Songkran’s round the corner and today marks the last day of the school term; which means that from tomorrow onwards,  the kids will have lots of time on their hands to create more mayhem, tearing the house down for the next 2 weeks!

As with all other last days of the term, the school would always have some sort of activity for the kids. This, without fail,  usually means that the parents would have to dress their kids up in some theme they come up with and, on top of that, they require us to prepare a dish for the kids to bring along.

We were also informed prior that in the spirit of Songkran coming up in about a week+,  we need to bring along their bathing suits because there’ll be lots of water play. Easy enough! But, that’s not all – we also have to dress the kids up in purple because the last day of the term also happens to fall on the Princess’s birthday; the colour representing Saturday – the day the Princess was born in 1955.

On top of having to dress them up in purple, Spud has also been constantly reminding me since last week that they were required to wear a flowery-themed shirt (symbolical of Songkran celebration) as well. It was something which her homeroom teacher had not told us about, but she was adamantly confident about it, telling us that her Thai Language teacher had made that a requirement for all students.

Herein lies in the problem: The kids neither have purple-coloured nor flowery-Songkran type clothes. And I have been searching for several days at the day-market near my office to look for them, in their sizes, with no success…resulting in Spud being extremely pouty and disappointed when I came home empty-handed in the last few days. Where are all these things when you really need them?!!

I guess I could have just ignored it, let her pout and dress them up in their bathing suits with a purple ribbon or something! I could have just told her we have no more money left to buy stuff and leave it at at…but that would mean pulling teeth trying to get her out of the house in only her bathing suit the next day. I was in no capacity to handle another morning drama…

So, as dog tired as I was yesterday after a 10-hour work day, we hauled our asses to Big C – a hypermarket the likes of Walmart,  to scour for something purple and something flowery and a few ingredients for me to cook up their dish for the next day. We didn’t even have our dinner first!

Very fortunately, we got what we wanted within half an hour in Big C and with a grand total of 711 Baht (29.74 SGD), we hauled back 3 flowery shirts, 2 purple tees and 4 shorts – all for the kids!

These clothes would probably fall apart after the 2nd wash if you are lucky enough, but when it comes to crunch times like this, you gotta love Thailand for such prices. Not to mention an easy find without having to scour the entire city for them and for one shirt costing only 69 Baht(less than 3 SGD), that’s a steal, no!

I still had to spend another 45 minutes prepping the dish they had to bring when we got home at 9 p.m and by the time I was done cooking a simple kid-friendly fried rice, I was over-hungry and ready to collapse…

…which I might as well have, because it turned out that when we dropped them off to school this morning, they didn’t need the flowery crap. All because the said -Thai Language teacher had misinformed the students about what to wear.

After all that trouble in such rush, I could only sigh. What if I was really skint and 711 Baht was all I could afford for the entire month?! *Growl*

And, now that the kids make their own decisions of what to wear and make such a big fuss while at it too if we suggest something else, I reckon these shirts will be shoved in their cupboards and never see the light of the day again.

Fun would not have been the word to describe my rather eventful days last week and my head has been a little more than scrambled to even write a coherent sentence for several blog posts which I had intended to write. For the life of me, I just could not get started.

Right now, I just can’t believe that the first quarter of the year has come and gone. Stuff – be it work or personal, pops up and there are still LOADS to do. I thought I barely started the year. Where did all that time go?!

In the same breath, I can’t seem to catch a break either, as, just as I thought I almost got to an”OK” stage, something else happened to upset the balance.

In the week back in Bangkok following our Singapore trip, each and every one of Grubbs ‘n Critters family took turns being sick. Fever, coughs, flu…the works. Our Nanny included. Spud started the whole thing going pretty much the very night when we arrived in Bangkok with fever over 39 degree Celsius. For us, it meant not much sleep happened for several nights thereafter.

3 days later, I caught her bug. I steeled myself back to work, but by Friday night, I was rendered useless. Both Mother and Daughter spent most of our time on the couch  drifting in and out of sleep over the weekend nursing our flu. The house has never been so quiet! Whilst Spud got better after almost a week of rest at home riding out her fever, I got progressively worse. By then, our Nanny had also started with her sniffles and coughs.

Squirt pretty much followed suit quickly. And, for someone who has hardly ever been sick since he was born, Squirt was quite a sorry sight as his fever soared to a high 39.4 degree Celsius that very weekend, sending us into a little frenzy as we tried to bring his fever down.

Squirt continued to be feverish for almost a week and in between his discomfort and whines, he managed a weak “This is no fuuuuunnnnn!” cry before he puked all over his bed. Funny little guy. It didn’t matter how lousy I felt from the nasty flu, but when the kids are sick at the same time, somehow a mother just goes on auto-pilot; refusing to believe that she isn’t quite the superwoman she sets out to be!

And that had added a few more broken nights for me, sick and all,  before I was due to travel out again for work late last week. On the day I flew out, Silver Bullet caught the bug. Also all the works…plus…2 sick, pukey kids and having to depend on our Nanny whom, by then, also had the full-blown flu!

So, no. Last week and a half had not been fun for all of us. Squirt was still nursing the last remnants of his fever when I arrived back home 3 days later but the good news is, at least all of us are already starting to feel a lot better now. Hopefully that stays because right now, all I want is just a little damn break. And I want sleep!

Being away and unwell for several days also meant that I hardly had the time to catch up with >60 other blogs I follow with more than 200 posts which I meant to read. I barely managed my own blog and truly, finding the time to write has become a challenge. So my apologies here if there has been a delay to moderate and/or reply to your comments.

I remember reading a blogger’s post (for the life of me I struggle to remember who!) who mentioned that she actually took the day off from work to catch up on reading blogs – oh how I wish I could do the same! Given a choice, I would do nothing but blog all day! How do YOU manage to put up several posts every day? That’s really an incredible feat!

With several work deadlines looming in the next few weeks, I am already feeling a little disheartened that I may not be able to keep my head focused and coherent to be blogging regularly. I hate that!

Yet, I have also been ambitious enough to sign up for Word Press Writing 101 that’s happening in April.  Crazy anyone?