I'm a full-time mummy

I get asked often how do I handle taking care of 2 kiddos during an outing all by myself with them. Oh well, practise, practise and more practise I guess?

In my initial stage of pregnancy, I have avoided taking unnecessary stuffs like strollers and etc and prefer to travel light with my 2 kiddos. I get our 4.5 years old boy to wear his own school bag (with his own water bottle, a pack of baby wipes, a backup diaper for his baby sister and a spare change of clothes for himself and some snacks in case he's hungry) while my own diaper bag consists of the similar things I packed in my boy's school bag. Getting in and out of car must be swift and careful as well.

Anyway, now that I'm at 37 weeks preggy, it is tiring for me to walk for long distance and even carrying our 2 years old girl for longer than 10 minutes, so yes, I have to bring our stroller along for our latest mother-kiddos outing to Ikea. We had a church playgroup outing to a pet shop in a shopping mall nearby and I decided I must bring the stroller along since I also planned to get some box containers to revamp the toys and stuff in our room.

So how to handle 2 kiddos in an outing? Get them busy with something. The first thing I did when we stepped into Ikea is grabbed 2 pencils and 2 sheets of 'to-buy' checklist from one of their stands and then hand each to my kiddos. Both start doodling and scribbling as if they are onto a treasure hunt or something.

When it was time for lunch, I got our 4.5 years old boy to help out pushing the food trolley as I had to push our stroller with my girl sitting inside still. Just gotta make sure my boy pushed the food trolley carefully.

And finally, reward ourselves with nice yummy food! And before leaving, to gently remind kiddos it is time to go home right after our meal, no more stopping over at any toy shops etc.

Have a blessed week ahead and thank you for reading!

The playgroup where I bring my 2 kiddos to since early this month have this nice system for their toys arrangement/placement. Each toys are placed in their respective containers in their respective spots in the book shelves.

When a child takes a toy to play, they can only play 1 toy at a time. It takes a while for my 2 kiddos to get used to this as they have been playing more than 1 toys at a time and to be told suddenly they can only play 1 toy at a time, to return it back to its place before they can play another toy takes a little bit time to get used to. But within half hour, they got the message. One toy at a time. Neat!

I like the idea that a child must always returned back the toy they finished playing with by following and matching the stickers on the toy's containers and its spot in the shelves. According to one of my FB page follower (Miss Jennifer Dansberger Jones who worked in a preschool for years), she said that "the labeling system was mandatory for 2 reasons, 1) easy clean up and identification 2) pre-reading skills -matching, observation, and (we labeled with the word and picture for word/object association. I feel children should have more art supplies available, and manipulatives ( puzzles, sorting beads,etc.) any problem solving and fine activities- because children are lacking those skills."

So yes, I am so going to do this to our home as well! Picture below taken on 13th Sept 2013, bought 5 cloth boxes from Ikea (after making sure it fits our Expedit bookcase) and reorganize all toys and books in our room into the appropriate boxes with labelling (words and pictures). Still pending: need to tidy up the wires and cables dangling at the back and probably fill up the rest of the shelves with the blue cloth boxes as well hehehehe...

I hope I will be able to train my kiddos to organise and clean up the toys according to the correct boxes and by matching the labels to the boxes. Wish us luck!!!

**Personal notes: Apologies but due to my paranoia of privacy and security of myself, my family and my kiddos, I am not going to reveal what is the SAHM group I'm in, the playgroup name, the area and so on. Apologies but like I said, I am really paranoid and with info like this being shown in public, I hope you can understand my reasons for doing so.

Yeap, today is the day our precious ninja girl, Alyson turns 24 months old... aka, the TERRIFIC 2 stage! Like her brother Benjamin, I choose not to even think of the commonly used 'terrible twos' terms as I like to think positive and I believe we as parents should think the best and positive thoughts of/for our child!

We have been so blessed by our second kiddo, her cheekiness, the joy she brought to us, we are constantly amazed with her understanding and inquisitiveness, how she can self-feed herself at a young age, and that she enjoys her food so much that I don't have to worry much. I love that she loves her mummy's milk just like her big brother, and hope to tandem nurse when our 3rd child comes along in less than 2 months time.

I hope that she will love her new bay sister and continues to bring joy to all of us!

Happy 2nd birthday to you sweetie!

Mummy, daddy and Benjamim ko-ko loves you awfully so so so much!

Read: Psalm 112:1-2 (NIV), Psalm 127:3 (NIV), Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)