School holidays have ended and the children have gone to school for term 3 & 4 this morning. The house feels a bit empty this morning after being filled with their voices for a month.

This week we also managed to get their passports renewed. I could not get an e-appointment to pick up the passports, so we decided to just walk in. We had to wait for around 45 minutes, but this being Singapore, it was done very efficiently and quickly. The passports now have retina scans and fingerprints for the children also.

I also received notification from the ministry of manpower that my helper R’s contract is expiring in two months time. I am now in a real bind and don’t know if I should renew the contract or not. Without full-time work, it makes no sense for me to have a helper at home, especially since she does not have much to do now that the children are older.

One option is to wait for a couple of weeks to see if something clicks in the job front. If that happens, then it’s back to status quo and I don’t have to have any difficult conversations with R. Otherwise, I need to have to the difficult ‘it’s not you, it’s me‘ talk and ask her to look for other options. I will then become a SAHM for the next 16-18 months till the children complete their ‘O’ Levels and then look for full-time positions. We will not have any helper at that point since the children will be out pretty much the whole day. I will probably get some part-time helper to come help once or twice a week for the more intensive chores, but yes, that will be it. In the meantime, I am going to see if I can get some part-time work which I can do when the children are in school or some freelance work from home.

Anyway, let’s see what the future holds for us and me specifically.

Have a good week everyone!