Festivals are more merry with kids

I love to celebrate festivals with the kids. I love to create the excitement for them. We would talk about the festival and what we would do and I love to see the look of anticipation on their little faces.

They are getting all excited now to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We talk about the foods that we are going to eat, the new clothes we would wear, the relatives we will visit. It gives us a lot of things to chat about and it gives the kids something to look forward to. Come to think of it, it gives us the adults something to look forward to as well.

Talking to the kids, leading up to the festivals are a fun way to teach them about the festivals (as if I know a lot). Anyway, since I don't know a lot, I make sure I read up and learn about them myself so that I can teach the kids about their culture and to value and be proud of being part of that culture.

You can read a child from their drawings

This is a recent drawing my girl drew of her daddy. He is wearing a tie, his specs and driving home from work. (According to her that is). The rectangle thing on the left is a tall building. (because we used to live in one). She drew one of me too (with the curly mermaid hair) and we (she and I) had a good laugh about it but I misplaced it so I can't post it. :(

You can tell a child from their drawings. Their "artwork" are very nice and interesting to keep as keepsakes. Its a good thing that I have a blog to keep them. Otherwise, my house will be full of clutter. Haha. At the moment, my boy just draws circles, so I'll post his drawings later when they make more sense. Lol!

For now, my girl's drawings usually consist of her family, her house and car and usually we all wear happy faces. Hehe. Thats a good sign, I suppose. Sometimes she adds in some scenery like flowers or a road, clouds, sun or rain.

Apart from drawing's I can also tell if she's unhappy or otherwise when she pretends to read. After a scolding, her "stories" would contain sentences like "and her mummy said go away! and she cried and cried (making sobbing sounds) ......" etc. Thats when I know I have to tone down the scoldings.

Sick again!

The whole family is sick again. Runny noses, coughs, on and off slight fever. Yup. Its the sick not so merry go round again. Started with me. I passed it on to Mr MG. He passed it on to baby. Baby passed it on to my girl. Baby passed it on to me. So now, we've all got it at various stages.

Its the time of the year made worse by the weather and the food. I fall sick every year around Chinese New Year. This year we got it early. Lets hope we all are able to recover before Chinese New Year. Bleh!

In the meantime, its Valentine's Day, so Happy Valentine's Day to all who visit this blog. Here's a rose for you.

Doing more things together with the kids

Its been searing hot. We took our old carpet out to the porch, sprayed water on it, threw soap powder over it and brushed. After that we sprayed more water and the kids had so much fun jumping on the carpet and making the water splash over their feet.

Cleaning time is the only time they get to "play with water" without being scolded so it was double the fun for them. We used to live in a high rise before so there was no porch to do such fun stuff with them. It looks like we'll be washing our car more often now, with their help. Lol!

The sun was so hot, despite the carpet being dripping wet and very, very heavy with water, it dried up in one afternoon. Imagine what the sun would do to your skin if you were out all day?

Switched to the New Blogger

I've been switched to the new blogger. I was not allowed to sign in unless I switched and so switch I did. It took all of 2 minutes and everything was done. All my add-ons and other customization stayed intact. Phew! *wipes cold sweat off forehead*

I was dreading this day for months worrying about losing my layout etc and having to redo everything. I even went to change the template on my other blog to make it more "switch friendly" because I had problems switching earlier. I was worried that the template that I was using was not compatible with the new blogger. Hmm..... should have left my old template intact.

Now, I'm still running on the old html code because I'm so worried about trying out the new ones and having to waste time redoing everything. (my various add ons). Feel really silly for having switched but not trying out the new blogger but no time to mess around with templates these days.