Mothers do what they need to do...

My MIL is away in East Malaysia for a week now. I am now cooking in the evenings to feed hubby & the kids and also sometimes for my FIL and SIL who are at their home nearby. MIL will be back next week. So today I went to Tesco during lunch break to get some vegetables for tonight's dinner. Actually, I find it still quite manageable. I leave immediately after work, fetch all kids who will be at my daughter's kindy and get home around 6 pm. Starts cooking and dinner will be cooked by 7 pm. Not bad at all. But of course, it does need a little bit of pre-planning, like defrosting meat/fish before hand. I don't mind this at all but I believe my MIL still wants to cook dinner for us, so I'll still leave it to her when she comes back.Unless of course she changes her mind.

Christmas was yesterday, went to church on Christmas eve and Christmas morning. In the afternoon, we went to have a small family get-together at sis' house. I ended up cooking, with the maid's help, while my sister and my mum had to do some last minute shopping for kids' presents. I did mine earlier. So the kids were all happy with a couple of presents each. Anyways, the kids had fun and it was wonderful to spend time with my siblings and their families.

The new year is coming soon, the kids will start school on 2nd January. I have yet to see how we can manage because one of the boys will be schooling in the morning while the other will be in the afternoon. The two boys, although cannot stop quarreling sometimes, are like always together. So now, this year, they will see each other less. When one is in school, the other will be in daycare and vice versa. I hope their bickering will be lesser. Anyways, they like to gang up against their sister and make her scream, still don't know how to stop that, both they making her scream and she screaming...

I was talking with my mum and siblings and the subject about how to teach children came up. So my mum said we should not shout/scold or hit our children but reason with them. Hmmmm... Ironically, I don't remember having a lot of chit-chat with my parents while growing up... In principal, yes, we should not scream and scold at them. But in practice, it's not easy. I blow my top sometimes, even hubby does that. When either of us do that, we get annoyed at each other. I believe my parents felt the same too, more my mum because dad was not at home as much as mum.

Sometimes, we just need to sit back and look at things in the kids' perspective. They have siblings to contest with for attention, they get bored easily and they are just mischievous little creatures by nature. When they can get their siblings miserable, they are happy! My sons would do anything to be able to play computer games! I definitely control that, I don't like them getting so hooked up at the PC or iPad/iPhone playing games. Fortunately (or unfortunately) my Streamyx at home sucks, so loading online games takes forever, that kind of hinders their online gaming activities (and also my Maaduu sessions as well :( ).

I think, we just need to help them spend time doing something more interesting and beneficial, together, or even apart sometimes. Last week, we spent sometime doing some paintings. We also should have some outdoor fun and exercise too. I think I am going to draw up a schedule to include some of these activities into their lives instead of shopping every weekend. Let's see how that turns out.

I got this book for Christmas, Thanks MT. One of the quotes inside goes like this:

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

                                                      - Benjamin Spock