At home with Caitlin

Caitlin's two days off from school last week has stretched on till today since her asthma cough has not improved and she developed a mild fever three days ago. It looks like the fever has gone today while she continues to have phlegm and coughs and pants a little when she gets too active and loud. Her condition seems to bother me more than her as she continues to be her usual active and playfully mischievous self at home, while I have to be the one monitoring her medication and inhaler schedules.

She's been good at keeping herself occupied most times. I'm actually surprised and pleased that she has done without Astro (satellite TV) quite a bit as our TV set in the living room has been out of order since last week. She's been watching a couple of DVDs in the room but mostly occupies herself with books and toys. Hopefully once the TV is working again, she would have forgotten her morning dose of Tom & Jerry cartoons. She seems to enjoy the cat-and-mouse violence which is beginning to make me wonder if it would have any long-lasting effects on her although I keep reminding her that this is just a cartoon and those acts don't happen in real life....

I hope her cough and phlegm will stop soon so that we could get back to our usual routine of her being at school to allow me to do stuff at home in peace!

A productive day

I am pretty satisfied today was quite a productive one considering that Caitlin was home with me all day. I decided to keep her out of school today and tomorrow due to the chronic cough that she's developed once again from a runny nose after a seven-month hiatus.

Somehow, she was pretty compliant and 80% well-behaved throughout the day. I was actually expecting the worse this morning when the notion that I'd have her with me all day at home hit me.

Here's roughly what she did today:

Read a few books by herself after breakfast

Completed about six pages of math (subtraction) with my guidance

Coloured some pictures in her Barney colouring book

Practised music on the piano for 15 minutes

Took a nap on her own (so I could cook dinner in peace)

Read more books by herself after her nap, and arranged them back on the shelves by herself

ATE DINNER AT THE TABLE ALL BY HERSELF AND FINISHED ALL THE FOOD ON HER PLATE!!!


Played some computer games and read some online stories, and AGREED to stop when I told her to (although she cheated a little by turning the pages back to read the story backwards to prolong her computer time!)

Completed four pages of subtraction so far on her own (with only one mistake!!) while I'm writing this (despite coming over to check on me very frequently!)

Notice all the caps and exclamation marks I have. That's how surprised (and pleased) I am!

She is now doing another page of math. I can hear her counting aloud in the other room. Next and finally, I hope she'll turn in for the night without protest!

Caitlin's QOTD

I was eating some dragon fruit after dinner when Caitlin presented me with her question of the day: "How do you make a dragon fruit?" I told her that you do not make a fruit, it grows on a tree. And Caitlin, being Caitlin, could not accept a correction. She had to have the last word and so proceeded with her own explanation in a rather matter-of-fact way:

"When the dragon is dead, you chop it up and let it rot. Then you put some seeds in and you get dragon fruit!"

Yes, ma'am!

Blog and make money

I started blogging in March as I thought it would be a good way to share some of my thoughts and stuff about our life with family and friends. Since I enjoyed ‘talking’ on paper as well as ‘virtually’, I started considering if this could be a way to earn some money from home. I started exploring making money via blogging and have been surfing other blogs. That’s how I came across PayPerPost.

PayPerPost is a site for bloggers and advertisers, providing bloggers with opportunities to blog about products, services, websites they are interested in, and getting paid for it by the advertisers. I was eager to see what I could do with PayPerPost so I signed up immediately and submitted my blog…without checking what the requirements were.

It was only after receiving an email rejecting my blog that I learnt my blog had to be over 90 days old and have at least 20 entries, among other requirements. I’ve crossed that hurdle now that my blog is over four months old!

The PPP community is filled with people from all over the world, all walks of life and they all have their own interesting stories to share via their blogs. It’s amazing how some of these bloggers are doing so well in their earnings from PPP. I’ve yet to explore PPP and its community fully and hope to do it soon. Despite having been an ‘at home’ mum for two years, I’ve yet to master the art of juggling ‘home stuff’ and ‘work stuff’ well enough to make tons of money from home!

I plan to take this slowly and whenever I get some money out of this, I plan to keep it in a little kitty for personal pampering. So, if you’re like me and looking for some pocket-money or even better, some big bucks to supplement your main income, try checking out PayPerPost.

Planning a holiday is hard work

It's been a long time since we took a real holiday. Our last was in 2005 in Penang when Caitlin was three (my profile photo with her was taken then). She enjoyed it the most as it was her first experience (that she was really aware of) staying at a hotel and playing on the beach and in the sea. I remember that she was somehow very fascinated with the light switches at the bedside table and kept playing with them until one of the bulbs blew!

It's time for another holiday. School is off for a week mid-August and there is a long weekend for the National Day holiday on August 31. These few days, I've been looking around in the internet, newspapers and my Amex brochures for good deals, free stays, cheap flights, points redemptions, etc. Obviously, it is another holiday with Caitlin's interest in mind, to give her an experience of travelling in an airplane, or coach, and using her passport. (Parenthood forces you to change your priorities;I am still longing for my snorkelling, kayaking, shopping and foodie trip somewhere I've not been to before preferably....)

Planning a holiday, especially with a young child or children in tow, is a little harder. We can no longer simply rough it out or schedule a hectic itinerary and hop from one place to another at a moment's notice. The destination selected should preferably be kid-friendly, etc etc etc. (parents with young kids, you know what I mean). And it gets harder when you are on a budget and time restraint since we've yet to have money come down from the sky (we're working on that!)and there aren't many vacation days for Eugene just yet.

Hopefully, I can pin down someplace suited to all the above concerns soon.