Day in a Life (DIAL) of a Mum 2016

As if you guys are still not familiar with our life today I am going to write a post about it again.  2 years ago, I wrote about the After Work Hours of a FTWM, so has things changed 2 years later?  Oh, definitely!  Besides being a full time working mum and a mum blogger, I am also a crafter now, on top of that I cook "ferociously" on weekday nights for a healthy home cooked dinner for the family.  Adding on to the one hour coaching the boy on his school work and revision too.  All these are new routine that requires time to adjust and I am glad that I persisted, the result is tremendously great!  So read on and find out about a typical day of our household.

*** *** ***

My day still starts early as the alarm went off at 515am (usually at 4am+ on weekend mornings) where the snooze button will be hit a couple of times till its 530am; yes I need time to get myself wide awake.

After washing up, I'll go into the kitchen to make myself a cup of instant kopi-O, sometimes I put laundry to wash and off to the study room I go to do stuffs to do before the rest of the family rises.  What stuffs?  Stuffs like blogging (like now) and finishing orders for my online shop.

An hour plus later it's Rise and Shine for the boy who jumped out of the bed almost immediately (I always wonder how he does that!) to wash up.  Breakfast for him is usually a cup of Enfagrow formula milk, he rarely eats anything coz according to him "my system has not wake up yet.".  I am not the least worried because the milk keeps him full and gave him energy for the morning till his recess later in the morning.

While he takes 15mins or so to finish his cup of milk, I went off to either hang up the laundry or get ready for work.  After I'm done, he will heads off to the bathroom for a quick shower too and get ready for school. We are out of the house 45mins later (oh before that I have to kick DinoPapa up from his comfy sleep hahahaha!)

School is a stone's throw away, but sometimes we still manage to make him late for school *opps* but this year we are doing great in this area, only late for school ONCE back in August.

We parted our ways at the school gate and I continue my journey to my workplace in town.  I love the morning train ride to work because I get to do my crafts, its therapeutic and wakes my mind slowly (yupe still feeling sleepy).

I reach office on time and starts to settle down to begin my busy day.  As I woke up real early, by this time I will be famished, I'll either make myself a cup of instant cereal or milo but recently I've been having a better & healthier breakfast; banana nut crunch cereal with milk is one of them.

Well, with a full stomach I am ready to tackle the day's work that includes handling phone calls, courier guys, attending to bosses (I have 7 of them!) requests and work instructions, doing accounts and admin work.  Some days it's a mad day where I don't even have time to visit the little girl's room, some days it's peace and quiet that I feel like falling asleep on my table.... Of course NOT!  

During such times I busy myself on the social media (who doesn't hehehe~) or I'll take out the stack of assessment books or past year test papers which I lugged to work that day to mark.  Yupe, I've been more persistent in getting him to do his revisions coz I am more worried about his school work as he progresses towards P5. Things will get a little bit tougher and more challenging as the school gears them towards PSLE, knowing my son I know he will do well but there may be chances that he is over confident with himself.  Thus I want to keep his feet on the ground and ensure that he practice & revise his school work.  So far our arrangement has gone well, in the morning I will mark them out and leave the books on his study table, he will finish them diligently when he comes home from school. Now, its the marking by this mama that still needs some improvement, that is why I bring them to office.

The most important part of a work day for all working adults is LUNCH, the same goes to me too.  Working in town does means that every thing costs slightly more, a bowl of ban mian 版面, sliced fish noodle can easily cost SGD5 to SGD6, a plate of chicken or char siew rice is SGD5 with miserable pieces of meat.  So a year plus ago I started to cook my own lunch in the office, thank goodness my bosses and colleagues has no objections about that.  I don't do the whole stir frying, deep frying or anything, I just use my Electric Lunch Box or ELB to steam my food.  Sometimes I'll bring last night's left over dinner to heat up and eat with rice or noodle but most of the time I cook them fresh because I am able to buy fresh ingredients from the nearby supermarket and keep them in the office's fridge to cook for the rest of the week (Lucky me eh?) 

Here are some of the food that I cooked in the office.  A friend once mentioned that my lunch is always very exciting because I get to cook different food almost every day.

Despite my busy workload I was able to knock off on the dot daily, its a mad rush n squeeze in the train back home, sometimes with that day's dinner ingredients in my hand.  Dinner time in the family is a serious affair.  I will take turn with DinoPapa to cook and as we probably have about an hour to get everything served on the table, things can get a little bit chaotic in the kitchen.  Sometimes temper flares because of reasons like getting into each other's way.  Some days things are smoother, DinoBoy has started to help out more in the kitchen since last year so we can let him do some cutting and cooking of the food under our supervision.  This boy really like to learn cooking, I think he takes over the dad plus he sees both of us made great food in the kitchen and it inspires him into wanting to follow us too.

It's usually 3 dishes + a soup but sometimes we make do with 2 dishes and no soup.  Most important thing is we have healthy home cooked food to end our day.  As you can see from the follow photos, we have moved on from simple one pot dish dinner to more lavish sumptuous dishes.

R&R time after dinner will usually see me sticking my nose at my mobile phone playing games, sometimes if our pet hamsters are out from their slumber early I will play with them together with DinoBoy. We adore both Russel and Bacon, they may be brothers be but their character are totally different.  Guess who is the tam jiak or gluttonous one?

In a short while we either proceed to the study room to do our stuffs; DinoBoy continue with his revision or he will grab a book to read while I sit down to do my craft work.  If he's doing revision it will take him about 30mins, after that it's reading time.  We do not have screen time; exceptional case to DinoPapa (dads always do not fall into the Rule thingy) on weekdays, now that he is older, he is able to plan out his time, keep himself occupied instead of bugging me to play or entertain him.

Things are getting slower at home for me, especially the night.  Although I do not have After Work Happy Hours I am starting to meet up with my girl friends recently.  We agreed that it is going to be at least a monthly meet up so we shall see how things turned out.

Bed time is 10pm for DinoBoy, I will stay in the study room to finish up my craft or a little bit of blogging before turning in for the night about an hour later, that also marks the end of the day for us.

*** *** ***

This post was written as part of the Day in a Life (DIAL) blog train that is being hosted by Mum in the Making. Please click on the button above to read more DIAL posts. It's been so interesting taking a peek into the lives of other mums!

Next up on the blog train is Lynn, a SAHM to her two young children, Faith and Daniel. She spends each day designing and carrying out homelearning activities for her children, on top of managing household chores. Through the blog, she hopes to share motherhood stories and resources with fellow moms, along with her other interests such as baking and health & fitness.