Unsure, Uncertain, In doubt.

December supposed to be my favourite month because of Christmas. Somehow for this December, I'm feeling dismayed. The work pace has not slowed down and there is still a lot of outstanding work to be completed and I'm quite pressed for time.

It has also turned out to be a month of unsure, uncertain and a lot of doubts.

Unsure - should we move or stay put? The bedroom flooring is giving way. The laminated flooring has started to warp and it is deteriorating with each day. The biggest sore eye comes from the study room which has a bald patch (no thanks to the helper - you can read about the incident here). Every other day, we would get something that is starting to give way or broken down. Coming to 6th year of stay at this address (since January 2010), it is either we do an overhaul or we move out.

The hubby is more keen to shift out. But I'm holding back because there's the primary school to consider, the parental support I rely on during emergency, the convenience of having amenities nearby. We have been to a couple of showrooms but nothing impressed us greatly. It is all about timing, I feel. Just that this round, he is the one feeling impatient while I would like to bid for more time.

Uncertain - 3.5 years with us. That's my 3rd helper and current one. I had to change 3x within the same year before she came to work for me. She came with zero. Zero English language, zero working experience, zero cooking skill, it was a very steep learning curve for her. I was heavily pregnant with Matthew and I had to push her hard to make sure she knew the routine before the baby came out. She did well for her first 2 years.

But the handphone and off days distracted her too much that I found myself nagging at her every 3 months for the same mistakes. It has been a year since then and I finally gave up. It is getting too tiring to repeat every 3 months.

We are sending her back next Monday and no idea when the new helper will be with us. I thought about this change in helper for a very long time because I know I have to deal with the same situation like 3.5 years ago. Thankfully, my mum has agreed to help me "jaga" the new maid for the time being so it helps to lessen the burden. I pray hard this new girl would be my next good pair of helping hands.

In doubt - about MindChamps. I thought about the preschool a lot recently, partly due to the fee increment next year and the "good points" the preschool used to have. When we picked MindChamps, it was because #1 - the low teacher : student ratio; #2 - the mission the preschool held - making learning a journey; #3 - the strong curriculum.

With social media in trending and the sprouting of new FB groups with common interest, it is not difficult to solicit feedback and reviews on preschool, enrichment courses etc. Hence, I got to know that  even PCF classes could offer better teacher : student ratio. It worked out that with PCF, more teachers are assigned to the same class if the students are more. So with that, the teacher : student ratio could become 1:4 for a N1 class. The monthly fees from PCF is just a fraction of MindChamps and yet, PCF centres could be SPARK accredited. If you think about it for a moment, you would realise that MindChamps has a solid panel of experts to frame the curriculum but who has ever verified the quality that has been delivered?

With the increment of school fees (our 2nd time of having the school fees increased since Jonathan started at PG level), I do not see any tangible improvement of the preschool, whether in learning materials, delivery of lessons etc. It made the increment rather unjustified. I thought about changing the preschool but then, when your child is too happy to be uprooted, it makes the change trickier.

At current moment, I kick myself for withdrawing Matthew from CWK. If I had let him stay on, Jonathan would have a chance to enter CWK for K1 and this perhaps would be a better choice.