to med or not to med

After being a momster for 4 years now, I sill find myself in a dilemma whenever my kids fall sick. Should I dose them up with medicine? Perhaps I was brought up in an almost 'drug-free' environment - my folks never believed in western medicine nor doctors. Somehow this has manifested as distrust for drugs in me. So anyway, both my little boy and girl have been coughing for the longest time and I've never really thought much of it. They seem to be fine, still as active and playful as ever, which must be a good sign.

Nanny S who is taking care of little L has been asking me to take her to the doctor. My answer to her was always it's ok lah school-going children fall sick all the time. Until yesterday night it was, when she told me that little L seemed a little warm to the touch. So we took her temperature. It showed 38C. Another dilemma. Should I give her fever med? It's just a slight temperature and she seems perfectly ok. Could it be due to the excessive running around causing her body temperature to temporarily rise? In the end I decided to give her a controlled dose of paracetomol suspension since it was bedtime and I didn't want to have to wake up in the middle of the night finding her in high fever.

Hubs always scolds me for being kiam-siap (stingy) with medicine. It's not that I'm kiam-siap. I just don't want them to be dosed up with drugs. Funnily both my kids love taking medicine - I don't know what is so yummy with those syrupy mixture. Especially H, he will actually ask me to give him medicine whenever he has the slightest cough or runny nose. My answer to him was always a curt no need, a little runny nose/cough is ok.

Am I being a mean momster mom who's depriving her kids of needed medicine? Dilemma... Dilemma!!

Oh my Terrible Two!

Being a mom is no easy job. It's amazing how 2 kids from the same parents with the same upbringing turn out to be so different. I have mastered the art of dealing with H but with my little princess L (or should I say little tiger), I'm still at a loss!

Is this the sign of the oh so notorious Terrible Two stage everyone's talking about? I remember having to go through a whiny tantrumy stage with H, but with L, it is a whole new ball game. She's only just turned 2, but her defiance and hard headedness started months before.

Scene 1: Trying to get her into the bath
Me: If you don't bathe you can't follow mommy out. Do you want to bathe?
L: NO!
Me: Then you can't go out. Do you want to go out or stay at home?
L: Stay at home!

Scene 2: Struggling to get her into her car seat in the sweltering afternoon
Me: L please get into your seat quick, it's hot out here
L: It's not hot it's cold
Me: If you don't get in mommy will leave you here <while struggling to put her in her car seat>
L: NO! The seat is hot
Me: Ok mommy will leave you here <carrying and putting her in front of the shop>
L: OK! <and off she went to play with some kids who were in front of the shop>

Scene 3: Trying to get her to stay in her car seat
L: Open open <pulling at the buckle>, i want to sit on mommy's lap
Me: No, mommy's driving and it's dangerous...
Granny who is way way more patient than I am: Dear you're special so you have a special seat...
L: I'm not special!
Granny: This is your princess throne. Are you a princess?
L: NO! I'm not a princess, I'm a TIGER!

So you see, threats won't work with my lil tiger L. In fact I have to remind myself not to use them with her anymore since they more often than not backfire on me. So how do you tame a lil tiger like L?

Is my pre-schooler being bullied?

I haven't been able to concentrate the whole day. Is my baby boy being bullied in school? H woke up this morning telling me that he didn't want to go to school. Hubs and I were just discussing the night before about maybe taking H out of school for a year since he didn't want H to "burn out". I'm not sure what he meant by being burnt out since kids are just meant to play in preschool. Anyway, I didn't really want to argue so we left it at that, i.e. to be further discussed... haha. So, back to my earlier point, when H told me that he didn't want to go to school I wanted to know why. It took quite some persuading before he told me that he didn't want to go to school because his friends didn't want to play with him.

H, unlike his toughie little sis, is rather sensitive. He gets upset easily. I also noticed that he doesn't quite play with other kids. I mean, he loves playing with his cousins, and even my neighbour's older son, but with other kids.. hmmmm... he doesn't immediatly gravitate towards them. Then I remembered asking him about his friends in school a few nights back and he told me that there's this boy in class (let's call him N) who's mad at him. He claimed that N gives him the stare when he gets into class every morning. I didn't think much of it then and suggested that he asked N why he is mad. So everything sort of fell together with this morning's episode, and it suddenly dawned on me - what if H is being bullied in school? I need to prepare him on how to face/handle bullies!

So it being first thing in the morning (I didn't have time to google for parenting advice and I needed to get him ready for school), I made up some scenarios and play acted how he can react in an amusing way. I figured if I made it funny (he started giggling non-stop) then he won't be afraid or upset when put in such circumstances. Instead, at least I hope, he will be able to imitate what I did and avert the situation without aggression.

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid and this whole episode is nothing more than a typical playgound squabble. Well... better be overly prepared than be sorry I'd say. No one messes with the Momster's kids! :p

Picture courtesy of Childcare Education Institute

 

Finding a local nanny

Hubs and I, we are strong believers of outsourcing. Not that we are bad parents, we dote on our kids, but we believe that there are things that we need to be personally involved in (i.e. value added stuff like reading to them, communicating with them, giving them lots of hugs and kisses, etc.) and others which can be outsourced (i.e. mundane non-value adding chores like feeding and washing, etc.). So to cut the long story short, our nanny has just informed us that she is resigning so once again we are on the look out for a new nanny for the kids.

I remembered how we panicked when our previous nanny (whom we got through a friend's recommendation) resigned. This time we know the drill. Our friends are usually curious (slanting towards disbelief) when we tell them we have a live-in local nanny. We usually get asked "really? how did you find one? is it difficult? etc etc..."

So for those of you wanting to get a local nanny, here's what you do:

1. Place an ad in the local chinese dailies. I was told "Zhong Guo Bao" (which we tried previously) but found that the quality of applicants are better in "Xing Zhou" and "Guang Ming" (both these papers are related, so you get a 2-in-1 package deal). Just call the papers, tell them your requirements and they will do the ad write up for you.
2. Be prepared to be bombarded with calls. OK that's a slight exaggeration but you can expect at least 3-4 calls a days or more which isn't at all bad. I would normally run the ad for 6 consecutive days so you do the math (i got 34 calls the last time). So better get organised else by the end of the week you'll be utterly confused.
3. Make appointment to meet the shortlisted candidates. This is quite tricky - i must admit i've not really mastered the phone screening process (most of the time i ended up listening to them talk rather than the other way round, and mind you some can be really long winded). On one hand you'd want to have face to face meetings with everyone who sounded decent over the phone, on the other hand you just won't have the time. For us, we can only have the meetings on weekends, and normally you'd need to find your way to parts of KL you never knew existed (thank god for GPS) - very time consuming indeed. Note to myself: have a script ready with a checklist of questions to ask and do a proper first round screening over the phone. 

Now wish me luck in my nanny search :-)

What kind of mom are you?

Just as i was setting up my blog i stumbled upon Mom Illustrated (i must credit the owner of the site for using her illustration as my profile photo, hope she doesn't mind). I can't really pin down which momster i am. Definitely not a Supermatrix Unrealisticata (Super Mom), can sometimes be a Indulgatrix Ridiculus (Spoiler Mother) but more closer to a Oblivious Ignorus (The OHkay-DOHkay Momma).

What kind of momster are you?