Crash back to Reality

We're back from our whirlwind 4-week vacation in Singapore and Thailand. It was AWESOME. I'll blog about that another time. Please follow me on Instagram: prissteph or Facebook "Priscilla Tews" for more regular updates!

Well, I knew I needed to blog today.

You know how you crash after a long vacation? We certainly crashed alright.

A 7-hour time difference is no joke, I tell ya. At breakfast time, I'm so famished I want to eat my lunch. By lunchtime, I'm so tired I want to go to bed for the night. My children and I have such a hard time getting through the 3pm-7pm time (10pm - 2am Singapore time).

We usually fly back to Germany to arrive on Saturday so that I have one day to do my groceries and have some form of order in my house before the hub goes back to work. But this time, thanks (or no thanks) to my beloved hubby (who did the booking), he booked the flight back for Sunday instead of Saturday!

So HELLO to empty fridge, NO food and NO supermarkets that are open on Sundays. And oh wait, no one day to get back to R.E.A.L.I.T.Y

And if that was not enough, on Monday the hub couldn't come back any earlier. He tried to come back at least 1-2 hours earlier so that we could have dinner at 5pm and let the kids sleep. No, he only managed to make it back at 7pm so the kids almost killed their Mom (=me) the entire evening.

Tuesday morning, I was determined to get ahead of things and even wanted to start the day well by going on the cross-trainer. While having my Frenchtoast with my baby companion, I was startled by my alarm that told me that the 2 older boys are supposed to have an appointment with the eye specialist at 10.30am. It was already 10.20am when the alarm went off.

I was puzzled at first. I mean, who in the right mind would make an appointment for a doctor 2 days after arriving back from a long-haul trip right? But after calling the eye specialist, I realized that yours truly managed to book the appointment and forgot all about it!. Oh gosh! I tried to ask if I could reschedule, but the lady said the next appointment would be in 3 months' time. I asked if I could come an hour later, to which she agreed.

Only when I had put down the phone did I realize that I should have asked her if privately-insured patients could have an earlier appointment, so that I wouldn't have to go through the madness of rushing for this appointment. I tried to call the doctor again for at least 5 more times but the phone line was engaged!

So I did the next thing I knew how to. I packed the baby up, drove the car to the kindergarten, rang the bell at the unorthodoxed time of 11am since parents shouldn't pick up their kids outside the usual pick-up time. Explained to the teacher why I had to pick the kids up earlier, packed up the kids and drove to the eye doctor.

Surprisingly, we didn't have to wait and managed to see the doctor immediately. Samuel passed his test with flying colours, while Gabriel has a bit of astigmatism which warrants an extra check-up in a year's time.

You'd think by now, your day can only get better right?

But no. Over lunch, I noticed that baby was developing a rash. It started on his face and developed all over his body by the time lunch was over. He wasn't feeling himself and didn't eat much for lunch.

I decided to call the paediatrician but our doctor was out. We had to call 4 other doctors before getting an appointment. Usually I would wait it out, but I really couldn't rule out whether Liam was having an allergic reaction to something. He has never had an allergic reaction before, so who knows right?

The worst part was that Samuel was supposed to have a consultation day with his primary school. They had invited the parents that afternoon to have a talk with a school representative who would tell us about the school curriculum. We didn't know about it until today, so it would have been just me to bring 3 kids along for this school thing.

But with Liam developing his crazy rash and this school appointment, I couldn't possibly divide myself into two right?

I tried calling the hub like a million times - no kidding. I thought if he could somehow perhaps excuse himself from the day's committments, he could maybe play tag team with me.

But no, he didn't pick up his phone.

So I did what I thought was the best decision - Bring all 3 kids with me to the doctor and miss the school appointment.

I arrived at the "substitute" doctor's office and thought "At least now the kids can play in the playroom". BUT I had to declare that we had recently arrived back from Singapore - 2 days ago.

So guess what?

They quarantined us at the stairway.

There was NOTHING to do. Like absolutely nothing.

And because I had too much Mummy guilt that I had allowed my kids to play with our phones too much while we had all these meet ups with friends in Singapore, I decided NOT to let my kids use my phone while waiting for the doctor.

So I told them to go down the stairs and count. To which samuel said "So boring, Mummy".

So I said, "Go into the lift, go down to the groundfloor and come up again via the stairs".

The 2 boys were sporting enough though. They kept up at it for quite a while. All this while, I had to take care of a pretty moody baby who was turning red from all those spots!

We waited a grand total of 1.5 hours! 90 minutes! At the stairway! With NO toys, nothing to entertain the kids.

Craziness? Totally!

And have I mentioned how heavy that maxi-cosi carseat is??? With a 9-kg baby sitting in it, it felt like a ton!!! I had to carry that thing FOUR times in and out of the car today. I seriously felt so sorry for my back! And I had to keep thinking, "Oh boy! That baby must have had a growth spurt in Singapore. He's SOOO heavy now!"

Hub came back thankfully a bit earlier today so I had some time to cook.

I couldn't bring myself to have German bread after all my yummy Asian food. So I told myself to cook some rice. And I made us some lemon chicken accompanied by broccoli and carrots.

The kids ate it up and Samuel said I'm the bestest cook in the world.

But to be very brutally honest. I felt so sad when I saw my cooking. All that work in the kitchen, for ONLY 2 dishes. Compared to those zhi-char food in Singapore, which you can just order and have 10 dishes at the click of your fingers, I felt sad for my belly and my kids' bellies.

We actually had dinner while talking about our favourite zhi-char dish! Sam's one is the prawn paste chicken. Ah, that boy can have the entire plate for himself! It warmed my heart to know that my kids miss Singapore too. I told Stephan that in the past, it was just me and him who would reminisce about Singapore. Now, our kids do the same too. How sweet!

Days like today make me realize how important it is to be a stay-home Mom! It was stressful enough navigating the day with all those last-minute changes. How much worse would it be if I had to work at a regular job and figure out how to leave my job to tend to my babies? And don't even get me started on the number of doctor's appointments one has with children this young.

I used to gripe that the only thing about being a SAHM is having no income. BUT all this has changed, since I started working with ItWorks! This is really a dream job that has enabled me to combine my two loves - my family life and social media into a job that earns me money! Having done it for almost 2 months now, I'm absolutely enjoying this breath of change for me and oh boy! Seeing my first paycheck in 5 years? Heaven! And doing all this without leaving my 10-month old at the daycare? It simply does not get any better than this! I would never ever outsource taking care of my own children.

My dream with this job is to earn the money for our next vacation together! Yeah, I know its easier to just depend on the husband's money but I used to be the one to earn the vacation money back when I was working. My hub would earn the money for the regular expenses while I earned the "enjoyment money". Thank God that these days we can depend on the husband's salary for a lot more than just "regular" expenses, but it'd be fun to see where this job takes me!

I love my husband, I love my 3 boys and I love my life. No matter where we choose to live, Singapore or Germany, we can still have a meaningful, crazy life together. That's all that matters at the end of the day right? And of course that we know that the Lord is in the centre of our relationships and our lives.