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.

Zeeyau’s dance class in action! That girl in black and white leggings is Zeeyau. The second picture shows the girls doing their 民族舞，learning a peakcock dance routine.

Class started at 9.30am sharp, but most of the girls arrived like 10 minutes earlier. Time wasn’t wasted loitering around if you arrived early, but used to practice some stretching exercise. All the girls automatically headed towards the mirrored walls and did the “wall hugging” exercise. The more senior girls didn’t need help from the teachers anymore. Newer students like Zeeyau were constantly reminded by the teachers to straightened their backs and moved their butts towards the wall.

I saw fewer girls compared to the first time we attended the session. I guess there were quite a few girls on trial class that day. I remembered a mother with a girl about the age of 3 or 4 years old. She spent a huge effort coercing the girl to join the class. The girl wasn’t quite cooperative with the mother and refused to join until the mother agreed to stay by her side.  If she realised the mother had moved further away from her, she will ran back to join the mother. She ended up crying from time to time.

After about an hour, the mother finally gave up and removed her from the class. I was at the door during her departure and her final words still rings in my ear “ 人家女孩儿都喜欢跳舞， 就不明白为什么你不喜欢。” Somehow I felt she was very disappointed that her girl wasn’t able to fufill her expectation. I admit I have grand dreams with my kids, but I hope this serves as a good reminder to me not to push the kids to do or learn things so as to fulfill my expectation against their wish. Sometimes, they just aren’t ready yet.

(well, easier said then done. I still have lots of great expectations…lol)

Aright, back to usual business and not some funny side tracks.

弟弟 will be 2years old in 10 days time, yet he is still drooling like a baby. Strangely, Zeeyau almost didn’t drool in her baby years, but her little brother has a leakage problem. He is perpetually drooling all the time. The only time he stops dripping was during the time he was sick and when he was terrified by the firecrackers. I think during those times, he was too weak or scared to open his mouth and managed to contain the liquid inside his mouth.

He drooled so much that our sofa here was covered with water marks and stains and I have to protect the sofa with a piece of sofa throw. We can’t changed his T-shirt all the time like what we did back in Singapore, so I could only use a bib to catch his saliva. Problem is, most bibs on sale are velcro strap style. He was never trained to wear bibs from young and hence dislike that strange piece of cloth over his neck. He removed the velcro strap bibs easily, so we could only rely on the old fashioned tying style.

And those old fashion tying bibs weren’t easy to find. I managed to buy a set from mothercare and got another set here in Shanghai  after much scouting. Ah, I wish he could learn the art of managing his saliva soon.

Zeeyau and her best friend, Julia, in school. Oh man, this girl speaks perfect Mandarin (and so does her mom!)

They are on the same school bus and she is a really sunny and cheerful girl (quite loud too, hah). I guess that’s why Zeeyau likes to play with Julia, I think she always looks up to bigger girls.

Oh, Zeeyau also told me Julia plaits her hair into “four buns” everyday. That might be another reason that intrigue Zeeyau and makes Julia special to her.

Ms pinky piggy can send smoke through her pointy ears. 弟弟 prefers to see more of it from her stomach. Such things never fail to intrigue and entertain children.

The smell was lingering out there but the source was nowhere to be found.

It was quite sometime later when I noticed 弟弟 fidgeting with something in his warm comfy bodysuit that I realised I was in for some dirty job. That thing actually fell out from his diaper, yikeeesss.

People might wonder what can keep us mothers busy all the time. Well, such unexpected, dirty, messy, icky happenings which take place every now and then never fail to destroy our brief moments of peace.

After almost two weeks of frequent loose bowel, the small one is finally back to normal.

I am not sure what has happened. He started doing diarrhea like big businesses very frequently since two Fridays ago, as many as 8 or 10 times a day! Initially, I thought it was the due to the brown rice I introduced, or maybe it was because of the soy bean milk I have been drinking. However, eliminating both items didn’t rectified the situation.

He appeared normal and well, no pain, no extra fussiness, so I delayed bringing him to see the doctor until a few days ago, when he is due for vaccination (saved the hassle of two visits and double consultation fee, hehe, stingy mom). The dr. found nothing amiss and that gave me the assurance that it is probably just a phase. She did prescribe some Lacteol fort for the baby. And viola, it works wonders, he recovered in 2 days. Hurray!