For some reason, both my children had been sleeping with us ever since they were born.

We were always in the same bedroom. You know how inconvenient it is to have intimate moments with your spouse with children tagging along in the same bedroom. But I have always believed that one day my children will raise their hands and volunteer to move out of our room. This is a common belief for parents who follow attachment parenting. AP practitioners believe that children will never grow too attached and they will become independent when the time comes.

Monday was my daughter’s first day in primary school.

It is a bit of a challenge for J as she is not the most sociable child in the world. And life must be too overwhelming for her as she will be surrounded by more than 350 students of the same age – out of the sudden. Not to mention her seniors in the afternoon session.

We, everyone at PW, would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas 2009 and a Happy New Year.

J has been attending piano classes for a few months now. But before we take the plunge and invest thousands of dollars in a piano, my wife and I want to make sure that she really likes it.

In the meantime, the only piece she uses for practice is a toy keyboard she borrowed from her cousin!

I attended Character First parenting workshop last Saturday and it aimed at parents with children from 3 – 12. The instructor, Joseph Tan, (thanks to his funny and lively presentation or I would have slept through the workshop), called it primary years. It is during this formative period that the children should be given moral drilling and not moral reasoning. Despite this fact, many parents do it the other way. They give moral reasoning first and in teenage years, moral drilling. That explains why the children are rebellious when they reach their teens.

You could argue until the cows come home but to me TV can be an excellent educational tool if you know how to use it right. Of course, parents must play a role in making sure TV brings more good than harm to children.

I am surprised to find out J and K (now 6 and 3 respectively) are not couch potatoes. Meaning to say they don’t glue to the TV for long hours. Maybe due to the fact that we didn’t encourage it when they were young.

This is the 3rd time she did this, if I remember correctly.

I smiled with a great relief when J took over my duty. Just after school today, she volunteered to bathe K. More than happy, I agreed. Later, she took shower by herself. An achievement by itself.

We never had such a packed weekend. Just last weekend, it was full of non-stop activities. The children enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

He was coughing badly on Monday night and my wife thought it would be a good idea for K to rest at home the next day instead of going to kindergarten.

The air quality lately is terribly bad and many people fall sick. To make it worse is the outbreak of Influenza A (H1N1).

Fortunately, K was active as usual yesterday. His cough is bad only in the middle of the night, and lasts for 10-20 minutes. For no reason, magically he stops coughing after that. But when he coughs, I will try all available ideas to soothe him and put him back to sleep: giving him warm water, applying Vicks, carrying him, putting him on a higher pillow, and so on.

Today is the second day and we decided to send him back to kindy. Plus after staying home for a day, he himself requested to go to school.

Having a bad experience in the past, I really hope that K’s cough will not get from bad to worse.

I don’t know about you.

It’s very hard to find one dish that two of my preschool children love at the same time and say a resounding “yes” when I ask if they would like to have it for dinner.

In fact I myself love this dish. And I found out this by accident.