Meal time monster

B was unwell over the CNY holidays. We didn't go out that much over the long holidays beacuse of her being under the weather. She was throwing up anything that goes into her body and she turned into such a fussy eater. She would cover her mouth with her ten little fingers and turned away. To feed her in this state caused all the avalable energy in you to be used up.
Thankfully, she recovered but not her attitude during meal times. Porridge which used to be such an easy meal to feed turned into such a pain just to get it down her throat. I figured she was tired of having porridge all the time so I decided to give her what her brother eats (minus the salt content). Boy! was I wrong, she even refused such menu. She would store the food for a over five minutes in her mouth and she will fake somekind of nauseous expression. Mealtimes has since become a battle between B and me. It has not been any better since then. On occasions, it will take me a fast half an hour for mealtime to be over but on 'not so' good days, it will stretched for over the half hour mark and it is depressing enough for me and her with the occasional spitting, crying and stern scolding ( I lost my cool sometimes. Even the TV, don't do its magic like it used to be in the past. I just hope that its just a phase which she is going through and it will be over before I even realize it and I pray for the strength to go through this phase with her.

my mealtime monster

The double wheel skate scooter queen

My princess has finally acquired the skill of using the skate scooter.She is simply amazing I must say. She mastered it after approximately 2 months or less ,I can't remember exactly but it is defintely under 2 months. Of course, at the initial stages, she simply loved to drag the skate scooter around That's the advantage of being the 2nd child of the family. She gets a slightly more experienced mommy and daddy who just gave her the skate scooter at the age of 20 months without any fear of her falling and getting scratches on her suple skin. In addition to that, she had a life model to model from- her elder brother who is wheezing here and there like a pro. We don't have to do much teaching, she simply just pick up the skill. All we have to do is to give let her to correctly hold on to the handles and constantly remind her, ' Balqis, put only one foot on the skate scooter'

Now, she is trying out her brother's skate scooter which is a 2 wheeler. She is on the way to mastering the technique of wheezing around on the 2 wheeler skate scooter.

Prawning??

Last Sunday, we decide to try prawning (not sure of the exact term though)at East Coast Park. The kids were not too excited about it- I mean they were in the beginning but due to the long wait before we had our first catch, they got bored. We were given a rod, a basket(to store our catch) and a small plate of bait (chicken heart) The hubs managed to get his first catch after 45 minutes of waiting. It wasn't easy like how we thought it might be. Either the prawns were well fed or they were smart and skilled enough to eat the bait without getting hooked. We even resorted to buying a small container of earthworms as an improvement to our earlier bait which was the chicken heart.
The fresh water prawns looked a little different as compared to those we bought from the supermarket. These prawns had long blue pincers(hubby was nipped by one of them)which made them look like minature lobsters- at least thats what I thought.

Ilyasak was so bored that he kept on asking for pernission to play his skate scooter at the East Coast tracks while he waited for hubs to get the prawns. Balqis, as usual was like a dynamite. She simply can't keep still which simply tire me out througout the session. The good thing is, I managed to feed both of them lunch on my own.
Hubby successfully caught 6 prawns after an hour and a half. He did so much better during the last half hour where he caught the last 4 prawns.

We decided to let the kids play their skate scooter and run around while we lazed around the grass patch before we headed home. It was nevertheless an enjoyable Sunday but we will not go prawning again till the kids are older and have a longer attention span and patience.

Joys of the playground

My kids enjoys the simplicity of life. They are not ones who crave new toys in the shop or those advertised on TV (not that they watch much TV)or catalogue. They simply enjoys their daily trips to the playground. It could be just the playground around the HDB flats, not neccesarily those big parks. Of course, a trip to big parks like Jacob Ballas or Pasir Ris park is a bonus.

HFMD hits home

An angry red rash which appeared all over Balqis gave us a real scare. It was followed by high fever which fluctuates between 38 to 38.5 degrees. When an NEA officer came to inspect my mom's house for any potential Aedes mosquitoes breeding ground and he also informed us that there was a few dengue fever cases at the next block. I was worried that Balqis might be down with Dengue fever. Hubs took her to the PD the very next day and we were told that it might not be dengue as she had no vommiting or any loss of appetite. The PD attributed the rash to her throat infection.
However, the Hubs developed some kind of blisters on his feet and some red spots on his hands along with high fever. Not to mention the unbearable sore throat. Then, I followed suit, with high fever and a blister on my left foot.
HFMD came to mind and the 3 of us headed to the polyclinic to confirm. Indeed, we were all infected with HFMD. Both hubs and I contracted it from Balqis and by the way she had developed more red spots and blisters on her hands. The unbearable sore throat which we had resulted from the ulercs in our throat. Mind you, it was so painful that we could not even swallow anything.
Hubs was given 5 days off work and all of us were to go to the polyclinic again for review on 24/12.
There you go, all 3 of us were stuck at home and we had to send poor Ilyasak to my mom's again. We cloud not trace where Balqis contracted the disease from and the only place we could think of was the airport. Balqis played at a few indoor playgrounds so it could be from any one of them.
Till then, we are home bound and ahd to find activities to entertain ourselves. It was kind of a blessing in disguise as both hubs and I can rest fully as we did not really have a chance to rest after our Hajj trip.

Here are some pictures of Hubs feet and hands with the scary looking blisters.

A track of his own

Finally, Ilyasak succeeded in constructing his own train track without any help from Abi. He had been trying this for quite a while. It may look easy to construct but mind you, it takes creativity and persistence to actually design the track along with all its accessories. The hubs often took over an hour just to design the track. As it is, our choice of tracks available and its accessories were very much limited.


It can be seen here that he still need to be much more observant in his choice of a particular track. Here he was unaware that he needd to build an extension when he used a diversion track.

Well done! Ilyasak keep trying to design more varieties of train tracks.

Young parents cover baby of the year casting

Balqis was invited to do casting on Thursday 28th of October by Young Parents magazine. Eventhough it was just a 15 minutes affair, everyone was pretty excited about it. She was scheduled to go in at 10 in the morning. As usual, we were a little late. My mom accompanied us for her casting. The session went pretty well, I must say. We managed to see her smile showing off her pearly whites. I must say that she responded well to the camera. The lady in charge was busy snapping her pictures using digital camera while we (both mom and I) tried our best to do all sorts to get her to smile. I really hope she got nice shots of Balqis. Good luck Balqis! All of us are rooting for you.