Tuesday 27 January 2015

Stay At Home Week!

Kaitlin's school has been having HFMD on and off. I mean they have always had it but not as frequent. Then last year, it seemed pretty frequent but there weren't that many cases. Then *jeng jeng jeng*, this year..bam! HFMD with few cases, and then now a huge increase. As of now, there has been a total of 16 cases since the first week of school, and currently 14 present cases.

When we came across our first ever HFMD case in Kaitlin's school, I kept Kaitlin away from school. Then I slowly eased and felt it was alright for her to attend school since the case was not in her class. Thankfully nothing happened to her. Even this year with the few increasing cases, I let her attend school. Yes, can you imagine first few days into school and HFMD. Super thankful that she wasn't just starting school and having to deal with the separation anxiety. If it was like her starting school for the first time, and not being able to drop her off at class I think it would have been pretty hard to handle and I would be worrying like mad.

So the cases kept increasing and Kaitlin's class happened to have 1 case of HFMD so that was it for me. I wasn't going to risk her getting HFMD and then everyone else in the house to end up getting it as well. Plus seeing how close Kaitlin and I are, it's almost impossible to not get if she had/has *touch wood* HFMD. I rather be extra safe and not have to see her suffer in pain and all.

Thankfully I decided not to let her go to school on Monday, because it was only on Monday that I received an email notifying that there were 6 new cases over the weekend and this email came in the evening -.- With that I thought I would not let Kaitlin go to school for a few days cos of the HFMD cases and cos she was sneezing a little, but the cases increased so the entire week, Kaitlin got to skip school!

I could kind of tell that Kaitlin wanted to go to school to hang with her friends. There was one night where she told me she wanted to go to school the next day and play with her friends and that she wanted to celebrate her friend's birthday. Awww :( I did want to let her see her friends and all, but cannot luh, cannot take the risk.

So what did we do the entire week? Well, we had lots of awesome mommy daughter bonding time. It made me reminisce the time before she started school! How we spent everyday together, whether it be chilling at home or heading out and having fun!


1. Lunch with Kaitlin

I got to have lunch with Kaitlin a few times the past week! I don't know why but I always feel happy to be able to dine with Kaitlin when it's just the two of us and we dine outside. It's like our mini little girl's date!

2. To The Market We Go!


 I do bring Kaitlin with me to the wet market, but that's usually on the weekends, so I took this opportunity for us to head to the wet market on a weekday. Less crowd hurray and we could get whatever Kaitlin wanted like cod fish and fishballs! Plus she got to have dou nai and her fave carrot cake. And as usual, we popped by Tiong Bahru Bakery to get Kaitlin a treat!

3. Evening Playground Fun


That same day when we went to the wet market, I had wanted to bring Kaitlin to the playground but we had to rush back home. I decided to take a chance and bring Kaitlin to the playground in the evening. I say chance cos firstly I knew we would have to rush quite a fair bit with dinner time and bed time. Plus, Kaitlin may get all cranky and I had to factor in the evening rush hour crowd issue. Thank goodness that all worked out pretty fine. We had to rush a fair bit after getting home but Kaitlin got to have the whole playground to herself! Even though it was a pretty tiny playground, I guess it's still awesome to be able to just play and run freely. 


4. Exploring Outdoors

Seeing the perfect weather..I decided that Kaitlin and I should head outdoors and explore instead of just staying at home or hanging around the malls. I was actually hesitant to head to the other end of Botanics cos it's harder to get there than the usual side we go to. Plus by the time we left home it was pretty late, so I wasn't sure if we could have enough time for fun and not have to rush. Well, I decided we should just do it anyway, and if anything to cut it short. We eventually got home pretty late, but thank goodness Kaitlin didn't get cranky!


That's Kaitin's attempt at taking a picture with a swan! Hahah! she didn't want to stand any further back cos she was afraid. She also said that the duck was scary and I asked why and she said "it's eyes are scary!"

We were strolling and Kaitlin saw this leaf:


Look at how huge it was!! Like bigger than the size of her face lol! She wanted to bring the leaf home to paint and..yes, the leaf is now in our home. Kaitlin's not the super adventurous kind, like she even used to be scared of paint when she was younger cos it would dirty her hands. So seeing her just pick things up and being totally fine with it was awesome!

Speaking of which..look who touched sand!! Okay I got a little happy too soon, cos she was at first totally alright with touching the sand and reached out for it, but I don't know what happened..the next second later she didn't wan to touch it but asked me to put the sand on her palms. Okay luh, still got improvement from last time when she would freak out at sand. 


Oh and she spotted that dried piece of leaf that look like a heart! So cool right!! It's like how did she spot that amongst all the other tiny dried leaves. Like suddenly she adventure girl allll!


We also climbed up the tree house at the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden! Kaitlin was a little afraid at first but with encouragement she did it!! She didn't slide down the tunnel slides, but perhaps next time. Oh yes, we were exploring around and found this area with some rocks, so we climbed down and went closer to the tiny pond to look at turtles and fish. Kaitlin had wanted to see turtles and fish when we first reached Botanics cos her memory of Botanics is like feeding the turtles and fish and going to Food for Thought which was on the extreme end of where we were. So it was perfect we chance on this tiny pond! 

5. Lunch with Godpa


We also managed to visit Kaitlin's Godpa for lunch! It's been awhile since Kaitlin and I met up with her Godparents for lunch. We used to that before Kaitlin started school, so I was definitely happy that we got to do this! Relieve old days, plus I got to go back to NP for just a short bit and I was so happy! Makes me miss poly days so so much.

6. Water Play


Though Kaitlin is three, well going to be four years old this year! She's still pretty timid and is afraid to play with sand and water. I've always been encouraging her but she wouldn't be all that keen to try it out and would get pretty afraid. I was super happy when she played with the water that day and in fact she was looking forward to playing! She didn't exactly go crazy with the water play, but it was a big step for her cos she would touch the water and even use it to wash her face. For a moment there it looked as if she was using the place as her personal toilet -.- It took a lot of encouraging and she finally tried walking under the water!! When we were going to leave, I asked her if she wanted to do it again but she was afraid again. Don't know why, but hey at least she did it! And it's such an improvement from the last time we were there!! 



7. Indoor Playground

Since we already had fun at the outdoor playground, time for some indoor playground fun! I brought Kaitlin to Cool De Sac, an indoor playground that we've never been too!



Somehow this whole week of spending time with Kaitlin kind of made me consider pulling her out of school and perhaps re-look at homeschooling as an option. I love being able to spend one on one time with Kaitlin and watching her learn and conquer her fears. I feel like it's more productive cos we focus on her and what she wants to explore. Of course with that said, there are pros and cons to giving her undivided attention and being in a setting where there are children who are her age, where they learn and play together.

Whatever it is, I kind of felt like this whole HFMD was kind of like a blessing in disguise, and in fact it sort of happened at a right time. I'll admit I'm pretty peeved at the whole HFMD situation, but that also kind of gave me the opportunity to spend mornings with Kaitlin. It gave us time to venture out together. At times we had to rush, but at least we got to play! What's more with the bub converting to full day school soon, I felt like I had to make use of and treasure the time that we had together all that more. I can't help but feel sad knowing that with the increasing months and years, we won't be able to play and chill like now. It would probably be school school school, school work, projects, tests and what not. Stress, and lack of time. It's so sad knowing that we would end up spending time going through work and revising, and I probably would end up nagging at her more than us actually spending time having fun :/ I would want to create opportunities for us to chill, relax and have loads of fun but I know that that's going to be kind of impossible. Sigh. Well, this just makes me want to spend even more time with Kaitlin and to try and find a balance of making sure she won't be lagging behind her peers and to enjoy her childhood.

No comments:

Post a Comment