Running shoes

The hubs bought a new pair of running shoes to replace my old ones. It's real pretty and definitely no excuse for me to not exercise.

Hokaido milk bread

Finally, I pulled out my bread maker which had gained the status of a 'white elephant' in the house. Made Hokkaido milk bread using this recipe. I had this big plan of making it into small buns but ended up baking it into a loaf instead simply because I wasn't familiar with the buttons on the bread maker. Nevertheless, it was edible and in fact tasty due with its subtle milky taste and soft texture.
However, I do need to invest in a good bread knife as the slices were pretty ugly when cut using the normal knife despite me using the 'sawing' method.

I got hooked in baking the milk bread that I baked another loaf ( still can't figure out how to do the bun style yet) just two days after my first attempt. It simple and fuss free because all you have to do is dump the whole load of ingredients into the bread maker, 'start' the machine and 3 hours later, you get a fresh loaf.

The down side of baking your own bread is that its shelf life is pretty short as compared to those commercially bought simply because of the absence of preservatives.

Lego plane

Another of his Lego creation with the help of the manual of course. Something about this piece which made me proud of him was that he attempted it with minimal help from us though it was not his first attempt. This Lego set was meant for children with a minimum age of seven and he is only five. I really hope his interest in Lego stays for long as honestly I did not want it to deviate to some computer games or TV. I am quite happy with his lack of interest in TV but he does request for his nightly bonding time with Mr iPad which I try to keep to a minimum.

A boat in the making

Abi wanted to create a boat from scratch. It sounded quite insane in the beginning and I thought that it would be just some plan which will be ditched.
Boy, was I so wrong, he actually carry out his little project and now his boat was almost 3/4 done. He plan to build it and powered it with a motor to turn it into somewhat a remote control powersed boat. It was his idea of his bonding session with Ilyasak.

My robust sleeper

Balqis is indeed a robust sleeper.Pronto!

She can sleep absolutely everywhere and in any sort of environment. She can even sleep on the bicycle seat which I have yet to take a picture of her in the act.

Sorting cum threading

I gave a tub of buttons of different shapes and colours to Balqis.and her first task was to sort them according to different shapes. She successfully did just that. Her second task was to sort it according to the different colours. She was a bit confused probably because some of the buttons come in different shades of a particular colour. Eg. Light, dark and also translucent sort of red. I think its time I introduce her to family of colours.
She did some threading with the buttons too and I am very happy that her fine motor skills is getting much better now. She could thread through the small holes of the buttons.

Mini lego creation

Ilyasak received his reward from me yesterday after he collected a card full of stickers. He collects one sticker each time he is well behaved or he perform certain tasks well. Eg. He got ready for school fast or he finished a meal fast without any form of feeding from me ( he does require us to feed him from time to time).
This time round he received a small Lego set from me as I try to keep his reward small and cheap. I bought this set from a sale so it was selling at a fraction of the retail price.
He worked on the set almost immediately and was done in about ten minutes as it was a pretty simple set for him. He will usually play with his Lego creations once he was done with it. That bought me some time when I could rush to the kitchen to prepare lunch while he was at it and Balqis was busy with her threading activity. She did helped his brother to fix the Lego figure that came with it though ( she has a thing about fixing Lego figurines)