Stubborn, bad temper, a tendency to hit people when he got agitated, plus high school fees, we decided to keep didi at home though the school informed us that he could attend Okiki’s nursery 1 class (托班）last July. What if he throws tantrum in class, fights with the other boys, bullies the girls and refuses to take instructions from teachers? So no school for him until I am convinced that he is ready to behave.

After months of 悉心调教，Didi finally started his nursery 1 class on 1st of March after delaying it for a semester. He thoroughly enjoys his playschool and looks forward to it everyday, and no complaints from the teachers so far!

We visited a dermatologist today for a second opinion on Zee Yau’s nail. Her nail on her middle finger lacks lustre and is becoming very rough. Initially, I thought it was due to abrasion resulting from playing with sand. However, I realised that it has gotten worse lately. I had a GP seen her last week, he didn’t say much about it except telling me to keep her hands dry and said it will take a long time to recover. Zeeyau was prescribed a cream to apply. My guess is the GP himself wasn’t too sure what was wrong.

I wasn’t very confident about the GP’s diagnosis (or no diagnosis). My brother then recommended me to visit Dr Goh S.K. clinic at Paragon, saying that he is very experienced and charges very reasonably. We made an appointment to see him very quickly. True to what my bro. said, his clinic is really those no frill kind compared to the other clinics around that look expensive, posh, tendy, high class or whatever decor.

Dr Goh diagnosed Zeeyau condition to be the Twenty-nail Dystrophy. Following the diagnosis, he gave me a little education on the condition, showing me books and asked me to read the description of that condition.

He said such condition usually occur in childhood. Early symptoms are small spots on the nails, which will slowly join together to form longitudinal ridges that makes the nails look rough. He found small spots of Zeeyau’s nails and the badly affected nails fits the description of the condition. The cause of such condition is unknown, and there is no known medical treatment. Well, the good news is, it is not fatal and would not affect her health in any way. It might go away when she grows older, hopefully that wouldn’t take too many years.

I was told to stop applying the cream since it has nothing to do with fungus infection. However, Zeeyau wants to continue with it, believing that it will help her nails recover by Christmas. I told her it might take 2 or more Christmas before it will return to normal.

Two important reminders.

1. always bring the child to consult a doctor to get a more through checkup during emergency even if everything seems alright.

2. avoid letting young kids handle glass.

It was really quite a freak accident. 弟弟 and I were enjoying a bottle of juice and he accidentally dropped the glass bottle. The bottle broke upon hitting the hard concert pathway. Then he rubbed his right eye with his hand and begun crying in pain. I thought he was terrified by the shattering sound of the glass. As I dried his tears with a piece of tissue paper, I saw a faint stain of blood on the white tissue.

Damn shit happened. My immediate reaction was to send him to the hospital right away and then warned him not to rub his eyes any more . He stopped crying after a minute or so and I started wondering if his tears had successfully flushed out any glass fragments that had gotten into his eye. Should I just go home since he wasn’t in pain anymore?

Better be safe then sorry and always trust our ultra kiasu motherly instinct. We went to the nearby Ruidong Hospital and was directed to see an eye specialist straight away. The initial checkup didn’t show any sign of foreign objects in his eye. However, closer examination with proper equipment found a stray piece of glass .

She had it remove quickly and his corneas wasn’t injured in any way, just a little cut on the minor eye area. Thank goodness the little lad was sensible enough to heed my warning not to rub his eyes. The amazing thing was, the kid was in total compliance during the whole process. No crying, no fighting. He followed the doctor’s instruction to look to left, right, up down and could even keep himself steady while the doctor was removing the glass fragment. Imagine someone holding a cotton bud and tried to swab it on your eye. I think he was quite brave.

Anyway, that was our little emergency last Thursday.

Great Wall climbing day today and I have picked 慕田峪 to visit. Took us almost 3 hours to reach the destination by car as traffic was quite heavy.

Zeeyau completed the amazing feat of climbing up the steps to reach the great wall and continued effortlessly for the rest of the trek followed by more climbing up some more steps. 弟弟 climbed and walked and cried for half the journey and demanded to be carried every now and then I would have given up if there was a choice to turn back, carrying 弟弟 while walking up the steps was killing.

弟弟 climbing up the steep steps on the great wall.Getting down the wall was much easier as we bought the cable car tickets. Though it required more effort to reach the great wall by foot, walking down the long flight of steps with children will be too dangerous.

It is May day holiday today in Beijing. I guess it will be crowded everywhere, so the plan was to make a trip out of the city. Well, not a perfect plan as the Beijing city dwellers were having the same plan and some parts of the road was packed with cars driving out of the city.

We left the hotel early at 7.30am, so the traffic weren’t too bad except for a few bottle necks. James did the driving though I was against that idea initially, and it turned out to be a smooth and event less drive after all (thank God).

Anyway, we were heading for 龙庆峡, which took us about 3hours to reach. It was bloody warm and sunny yesterday, so we were all dressed lightly today. However, it was raining in the morning and there was chilly wind blowing. We were confronted with a 14degC temperature and cold wind when we reach our destination and James was without a jacket. Zeeyau was crying and wanted us to return home immediately. We almost headed back home, but decided to have an early lunch and wait for the weather to clear.

We had a meal of 农家饭 (err…country style meal), and their 柴鸡蛋 (range free chicken eggs) were really yummy. However, such simple, non fancy meals cost us around 200rmb. That was really expensive since we could easily have a meal in a nice restaurant for that price . Well, thanks for the meal, the rain stopped, the sun showered its warmth and we managed to make our way into the gorge.

Boat ride in the gorge, kids friendly and leg muscles friendly.

金刚寺, small temple, nothing special.

百花洞, or rather, 假花洞, ultra amusing cave full of fake plastic flowers. The kids found it interesting, we thought it was amusing looking at the plastic flowers, spotting buildings that were falling apart. The toy pandas even had the same expressions and pose.

No more kiddie friendly visits today. Forbidden city and such were off my itinerary as they were too touristy and crowded. Plans were made to visit 雍和宫，国子监，孔庙 in the morning.

Well, 雍和宫 was the former residence of emperor 雍正 and birthplace of 乾隆 and was later converted into a Lama monastery. Bringing children to monastery or temple weren’t a relaxing experience. First, they architecture didn’t interest them, secondly, they simply couldn’t follow the instruction not too step on the 门槛 (doorsill)。Anyway, the children disrespectful behaviour of stepping on the doorsill did not annoyed the monks or the Buddhas, instead, a friendly monk who was on duty to change the 供品 (offerings) gave the 3 children present an apple each. Oh, that attracted lots of attentions from the people around. The guide then told me it is considered great blessing to receive the offerings.

Next stop were 国子监 and 孔庙 which were just a street away. They were so much deserted compared to the other tourist attractions around. I hope the children could absorb some of the positive elements present at these educational institution but they clearly didn’t. They were more interested in playing with the wooden plaques (for blessings) hung around the institution. Zeeyau was tired and complained of leg pain and 弟弟 kept wanting to touch the relics on exhibit. I had to flee the various rooms before getting chased out of the premise.

James finally joined us in the afternoon for the visit to 恭王府(Gong Wang Fu). The huge and beautiful mansion was definitely overcrowded with tourists. The show at the 戏楼 (theater) was too short, too commercialise and lousy, what a waste of time. There was a long snaking queue to touch something, should be something to do with fortune or blessings. We weren’t keen in doing that and left our tour group before the queue start and wander around on our own. Well, no guided tour, but at least we didn’t have to endure the guide rattling uninteresting information into our ears.

We ended our tour with a trishaw ride visiting the 胡同 (Hutong, small lanes) 四合院 around 什刹海 (Shichahai). Many of these traditional Beijing houses were undergoing renovation or restoration. It would be interesting to live in such houses, though the floor area seems rather small.

We booked a private tour guide to bring us around since the father was away on his business. The guide cost 300rmb per day, cheaper if we booked her directly instead of going through her company, but having an extra pair of hands to help shepherd the children around will help greatly.

1st day in Beijing and I thought I should entertain the kids first before boring them with temples, monuments and imperial gardens.  So our fist stop was the 北京动物园 (Beijing Zoo), got to visit the pandas! The animals in Beijing zoo are quite different from our rain forest theme zoo in Singapore. There was a quite a large number of various colourful fowl and birds, and the children seems to enjoy looking at the beautiful birds. The Chinese tigers look more magnificent from our Malayan tigers, but most of the big lazy cats (tigers, leopards, lions) were either sleeping or lazing motionless in their enclosures. A lot of walking was done, and the boat ride along the canal allow us a good rest.

The 2nd place to visit was the 北京自然博物馆 (Beijing Museum of Natural History) as there is an ongoing Woolly Mammoth exibition. I thought I could see the real, whole woolly mammoth. The big woolly mammoth on display turned out to be a replica, the real things are only the bones and the head. The kids weren’t too interested with the mammoth, so we make our way to the main exhibits at the main exhibits. They separated the two area and we had to purchase tickets to visit both areas, damn!

Anyway, the dinosaurs, animals, bugs and plants interest the children way more then the mammoth. Its funny that we just visited the real animals in the morning, and then looked at their specimens in the afternoon. Nevertheless, the children enjoyed the trip.

Believe it or not, we have moved to Shanghai for almost half a year and have never been visiting any places except 城隍庙 (Chenghuang Temple) and 世纪公园 (Century Park), and maybe a few shopping trips. It was either too cold or too wet (raining) or the father away for business trips during the weekends.

We have plan to visit Beijing but was postpone several time. I almost wanted to postpone this trip again due to the swine flu outbreak. Heck, China isn’t affected yet, at least not from what we known, so we made a last minute decision and bought the tickets to fly out tonight.

And after battling the horrible peak hour traffic for 1hr 30min, we finally arrived in the domestic airport just in time to check in. Beijing, here we come.

While I wanted to get either the cakes or strawberry for Zeeyau and the school bus for 弟弟, they went against my wish and wanted the black cat and the green frogie.

I know Zeeyau likes black cat and it does look cute, so I agreed. However, I think 弟弟 choice of the frog bag is really bad, so I manged to convince him to choose another frogie backpack instead.

However, they were both out of stock.

So in the end, I bought an elephant bag for Zeeyau, which happened to be her first choice bag before discovering the black cat.

Need a small lunch box for Zeeyau as well, so I thought the strawberry box is lovely to have. Out of stock too, and have to settle for the blue school bus. Not a bad idea, both the kids like it and 弟弟 could use it in future as well.

So, these are the two items I got in the end. I am still waiting for the green frogie bag to be back in stock.

Donkey’s years ago, I applied to be a relief teacher at a kindergarten after my “A” Levels exam. I was confronted with 20+ active kids which seems to have unlimited energies. They were like little birds flying around and chirping nonstop, thousands of them. I surrendered on the second day even though it was an easy job, the noise was simply deafening and their movements gave me headache. From that time onwards, I am very sure I don’t posses any affinity with young children, I think I am afraid of them. That was why I chose to deal with teenagers during my teaching years, that are so much more interesting to interact with.

So, having 5 children at home these 9 days was a big challenge to me. The older ones required lots of attention because they got bored easily and needs activities to fill them up. The 2 toddlers needed even more attention because they were always fighting!

As I mentioned earlier, 弟弟 was handling the new friends very well during the first few days. However, we noticed that he was back to his old “little monster form” these few days. He refused to go to bed and made a big fused each night crying. He got angry easily and tend to hit people when he was agitated. He was very protective of his books and toys and tried to snatch them back if the 小哥哥 and 小妹妹 took them. However, if Zeeyau or the other 大姐姐(8yrs old) took them, he was more willing to share. We thought he probably felt threaten by the presence of the 妹妹 who is just 1 month younger and frustrated with the 哥哥 because he always “kachiao” (teased) him.

Luckily my friend and I shared similar mindset towards raising and handling children and had been quite cool with all these squabbles and conflicts, else friends might become foes in the end.

Anyway, the family has returned home and the situation is back to normal, it is just 弟弟 and myself at home now. 弟弟 seems to have shift back to his big boy self. Got to guide this boy carefully and and purge that violent and aggressive aspect from him.