the old familiarities of hanging out with my other sister, having our morning routines in KL and also staking out at my mom's place whenever I needed a safe place for the boys to play while I chat with my mom.

All In Good Shape

We are OK.

Sorry for the long silence.

Mil is here for a couple of weeks, so while everyone is a sleep, I am blogging in the study*.

It's like we were just thrown into a mixer and then pressed into a mold and now being baked in an oven... Considering the weather, these days, it literally does feel like an oven.

We only had a few days of rest when we got here on 29 December 2009, and then the boys started school on 3 January 2010. The first 2 weeks was tough moving around in public transport with 3 kids in tow, getting to know what's where in our neighbourhood and trying to work out caring for 3 young boys (and a big one) and keeping them happy, while doing the cooking and keeping the place clean (notice I didn't say 'neat') and safe.

BUT I am so so thankful for my older sis who is here. She is really my life-saver, a float, whole being thrown into the deep blue sea. She had already helped earlier in getting my boys into the same kindy as her girl, so registration and adjusting to their system (for me) has been fairly painless. Also, she is always reminding me of new things to look out for, i.e. Water play on certain Fridays means we must remember to put in the slippers and a towel for the kids, apart from their usual change of PE clothes.

Now we have a car, about 3 weeks ago, and so moving around is fairly less stressful. It's now Myron's turn to adjust. You see, while we were moving about in cabs, busses and trains, Myron had been safe and snug in a baby carrier, always snug close to Mommy. Now he is being strapped into a car seat and Mommy's not within his reach. So poor baby is in "carseat-bootcamp".

Where we stay is a rather new but very nice community area. There are lots of open fields and almost everyday there are some people flying kites, even night kites with blinking lights. On weekends there could easily be about a 100 of them in a field that is across the community center alone. There are quite a few more wide open fields surrounding our apartment.

Our place is actually at a pretty good locale: 10 minutes' walk to the public pool, 10 minutes' walk to the shopping mall/train station and 8 minutes' walk to the market. We are just 10 minutes drive from my sister's place which is an older and more established community area, so it's also pretty convenient when wanting more choices of eateries and shopping for household needs.

We are also glad to announce that we have a guest room that is available at any time, so if you are ever coming over to Singapore, please don't hesitate to ask, if you need a place to stay. Having said that, let me say that Availability is, of course, on a first-come-first-serve basis, unless you don't mind crashing in our living room, which has a nice couch in front of a huge plasma TV. :D

More stories to come...

* Yes, we have a study, pretty nice one, here at our new place, but I like to be close to my sleeping boys in the middle of the night, so the computer being in another room was also keeping me away from blogging, apart from the fact that my days usually ends after midnight with chores (laundry and mopping floors) and by then I'm just too tired to want to sit in front of the computer. Today, Mil had done the laundry and the dishes while I spent quality 'bedtime' time with Micah and Myron (Max had crashed in front of the TV while watching Speed Racer). I really appreciate her care and thoughtfulness.