SKYNI

It is really strange with kids. One minute they can be jumping up and down and the next minute they can be as sick as a puppy. That is what happened to Linn yesterday.

We just left home and stepped into a cafe for a quick lunch. The kids were in high spirits. Suddenly, Linn said to me calmly that she needs to go out of the restaurant to ‘spit’. I followed her to the door and once outside, she did a Merlion.

Of course, we had to go home immediately. We were going to attend an exhibition for World Autism Day and a kids disco party in the evening. We spent the whole day at home nursing the little one instead.

and I thought spring is here? It is back to 1 degree!

It has been a long long winter and we are really glad to see the coming of Spring. The snow is slowly but surely disappearing and we are finally see the grass on the ground. The day is also getting longer. It gets bright now at 5 am and sun sets after 6 pm.

We brought the kids out for a walk today. It is a beautiful day with the sun shining but the chilly winds are unbearable. It is extremely cold at 3 degrees. We are starting to see more people out on the streets. I thought it was funny when I first met our new neighbour (who lives next door to us) in November and he told me ‘See you in Summer’. Now I understand why.

It will get better…let’s really hope so.

I had a very interesting chat with my mother-in-law the other day. She was telling me that she finds it difficult to understand how Asians can ‘óut-source’ parenting, leave the kids in the hands of maids and spend so little time with the children. After having lived here for 8 months, I understand why she thinks this way.

In Singapore, we have to work very hard to keep our jobs as it is so important to provide for the family. Unlike Sweden where there are strong labour laws and unions to protect the interests of the employees, we don’t have many laws to protect us in Singapore. Hence, we need to protect our jobs, meet those tight deadlines at the expense of spending less time with the children.

In Sweden, employees can walk out of their jobs at 4 pm in the afternoon, and no one will say anything negative. The company understands the need to pick up the kids from the childcare before 5 pm and they trust that the employees will be efficient in delivering their work. It is a different work culture in Singapore. You are expected to take good care of your own family affairs and not let them interfere with your work performance. It will look really strange if you leave at 4 pm everyday and like a friend of mine put it, your colleagues may think you are taking half day off!

Of course all parents love their children but sometimes the way we in Asia show it is being able to provide for many things like new toys, good food, tuition classes, overseas holidays, nice accommodation and car…i.e give them ‘a good life”. Hence we work even harder to be able to provide for our children…all the way till they finish their university education (if they can survive the tough education system). It all sounds materialistic but we live in a different world with different forces, demands and expectations.

Although the Swedes pay crazy taxes, they have very good medical and work benefits. Every child receive additional cash (SGD 250) from the government every month till they are 18. Employees who take time off work to look after the kids will also be paid by the government. Employees will still receive their monthly wages, up to one year, if they lose their jobs. Education is free and children under 18 need not pay for any dental and medical consultation. So maybe this explains why Swedish kids are ranked second happiest children in the world. (the first is Denmark).

I wonder what the Swedes think of our foreign maids leaving their families to work overseas for a few years. I think there is no right and wrong. But there is no doubt that we are all driven to provide for our children.

We have seen some progress with Jonathan in the past few months. He is more vocal these days with Swedish.

The AutismCenter here have been working on him indirectly. Unlike the Singapore’s system where they trained Jonathan every other day for 2-3 hours, the Autismcenter here believes in training the parents and teachers. The consultant shows us how to engage Jonathan and set goals for the parents and shadow teacher. We need to work on Jonathan 15 hours a week with exercises. The consultant meet with the child, parents and teacher once every 2 weeks to check on Jonathan’s progress and make any changes to the goals.

Jonathan’s shadow teacher has been working very hard on him and we do see good progress with him. The other children in school are also very nice to Jonathan and Jonathan doesn’t seem to mind school so much. Everytime I asked him what he did in school, his response was standard …’Jag lekar’ (I play) He also enjoyed all the outings in the school and they have been to a few museums, theater, plays and parks etc.

He is also starting to show some emotions. The other day when Linn accused Jonathan for hitting her, he told me with tears in his eyes that he did not. We believed him of course!

We only hope that we can help him develop to his full potential. We are still at the start of this life-long journey.

I am still hoping to find his other interests and not just Star Wars and Lego. 🙂

The following is a definition of Fika according to Wikipedia….

Fika is a social institution in Sweden it means having a break, most often a coffeebreak, with one’s colleagues, friends, date, or family. This practice of taking a break, typically with a cinnamon roll or some cookies, or sometimes a smorgas or a fruit on the side, is central to Swedish life, and is regularly enjoyed even by the government.

I must say that I am really starting to like the Swedish Fika…specially the cinnamon roll (kanelbulle), chocolate cake and cookies. I used to think they are very simple and not like the sort of cakes you get in our Singapore High Tea. But the swedish deserts really grow on you. ….literally as you can get addicted to it and put on weight from eating too much of it. But I love it!

We attended Elín’s confirmation during the weekend and there was a really great party after that ending with swedish fika (all homemade) at its very best! It was truly amazing!

One morning, in my frustration to get Linn to dress up, I have to use a bribe. I told her that if she behaves and dress up quickly, she will get 5 pretzels sticks (her favourite) from me.

She kept quiet for a while and walked around the room. She then came back and said.

‘No..I want 10 sticks and Jonathan gets only the short (broken) ones!’

Welcome home to Singapore. It has been a long time since you have been back from London. We hope you have a great holiday and wish that we are with you as well. In fact, we are super jealous!!!

Enjoy and have fun!

I picked up this strange princess the other day at the daycare!

One morning, Jonathan decided that he will start speaking swedish and now, he speaks Swedish all the time!

I am really stressed!! Am I the only one at home not speaking swedish?

I can spell my name with the bread!

7.30 am : Jon and Linn, come eat your breakfast!
7.35 am : Eat your food…
7.40 am : No Jon, you cannot get something else…
7.45 am : Jon, eat your bread
7.50 am : Now, hurry up and eat your food. We need to go to school.
7.53 am : Linn, stop playing with your food!
7.55 am : Ok, finish your food. We need to leave in 5 mins!!
8.00 am : If you don’t finish your food, I will take it away!
8.05 am : Now, finish your food! Mummy cannot be late for school!
8.10 am : Why must we go through this everyday? Now, it’s too late. Let’s go!
8.15 am : WE HAVE TO GO NOW!!!! PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES !!!!
(ARGGGGG!!! Now that is another monologue!!!)

Today is supposedly the last day of winter. It is still 0 degrees and white outside. Well, it is definitely an improvement from the -20 degrees we had in the last few weeks.

I cannot believe that we have been here for 7 months now. Definitely an interesting journey so far. Yesterday, I was reading Woffles Wu’s article in 8 Days. (Yes, my wonderful friend, Bert sent some old copies of my favourite magazine to me) His article was about how some people have emigrated over to another country thinking that the grass is greener over the other side but when they found out that it is not greener, they cannot bring themselves to return to their home country with shame.

Hmmmm….I wondered about our journey so far. The grass is definitely not greener and in fact, we have not seen much grass. We know exactly why we are here and we can only hope it will work well for Jonathan. It is great for the kids to know their swedish roots. Yes, I admit that it has not been exactly easy….specially for me. But I guess we all just need to embrace this new experience and make the best out of it!

Well, we survived our first winter!!! Hurray!

Is it possible that i get a good night sleep without someone calling ‘Mummy …mummy…i want you to sleep next to me” from the next room.

Little Miss Impossible has been really difficult for the past few days. She claims that there are monsters around and needs to be protected. As I looked into her big brown eyes, I cannot bring myself to tell her that she IS the little monster.

My little monster wants to do everything herself, refusing to take instructions and is really great at manipulating her brother. When Jonathan got his weekly candy reward (she got none for bad behaviour). she quietly brought her brother to their room and tricked him into giving her his candy! When I discovered her trick, she quickly spat out the candy.

How can my baby be absolutely annoying but yet adorable at the same time!!!

Jonathan has been attending many birthday parties lately. His friends at childcare invited him to the parties and he really likes them. In Oscar’s party, we were at first apprehensive about leaving him at the party because in the past, it did not work well and we had to be there. But Oscar’s parents said that it worked well and we were so proud of him.

Yesterday, I brought him to Luke’s and Lilly’s party. He was really good and had a great time at Lekiz (the likes of Singapore’s Go-Go-Bambini)

He was only upset when no goody bag was distributed at the end of the party!!!!

Jonathan looked really happy to see me a few days ago when i picked him up from childcare. He showed me a painting he was doing, gave me a nice big hug and sloppy kiss on the lips. Jonathan looked tenderly into my eyes and asked me sweetly……….”‘Mummy, now can I get some candy?

😐

We thought that winter is over as we started to see the grass beneath the snow. But it only went on holiday and got back yesterday. It must have been a bad holiday and so it decided to create some chaos. As we speak, we are having so much snow that I have not seen anything quite like this. The road conditions this morning are just unbelievable. Our new car was shaking so much that i had to hold tightly to the wheel. My neighbour told that it is because of the ice beneath the snow. I had to help my neighbour whose car is stuck in the snow. It seems like 4WD is a neccessity in this country. The buses are cancelled and we couldn’t even park the car in school properly because there was just too much snow.

How can it be possible to have so much snow overnight? See our patio, it was clean and snow free yesterday. The flowerpots were also empty.

The kids are having a hard time walking in the snow today. The snow reached all the way to their thighs. With the wind howling and the snow blasting in our face, I think I just want to stay in bed all day!

When I was little, I used to think that Chinese New Year (CNY) was uncool. Except for the goodies and the Ang Pow (red packet). I wondered why the adults made such a big fuss over Chinese New Year.

Now that we are so so far away, I really miss the celebrations. There is hardly any ÇNY átmosphere here in Stockholm. But that does not stop my friends from China. It is interesting to see them rush about their chores… such as spring cleaning their homes, putting up Chinese greetings in their homes, preparing a big feast for CNY eve. To the Chinese, CNY is as big as Christmas and it is important to follow the tradition…even to the extreme of not cleaning their homes for 15 days (now, that is quite a good excuse but I don’t think i can ‘tahan”).

Maybe I am becoming old and sentimental, I really miss the warmth of the family at the reunion dinner, the get-togethers of good friends, the smiles on the faces of kids receiving their red packet, the food and even the noisy Chinese New Year songs. So when we have no celebrations at all this year in Stockholm, I feel a little disappointed that my kids may forget this important tradition. They must know their chinese customs.

We tried to replicate this by inviting our swedish family for dinner last weekend. We had a small feast of homecooked Hainanese Chicken rice, Beef rendang, Samsui Chicken and Spicy brinjal. Nicke’s family exchanged oranges with us, we blasted CNY songs in the house and ate whatever cookies we can find.

So from now on, if we cannot go home for CNY, we decided that we will do our best to bring CNY to us in Stockholm.

We were really hoping to go home for Chinese New Year. However, Nichlas can’t take time off work, and the air-tickets were just ridiculously priced. I really miss my national carrier. Bringing my kids alone on a 18-20 hour flight with no good inflight entertainment system is quite a scary thought. Well, you can say that there is always the Ipad. But I have 2 kids who can’t quite ‘share’. I think there will be too many ‘angry birds’ on the flight.

So we are not going home this time round. We will definitely miss our Singapore family and friends, the Reunion dinner and all the Chinese New Year goodies, the friends gathering. And also the Yu-sheng. Thinking of the food just makes me salivate. Thanks Hock Yam for sending some pineapple tarts to me. It is really wonderful and kind of you.

So here’s wishing you my family and friends… Kung Hee Fatt Chai! Eat, drink and be Merry!