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.

Ilyasak's little friend

Ilyasak has found a new interest for a certain creepy crawly- garden snails to be exact.. Weird isn't it? It's not some fluffy kitten, a furry hamster or a colorful guppy but a GARDEN SNAIL. Yucks! at just the thought of it.
Well its not entirely his own genuine interest I must say. I did introduce him to this slimy creature a few months back when I introduced him to the concept of 'Habitat'. I picked the garden snail in particular and taught him all about it. He became interested as he could see and observe the snails 'live' in action. Garden snails are easy to find- everyone will agree to that. We even borrowed a book about it and 'googled' it on the Internet to find more information about them. It was a learning experience for me as well. The daddy caught a snail once and placed it in his observation jar for half a day so that he could locate where their eyes were and other body parts- it was interesting. The 'snail mania' in him died down soon after we released the snail back to it's habitat.
However, just a few days ago, the 'snail mania' came back to him. This time, he was brave enough to pick them up with his bare hands! I he knew I could not do that for him. If he wants those yucky snails, he had to fo it on his own. He braved himself up and last Saturday, he picked up not one but two on our way to my mom's place. He had then been picking up snails eversince till we had to coax him to return it back- telling him that it was cruel to let them stay in our house as it is not their home.
Just last Sunday, he pleaded with me to go to the field and grass to look for snails. Armed with a plastic container, he picked up two snails and took it back. He was ogling at it and even held on to the container which watching his msgic school bus DVDs. How gross is that? We coaxed him to return in back when we are about to go out.
During his outdoor playtime in the evening, he would call out 'snail where are you? Please cone out'. As soon ashe sees one, he will glady pick it up and place it in his bicycle basket. I had to remind him upteenth time to return them back to where it belong.
I hope he will outgrow his 'snail picking' habit soon.

Round and round the playground

As usual, Ilyasak is off on Fridays and we decided to go to Pasir Ris park. I tried my best to get them ready real early and managed to get them out of the house by 10.30 pm. An improvement on my sude considering that I am dong it all by myself. Howvever, I sort of cheated because I did not cook for any of them.
We took a cab to teh park and reached there by 11am. The park is lovely with all the shady trees making is posssible for children to use some parts of the park at least when the sun is upright on our heads!
Ilyasak and Balqis clearly enjoyed running around the park. Both were quite independent-movig around by themselves to play. I had to be vigilant of course considering that Balqis develop a strong interest on slidesand were always climbing up the steps.

The downside of te trip was when Ilyasak threw up the minute he entered the cab. Lucky for him, I managed to pull him out just in time so that he could throw up in the drain to avoid durtying the cab and his clothes. I could not see the reason for his throwing up and only found out the cause of it when he told me that he had played too much of the merry-go-round and had develop a headache. Poor thing! I am sure to refrain him from over laying the merry-go-round in the future.

He had fish and chips for lunch where he polished almost all of the fisha nd left the fries and salad for me. Strange thing I observe about him, is that he developed a strong liing for 'outside food' which I am sure to discourage. I fed Balqis at the park- one mission was accomplished much earier.

Once done, we walked home. I gave both of them a good shower and they were ready for their naps. Both mummy kids napped well when they are fresh and clean. I had a good one hour rest before Balqis woke up which was normal as she generally do not do well in afternoon naps.

Gingerbreadman cookies

Ilyasak completed his read on 'the Gingerbreadman' story. He read the simpler ladybird reader and managed to read the entire book without much help from me. Well done my little boy! He has made good reading progress so far which I am totally proud of.
To tie in with the story, I decided to let him bake some gingerbread cookies. I was lucky to find a Pre mix for this gingerbread cookies which suits me perfectly because I am not much of a baker.
It was real easy as all we need are eggs, a tablespoon of butter, 2 teaspoons of water and of course the Pre mix flour. We are to mix all the ingredients together. Knead the dough and we are ready to cut the cookies. It was so convenient that the pack even provided us with a gingerbread cookie cutter.
We allowed the dough to rest in the fridge for 15 minutes before cutting it out using the cutter. Ilyasak was quite impatient while he waited for the dough to set. To make the wait bearable, I suggested that we try to complete the story book. He successfully completed his read after about 20 minutes.
I gave him a chance to have a go in rolling out the dough, cutting them out using the cutter, putting the M&Ms buttons and baking it. Of course, he popped in quite a few M&Ms into his mouth in the process. He was not so keen on the icing part as the squeezing of the tube demand some amount of strength. In the end, I had to complete all the icing activity myself while he napped.
I wasn't much of a baker and had to rebaked quite a few batches as it turned out to be soft after being out if the oven for quite a while. I guess I had to practice more aye!
Ilyasak gave some of his cookies to both his grandparents. Hope they enjoyed it. I did not have much of the cookies myself as I am not such a big fan of Ginger to start of with unlike the daddy who simply enjoys the taste if Ginger. Believe it or not, each time that we are in a coffeeshop, he never fails to order a cup of hot Ginger milk tea ( teh tarik .)

The Giving Tree

Ilyasak completed this book in about 4 days. I am extremely proud of him. He read about 2 or 3 pages a day and he will read more for pages with very few words. Of course, I had coax him and give him occasional nudges for him to perservere to complete the book.

Young Parents finalist

I was flipping through the Young Parents magazine September issue thinking of checking out the litte duckboat project which Ilyasak and the hubs sent in. Instead of that, I was surprise by a picture of Balqis in one of the pages. She was selected as one of teh 20 finalist for the cover baby contest 2010. Ilyasak was shocked too and told me excitedly, 'Umi , this is Balqis'

This was really a surprise for us as we did not even think that Balqis could make it to teh top 20 finalist. We even forgot about the contest. For a start, she refused to look at the camera and did not want to smile at all. We don't know of the existence of this particular photo which was taken. Anyhow, we were glad. Alhamdulillah, she still won something even if she did not make it to the top 3. It was already a big achievement for her and we were really happy for her. It will definitely be something for her to remember by when she grows up.

Huggies Babe

A few weeks ago, on the 21st of August we headed down to Downtown east (D marquee). I signed both Ilyasak and Balqis for some kid's race. Ilyasak teamed up with the hubs for the race but Balqis was on her own. We had to wait for quite sometime before each of their race started. Ilyasak was in category E while Balqis in category C.

I was scouting around for the Huggies babes and dudes contest as mentioned in the flyer as it was an on-site registration. I was surprise when I learned that the queue which was developing at that point was indeed the huggies babes and dudes contest. I was hesitant whether to join the queue as it was limited to only first 50 participants and looking at the queue, I had doubts that I could safely be in the first 50. Nevertheless, I went ahead to queue hoping that I was lucky enough to be in the first 50. My sis was there to accompany me in the queue so I wasn't too bored. It took me close to an hour before it was Balqis pictures were taken.

It turned out to be fruitful for us indeed as Balqis was shortlisted as the 10 finalist out of the 50. It felt good to hear the MC announced her name. She was called up on stage later where the audience had to vote for the huggies final babe or dude. The winner, of course the one with the most number of votes. Alhamdullillah, Balqis was crowned the Huggies Babe. She won 4 large packs of Huggies diapers for herself which was a good saving for the hubs.

We were very happy for her. We did not win any of the race although I was pinning my hopes on Ilyasak and the hubs to win some kind of prize. Oh well, most importantly we were there for the fun so it doesn't matter.