The latest hero in our family is *drum roll please* DH!

Yesterday he saved a two-year-old girl from choking on a piece of soft candy.

He was hanging around the reception area of his office (well, apparently he does work sometimes ) and noticed this little kid gagging and rocking her head backwards in distress!

DH alerted her mom who was sitting there looking pretty and totally unaware that her kid was choking! Her mom panicked and burst into tears. Well, I don’t blame her, it would’ve scared the daylights out of any mom!

Quick as a flash, DH picked up the little girl, tucked her under his arm and started racing to the nearest clinic with his staff and the mom running close behind.

Since the girl was so small, it was almost impossible to grip her under her diaphragm from behind which is what experts recommend. The candy, being soft and sticky, would’ve been much harder to dislodge. That was DH’s biggest worry.

As he ran, he tilted the little girl upside down in the hopes the candy would come loose and fall out. I think it worked. The candy dislodged itself and the girl started crying for her mom. Definitely a good sign because she couldn’t make a sound before!

Poor kid must’ve been wondering why she was going on a marathon race tucked like a baseball under this man’s arm . By the time they got to the clinic, the candy was already out and the girl was crying from the sheer sight of the doctor (must not have been a very good-looking doctor)!

His job not yet done, DH darted across the street to buy an ice-cream to cheer up the kid whose life he’s possibly saved. And yes, it’s all in a day’s work for our superhero (when he works, he really works, ok? )!  We’re so-oo proud of him!

So moms, be very careful about giving your toddlers soft, sticky candy like Sugus or gummy bears. Our ex-pediatrician also warned us about giving kids whole grapes and rambutans. These are common choking hazards so either avoid them or cut them down to small pieces.

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After I picked Raine up after her exam ended at 9:30am Friday, we headed to the mall. Just her and me. We haven’t done this girls’ day out for quite a while now so it was kinda nice.

We had Auntie Anne’s Pretzels for breakfast. Of course, we chatted non-stop . That’s really the nice thing about going out with Raine. We have so much to talk about.

We did a bit of window-shopping since we had so much time to kill before going to pick Skye up from school. But we didn’t buy anything because we wanted to wait for Skye. It’s no fun shopping without Skye.

Just before we left the mall, Raine suggested we make black pepper lamb chops again since her Daddy missed this last weekend!

I don’t take kindly to people saying that moms who stay at home have nothing better to do than paint their nails or go shopping all day.

To all the friends, ex-colleagues, even family members who think, and sometimes even say it out loud to my face, yes, you guys piss me off.

But I’m too tired to pick a fight today. Instead, I’m going to list out what I did yesterday to give you a taste of what a typical Friday for a mom of 3 teens is like.

Warning: Do not try this at home. This is extremely hazardous to your mental and physical health and may mess up your simple mind.

5:00AM - Alarm clock goes off. My mistake, I clicked the wrong alarm setting on my PDA phone. Try to get back to sleep. Couldn’t. My mind just keeps going through my schedule for the day.

6:00AM - The usual breakfast rush. DH drops off the kids, then comes back to pick up his luggage for a business trip.

7:40AM - Work out at gym for 1.5 hours.

9:15AM - Home to change out of my gym shorts and pick up some stuff to go to the bank. Banks are what I consider hostile zones, gotta cover up. I don’t want the men at the bank to drop dead from heart failure seeing me in my gym shorts.

10:05AM - Wait in line at the bank, only to realize I’m at the wrong branch. OMG, what a waste of time!!

10:40AM - Second in line at the right bank but just how long does it take to withdraw a few measly dollars and update a savings book?

11:15AM - Do some quick shopping at Tesco while waiting to pick up Skye. Tummy growling like crazy since I didn’t have time for my second breakfast after gym.

11:45AM - Wait at Skye’s school, munching muruku to keep from fainting from hunger .

12:10PM - Set Skye to make her own ham sandwiches while I have a quick shower. Been stinky since gym .

12:30PM - Rush out to pick up Raine from school.

12:50PM - Finally get to have my two ham sandwiches and a cup of tea. Then go online to quickly check my emails and read a bit of news.

2:30PM - Rush to pick up Steev from college and then head straight for DH’s office downtown to pick up something. Luckily I packed two curry puffs and a bottle of iced water for Steev because he has irregular lunch times depending on class breaks. Reach home at 4:00PM.

5:00PM - Send Raine to tuition in the pouring rain. By the time I drop her off, it’s storming so badly I decide to wait outside her tutor’s house instead of driving all the way home.

I spend the time crunching almonds in the car and making phone calls home to get Steev and Skye to turn off the modem and to look in the fridge for something to eat if they’re hungry.

8:00PM - Finally we’re home after one whole hour in the massive traffic jams everywhere. I needed to go to the bathroom badly and had been holding my poor bladder till I was going to burst!

I have not prepared dinner. Earlier I’d promised the kids we’d go out for a quick burger for dinner. But by the time I get home, I swear nothing was going to make me go out again. So we end up eating sandwiches again since it was too late to cook!

This has been a long post just as it had been a long day yesterday. But I still say this beats working in some cushy office getting paid to do practically nothing all day except drink coffee, socialize and surf the net in air-conditioned comfort!

You know how when we run into friends we haven’t seen in a while, they always look at our kids and marvel at how much they’ve grown. It’s strange how we never seem to notice how our own kids have grown but it takes someone else to see it.

This morning, as I watched Steev get ready to attend a launch, I was suddenly struck by what a handsome young man he’s grown into. Okay, maybe I’m a little biased here but… wasn’t he that little baby in my arms just yesterday?

Today my 17-year-old is wearing a long-sleeved dark-colored shirt and pants with his spiky hair all gel’d up and looking for all the world like a grown man, and I had to swallow hard and blink back a few tears (of joy).

Steev runs his own business. Today’s the first time he’s been invited to a product launch by a multinational at a five-star hotel. And they said he could bring along a staff member.

That really cracked me and his Dad up! Staff? Since one of us would have to chauffeur our CEO downtown, Dad decided to tag along as his ’staff’! The things we do for our kids!! I guess in many ways, we’re growing up with them.

Wendy wrote this comment on my previous post, “Your kids are the quiet type? ALL of them? How did you manage that?”

Um, I’m not sure really but yes, I can honestly say my three kids never ran around the store or threw tantrums if they didn’t get what they wanted.

They never asked to buy anything. In fact, it was always DH and me who’d ask if they liked a certain toy or book and offer to buy it for them.

They never fought over things. Maybe it’s because we never told them this is your book or this is your toy, so it’s understood that whatever we buy is meant to be shared.

I’m not a particularly strict disciplinarian, at least not in the sense of brandishing the cane. Practically every Asian household with kids has a cane though.

I had one too, kindly provided by a well-meaning aunt who says if I’m ever to raise good kids, I must have a cane. Well, don’t tell her but I’ve never used it and I can’t even find it now .

I’m not sure how it all worked out so well and I wish I had tips to share. Thing is I didn’t consciously set out to ‘tame’ them but along the way, I probably did something right .

Whoa, this must be the quietest weekend in a long while. True, my kids are the quiet type, even when they were little, they never run around the shopping mall or jump on the furniture or scream and fight with each other.

Still, this is a very quiet weekend even by our standards. All my three kids are in exam mode which means everyone is supposed to be doing their own revision with minimum social interaction. I check in on them periodically but for the most part, they’re on their own.

Kids these days are very different from us in our time. I used to get more panicky as the exam date drew near. But these kids, they’re counting down the days, they just can’t wait for the exams to come and be over and done with.

But just between you and me, I’m the most nervous one of all. My two older ones tell me I’m such a worrier and that it’s all going to be a breeze. Yeah, if I can honestly believe that because when I was preparing for my exams during my time, I was nervous as heck!

Since the kids were little, I’ve been lugging around one oversized tote bag after another simply because it’s big enough for the kids’ things as well as my own stuff.

When they were younger, I carried their milk formula, water bottles, toys and spare disposable diapers in my tote. I never carried a handbag. Too much hassle, already dizzy trying to juggle baby, toddlers, stroller, tote bag, shopping bags .

The one thing I always carried in my tote bag then, and yes, even now is my little bag of medical supplies. I use a freebie cosmetic pouch for my minyak angin (a cooling medicated oil which is great for headaches, insect bites), Panadols, Band-Aid plasters and mosquito repellent.

I feel much safer knowing I have these few things with me just in case. I should probably throw in a couple of safety pins as well. Just recently, I had a button pop off my shirt while we were out shopping.

I went into a few clothing shops to ask for a safety pin, just one safety pin and no one had any to spare me. Very sad! But I guess it made some guys happy to see this woman with an unbuttoned shirt .

We’re still waiting for Skye to say, yes, I want my own handphone. But she hasn’t said it yet . She says she doesn’t need one and it’s a hassle to have to take care of it so it doesn’t get lost.

My 3 teens had a shared handphone up until this year when Steev started college and only because he needs to communicate with us about daily transport arrangements.

Before that, we had one handphone for the 3 of them. Whoever was going out somewhere (school activities, friend’s house) would take the phone.

When Steev got his own phone, the girls started sharing the other phone. They still are now. But recently I got my new handphone (see, pretty cool, eh?)…

… so we’ve got a hand-me-down phone for the girls now. My old handphone is also a pocket PC phone so we thought Raine, being older, should get that while Skye takes over the shared handphone.

Skye is 12 and next year, she’ll have more activities and running around to do when she goes to secondary school. I would feel much better if she’s just a call away.

Many of her friends at school have had their own handphones since they were, what, 8 years old?? A handphone at that age is excessive, if you ask me. What do you think? When’s the right time for a kid to get their own handphone?

I overheard Raine talking to her friend on the phone. These days, it’s a big deal when 15-year-olds don’t see each other online on MSN, so they either call or SMS to find out what’s happening.

Funny, I’m never online and no one bothers calling me! I reckon that immediately qualifies me as someone who belongs to the Dinosaur Age ??

At any rate, I could only hear Raine’s side of the conversation. But it sounded like her friend was seriously concerned about why Raine hasn’t been online.

Is your computer conked? Raine said no. Are you grounded? Raine said no. After a few more ‘no’s to her friend’s guesses, Raine finally told her she’s only allowed limited time online.

Actually I’ve imposed a no-surf curfew on my two girls as the government exams are approaching. They have to get my approval and even then, only if there’s an emergency online, bwahaha.

I may sound harsh but I’m not. I’m actually pretty easy-going as far as pushing them to study. I’d love for them to score A’s, of course, but I don’t believe offering money as a reward is the way to go. And my kids know that.

They know they must work hard because they want to succeed, not because of the money I’m offering to pay them. So far, it’s worked out really well.

Every so often, a mommy blogger would raise questions about whether to send her kids to a Chinese school or a national school. On many occasions, it’s been pretty obvious they’ve already set their minds on Chinese schools but they just need to hear it from other parents to reaffirm their own decisions.

Just before Steev, my eldest, started primary school, I too was under a tiny amount of muted pressure from well-meaning family and friends to send him to a Chinese school.

I say tiny and muted because DH and I are notoriously known, on both sides of our families, to be rebels - with a cause, or so we’d like to think . We’ve left deep and lasting impressions in our family scrapbooks for not walking the walk and not conforming to the norms.

But just to satisfy ourselves that we’d considered all available options before coming to a decision (I didn’t want this to come back and haunt me later), I went to a Chinese school nearby to visit with the principal and check things out for myself.

Her first question was ‘does he have two years of Chinese kindergarten background to start him off? If not, he’ll have big problems catching up with our curriculum’.

Well, my answer was no. So I reckon her comment pretty much answered what would logically have been my next question. My biggest concern, though, was not with Steev catching up. It was with other, bigger issues.

First off, because DH and I are both English-educated, it’d be mission impossible for us to guide them. That would mean having to subject Steev to a merry-go-round of tuition (where oftentimes the tutor is not teaching but doing the children’s homework for them. I’ve seen this with my own eyes). So where’s there time for the poor child to have a childhood if they’re being shuttled endlessly from one tuition class to the next?

Then there’s that insane mountain of homework. Friends were telling us their children were frequently up past 1 or 2 a.m. plogging away at ‘homework they just can’t finish’. And which would inadvertently end up with their mothers finishing it up for them so that they could all get some sleep.

So what’s the point in that? Homework is meant to reinforce learning, to gauge a child’s level of understanding and to enable them to put into practice what they’ve learnt. If Mom’s doing the homework, what possible benefit could there be for the child? None, so far as I can see.

Then there was the issue of discipline. We don’t believe in beating our kids, so there’s no reason at all for us to even think about sending our kids to school for someone else to beat them for us . At any rate, I just can’t see forgetting to bring to do their homework once or twice as any major indiscipline, or scoring below 85% in an exam as something that warrants beating.

Skye, my youngest daughter, is a kindergarten dropout for this very reason. Skye was slapped by a Chinese school teacher when she and some of the other kids weren’t synchronized in their dance routine for the school concert. I pulled Skye out of school that very day after telling the principal off !!

Beating or caning is never the answer. It only teaches children that hitting’s okay. Violence begets violence. So what are we really teaching our kids here?

A highly-controlled highly-regimented environment with little free time for anything other than homework and tuition would stifle a child’s sense of creativity and expression.

Worse, it might even kill their interest in learning and that would be tragic. It would be like stuffing them into a cookie cutter, only to have them come out the other end all in one shape, stiff and unbending.

Not every child is cut out for these highly-stressful environments, and many don’t do well and lose their self-esteem and self-confidence. Six years is a long time to a kid. So where’s the fun in learning? Where’s the fun of discovery? They lose interest in learning.

Well, when all is said and done, I’m pretty sure DH and I have made the right decision with our kids. If we’re wrong, well, they can always pick up Chinese anytime and still have a childhood to tell their kids about.

Put simply, you can never get your childhood back but you can always pick up a language, or two or three even. But then, that’s just us .