A Brand New Year

Hello there!

How is your 2014 thus far? I am not any less fun than before. Work is still hectic and I am still huffing and puffing everyday, after-work to race with time to pick up my daughters from the babysitter as shorter time as I could. I think, I am doing much better this year: For the past 18 days of working, I have not exceeded 6.30pm to first see Bomber's cheerful smile.  *Give my self a pat of the back.

Porridge as dinner, just because they love it.

Cooking is part of the routine now. Big part of the routine. Simple food though, at least three out of five. Being away from home, cooking probably is a way for me to recuperate from homesick, to recur my childhood memories. I guess, I am building and storing the girls' too.

As my first born is P3 now, we battle more. Yes, the battle hymn of another tiger mother and the daughter. I always at the exhausted state when dealing with her study after dinner, so is she. We often end up with crash and crash and bang! It is unbearable to see my angel turn into a scary monster. So much as I come to a realisation that I am my parents but she is not me. Old generation harsh parenting may worked on me, it doesn't mean works on her. Whatever happens to her now is partly my mistake of parenting. I have been pondering and trying to change. It is harder than I thought. Fortunately, at this stage the daddy could take over, I step back and manage the house chores, or one-to-one with Bomber.

Those are our weekday. Our hectic weekdays. Less impact on little Bomber though. She is attending PCF Nursery Class, has her meal and rest fixed at the babysitter's place, joyfully plays with her sister when they reunion in the afternoon. 

As for weekend, SC and I are embarking into new activities and hopefully it will be last till the end, for me, for him and the girls...

We jog regularly every evening of every weekend. It was fun to have little competition among ourselves, and see the big girl smugly and sweaty look after that. Oh yeah, she beats me, everytime. I can only run half of her records. But I don't mind at all, she had just helped the poor weak mama to start her engine to exercise. Prior to this, I was very lack of working out. 

It's great to be able to do a common activity together with the whole family. For the record, we have not been breaking the routine after four consecutive weeks of January. (But I think we wouldn't be jogging during CNY.)

Excitingly, we will be hunting for the best cup of coffee (in our opinion) in town. SC stumbles across this list and thinks it would be a great dose of adventure into our Sunday mornings, while jiejie is attending her wushu class. Oh, it is our quiet couple time, along with Little Bomber.

Thanks to SC, this will be a year that I walk into café more frequent than pasar (market).

http://yahava.sg/

After travel alone with Steph last year, I decided to do annual solo travelling, no kids, no husband. Coming February, I will be flying to Bangkok with few of my old friends. But, looking at the situation now, I can only pray hard and hope for a miracle.

Lastly, a personal goal to save money. According to Dinomama, all I need to do is depositing $1 more for every accumulated week, and it will save up to one thousand by end of the year.



I think this is timely for me to re-learn about money saving and in-depth planning of my expenditure.

I wish to use that amount of saving at the end of the year to revamp my kitchen. The kitchen was inherited from the previous owner when we bought over the house. At the same time, I may consider selling our dining table and acquiring a smaller yet extendable table for my family. I found a very helpful website that provide me with relevant information for this effort.

It will be another busy year for me. I reckon it is best to make everyday count, every effort put a smile on my face. Ha!