Parental embarrassment

One of the joys of being a parent is walking your child into school.  Especially when they’re super young, like in Kindy or Year 1.  It’s such a proud moment – your child all dressed up in the school uniform, holding your hand.  You saying goodbye to them.
Unfortunately those days just don’t last.
Little Miss 10 [...]

Read Full Post »

Not a teenager yet.. not yet…

So my girls are 8 and 10.  Not old.  But not young either.
Chatting to a friend today, she said that her son turns 14 today.  14.  Only 4 years away for me.  But she was commenting that some of her son’s friends are already drinking and smoking at parties.  Some apparently attend AA.
Is this going [...]

Read Full Post »

Switching from Violin to Saxophone

Back in March, I blogged about how Miss 8 was losing interest in the violin (http://jasechong.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/giving-up-the-violin/).  She just didn’t want to practise, making practice sessions a real struggle and very non-productive.
We then tried her on the piano with Wifey teaching her.  This was quite good.  But 2 things have happened lately which have changed the [...]

Read Full Post »

Holidaying at home

With Wifey away on her school tour, I took 2 weeks off to holiday at home with the kids.
One thing that we did that the kids really enjoyed was staying overnight at a hotel in the city.   Hardly any driving, minimal packing, but the kids still got the same excitement of checking in, finding our [...]

Read Full Post »

Miss 10’s Signature

When did you create your first signature/autograph?  I remember when I was younger, I mucked around for a few days writing my name in various ways, until I found something that I liked and flowed for me.
Well, just last week, our little Miss 10 started doing that.
She grabbed a couple of blank pieces of paper [...]

Read Full Post »

Single parent again…

Wifey is off on an 18 day music tour with her school tomorrow.   Which leaves me alone with the kids for 18 days, across the school holidays.
The good part is that I’m taking 2 weeks off work!
The part I’m most worried about is food!   I don’t really cook very much.  I do help with some [...]

Read Full Post »

First High School acceptance letter

Whoa… 
Yes we had our kids young.  Choices were simple – which brand nappy to buy, formula milk, closest good quality daycare.  And now, suddenly, we’re choosing High Schools!  Aargghhh!! Life goes by so fast!
How do you choose a High School for your kids? 
On one hand, it’s a very important decision.  This is where they’ll transition [...]

Read Full Post »

Keeping the internet safe for kids

We recently bought a Lenovo S10 netbook for our Miss 10.
I’ll review the netbook in another post, but one concern I had was internet filtering. Our family computers are currently in the family room where we can monitor our kids computer usage. But we have also put NetNanny on our current computers to filter sites [...]

Read Full Post »

Dad’s night out

I’m lucky to have kids in years in school with great parents.
The Year 3 dads get together nearly quarterly for a drink, breakfast or dinner.   Last night, we gathered for a winter roast and a red for some male bonding.
It was good to catch up, knock down a few beers and bottles of wine, with [...]

Read Full Post »

Cross Country Victory

This week, our kids had their cross country race.  I took the morning off to support Miss 8 and Miss 10, and was glad I did!
Miss 10 decided to run in the 3 lap, 1.5km course.   I was worried, asking her “Are you sure you can run that distance?”.
“Yeah Dad… I did it last year!”   Duhhhh [...]

Read Full Post »