Sunday, November 01, 2020

Roller skate and and second lockdown

We started to give the girls pocket money. 

Not much, 5€ a month. 

We can see they treat the money differently.

One wanted to save it until a certain amount, then buy a toy that cost more.

The other wanted to buy something immediately, she doesn't have the patient to wait and save.

Sometimes, one persuaded the other to save together, and buy something together.

Sometimes, they fought as they disagreed on how to spend the money.

I told them they could increase their income by selling stuffs they no longer need or use.

We did two garage sales with a club not far from our houses, and they shared the income.

We also try to sell stuffs through the boncoin (the French's equivalent of craigslist).

Most of the time, they identify things they want to sell, and I help to put them online and deal with the buyers. 

At the beginning of September, when all sportive and club activities were going to start, I quickly put the pair of roller skates to sell. We rented them brand new from the club, and bought them the second year around 100€. After three years of usage, and trips on the road outside our houses, they looked worn out. We decided to put them on sale for 40€. We only got two requests. Finally managed to sell them after agreeing to send by postal to the buyer.



They girls got 20€ each even though the skates belong to the eldest. We were going to Center Parks, and they have paid activities, so I advised them to choose an activity and pay with their money. They told me no. 

With this money plus their monthly pocket income, they requested to go to the toy store as soon as we picked them up from the grandparents after school holidays. The eldest one wanted a makeup set, and the young one wanted a toy she has been eyeing on.

I'm sorry girls, we are back to lockdown. The shops beside grocery stores are closed. They will have to wait, or buy online. So eager for COVID to go away and back to normal life.

Friday, May 08, 2020

Covid 19 Lock Down : My house is my playground

We have been confined at home since 17th March, one day before Malaysia. Hubby handles all the groceries shopping. I only drove out once for some food during this period. As for the girls, they stay confined at home. Sometimes we have a walk around the neighborhood but we make sure we keep some distance from others. We also played football at the parking lot just across our house.

Beside school, the play most of the times, together or alone. It has been 4 years we moved in to this house, it has become their playground during the lock down.

The wall is her game center. The little one designed her games and asked us to participate.

They got a lot of Play-Mobile as gifts. All are mixed up because they picked up what they like and just damped everything they don't like into boxes. Kitchen area is being transformed to play area.

The big sister has taken over the living room area with her barbies and the accessories. Her uncle got them from a coworker and gave all to her.

PlayMobile workshop with her little sister (another kitchen area being taken over).

They were playing with water in the room so we chased them out. They like to serve drinks to each other, and damp some animal toys into their swimming pool.

At the beginning of the confinement, the little one's teacher mentioned that she should continue playing with puzzle. She saw this magnetic world-map in her new school's open house, and felt in love with it. We managed to find it online, and ordered. She asked everyday when her puzzle would arrive. Well, it came only 5 days after. She can point out France and Malaysia easily now. The new game is for me to name the countries, she would take it out one by one. If she couldn't find the country, I would give her some hints, like the location or the color. To end the game, I need to say the country name the second time in order for her to put each country back to its place.

She invented a game involving the world-map puzzle and asked all of us to play.


She really likes world-map, she asked to buy a book explaining all the continents in the world. We told her she has to use her own money and she agreed. With the attached map and postcards in the book, she designed a game. Each postcard was linked to a color, and she drew a map explaining the location of each color. Then I have to place the postcards on the world-map according to the color-code. For some postcards, she clearly put in the wrong place, like putting Mount Rushmore in Africa. Well, her game, her rules.

She loves drawing. She drew lots of things and put them inside envelops. She was using the real envelops with stamp already printed on. Luckily I found a stash of envelops from our old bank so she could play with it.

Sometimes they are the best buddy to each other sometimes they fight. In the photo, they presented us a poem.

Enjoying the sun while camping the garden.

Hubby bought a game which is suitable for the whole family. It's called Zombie Kidz. The whole family has to fight the zombies and lock down the four corners. Each character has its own superpower. When you succeed in locking down all corners, you put stickers on a booklet until you reach a number where you get an envelop. In the envelop, it could be a clone for one of the characters, or a new zombie. The players can decide to take on a mission or a challenge.

She could also play with simply an umbrella and a water spray.

All in all, they got lots of games to play so they are not bored at home. Their TV schedule is just like during the school times. The only drawback : they are invading lots of areas in the house! It just slowing me down when I have to do house cleaning.

Covid 19 Lock Down : My house is my school

France has been locked down from 17/03/2020 to 10/05/2020 due to Corona virus outbreak. The school was closed, and will only reopen on 14 May, under some restrictions:
1. Each class will only have maximum 15 kids
2. Half day school with no canteen and no after school care provided
3. Each student will come two mornings per week
4. Students should keep their distance. They are not allowed to play together
5. School will not provide face mask, students can bring their own

Since the school can't bring back everyone (all classes have more than 15 students), the school principal had created a survey to know how many kids would go back to school. We decided to not send the kids back due to these reasons:
1. We are both working from home, we should leave the spot to parents who need it
2. Our kids don't want to go back after hearing that they can't play with their friends
3. Our kids have never worn a facemask, we can't guarantee they would wear one at all time, there is a risk of contamination

Anyway, since 17/03, hubby has been their teacher. There was no online courses and there will never be one. Teachers send weekly workloads through the school principal by email. Hubby picks up the print out at school every Monday. He wakes them up on school days, and classes start around 8:30am, the same time as if they were at school.

The little one has no homework. She mostly just do colouring, writing ABCD, matching photos. Then playing all day. The big sister has a lot of work. She cried a lot because she didn't understand or did some mistake. Hubby has been patient, but he yelled at her sometimes.

It has been hard on hubby. He handles all the teaching and cooking, and only manages to work half day. My work has been busy since we are starting a new project. I thank him wholeheartly to contribute lots of his time to the family.

My only intervention is to ask them tidying up! I have bad mood when the house is messy.

My only regrets:
1. School year-end performance is cancelled. It was scheduled to be on the 2th of June, the big one has been practising a secret dance with her friends.
2. This is the last year in this school for both of them. I wish they have more time to say proper goodbye, but it seems that they won't go back to the school anymore. The summer holiday is just around the corner and it doesn't seem that the viruses would go away soon.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Her style

Awena has been in a phase where she dislike everything girly : skirts, pink color, princess... She wants nothing related to them. She was quite choosy when shopping for her clothes and shoes, condemning everything in the girl's department, until she saw the choices in boy's department. 

One day, after a movie, we went for shopping for Aelig. Surpringly, Aelig didn't find much to buy that day, but her sister bought a total of 10 clothes. She was facisnated with boy's T-shirts and pants. The shopping queen Aelig bowed to her sister, and urged me to let her sister go home with her choices since it was rare that so many things please her.

At home, Awena quietly removed all the price tags and tidied up her wardrobe.

All the price tags that she removed.

This week, her sister was invited to a birthday party, so I decided to have a date with her. We went to watch Frozen II (second time for her since she watched with hubby the day the movie was on cinema). It was the winter sales period, she had been complaining about her shoes so we went shopping. She browsed through the whole boy's area, selected those she liked, tried 7 of them, and urged me to buy her two pairs instead of one. I surrendered since we spent 1,5 hours trying out those shoes.She went to school the second day with her new pair of shoes.