3rd Hatchday II

Even though some of the kids are still crying in school being the 2nd week of the new school term, after checking with the form teacher, she feel that it will be fine to have a small celebration in school for Zethan's birthday. A break into the routine.

So we ordered a small Mickey Mouse cake from Polar, bought a box of animal biscuits and a bottle of Yakult for each kid in the class.

On the actual day, after dropping Zethan to school in his homewear (birthday boy/ girl get to be in homewear), went to pick up the cake. Brought along the balloon from his birthday party too.

It was a simple celebration with the children seated and the birthday boy get a special seat in the little tikes bench. The children sang a birthday song and get to tuck in a small slide of birthday cake each. I brought along additional little snacks in case any of the kids don't like the cake which turned out a few actually asked for 2nd and 3rd helping!

The box of biscuits and Yakult were packed in the childrens' bag to be brought home.

3rd Hatchday

simple matter such as my darling's 3rd birthday sent me in a dilemma too. Indecisive if we should celebrate his birthday, where do we celebrate, what cake do we buy, what design do we choose.......

Finally it was decided that Yes we will celebrate his 3rd birthday on 8th jan 2012 (Sun) and I have promised my dear Babe that it will be the LAST year of celebration, crossing my fingers and toes.

It was prettty easy peasy to decide the theme of his birthday party; Bowling, no doubts about it since he is going all gaga over bowling clips in Youtube. Venue was not as easy as it seem as we are trying to accomodate our guests to our every best if possible. Sourced for quite a few locations and had initially decide on Superbowl @ OCC after enquiring about the rates and catering services. However when we head down to place a booking, the irritating caterer turned back on his words and increase the price threefold while reducing the varieties on the menu! So very pissed off can.

So back to square one and started all the callings in action once again to double check and triple check lest it happen again. Placed a booking with the bowling centre @ CDAN at Bukit Batok and pop in one day with intention to check out catering menu. It was then I was full of regrets booking the place and the hub supported my idea to switch venue (not very appropriate to disclose our reasons here anyway).

So, again it was back to square one but fortunately I have done all the necessary homework so drove down to the next potential location; The Chevron. Decided that it is only wise to view the place before we proceed with any booking again. Once we are in there, we knew that it would definitely be the right choice and wise to switch venue. Placed a booking for 2 lanes for 2 hrs, one of which a bumper lane for the kiddos.

Head back home came the tedious arrangements. Choosing the menu was a 10 minutes affair while the horrifying aspect is to resend the change in venue to all guests via SMS. It does not help that even though it was less than a week to the party, many of the invited guests have not RSVP which is quite the norm anyway. Messaging, replying, reminders to bring socks, constantly on the phone and trying to recall if anybody have been missed out which would be a disaster; no joke going to the wrong venue!

Next up will be the birthday cake. Initial plan was to go for a bowling theme cake and had coordinated with one of the baker. Any hiccup here again since I was not aware that I had to collect the cake a day before in the noon since they are operating on sunday and the collection point is in Bedok! So again had to abandon this plan and go for a 'normal' cake. T&F will be the best option since Zethan is so much into it so T&F it shall be. Just 4 days before the party, the cake was ordered. I had to even watsapp the hub the shortlisted 3 designs to decide which to order (Zethan asleep in the car thus I had to order the cake myself).

On the big day itself, we headed down to Chevron slightly earlier to make sure the caterer did setup the food in order, the nitty gritty details such as lanes allocation, rental of shoes etc and in case any guests were to arrive earlier than the stipulated time.

We were very glad that everything went in order though the kiddos actually hogged the 2 lanes thus we have to apologise to the adults that they did not manage to bowl afterall! The birthday boy had a rolling good time and seeing the priceless happiness on his face made all the hassles and hiccups worthwhile!

A big thank you to all our dear friends and family for attending the party, sharing the joy of the little man. Pardon us if we have not been good hosts and hope that you have enjoyed yourselves too.

Lastly Happy 3rd Birthday My Darling!

School

A terribly back dated post and there are simply more to come.

We had our housewarming on 10 December 2011 after much procrastination and major changes due to indecisiveness, shall not even go there. Anyhow we split into 2 sessions; noon for relatives and Babe's colleagues while the night session is mainly for friends with a little mix here and there. The turnout was pretty okay even though it is a super peak period for weddings and holidays. We had quite a fair amount of leftover food though, quite high wastages.

okay, back to the intended post. Zethan's 1st day of school.

The search for his school was a very eventful one since it was decided at the last minute to place him in a kindy rather than full day childcare. This is largely due to the fact that since receiving news of my pregnancy, all plans have to go through major change; me not returning to workforce or rather quite impossible and uphill task. Imagine the panic mode I went into instantly having to source for a school for Z and we all knew that finding a 'good school' is highly challenging since registration and queueing start way in the beginning of the year. To make matter worse, it is the school holiday!!! which means most of the schools are closed.

Had to sprung into action with instant research on schools which offer preschool program in the area which I am absolutely clueless about it totally. So Kiasuparents.com became my bedtime story for the next few days. Did some research on the choices available and started calling them only to be greeted by voicemails which is normal since it is the school holidays period. Change strategy to email instead and everyday was pessimistic checking the emails to know that the schools are full and the waitlist is longer than the queue for Mac's Hello Kitty plush toys.

Reluctantly and my last resort; PCF. I am stereotyping here big time but the though of having to send Z to PCF brought me to tears (you could attribute this to pregnancy hormones too!) BUT what can I do? There are simply no other options available and that is the last bet! Called the office up and was told that they still have a vacancy for Pre-nursery..Phews. The only good news out of all the nad news, yes I need that. However the teleconversation with the super not helpful nor friendly admin lady was rather agonising. I could only do the registration on 1st day of school including payments, buying of uniform and the yada yada. The slow processing preggy me actually took all her advice in and did not pursue further.

Took me quite a while to realise that what if there are a few people trying to vie the supposedly limited vacancy and all turned up on the 1st day trying to do registration?!! I would be a dead duck and no way I would allow that to happen! So after 1-2 weeks later, I called again hoping that the answerer is somebody more helpful but tough luck. She told me the exact same thing again but this time I push her further on my concern. I had insisted that she took down our details to reserve a place for us which she said she can't and what if we decide not to turn up on that day itself. I told her off and said there is no other options available for us now and there is no way we are not going to turn up for registration and it was them who did not allowed immediate registration despite the office operational during the school holidays! You can hear the unwillingness over at the other end of the phone when she took down the child's name and that's about all she required?!!

So the first day of school is quite a madness for us since there's tons to be done. Reached there 15mins earlier with the necessary documents and started filling up the registration form. There she is taing her own sweet time despite the rush and even had time to take her personal calls while there are more coming in for registration and purchase of uniforms. At long last, settled all the documentation and payments and it was almost 20minutes later affair. Happily she told me we might not be able to make it for school today since we had to get uniform and they highly encourage children to be in school uniform to attend school! So we rushed through the trying out of sizes, payment again, changing Zethan into the new and crumpled school uniform and rushed to the classroom few units away.

What happen next was even unacceptable for me not to mention Zethan. We are expected to drop off the child and leave! No orientation, not even 5 minutes with the child in the classroom!!! We were caught totally unprepared and Zethan cried badly when the door closed and all parents had to go. This mummy here sobbed badly even while walking to have my Mac breakfast, eating and sobbing. Must have been quite a sight, tsk tsk. Can't control my tearing totally, blame it on the preggy hormones again. I had to chop chop finish up my breakfast and walked back to school, peeping in on him. After dismissal brought him to playground for a while before going for lunch. He could tell me - Zethan cry...mummy, mummy!

The 1st 3 days will only be 1.5hrs sessions as part of 'orientation' for the children and there are 4 teachers around to help with the crying ones. I had to prepare Zethan throughout the day on what he had to do when dropped off in school. Smile and say goodbye, no crying as he is a big boy and gave assurance that I will be back for him soon and he will have lots of fun in school with new friends and toys.

The 2nd day went well, no crying from him though he still look a little confused. All smiley while preparing for school which touched me close to tears again. Sailed through 3rd day as well and like they always say, the rest are history. Not a tiny bit affected by the other crying children which went on for a good 2 weeks. Good job buddy, all grown up and you did very well!