Grandma in town!

GRANDMA AND MADISON...

Chris' mum from Melbourne arrived on Tuesday night(2 nights ago ), in time for dinner with us at home.

Her visit this time round was to coincide with Boon Hean's wedding in KL, and she'd had a ball with the relatives. Well.. kind of... the grandfather was down with some chest thing and they'd had a bit of a tiff about how it should be managed. That's families for you. Some manage through peaceful discussions, others thrive on emotionally charged debates. In the end things do get sorted out, occasionally with silent wars that usually don't persist for too long.





GRANDMA, NEIL and MADISON



In any case, I decided to try my best to make her short trip worthwhile, so I took a day off work yesterday to take them out.

The weather, being Singapore weather and all was as usual hot and humid, with the threat of a thunderstorm in the clouds. Guess where we ended up first ? Shopping, of course. By the time I'd picked them up from their hotel it was close to Madison's lunch time and we had to make our first stop at the foodcourt at Vivocity.

Then it was time for a wander around till our lunch time, and by this time Madison had fallen asleep. The chaos then began.

Neil wanted a Singapore SIM card. So he headed off to the mobile phone shop. Mummy was happy to just hang around and shop at the M & S shop while I had to run to the car to get the stroller cover.

Of course Chris finishes clinic late and needs to be at a meeting within 30 minutes. So I rush. And of course we couldn't find Neil. I took a punt and assumed he'd do the smart thing and call us when he couldn't find us.

We start lunch at Bakerzin. Midway through he calls. Twice before we manage to tell him where we were. The kind souls at the mobile shop directed him to the cafe. At this time I'd taken over the care of the stroller while Warni ate her lunch. When I came back, Mummy was in tears! Argh... another tiff...

Things did get sorted out... and the dark cloud did pass... of course by then I'd developed a bit of a headache....

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Botanic Gardens with Pa and Geok.. Elizabeth slept through the entire jaunt! She's getting bigger quite quickly and Geok is coping remarkably well by herself ( Munhon is back at work ). She looks great too.



ALL OF US AT BOTANIC GARDENS.. umbrella for ELIZABETH .. sun REALLY HOT.





Auntie Kimit took us out to dinner at the Chinese Swimming Club. Her grandson, Gordon came as well, and his mother gave me a blow by blow account of her 4 year old education... well.. I did ASK! In short, he started lessons at 6 MONTHS, beginning with music then progressing to enrichment Mandarin and English classes. She knew all the brand name schools and recommended that I start with Julia Gabriel.

Ok.. oops.. Madison is close to 15 months and the closest to any group activity that she does are her visits to the Botanic Gardens where she gets to splash around with the other kids in the fountain play area!

So ... I shall have to think seriously about her education? To assuage my guilt, I have signed on for a trial class at Growing Up Gifted.. shall have to go check out JG too now... at least have a look then decide whether or not to BURN some serious cash on early childhood education!