Playing in the rain and puddles

I took them out to play the rain. Thanks to Ilyasak, it was only drizzling by the time we reached the field. As usual, he was taking an awfully long time to finish his lunch. They had their raincoats on and I am armed with my umbrella. They went sloshing and jumping about in every puddle they saw. Strange though there were not much puddle for them to play with. Nevertheless, they had fun and kept asking when can they play in the rain again each time it rains.

Potty Trained princess

My princess is potty trained. We had successfuly trained her and she is off diapers when she is awake. We do put diapers on her when she took naps though. I am too tired to clean up mess- as it is I am forever cleaning up daily mess created by my kids. She did well, she can tell us that she wants to pee and poo more than a month before her second birthday.
She did have accidents though but they were not massive. Probably because she is a girl and her urine production is not as much as a boy's. I remembered cleaning up Ilyasak's big pee mass everywhere around the house and its definitely taxing and stressful. Being a girl and wearing panties instead of briefs helped a lot where her poo were contained in her panties instead of be9ng scattered around the house.
With the diaper wearing hours pretty much shorten to during naps and night sleep, her rash which had been bugging her since she was young had pretty much not go away. Having sensitive bums, had practically put a 'no-no' to cheap diapers. To be potty trained early, gave us the parents nuch savings on the diapers part.
All I can say is that, I did not have a difficult time potty training her. Well done! Balqis. We can now buy start to buy cute pink panties ya!!!

'THE' purple dinosaur

B was introduced to Barney about a month back when I played one of the VCDs for her. Since then, this purple dinosaur has found her heart somehow. It is definitely a clear obsession which she had for Barney. She will look for her 2 (big and small) Barney soft toy the minute a new day greeted her. Those two soft toys will also be her constant companion when she fell into her deep slumber or her short naps even! A barney knapsack will be strapped to her back the minute she is out of the house eventhough there was nothing in there.
The brother used to be fond of Barney also but not to this extent. It can be somewhat entertaining when you see her eyes glow and her hands pointing excitedly at the sight of any Barney (even when it is someone else's bag)shi shouting 'Bajin, bajin'-oh ya !that is how she pronounces Barney by the way. The 2 barney books in our home library are her current favourites and she will request anyone to read it to her at any storybook session we had with her.
Well, I don't know exactly how long this new found affection of hers will last but we somehow enjoyed feeding to her obsession. Ha!Ha!

Frolicking in the sand

The kids and I decided to head to East Coast Park today. Ilyasak is off on Fridays so I usually planned some kind of outing on this day. I decide to take them for some sand playing since they had not had a chance to play the sand along with the associated sand-playing toys for the longest time. We did went to East Coast Park some 3 weeks ago but that was for prawning and they didn't get to play with the sand.
Since it was sunny in the morning and wasn't showing any signs of any form of downpour so I figured it was a good time to hit the beach.

We were late as usual and only reached the beach at 11.15pm despite choosing taxi as our mode of transport. It got really warm and lucky for us there was a quite a big spot that was shadowed by a pretty short tree. I didn't like the overwhelming sprouting of the tree roots though (not knowing what creepy crawlies might lurk out of there)but I guess we were not given much of a choice given the blazing sunshine.

Both of them enjoyed it nevertheless- scooping, shovelling, raking and digging the soft sand. Ilyasak was so engrossed in playing the dump truck considering that he didn't see the truck for the longest sand. It was enjoyable to see Balqis fully engaged with the sand toys and playing the sand. She has definitely blossomed and can now appreciate outdoor playing very much.



I managed to explain to Ilyasak where tide pools can be form, showed him a supposedly crab's burrow and the breakwater. Finally get to explain with a live view of what a coast is. Thw word 'coast' appeared far too often when he is reading books on crabs and other sea creatures. This is useful to him since he is working on a lapbook about 'A house for hermit crab'.

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.