Children Cancer Foundation (CCF)

Friends and relatives will know Singapore's Children Cancer Foundation has a special meaning to me. 8 years ago, my family lost my niece (aged 9) to Brain Stem Giloma, a very rare brain cancer with no known cure.
While at the hospital, a volunteer approached my brother and sister in law, and asked if there was anything they could do to help fulfill my niece's dream. It could be anything, a Disney vacation or a day being a "president". Nobody wanted to speak to her. We were not rude to her, but kindly rejected her kind efforts. To us, accepting CCF help felt like giving up and death was imminent. I remember the girl, visiting my niece weekly despite our refusal to speak to her. But in her little ways, she had made my niece's stay in the hospital abit more bearable. She loan us a portable DVD player, and would come with different DVDs and story books. Towards the end, there were talks of flying my niece to HK Disneyland, but we ran out of time. I know some of you will be thinking why so sturborn? Why refused the help?

My answer: It was not easy for us to accept a child's life was slipping away, especially someone close to your heart. We didn't want to give up hope, we didn't want to lose faith.

2 Saturdays ago, J's childcare had a fundraising event for CCF. We went and in a tiny way, I hope we helped.

 

Our first official family meeting

We have been having HUGE problems getting Jarrett to wake up in the morning during school days. He has no problem waking up on weekends and usually wakes up much earlier than we desire. But on weekdays, it takes a lot of effort to get him  to get out of bed. It takes alot of shouting, screaming and crying (J, not us) before he makes his way to the toilet to brush his teeth.
Another problem we have is him getting his piano teacher all rile up by the end of a lesson. His teacher is relatively young,  unmarried and doesn't have much experiences handling a 5 year old, mischievous boy. J tends to get way too comfortable with her and tries all his tricks to make lesson "easier"for him. He seriously tests her patiences at times, and in one of the most recent lessons, I told her to be more strict, if not J will be walking all over her. Well, she didn't heed my suggestion, and got really really pissed one night when J refused to listen to her.

So...we have been cracking our brains on how to improve the situations. In the end, I thought "Ok, maybe giving him more say and responsibilities may help". I called for an official family meeting.

We started with giving him choices and let him decide what time to get up and when to go to bed. He picked, 7am and 945pm.
Next, we asked him if he wants to learn how to play the piano. He said yes.
And then we asked him, what he should do to learn better and he listed the below (wrote it all down by himself too)
1. Concentrate and listent to Teacher Lynn
2. Practise hard
3. Play Practise more of on playing with my little finger
4. Practise more finger drills.

Will it work? We don't know..but so far so good! =)

Staycation for the little one

HB & I recently went on a couple trip. To make it up to the little one, we went on a staycation when we returned from our retreat. It wasn't some grand plans, just a simple day, away from home, away from rules, away from work, away from all our responsibilities. So what if the floor is wet? So what if Jarrett spends more time on Cartoon Network?

The boy has grown up!

At 5.5 yrs old, Jarrett has his first playdate at home. The first time he invited someone to our house!
Where did that screaming, brawling baby go? I know this is no big deal, having children over for playdates but this is the first time, he has done it all on his on. I wasn't the one who asked the neighbours to visit. Jarrett was the one, shouting across from our house to theirs, asking them to pop over and check out his piano. Well, it has been more than 20 mins, and they are still out in the living room, battling over Beyblades! And for a few seconds, I tried to imagine having 3 boys...shudders...not bad, just can't image having all that noise and energy in the house 24/7.