Happy 2011!

Another fantastic weekend!

New Year's eve :

The weekend started off with a half day at work( woo hoo!). In the afternoon we attended a 2 year old birthday party. The birthday girl incidentally will be starting school with Madison this year. The evening was spent at Novena with the grandparents, who organised a small house party to countdown to the new year.

We didn't make it to midnight though. Chris was on call. Madison, had ice cream at lunch, ice cream and chocolate cake at the party. Guess what ? Post party sugar slump. She fell asleep in the car on the 10 minute ride home, then woke up grumpy and whiny. She finally recovered late in the evening when the guests started arriving, and then was revved up for the night. I think she overate, and ended up spewing a little at the end. Gross.

Just in time to end the year, we've had a minor tiff in the family. Of course it's partly because of the kids. Madison and Elizabeth swing between being best friends and worst enemies, but lately Elizabeth has taken to biting. Madison has had several bite marks to show for that, and Elizabeth does not get disciplined for it. In our opinion Geok and Munhon have chosen a rather lackadaisical attitude towards rules and discipline when it comes to their offspring; she is frequently whiny, throwing tantrums and crying whenever she doesn't get what she wants.It is so annoying. Madison's behaviour deteroriates whenever she is with Elizabeth; to be fair, she sees how much Elizabeth gets away with so she tries her luck too.

Anyway, it started because Elizabeth bit Madison AGAIN. Chris took it upon himself to tell her off, but I don't think Elizabeth even understood. She smiled throughout it, thinking it was all a joke. The very next day I left Madison behind while I took Annika home to sleep, and as usual the 2 girls got into a tiff. Geok then took it upon herself to give Madison a shelling, and that's where it started. We thought it would be best to sit down calmly and discuss the issue of discipline, but then within a minute of starting, Munhon was up in arms, left the table and was saying he refused to participate in the discussion. But even though he said he wanted to leave the discussion, he continued to make remarks and comments across the room to us. That really pissed Chris off and he basically told Mun hon to either come and sit down and talk to us civilly or else shut his trap. Mun Hon then got angry and I think if it weren't for Pa's intervention we might have had a fist fight on hand???!!!

Argh... since then it's been semi cold war, I think the kids shouldn't play together until some resolution has been acheived. Since Mun Hon was the one who refused to partake in the discussion, I'm not initiating another one. He can do it.

New Year's Day:

We didn't join them for breakfast so we had a nice break. Usually we end up whittling the day away after breakfast when we're there but this time we managed to skype Anthony in Melbourne, then pop over to the shop next door to do curtain shopping for our new apartment. It rained cats and dogs in the afternoon so we were stuck indoors for the rest of the day. In the end we did wind up in the Novena house for dinner, but it was a quick one and we came home again early in the night. Dinner was civil, but you could tell things weren't right.

Yesterday we spent completely away from them, instead we had a field trip to the Sky tower at Marina Bay Sands. It was pretty cool! Of course we had to pay the silly entry fee, but we got to go up and check out the bikini babes ( and non babes ) hanging out by the infinity pool on the sky deck. Took plenty of pictures too. We had lunch at the food court after perusing the various restaurants at Sands. Mostly too posh to bring a toddler and an infant. In any case, the restaurants were empty. Ended the meal with dessert at a cafe called Darcis.

In the evening we left the 2 kids at home and took Chris' mum out to dinner at Prive. We were lucky that we arrived when we did; soon after we were seated people suddenly started appearing and the cafe was FULL! Had a relaxing dinner then back to reality.... the start of a new working year....groan....

Happy 2011!