All About Your Child

My father-in-law was discharged today. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONCERNS, WELL-WISHES and PRAYERS! *muack*

He is back home resting well now, but will be back in the hospital 4-6weeks later to remove the tube which was inserted to enlarge the gall and remove the stone in it as well.

Throughout the hospitalization, Allan has been taking the 30mins drive from our house to my MIL’s house to bring her to the hospital every morning and evening. Because Allan is a property agent, he has control over his ‘work-timing’, so all these doesn’t really disrupt any of his plans.

However when it comes to being discharged, for ‘unknown’ reasons, both my FIL and my MIL insisted on having their favorite son, my 2nd BIL, to fetch them. My 2nd BIL could not take leave today, but because they were so persistent, my 2nd BIL needed to take an urgent 1hr leave just to please his parents.

It’s an open secret that my 2nd BIL IS my parents-in-law’s apple of the eye. He was the only one whom my MIL cried over when he decided to get married and moved out. She was crying her eyes out that previous night, saying how much she’ll miss him and all of that….but neither my 1st BIL nor Allan could even get close to stir up such emotions in her.

Humans are still humans, made from flesh and blood, a creature full of feelings. Unexplainable feelings.

Why does some people ‘click‘ the moment they see each other?

Why others just can’t see eye-to-eye even though they are family members?

There are just so much into people-people relationships, other than horoscope, zodiac, Ba Zi, up-bringing, experiences….there are also alot of mystery behind it all…That’s the beauty of how all of us are MADE different from the one sitting right next to us, ya?

Though (by right) parents should love all their children equally, but somehow, (by left) in real life that’s not true.

Like my own family, my sis is always the favoured one, maybe because I don’t feel close to my parents at all…. after-all I WASN’T part of their lives till I was 5 years old….

In YOUR family, do you love one kid more than the other(s)?

In YOUR own family, are you the favoured one?

Or are you in the perfect family, where your parents love you and your siblings equally?

Suhanya said, “I’m passing this award to dear Friend Angel …for her real blogging with purpose blog!!!!She blogs all about children!!! Is it not blogging with purpose?? So she deserves This!!”

Thank you girl! *muack*

Show of hands, who blogs with a purpose?

Good I see your hands, so come on and take it away!

I was curious yesterday to know how you guys feel about bringing kids for hospital visits….Totally agree on the germs and virus part…today there was a new ‘neighbour’ beside my FIL, he had tuberculosis before and it seems that he is back to the hospital to check if the illness came back to re-visit him again.

When I heard that from my FIL, I was shocked. Tuberculosis is a highly variable communicable disease, how could the hospital allow him to stay in such ‘normal’ wards?! Anyhow, the moment we knew about this, my eldest BIL and SIL brought all the kids down to get some tibits, and kept them entertained with the nibbles for as long as they could.

I’m really unhappy with the ‘way’ this hospital handled certain things, especially towards my FIL. He can eat solids on his own without vomiting or getting choked, but they still put drips on him, causing him to have terrible water retention. His hands are like boxing gloves and legs are like baby elephants. Over the last 8 days in hospital, he has gained 10kg!!! - ALL WATER, as he hardly get to eat solid food till yesterday afternoon.

My frustrated MIL requested to get the drip off my FIL but was rejected. Their reasons were: “we still need to give him the antibiotics every 6 hourly, and we could only get it into the body through the drips…”NOW THAT’S SOMETHING NEW to me (at least).

We were all concerned, so we stayed longer than usual, but the 6 kids were getting impatient at the lobby. So I (the usual kids’ nanny for every Sunday’s family gathering at my parents-in-law house) went down and played quiet games with them, while the others continued to stay with my FIL.

We played the guess-which-finger-tapped-on-head game, count the number of cars passed by the drop-off point, count how many people wore a-particular-coloured top (this kept them entertained the longest, ‘cos all I need to do is just change the colour), count how many people carry a basket of flowers get into the lift and the usual scissors-paper-stone.

Of cos’ the un-unison toilet visits helped to kill much time off too. Before long, the adults were down and ready to leave. Keeping kids entertained is easy, but keeping kids entertained with their voices down is tough, when they are such easily-excitable-creatures….

What do you do to keep the kids’ volume down but at the same time making sure they are not bored? One rule to this question - no electronic hand-held games please….

So I guess, I’ll not be bringing my boys there till my FIL’s ‘new neighbour’ is discharged or relocated.

(Thank you all of your concerns, well-wishes and prayers, especially imbeingheldhostage, thank you for keeping my FIL in your prayers still)

As you know, I’m a SAHM. So no matter where I am, my children will be. Even when I’m bathing, they will come over every other minute and ask…..

“Mommy, are you bathing?…..Mommy, are you done?…..Mommy, are you putting shampoo on your hair?….Mommy, I don’t hear water-sound, so are you wiping yourself now….are you coming out now?”

So when I went to the hospital to visit my FIL, naturally they will go along. Everyone knows how ‘natural loud-speakers’ kids are, and being active 90% of the time, you could hardly get them to sit still for more than 5mins.

When my boys see their cousins, it’s party time! All of them would laugh and speak louder than usual. Even though every adult would go, “Shhhhh…..this is the hospital, the patients are sick, they need to rest, so you need to talk softly…” a thousand times, they would still forget this golden rule the next minute.

I’m glad that my boys obeyed the “NOT TO RUN ABOUT” commandment, but not my nieces and my little 1year old nephew.

My second sis-in-law had not brought her only daughter to see my FIL for the past 1 week since his hospitalisation, in order to prevent the need to discipline her in public.

My eldest sis-in-law’s kids, who stay with my parents-in-law, would naturally follow my MIL on every visit.

Being active is usually ‘acceptable‘ but sometimes being kids, they would say whatever that comes to mind and THAT may be ‘unacceptable’ to the ears of the patients or the patients’ families at time….

“Mommy, why the uncle got that thing stuck in his mouth?”

“Mommy, why that uncle make so much noise?”

“Mommy, why that uncle sleep like that?”

“Mommy, why that uncle poo-poo on his bed?”

“Mommy, why that uncle vomit?”

“Mommy, why that uncle’s leg got that big white thing?”

“MOMMY, that uncle not moving, IS HE DEAD??!”

and the ‘why’ questions continues….(my FIL stays in a male ward, so they saw male patients only)

Even if I wasn’t a SAHM, I believe I’ll still bring my kids along whenever I visit a family member or relative who is hospitalised. It’s vital to let them know the importance of being healthy. Actually, these few days, my elder one has started to eat slightly more vegetables, he used to eat only ONE vege per meal….

“Mommy vegetables are good for my body right? I want to be healthy, don’t want to be sick. If I am sick, I have to stay in the hospital and cannot go home….I don’t want that.”

I think there’s some kind of effect after seeing how people suffer in hospital…he doesn’t want to see himself in that state….

So are you like my 2nd sis-in-law, who prefers not to bring her kid to the hospital to prevent unnecessary noise pollution?

Or are you like my eldest sis-in-law who doesn’t have a preference if the kids went there or not?

Or are you like me, who thinks that hospital is another educational centre, where kids can learn alot from there too?

It’s torturing when you face a problem and you have no idea what causes it and how to solve it!

My account was suspended for 3 days because there was An increase in users, or a large surge of people at the same time. - That’s the bottomline. Sounds rather ironic, being penalised for such an issue.

Anyhow for those of you who are IT savy, you may want to read the following email sent to me by my hosting company support group, if not, you can skip all the italics and scroll right down to see my posts during my MIA from this site.

“Hello,

“There are multiple things that can create an increase in CPU usage.
Popularity is one aspect, and the cache plugin will reduce the amount of
load created by people visiting the site. Another would be ineffective
plugins, some bad search engine crawlers, spam bots, cron (scheduled)
wp or unix jobs, and many other variables.”

keeping my fingers crossed….’cos some of the stuff mentioned here are beyond my control….wish me luck, won’t you? *wink*

Before I started this blog, I was using Google Blogger. So for the past 2-3 days, I was blogging over there - http://allaboutyourchild.blogspot.com. The following were the 2 posts over there when my (this) site was inaccessible.

Today’s Post: Can I have some good news, please?

Thursday’s Post: What a lousy excuse!

So, in future “Touch Wood” if my site is not accessible again, you could pop by over there to see if I’m still alive. *laugh*

I over-slept this morning. Keatkeat was supposed to be in school by 8am, but that was the time I woke up. He usually needs about 30-45mins to get ready, laze around, whine a little, brush his teeth, wear his shirt, wear his shoes….in sllllloooowwwww motion.

Even when I was awake, I couldn’t get my tired body out of bed. With the travelling to and fro from the hospital, staying there to look after my FIL did tire my aging body. Sorry Keatkeat!

My FIL had an operation yesterday. The doctor inserted a tube to enlarge his shrunk gall. The tube will be remove only 4-6weeks later together with the couple of stones found in his gall as well.

Because my FIL’s platelets count is still not increasing and worse, it’s not reacting to the antibiotics (which is supposed to help increase the growth of it), so the doctor doesn’t want to do a ‘long’ surgery in fear of pro-fused bleeding.

He can only consume fluid now and constantly vomiting phlegm so it’s really quite a heart-breaking sight. He is bed bound till his platelets starts to reproduce by itself to the ’safe-level’ and provided his ‘yellow-ness’ disappears….

Thank you everyone for your concern and prayers. Thank you, thank you!

Psssst…..did you know Keatkeat is not my first child?

She came by way before I was married, way before I worked in the Child Care Centre, way before I started giving tuition and way before my menstruation came the very first time. Did I hear you say “Huh?”

I started taking care of her when I was only 7 years old. I changed her diapers, bathed her, prepared milk-milk for her, played with her…..she is my one and only sis, I call her Meimei. This picture was taken when I was 8 and Meimei was 1.

My Mom took care of her most of the time, but when it comes to school holidays or weekends, she would disappear to the mahjong table and leave little baby Meimei to me and lo-and-behold, she would be back in time before Papa comes home from work.

Papa had 3 jobs at that time, to support my Mom’s medical bills, my education and the family expenses. My Mom had her 2nd relapse (Cancer) when she was pregnant with my little sis. Her doctor persuaded her to abort my sis, but she insisted on having her. Luckily, my sis was born healthy, much healthier than me, that’s what all the adults said.

You can say my Mom trusted me alot, or you can say she is ONE IRRESPONSIBLE MOMMY, two-sides to a coin. I accept both thoughts whole-heartedly.

While my friends were playing at the playground, I was wiping the bum of my sis. That was my very first job (unpaid) - Nanny.

As little Meimei grows, usual siblings fight came along, jealousy grew in my heart as my Papa (unmistakably) shower more love towards my sis. It was an obvious fact that even the neighbors could tell.

Our relationship took a big step forward when our parents start fighting (go read My Story for the reason). Since then it has only been my sis and I, the only 2 sane people in the four-walls, till I got married.

Oh dear, this is suppose to be a happy post, now it seems like a sad one.

This was the durian cake (as she requested) we bought for her birthday from Angie The Choice. This cake has a pretty name called Charlotte, too bad, that’s not my sis’s name….

Her name is very close to mine. I’m Angeline and she is Angela. *wink*

Bottom-line, I love my sis in a very unusual way, its a mixture of siblings love, motherly love, teacher love and friendship love. Probably that’s why when she was younger, all her friends say we don’t behave like what other siblings do….right Meimei?

Happy Birthday Girl!

This morning at 10.30am, my FIL was shivering very badly, almost into a fit.

The doctors from Tan Tock Seng Hospital decided to do an ultra sonic scan for him and will be transferring him to the ICU.

Yet after waiting for 6 hours, the doctors came back and said they couldn’t fulfill whatever they had promised earlier because there isn’t a ’spare’ bed for my FIL in the ICU. *Urrrrrgggghhhh*

And because they do not have sufficient supply of the Platelets, they could not put the scope into my FIL. They were worried that any rupture internally may cause profuse bleeding. So they are waiting for more supply of the Platelets from Singapore General Hospital. *Double Urrrrrgggghhhh*

Anyhow, my FIL is having oxygen assistance right now. He seems better when we left at 6pm but he is definitely getting more yellowish…..*sigh*

Many DIL may not feel much for their FIL but for someone like me, who hardly had father’s love, my FIL is like my ‘real‘ dad and to see him lying there, breathing heavily is really an unbearable sight….*heart sank*