Household Stuff (For those who love knowing!)

School
Beth went for her immunization update (a must for school enrolment) at the nearest Maternal and Child Health Centre. There must have been a dozen parents and kids (from bubs in arms to preschoolers) queuing to see the nurse. Beth was really good - she needed no persuasion or comforting to proffer her arm for the 3 shots. We were so proud of her. The nurse was so impressed she plied her with a choc Freddo, candy, a balloon and lavish praise for her courage!

We drove round to look at various Council kinders. Unfortunately, the ones we all liked were full (intake closed Jul 06, before we arrived), so we enrolled Beth with the 2 nearest home. Council kinders are the equivalent of PCF kinders in Sg. Their programmes go by 10/12/14 hrs per week, and the fees are capped at $888 pa for the 14-hr prog, which is way less than the $1k pm charged by private childcare centres here for a 5-day week. The Council will let us know which kinder she's been accepted for. She starts next Jan/Feb.

Playgroup
In the meantime, we attend Mon playgroup in church. It's run by a couple of mums from our congregation. The past 2 times when we attended, we had 5-7 kids attending, all aged 2-4. There's a huge playroom with toys laid out thoughtfully on the outer fringes so the kids can run about safely within the circle, the toys are in good condition, and there's something for everyone. There are tables set up so the kids can do a bit of colouring or puzzles or sticking pictures on paper if they wish. When tea time comes round, the kiddies get fruit and bikkies (biscuits) while the ladies get a cuppa tea. It's a great way for the kids and mums to socialize, and I've learnt a lot just by interacting with the other mums.

Church
Last Mon when we were at playgroup, the pastor came round to take orders for tea and then went to the kitchen and made up the orders personally! At the end of the session, he came back in to help the ladies put away the folding tables and toys. We were so impressed by his humble, hands-on attitude.

Another e.g. of the church's hospitality: after just 2 visits, we received a really nice letter from the pastor welcoming us and expressing the hope that we would find Hoppers Crossing Uniting Church a suitable spiritual home to settle in. How nice is that?

And we just love the way the congregation, though small (we counted 50 persons last Sun), engages actively in community outreach with its weekly Opportunity Shop (like Salvation Army's thrift shop), monthly Carboot Sales, weekly Home Groups (CG), a weekly reflective letter in the bulletin from the pastor plus Bible readings, and - with Christmas around the corner - taking weekly donations in kind for the Christmas baskets which are going out to the less fortunate members of community. We have so much to learn.

Grocery Shopping
We're learning to do like the locals: bulk buy our groceries so that we make fewer trips to the supermart (time and petrol cost $, even if you do get 4cts per litre off for large purchases!). We're constantly looking out for bargains because of the speed with which milk, bread, cereal etc gets polished off in our home (Beth had 3 slices of bread with Nutella at teatime today!). We've progressed from Coles to Safeway, Bi-Lo, and now Sims and Aldi. It's hard work keeping track of who's selling what cheaper, and whether the difference in price is worth the difference in quality, so I'm running an Excel spreadsheet to see if it helps. So far, we find that buying home brands helps cut costs and the quality diff is negligible.

The other thing we're doing is buying our meat from a meat specialty shop which offers various packages so we can bulk buy and freeze what we don't need. This week, we tried their $38 BBQ package: 1 kg lamb rissoles (which make great burgers), 1 kg beef steak, 1 kg marinated chicken wings, 1 kg sausages, 1 kg chops. Great value I say, and makes meal planning easier.

Now I know why the locals favour buying a separate freezer; they need that much extra space for all the kilos of meat they bulk buy!

How's the Bub (aka Baby)?
She's now 32 weeks in utero and doing good, as of this Tue when I saw my gynae. He did, however, point to the top of the bump and announce, "That's a breech position." Babies are known to turn around in time for the delivery, so let's hope this one does! (Beth is very confident her mei mei will do just that, as she had a little chat with the latter after the gynae visit, along the lines of "Mei mei, you must turn upside down, ok?")

How am I feeling? Enormously heavy and clumsy, and the belly itch's a killer. Most times, it feels like something's sitting on my bump and pressing on it. It's rare to get through the night without waking up to pee or change positions, and I'm really missing my nice firm King Koil orthopaedic mattress back home! My appetite's improved tremendously tho', to the point that I'm now 15 kg heavier than when I started out, and I suspect a lot of it was put on in the last 3 weeks after we started cooking for ourselves.

How do we occupy ourselves?
We're often surprised how quickly the day goes by. The mundane little things really add up: the laundry, feeding and walking Scottie and clearing the backyard of his poo, checking the mailbox, going to the library, reading what we've borrowed from the library, browsing the latest shopping catalogues to see what's on sale this week, reading the community newspaper, preparing meals and washing up, chasing Beth to take her bath/finish her meal/lie down for a nap, attempting a new recipe, church activities, weekend craft markets...

Do we miss the nightlife and the 24/7 bustle in Sg? Nope. I find I appreciate the complete stillness and quiet of our neighbourhood (which is that way by day and night, except when the train goes by), and don't at all miss hearing motorcycles tearing by at midnight on the main road below our window like I did back in Sg. As it is, there's already so much to do throughout the day that we're pretty bushed by 10 pm. Keeping Beth entertained (which mostly means reading ad nauseum to her from the same library books until the next visit) is itself a full-time job, and I'm glad Cheng Ann's available to share the load, else I would go stir-crazy hearing "Mummy, can you read to me pleeaase?"

Effect on Beth
That said, the huge amount of time we have available for Beth has reaped unexpected benefits. She is extremely close to us (she doesn't have much choice there, does she), esp to Daddy, who sings to her, horses around with her and invents hilariously wild games to keep her in fits of giggles. Her conversational skills have improved (she even speaks in a semi-Ozzie accent when talking to locals), as have her reading skills. We noticed she's actually able to read word-perfectly to herself after we've gone through a book with her a couple of times. Either she has an astonishing memory or she's actually able to recognize sequences of words now. Either way, it's really impressive, and we're glad.

Her vocab and word recognition have expanded to include a range of local words & phrases which she tosses off comfortably: Target, Barry Plant (our real estate agent), For Lease, For Sale, Coles, Safeway, Bi-Lo, Sims, Werribee, Hoppers Crossing, Bunnings, The Good Guys....You get the idea.

Thankfully, she has not forgotten how to speak Mandarin. I converse with her from time to time, and she is able to respond appropriately. When we met up with some acquaintances from China, she was able to converse in guoyu, which impressed them considerably. (Whew.) Will probably have to devise some sort of home study program for her once our things arrive (they're clearing Customs), as there's just one Chinese school in the area, and it's probably targeted at the locals.