Blessings from Above

Claire has been doing spelling since the start of this year - are there specific methods to learn to spell? I teach her to recite the letters and then the word as she writes them so that they 'register' in her brain. Is this a good method?

I always know its trouble - when the OTHER family falls ill. Though we do not meet often (once every two weeks, maybe - even that is too much), there is a 'carrier' who will bring the germs and viruses over to my household. It normally starts with the children and then DH... and I'm usually the last to get hit. But since I am pregnant now (there are many articles explaining why pregnant women get sick more easily - just google it), I got infected before DH and I'm glad to say *touch wood* that the children got a much milder version. It started last week - with a horrible feeling in the throat and before I knew it, I lost my voice *almost completely* - conversations were reduced to whispers and I bet the children were glad that I couldn't SHOUT at them when they did something dangerous! I started off with laryngitis and then, drippy nose - I've got my voice back now but now the throat is always itchy, the nose is stuffy and the phlegm is greenish. *YUCKS*

Recently, there has been a furore among parents with young children over plans by the education ministry to 'review' the current primary school registration process as the current system gives priority to certain groups of people, much to the chagrin of others. I belong to a group who has some 'slight advantage' over others as I graduated from one of the local top schools - that 'automatically' qualifies Claire for a place for the school. Never mind that we stay a good 30 - 40 mins drive away from the school. However, being a single gender school, we will need to seek alternative schools for the boys, adding to our logistics woe in the future. Our current residence is in a private estate and the nearest school is 1.3km away. We have started looking at properties nearer to school for Claire, which means that we will have to move out of our comfort zone in the east. To make matters worse, property prices have escalated to ridiculous levels with suburban prop

I guess its pretty obvious that I'm not able to blog as often as I'd like to even though its what I set out to do. Between shuttling the children to and fro school, catching up with work in the office and occasionally cooking a meal or two, I can barely find time to do anything else. It doesn't help that I need more sleep than normal now or that I'm not very good at managing my time. :| Just for the record, Chace at 30 months, only has 19 teeth and is still not potty trained. I'm a believer that the child will achieve a milestone when he/she is ready and thus I'm not worried. The grandmas, on the other hand, have been bugging me to toilet train him particularly because Claire was off diapers in the day when she was about 18 months. However, he is way before schedule for other milestones e.g. speech and motor skills so that, in itself, really isn't a cause for concern. As for Claire, she is starting to realize that school is not all fun and play. Oth