Every mother is painfully aware that children are now on their way too long school holiday. Initially, the novelty of not having to wake up at 6:30 am to clothe and feed cranky kids who resent you for disrupting their sleep, was so very much welcome. No more waking up early. No more thinking of what to make for breakfast. No more getting evil stares from kids who just want to sleep some more!
However, after this novelty has worn off, you realize that you have traded a mere hour or two of extra sleep for those precious 4-5 hours of peace and tranquility you had in the mornings. That was the blissful period of time when you could drive around and get your errands done while listening to music other than "The Wheels of the Bus"! Sometimes you could even fit in a hair wash!
A week into the holidays, and the kids have burrowed right down to your scalp after being in your hair 24/7! Not an hour goes by without hearing these favourite chants:
"Mummy, I'm bored!"
"Mummy, I have nothing to do!"
"Mummy, what do I do now?"
So, to prevent kids from going nuts, and Mummy getting depressed, we have to come up with lots of activities for kids to keep them occupied over the holidays.
These are some of the activities we have done post Genting Highlands trip:
- go to the park to play on the swings
- go to the shopping mall to do sand art (again)
- make gingerbread men cookies
- put up the Christmas tree
- pack 550 presents for the upcoming Christmas party for children from rural villages
- start intensive private swimming lessons
- start private art classes
Since there are so many cousins, we could organize private art classes at Grandpa's home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. May 'The Force' be with the poor art teacher who has to teach all 9 of them!
I have also arranged private swimming lessons at our condo for the 3 girls on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. They really enjoyed their first lesson, because the coach is really good with children and makes their lessons fun! This is a humongous improvement from our condo's resident coach who once scolded Annie, "Can you understand English?!"
The nerve of him! He is the one who can't understand English, because he kept asking Annie to stroke with her right arm and Annie kept doing it and he kept yelling, "Right arm! Right arm!" It was the right arm already for goodness sakes!
So anyway, we still have plenty of time before school starts. Tomorrow, they will attend a Christmas religious camp in the afternoons for 4 days. This was organized by Grandma and includes hearing impaired children. Grandma teaches sign language and speech and has worked with the hearing impaired for many years.
Well, that will keep them busy for another week. For next week, we'll see what we can rustle up and I'll report it soon.
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