Moving Back?

We have been staying with my in-laws since last Dec to facilitate my back-to-work plans. But now husband is suggesting moving back home due to space constraints.

You see, there are only 4 bedrooms over there - 1 for my parents-in-laws; 1 for my sister-in-law; 1 for my grandmother-in-law; and finally 1 for us (i.e. me, husband, Ying Ying and Mei Mei). My in-laws' helper stays in a little room next to the service balcony. So there are altogether 9 people staying under one roof! There is no proper study room for us to work nor a play room for the little ones to hang out. Ying Ying's toys (especially the bigger items like the kitchen set, snuggle bug car, swing, tricycle) are cluttering up the dining/living area and my in-laws aren't too happy about it because they are the throw-and-throw type who cannot stand messiness and things piling up everywhere. They don't believe in buying toys at all and have never bought a single one for Ying Ying since birth (perhaps except for a mega calculator my father-in-law specially bought for Ying Ying to teach her numbers which I don't really consider as a toy).

Also, Ying Ying has been extremely uncooperative eversince I went on my maternity leave. Husband says it is very difficult for his parents to manage her in my presence.

For instance, they couldn't feed her breakfast properly because she always demands to be nursed the minute she wakes up and it usually takes quite a while. By the time she is outta the room, they would be running late for her school (= heightened stress level). And to make things worse, she would refuse to eat much (sometimes nothing at all) because she would be semi-full with breastmilk. While I am not too concerned over her lack of appetite for solid foods (what could be more nutritious than my milk right), to my in-laws, that is not good enough a breakfast. They want to see her consume the bowl of oatmeal and drink up the cup of fresh milk. After all the attempts in coaxing her to take breakfast, they would have to face another challenge to get her outta the house. Our friend would purposely take her own sweet time or refuse to wear her shoes or declare "I dowan to go school/I want to stay at home (with mama)". In the end, they may have to drag her out literally by getting helper to carry her to the car.

Then when she comes back from school, the first thing she does is to run into my room and demand to be nursed. If I told her to wait till after lunch, she would kick up a major tantrum and she would look so pitiful that I would eventually give in. (Actually I don't mind lah cos I think my milk is more superior than her lunch. haha) After which, she would doze off for a couple of hours and therefore miss taking her lunch. But she would always take a hearty serving of dinner cos she would be so hungry by then since she didn't take proper meals for the first half of the day (heheheh).

And the above pattern has been repeating almost every single day I am at home. My in-laws are quite disturbed by her lack of food intake and I suspect they think Ying Ying will be undernourished if this continues.

Yesterday, I went out for a haircut and husband claimed that Ying Ying was super cooperative with them when I wasn't not around. He concluded that we have spoiled her rotten so much so that she thinks she can have her way all the time when we are around. That includes nursing anytime and as long as she wants, refusing to eat at stipulated times, refusing to go school in the morning, refusing to go toilet and choosing to pee all over the house, refusing to put on her clothes and even pinching and biting us! Boy, is she naughty or what?!?

I admit I may have been a little too permissive with Ying Ying in my parenting style. Perhaps it's time for me to do some reading up on how to manage preschoolers. Husband says it may be time we get a cane but I never believe in the saying 'spare the rod, spoil the child'. An authoritarian approach will only serve to make the child feel resentful of you, I feel, based on my childhood experience. Also, I am not planning to go down hard on her at the moment because I think part of the reason she is being so uncooperative could be that she wants some attention away from her newborn sister.

Anyway, husband thinks shifting back home may help to alleviate some of the problems mentioned above. But moving back now itself is a problem cos we have accumulated quite a number of possessions over the past 5 months. It would take several car trips to transport all the things over. We shall see...