20090928 Mommy's thoughts

Kathleen has been attending childcare for 3 weeks.

A usual schoolday for her will start when papa woke her up and drove her to her childcare.  As they are usually in a rush, Kate will only have her breakfast in school.  Usually papa will try to stay with her till after her breakfast, but sometimes he will have to leave before that if he has a early meeting to attend.  Kate will stay the whole day at the childcare till 5pm, and that is when the school bus will take her to my mother's place.  As my mother lives at the edge of the housing estate furthest away from the childcare, the bus journey took more than one hour.  By the time which Kate was already cold from sitting in the air con bus.  So after the few days, we notify the teachers to add on one layer of long sleeve jacket for her before she board the bus, and now her hands are not so cold at the end of the journey.

My mother will cook dinner for her and me, and accordingly to my mother, she will not speak much when they are alone.  I will go direct to my mother's place after work, and Kate will come to the door when she hears the door opening, and will give a wide smile, declaring 'Its mommy!' many times when she see me.

My father (her 公公)will burn the joss sticks during the evening, and that has become her new routine of some sort.  She will insist that the two of us followed gong gong around the house as he walked to the different altars around the house, and we will have to  拜拜 to the different altar with him, a simple routine that bonded her slightly to her 公公.

Sometimes her papa will come and fetch us home, on other days, we will take public transport home.  Usually we will reach home between 9.30pm to 10.30pm, after which we will have to prepare for the next day, and Kate will try to play as much as possible before bedtime.  Which means bedtime is also delayed as she will refuse to sleep until past midnight.  The new arrangement also means that we have less time for story book reading, and we have been visiting the library less often, and sometimes, the borrowed books remain untouched.

After the first few days in cc, she keep repeating the word 这个 (this), which I assume is learnt when her assistant teacher Mrs Chua, keep asking her if 'this' (bag/shoes/water bottle) is hers. :P

Her childcare always start the day with the singing of the national athem, and saying the pledge in both English and Mandarin.  After the first few days, she began to sing the chorus of the National Athem, off key and with the wrong lyrics of course, when she is at home.

She also regressed abit, and started to use gestures (bringing her pinched fingers towards her mouth with a 'ummm' sound) to indicate that she wanted to eat, which I assume, is because the teacher does not understand her when she said that she wanted her milk, and she is unable to have direct access to food.

My sister and I thought we noticed a slight increase in chattiness.  And she sang louder nowadays too :P Her vocabulary had increased, as she learnt new phrases such as 'pass urine', 'swallow' (imagine at Taka, and she keep shouting 'Auntie Beth pass urine' loudly when my sister's helper went to the washroom).

But with childcare, she also have to deal with the other children, with 'fighting' for toys and to shower instead of bath.  The former gave her nightmares which she will cry 'give me' 'give me', and the later will make her shout 'dunwan' as she is afraid of water coming down on her from the shower head.  At the beginning, she will toss and turned and rolled around almost the whole night when she sleep, and shouting out 'give me' or 'dunwan', or cry.  Those are trying nights, as both of us (her papa and me) have to work the next day. A mommy friend told me that her girl's childcare teacher told her that the nightmares will last from 2 weeks to 2 months.  2 months!!!!  She also developed a fear of bathing, and will refuse to bath (bath, not shower) nowadays.  

She has also become more clingy to me nowadays, and now, all the activities have to be done by me, including hand washing etc which used to be done by papa.

Since she started on cc, the adults has been more tired as we travel more on the road, sleep later, and (for her papa) wake up earlier.  Poor Kate also have to withstand 3 additional journeys everyday (from home to childcare, from childcare to my mother's place, and later from there to home), on top of suddenly being transported to a new environment.

Around the same time, I also started developing back pains.  Not the usual ones, but nowadays my back is very stiff, with pains radiating down the legs, sometimes with numbness on the legs, and the waist will weak and 酸 by the end of the day.  Sitting is now painful (and mine is a desk-bound job) and certain position brought pain too.  Kate's papa suspected that I got ankloysing spondilytis (choy!) while my colleague said that the disc of my spine are disintegrating (choy too!).  The GP suspected that the bone is pressing down the nerve, but X rays taken by the polyclinic showed nothing, and the doctor there said most probably its a muscle strain that will recover on its own.  I insisted on a referral to the hospital but the earliest date I can get is in November.  

Meantime, I have to delegate some of the jobs to papa, as when the pain is bad, I am unable to hold onto Kate tightly (eg in the carpark when she always like to dash into the road) nor carry her.  He is never in favor of having a sibling for Kate, and the new responsibilities (sending Kate to school, bringing us back) and uncertainties make him even more firm in his decision.

So I guess there goes my dream to have a bigger family, and Kate will remain an only child, unless my goddess send a few hassle-free, lawful kids my way. :P