Strangely Patient and Motivated

I've had a strange day. Yesterday must have been more rejuvenating that I thought it would be. I woke up patient and motivated. This is a BIG deal, especially when you consider the fact that I didn't fall asleep until around 2am (I blame the hazelnut bubble tea that I had in the afternoon).

We dropped Aaron to school on time and afterwards, Adrian and I spent some time at a new park we discovered. There was a big duck pond and I spent a good twenty minutes answering questions about the pond, ducks, swans, funny birds with red beaks, green stuff in the water (didn't look like algae). I often find myself feeling impatient with all the repeated questions that make no sense to me but I didn't feel annoyed today. And when it was time to go, Adrian must have felt very satisfied with my answers because there was no protest and we made our way slowly, but without detour, back to the car.

At home today, we worked on activities that involved fine motor skills - cutting, gluing, sticking and drawing. And once again, I didn't feel that I needed to hurry or be doing anything else. I didn't go on the internet as soon as I thought he was occupied. While spending all this productive time with Adrian, I also completed two rounds of laundry so all our winter clothes are now ready to wear.

I've managed to keep to my own rule of only allowing two different types of toys out at the same time. This is hard to do because I still need to remind Adrian to put away before pulling the next thing out and he has not caught on to this idea as willingly as Aaron did. Still, it has happened today because I have been patient and motivated.

And why is all this blog worthy? Because it has been a good day for me as a stay-at-home mom. I did all the stay-at-home wife things like laundry/meals/cleaning/etc and the stay-at-home mother things like teaching Adrian to read, write and count. Its not that I don't ordinarily do those things but very often, only one or the other gets done and sometimes, things are carried out in a grumpy way. Motivation usually isn't a problem for me but patience .... well, that has been worn down by the little, but daily, frustrations of dealing with little ones. So patience, must be the key to good days. Patience leads to less frustrations, which means more happy times, and that means the motivation levels stay high naturally and things get done!

Ok...patience. Where can I get more of this from?

A Whole Year Older

I'm only a day older than yesterday but I'll have to add a whole year onto my age now. The day started just after 7am when Aaron excitedly came to shove the first clue of his treasure hunt in front of my still sleeping face. He has been very excited about my birthday because of all the 'planning' he has put in over the past couple of weeks. So, after following the clues from the kitchen drawer, to the book shelves and all around the house, I finally found the present that he had been secretly working on - a twelve page book of drawings for me.

The drawings were mostly of various prehistoric animals that the thought up but there was also this one page of an adventure that he would like to go on with me.

Richard gave me an equally awesome gift but its too fancy to share here. Lets just say that its the fourth consecutive gadget type gift that he's given me, and, like the other three, I'll be mostly admiring it a few weeks before really getting into using it.

Obviously, I can't help but think back on the previous thirty five birthdays and comparing this one against the others. I'm happy to say that apart from my very first one (I was told that I didn't smile once), I have stayed happy, healthy and contented with my life at each and every one of them. My craziest birthday was my 19th when I had a 48 hour party with probably 48 friends. The birthday that led to my life now was my 22nd - Richard and I went for a Savage Garden concert and thats when we started going out. When you think about it from a certain angle, it was a downhill slide in the friends department from when I was 19. I went from spending my birthday with 48 people to just 3. Three very special ones though...

I'm off to enjoy the remaining few hours to this day with the three of them now. After being treated like a queen today, it'll be back to life as the help tomorrow.

Wordless Wednesday - Reminding Aaron Of Palembang

These photos were taken around the forth week of April in 2009.

Going for a walk to buy coconut milk : 

His favourite work was in the garden :

Calling out to the neighborhood kids :

For more Wordless Wednesdays, visit My Little Drummer Boys.

Taking Frugal Up A Notch

We spent a quiet weekend at home and I used the time to get some organizing done and prepare a few activities for next week. More specifically, I wanted to get things ready so that I could spend the week encouraging Adrian to use a pencil. So, I sharpened all 42 color pencils, put together some ruled and un-ruled paper, pulled out Aaron's unfinished coloring books and collected a few different colored pens from around the house just to make things interesting.

I also did something that made the following words flash like huge neon signs in my head "stingy, cheapskate, frugal, kiam-siap". I found one of Aaron's old alphabet writing exercise books - the kind that has the dotted lines. He had only completed the pages for A to K and there were only a few marks on the remaining pages. The book was in fantastic condition, not dog eared or teared in anyway, and the writing was all neatly done in pencil. So, why let it sit around or worse, throw it out? I ended up rubbing out all the pages that Aaron had already completed. It took much longer than I expected and I had sore fingers from doing it but I think its good enough for Adrian to try writing in.

As I was rubbing, I was thinking to myself how crazy it was to be doing it because I noticed that the book only cost $2.50. Isn't it a waste of my time? Couldn't I have done something more useful with my time? Who reuses exercise books?

Here's the definition of "frugal" according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

"characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources"

So, its true, I could have done something else with my ten minutes but at that moment, I just felt that it would be a waste of resources not to reuse that book. Its not just the money either. I did not like to see something that was still of use, get wasted. As I've grown older, I find that I make more frugal decisions - like mending and making clothes. These traits must have been passed down from my grandmother, to my mother and now to me.

I don't think I'm a miser who is tight fisted with money, I just like to spend it in a smart way. I also don't think I'm a hoarder (I suppose, they all say that), but I usually can find use for the things that I keep. Its not necessary for me to by the highest quality products because I think they will last a long time. I've always found that with care, most things do last. The money I save today, can be spent on something bigger tomorrow. And even when I come across that 'bigger' thing, there is always a decision that can be made on whether or not it is justified.

So Many Reasons To Be Happy

I actually started this post at around 2pm yesterday. The very first sentence was "Some days are just so much easier than others. And, this was one of them..."

The reasons were:
1. Beautiful blue skies with fluffy white clouds here and there. It looked like the pictures you see in children's story books.
2. Easy morning getting Aaron ready for school.
3. Aaron and Adrian did all sorts of cute things together, making me forget about the times that they are screaming at one another.
4. It was Thursday and I was looking forward to clogging at night.

Then I realised that I'd have to continue blogging in the evening because it was time to pick Aaron up from school. So, off I went.

First off, there must have been some sort of incident on the freeway and the traffic was backed up all the way to where I get onto the road. After about fifteen minutes of crawling along, our car starts to jerk each time I moved it. Then the message on the panel comes up "Transmission. Consult Workshop". Great! I'm in the middle of the freeway, already in a traffic jam, Aaron is waiting for me and now this? What happened to that easy, happy day?

Surprisingly, I did still have a happy day and ended up feeling very thankful because...

1) The car managed to jerk its way safely into the school car park. I don't know yet how the transmission is after doing 8km of jerking but at least we got there safely.

2) Roadside assistance took 45 mins to arrive but they did come and were friendly.

3) Richard was able to leave work early to go home and get the other car to pick us up.

4) Another mother was kind enough to drop my house keys off to Richard because, of all days, he chose yesterday to forget them. Can you believe it??

5) There were more accidents on the free way and 'our' tow truck had to be diverted and took nearly 90 minutes to get to us. But, it got there and delivered our car to the workshop before they closed.

6) By the time we got in the car, I realised it was too late to cook dinner. Traffic was horrendous and I had to break my golden rule of never taking the kids to McDonalds. (It was the only fast and easy thing that was on the way home.) I am appeased by the fact that Aaron protested and said he didn't want any and that he would only have it this one time.

7) And finally, it was a happy day because I still made it to clogging on time.

What a day! I'm now driving the other car, the one that I have always worried about breaking down. It will be time to pick Aaron up soon. I'm not worried because at least I know what to do now. Yesterday was a bit of a learning experience. Oh! Another 'first' experience in my lifetime - I've never had a car break down before.

Wordless Wednesday - He cooks! (with help)

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'To Do' List For Under 11s

I don't think under 11s are into making lists yet but a list has been made for their parents to help provide children with a taste of a 'traditional childhood'. I read an article in Saturday's Courier Mail and its actually a modified list (to make it more suited to Australians) from one that the UK National Trust came up with.

I try to remind myself to keep things simple and low tech with the children but I'm guilty of turning the TV on too. While I don't think this list is fantastic, its good enough for me to pick out a few things that I had forgotten about. For example, catching a butterfly with a net. I used to love doing that! We don't need to examine the details of the list to know that apart from showing children a life away from computer games, TV, iPads and the internet, its purpose is also to let children experience that feeling of being free and unscheduled, to explore their imagination and maybe indulge in a little day dreaming.

Its been a lazy afternoon for me but I like to position it as me free and unscheduled time. They did a fantastic job at keeping themselves occupied and fully utilizing their imaginations. They've role played in a paper making factory, doctor's clinic, mechanic's workshop and now they're in a kitchen. Somewhere in between all that, they let themselves out to the backyard to hunt for bugs. One had a magnifying glass and the other a pencil and notepad to write down everything they come across. Here's a photo of some sort of animal shelter where they were cooking for the animals and putting them to sleep.

Now back to that list. The very first 'to do' on the list is to climb a tree. Aaron has actually been trying to climb trees these whole holidays but hasn't progressed very high yet. He'll get there. In the mean time, look at this amazing tree that we found last weekend.

I'm not going to put the whole long list of 50 kids activities here but its worth a click here if you do have under 11s.