KNN

MBS

2011-10-22T14:37:00.000+08:00

It's our first time there. Main objective was to watch Wonder Full, the Light and Water show. Have to add, what kind of name is that?

After dinner at Marina Square, we managed to find our way to the Helix bridge. Whew. The night scenery is really quite magnificient. Too bad, we didn't have time to dwell.

I have a grouse. Both lifts (indoor and outdoor) at MBS were not working. We had to go down the escalators with our 2 strollers, which was not a problem. But I know of some parents who will have a problem with that. What about wheelchairs?

Finally settled down at Events Plaza.

While waiting for the show to start...

The boy cannot hold his smile very well huh? Hehe.

The kids also ran around the place, jumping up and down the steps. We saw disco lights in the distance and ran over to see.

It's Avalon, which I later found out to be a club. Pretty cool.

Then the show started. As with ALL shows, the kids got nervous. Mandy covered her eyes and then lied on my lap with her eyes closed. Barry was terrified of the mist that was coming out from the sides and at one point, tried to run away while yelling NOOOOOOO.

I really don't get my kids sometimes. It's just a light and water show.

They were very relieved at the end of the show. I got them to drink there milk there. Barry drank half and wanted to leave, afraid that the next show was going to start. Ha.

We then walked in the other direction, all the way to Raffles Place station to go home. What a workout!

I've moved!

2010-12-06T00:10:00.000+08:00

This afternoon, Blogger informed me that I've used up the 1GB allocated for my blog, for photos. I have to pay USD5 a year for some more image space.

Not gonna happen.

So I moved here.

The full address: http://k-newernews.blogspot.com/

See? It's neweR, instead of neweST. Heh.

I even have a new post already!

The blog is still under construction. I'm liking the super cheery look. But that might change. And change again. And again. Anyway, thanks for visiting this blog and I look forward to seeing you at the other one! :)

Food alphabet... and the boy's love affair with food ....and Philson's party

2010-12-01T00:38:00.000+08:00

Food. It's about the only way to get through to Barry. I'm not kidding.

Barry has some impulse control problems. I know all kids do. But... (ok, I'm going to do a very wrong thing here) compared to Mandy, his is very very serious. And then again, it might be because his a boy.

I realised I just compared my kids and gender stereotyped them. Oh well.

Anyway, he HAS to do what you tell him not to do and no threats work very well. EXCEPT the threat to take away his sweets, or toy foods. You see, he has this precious bag of stuff. They'll be toy food carefully selected from the kitchen set toys or sweets collected. Recently, he had a windfall from Philson's birthday party. About that later. Or some other toys, say beads or bricks which he pretended to be food.

I cannot keep that bag of stuff. It has to be there on the mat, even when he naps or sleeps at night. His precious.

Sometimes, you might find books strewn open on the floor of our place. DO NOT close them. He has painstakingly flipped to a page full of pictures of food, and place the book on the floor, so he can see food everywhere. He'll scream if you close the book or take it away.

He listens to story quietly but when there's a page with picture/s of food, he'll snatch the book away from me and ask to hold it.

He hated drawing. Had never shown any interest. Until one day, I exclaimed that what he had casually doodle on the doodle board looked like a cherry. What do you know? He sat there for the next 15 minutes, drawing cherries, apples, watermelons, oranges. He has a drawing book. Inside there, you'll find nothing but pictures of food and vegetables (mostly drawn by me). He only wants to colour if the picture is a food.

Only just 2 days back did he go to bed without some 'food' in his hands. He used to insist on holding sweets to sleep when he got his hands on some. He would clutch the sweet/s tightly. In the middle of the night, he would jump up, asking for his sweets. Most times, he would have dropped them. If we don't find the sweet/s or get him a replacement, he would throw a tantrum and wouldn't sleep. Other times, when he didn't have sweets, he had to hug a food pictorial book to sleep. Either the Lunchbox book or the Fruit and vegetable book. Once, he took fancy to strawberry picture in a huge hardcover book and insisted he wanted to sleep with it. Gosh. Oh, the first night we got our Mother Garden picnic set, he brought the whole (very big!) picnic basket filled with toy food to bed. *faint*

When we go grocery shopping.... gee... he just HAD to hold something. I usually give him an orange since it's more hardy than most other fruits and vegetables. The moment we reach home. it's war because I'll need to get him to let go of the whatever food he's holding in his hands. Once he held lemon in his hands, almost 24/7, for 2 whole days. Until it turned brown and I threw it away.

And no, he doesn't even like the taste of lemons or many of the stuff he insisted on holding, Sweets? He's never eaten any before, except one candy at the Halloween party though his craze started way before then. And he's never asked to eat them. He just simply loves anything that's food.

So.... I thought very hard about how to get to him. How to teach him. Because I was really having a lot of trouble getting him to stay at one place to complete something.

Came up with.... FOOD ALPHABET!

I have a stack of worksheets collected from Mandy's and Barry's time at the playgroup. These were the ones the teacher kept for me when they were absent. There were so many! I had an almost complete set of worksheets for the whole alphabet! Haha. Tells a lot about their attendance.

The objective is letter recognition and their sounds. Every week, I get him to do one worksheet.

He has shown considerable improvement in his colouring. Hurray! At least he knows what he's supposed to colour and has stopped coloring everywhere but the picture. He had to match the big and small letters and stick them.

Then, for the week, I bring his attention to the letter of that week. I also ask him to pick out the letters from the alphabet magnets. We match the magnets to the worksheet on the fridge again.

The finale is his favorite. The food book,which I do with Mandy too.

I place about 8 food items on the table and recapped how the big and small letters look like by referiing to the fridge magnets and worksheets.Then, we make the letter sound. The kids, each holding a big container, are to take turns to find a food item that starts with that particular sound.

Then, of course, they have to eat one of the item. Ha. For A, they ate dried apricots which they love. For B, they ate biscuits.

Once found, they colour pictures of the foods and do their food book! We've done 2 letters so far

I have Barry look for the letters among some others and stick them in the book, which is actually still a piece of paper now. Then he sticks the pictures of the food into the book.

Mandy writes the letter herself. She also cuts the pictures herself. She's getting better at it! Then she sticks them.

It's working pretty well. At least Barry recognises his As and Bs.

Alright, now I'm going to write about his windfall.

We attended Philson's birthday bash on Sunday. There was a pinata full of candies. The boy managed to squeeze 15 gummies, 3 chocolates and a jelly in his 2 pockets and brought them all home. How did he do that?

(I've already posted the pictures on FB so the captions are going to be the same. Hehe)

First, stand in line and wait for your turn to hit the pinata

Hit hard and wish candies fall on you

Jie jie has no luck too. :(

Candies galore. Rush in to grab. Know no shame.

Hands too small?

No problem

Maintain the pose till somebody pities you and gives you a plate. Continue piling on the candies even though everybody's gone!

Realises mom would not bring a plate of candies home. So it's stuffing time. GIN at anybody who tries to take your loot!

Actually, when Thaddeus came along, Barry, while still stuffing sweets into his pockets as fast as could, said "Ay. Wei. Didi! CanNOT. Cannot take ar. AY." Serious. It was so funny.

Lastly, engage help.

A lot of people were laughing at him that day. All the other kids just took a few and left. He was the only one so serious about his candies. Haha.

On the way home on the train, he took out his candies one by one, to admire. Then, he held up the jelly and went JELLYYYYY gleefully. Just had to record it.

Ok lah, rest of the pictures from the party. Very few. Hubby didn't go so no sard sard camera, which also meant I had to jagar both kids myself.

I was telling Audrey that this is how a modern party looks like. A Wii party.

Honestly, I would prefer the kids to play toys and interact. Constantly needing to ask the kids to let go of the remote or whatever that is, and to ensure fair play is so annoying! Especially when some parents help their kids hog the remote. And hearing your kids whine for a turn is.... argh!!!

Mandy with the birthday 'crown'. I don't know why Dee's dad put it on her. Heh.

I helped some mummies buy ukeleles for their kiddoes and brought them there that day.

Now, 6 of the kiddoes own the same uke. Cute.

Mine have learnt the correct way of holding the uke. Although hubby kept saying it's too young for Mandy to learn but he taught her one chord today. And she played it! Ha.

's'

2010-11-28T15:54:00.000+08:00

Uh oh. It's been 3 months since my 'r' post.

Well, we've been sick, there've been parties and outings.... And I was so lazy. Hah. Actually, it's because I'm very disorganised and very bad at multitasking. So if I needed to, say, plan for something, or work on something, I need to do that one thing at a time. It just happened I had quite a lot of issues I wanted to clear that past few months. Haiz. I wish I was better at organising my life.

Anyway...

Keywords:
spider, sail, sun, sky, sea, slide

Projects:

Spider

We read a couple of books about spiders. Their life cycles, how they live, what they eat etc. I emphasized on the number of legs spiders have and reiterated that spiders are not insects since insects have 6 legs.

Then, we made spiders out of crushed unwanted magazine paper, garbage bag, pipe cleaners and paper. Most steps were easy enough even for Barry.

Mandy's:

Barry's

I had them draw on the eyeballs and stick the eyes themselves. Then, they counted out 8 legs for their spiders. Mandy could poke the pipe cleaners through the garbage bag. Wow. I couldn't!

Then, I drew a big web for their spiders to play on. They were so thrilled, pretending my fingers were worms, flies, dragonflies etc, getting stuck on the web so their spiders could gobble them (my fingers!) up. After that, I wasn't free to play with them so the girl improvised. She started tearing pieces of papers of the magazines as insects. When I finally got back to them, the whole floor was full of tiny pieces of papers! Gosh!

We also sang the song "Incy wincy spider" and they made their spiders act accordingly to the song. Ha.

Up the 'spout'!

Sail

Previously, they did rowboats for their project, so I thought it'd be good to introduce to them another kind of boats - sailboat. First, we read a few books with sailboats as the subjects. They particularly loved "Sail away, little boat" by Janet Buell.

Mandy still remembered how to get rowboats moving in the water. She told me we had to use oars. 'What about sailboats?' I asked, 'How do they move?' I told them that when the wind blows on the sail, the boat will move.

Mandy asked me how we make the boats turn. "We steer the sailboats by changing the direction of the sail. If we want the boat to stop, we roll up the sail." I asked them to recall the cartoon 'Up' which they've watched umpteen times. The house has 'sails' too! And Uncle Carl steered the house too. The girl said she understood. The boy had long gone somewhere else. Ha.

They cut their own sails out of cardboard. Barry needed a lot of help. I tried my best to let him think he did everything himself. Ha. They stuck on the sails onto a disposable chopstick and I stuck the sail onto a shallow uncovered container.

Then, they experiment with their sailboats on the water. Mandy blew and was excited when her boat started moving! "Can! Can move mama!" she exclaimed. Barry destroyed his within seconds. Ha.

Then it was half an hour of splish splashing fun! They loooooove that.

Sea

I was way too ambitious for this project. The idea is simple. They had to read this book:

It has pictures of all kinds of sea creatures and their names in it. They had to look for a creature with a name starting 's'. Once that's done, we coloured, cut, laminated them. There were soooooooooo many pictures to do, so I had to help colour. Mandy insisted on cutting and I must say, she did quite a good job. Then, I laminated them so that the kids could play have some imaginative play with them.

Before this, they also sponge painted a big sea, which I also laminated. Mandy had lots of fun with this on the floor. She would pretend the seagull was perched on a rock, a salmon would swim by and the seagull would swoop into the water to eat it. Or it was the seal diving in to find fish. Or the swordfish or sailfish poking other fishes with their sharp noses etc.

She's a diehard animal documentary fan (she's concentrated through the whole Planet Earth series, whole Life series, whole Galapagos series, whole Nature's most amazing events series, and some others..) So, she knows her animals names, predators and and prey pretty well.

Now, the sea is on the wall, free for the kids to draw on, using whiteboard markers, or stick on pictures of the creatures.

Mandy's drawings on the 'sea'.

You cannot really see them but she drew fishes in the water. She said she wanted a 'big school of fish'. She also drew a sun (which looks like a rambutan hehe) and a big bird flying in the sky.

And also, one day, she decided to to add some pavements so the seagulls, seals, otters and sealions could rest. I suggested rocks instead. Ha. She cut and stuck all the yellow rocks herself.

These are the creatures.

Can you imagine all the work we did? Especially me? Tedious! At least, they had fun and learnt from the project. The girl remembers all their names. I bet you don't even know which one is sunfish! Ha! And she knows the difference between a sailfish and a swordfish. WOW! (oops, I just realised the sailfish is not in the picture.) She said she learnt that from Planet Earth.

The boy learnt some names too. :p

Slide

Included this because I knew they would love it. I asked them to imagine playing on the slide at the playground. I asked them why they could go down a slide so fast. Why can't we slide down the floor? This was Mandy's answer "Because slide got slope mah!" Although grammatically incorrect, but I was quite pleased. :)

We looked around for things that could make good slides. Settled on this:

Very soon, they were running around the house in a frenzy, looking for objects to go down the slide. They tried toy cars, beads, balls, soft toys etc. Once in a while, I stopped them make them guess which of 2 objects would slide down faster. The squarish brick or the round ball? The light or the heavy ball?

Then, I left them to do my chores. To my alarm, when I turned back to look, the boy was trying to slide down the table. Haha.

I love easy projects like this. :)

Squirrel, string

These are actually filler projects. The kids were sick for 2-3 weeks. And when they're sick, they're the whiniest, clingy-est creatures you've ever seen. I could hardly breathe with them whining and sticking to me 24/7. They couldn't even lift a pencil to do anything.

We did 2 simple projects then.

This is from here.

They totally drop dead on the table before they could finish sticking the squirrel. This is what the girl managed to complete after 2 sessions. She drew a sun and a tree at the background.

We also did string art.You know, dip string in paint and create a picture on paper.

They did this without their usual enthusiasm. Heh.

Sun

Wanted them to learn about sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset. Just the basic cycle. So we watched a few youtube videos. Search for the timelapse ones so you can see the whole process.

After that, they used paper plates to make a sun and a moon. Mandy chose to make a moon, and Barry a sun.

They drew and colored all by themselves! I must say I'm so proud of the boy. He drew a face!!!! Granted, the nose was accidental. He was drawing the mouth but turned out looking like a nose. So I asked him to draw another mouth. Otherwise, he did everything himself, except the sticking of the cellophane. Previously, he wouldn't even be patient enough to fill up the plate with colours.

Way to go Barry!

See what we did with the sun and moon.

Again, if it irks you to not see the whole screen, please watch it on Youtube. Just double click. I think. Hehe.

This was the 4th take. Barry was tired. But Mandy wanted to do it again and again. They were supposed to be behind a sea... or was it mountain? Ah, not important. Did you know Mandy was tiptoeing when I said 'highest at noon'? She told she was trying to go as high as possible. So funny. :)

I probably left out some details in my narration but well, they get the idea. I thought it was cute.

Sweet, sour and salty

I let them taste sugar, salt and vinegar and asked them to describe each taste to me. Then, we tasted tomato sauce and soy sauce. All in tiny amounts of course.

The next day, I engaged their help in making the sweet and sour sauce for my fish dish. Basically, we mixed sauces, sugar and salt together. They tried and gave me suggestions. "Too sweet". "Too salty". And I adjust the mixture accordingly. A very simple project.

Songs:
Incy Wincy Spider, Oh Mr Sun (no chance to do The big ship sails)

Mandy also did this:

I'm trying to get her to recognise english words since she can do it for mandarin. But somehow, it's much more difficult in english. She could tell me S-U-N is 'sun' by using the phonics method. But when she comes across this word again, she won't know it anymore. We have to start sounding all 3 letters again. Sometimes she gets, sometimes she doesn't. For english word recognition, is it more phonics, the look of the words, or the spelling? I suspect it's a little of everything. You cannot deny phonics help, but not for all words. Memorising spelling is quite tough for a 4 year old. Then, what?

I've read about the whole words method but don't really get it. Hehe. Not very smart lah, what to do?

Her teacher says she can read the reader books but when I take apart the words, ie out of the context of the books, she cannot read them. So was she just memorising the content? Or she could recognise the words somewhat but when out of context, she couldn't 'switch on' her word recognition mode?

Just wondering.

Mandy is 4!

2010-11-22T15:52:00.001+08:00

Today!

We had a small celebration with hubby's family on wednesday, and another bigger one with my family on saturday. Well, hubby's family is small, and mine is big!

We saw this flower at my mil's place. She said they only bloom at midnight. Hubby was intrigued.

When Mandy heard she was going to have a birthday party, she asked me to bring along balloons. Ha. To her, no party is complete without balloons. I gladly obliged. Well, she did not ask for a cake, did not ask for any party decorations, did not specify any themes or venue or even food. All she wanted was balloons!

Hubby got her Swensen's ice cream cake. Custom made Toy story one. They were quite thrilled.

There were only 8 of us to share the pretty huge cake. Mandy couldn't even finish her piece while the greedy Barry kept asking for more, more, more!

Barry was so happy to sing the birthday song. He cannot sing it very well yet but very adorably nonetheless. Mandy was finally able to blow out all the candles by herself. Still shy though. :)

(please watch the video on Youtube. I realised Barry cannot be seen half the time here)

Then came saturday.

I went early to my mum's to help out. She was preparing quite a lot of food for the party. Thanks so much mum!

Hubby brought the kids there after their very very short nap. They mucked around, playing with presents from my mum. Ukelele for Mandy and a train set for Barry. But in the end, you know... Everything is hers and everything is his.

The guests came.

Fifth aunt and Uncle Roger, thanks sooooo much for your help for setting up the fire and preparing the food! Then, for sending us home! Kam sia!

We had the bbq at a pit near my mum's block. It was my first time holding a party at a neighborhood bbq pit. The place was great. Very spacious, and my mum's place was just 5min away.

There was also prawns, crabs, sweet potatoes, sweetcorn, salad, fried beehoon, fried nuggets and seaweed chicken and assorted balls.

Their mobile nannies (aka Felicia, Ivan and Irwin) came! That's when I got my FREEDOM! Haha.

I tied 3 balloons to the lamppost and they provided the kids with much entertainment. Ha.

You might be wondering why Mandy was wearing flip flips instead of nice dress shoes. Well. I left the kids to the hubby to dress. While I remembered to specify the clothings, I forgot to specify the shoes and hair accessories. Sigh.... Hubby said "Well, she chose the shoes herself. They're pink what!"

With my cousins there to play with the kids, I could go bbq in peace. My favourite part of a bbq party is to bbq! But I can hardly do that with 2 clingy kids. So I was very happy that night.

See how entertained they are?

Oh yes, we 'borrowed' the NTUC trolley for all our stuff. I thought that was real clever of my mum. She said she felt so paiseh to be pushing the trolley home with a single rockmelon inside. Haha.

Despite the lack of sleep, they could still run and run and run. Non-stop.

The guests eat and mix.

I look odd as usual.

Anyway, the boy was totally stoned around 8pm. He could hardly walk! So I brought down the cake.

I had previously let the girl choose her favourite design from Bengawan Solo website. She also chose her favorite longan as the filling for the sponge. I thought the 'artist' did quite a bad job. The doggie on the right looks so weird and the handwriting was.. bad. But well, it's just a cake. The redeeming factor was that it was YUMMY!

The kids sang and clapped along with much gusto! So cute!

We tried having an all-kiddoes photo. But Wan Ting wanted out. Hehe.

After cutting the cake, Mandy was asked to make a wish. I know she totally didn't know what they were talking about. Haha.

Then it's every kids' favorite part of the evening. Eating cake!

The relatives helped so much with the bbq-ing, cleaning up and everything. I'm so lucky to have them. Oh, and because my kids love longan and kept asking for them, a group of my cousins and aunties actually spent the whole time picking out longans from their cake to give them. So nice. My kids are so lucky too. :)

Ok. Now, I really need to go rest.

天空

2010-11-10T22:02:00.001+08:00

This is way overdue. I was busy with the kids being ill, then parties and outings.... and then I was plain lazy. Anyway, we completed another theme for chinese homelearning some time back. Hmmm, quite a long time back. Haha.

To introduce to the kids the different elements in the sky, I did up some sort of a weather chart.

Everyday (that was the idea, at least), we would look at the sky once in the day, and once at night. The kids (Mandy actually) would stick what they can see (or feel, e.g. wind) in the sky on the correct area. Luckily, it rained quite often then, so Mandy had many chances to learn the words associated with rain.

Even now, she would sometimes look out of the window and say "Uh oh, 有乌云. Going to rain already." It's still mixed with english but at least she's taking the initiative to speak some mandarin!

We went through a book called 美丽的天空 from the library. It's like a chinese reader book. From there, and from the 四五快读 word cards, Mandy learnt a lot of new chinese words.

(By the way, I teach according to order of words in 四五快读 because I find that the kids must first know the sound of say, mountain, in chinese, is shan1, before they can recognise the word 山. I mean, they still can memorise and learn sound and meaning in the end but I prefer the whole process of word learning to be more meaningful so the kids would be more motivated. Easier to teach on my part too. So I teach words according to themes now. Very very slow but I'm quite happy with what little she knows.)

Now, she can match the words to the pictures easily.

We also learnt a new song and she could fill in the blanks of the song very well too.

We did a sky mobile too.

As of now, she can read the following sentences, with minimal assistance.

1. 我爱爸爸, 妈妈

2. 山上有花

3. 空中有白云

4. 天上有星星

5. 山下有水

6. 地上有火

7. 天亮了

8. 山上风太大

9. 我爱笑

10. 天天下雨

11. 看, 太阳好亮

12. 妈妈好美丽

13. 妈妈爱小星星

And she's pretty interested in mandarin now! I just hope she'll try to speak more. But then I always forget to speak to them in mandarin too. Oops.

Sentosa with kakis

2010-11-08T22:47:00.001+08:00

A group of us went Sentosa on Deepavali.

Aside from the slight drizzle at the beginning and end of the outing, the weather was perfect! And there wasn't the huge crowd that we anticipated. Whew.

First, we had to fill our tummy tum tum.

Then it's off to Skyride and Luge!

I was sooooooo excited and nervous. Well, if you know how clumsy and bad I am with operating anything, you'd be worried for me too. Would you believe I cannot control a bumper car? Those that kids play at funfairs? *gulpz*

Trix told me the Skyride is a bit scary because there's only a bar seperating us from the forest below. *shudder*

Walking towards the ride with trepidation.

We jumped onto the seat and I held on to Mandy with my dear life. I turned around and was aghast to see hubby calmly taking out his camera and snapping pictures. HELLO! Hang on to the boy!!!!

Even Trix in front, was worried for me.

We had a little incident during the ride.

Barry insisted on holding the bar and not leaning back like Mandy. Then, he started shaking his legs. I said "Barry! Don't shake! Your shoes might drop off!" I so regretted saying that! Bacause after that, he kept experimenting with different sitting positions. He tried to bring his feet in, and ended up dislodging one of his Crocs!

OMG! VERY SCARY!

Finally, we had his feet (and shoes) safely tugged in and him leaning on the seat.

Touchdown. Whew.... Getting prepped for Luge.

Barry had a crying fit once on the Luge. I think he was scared. He was screaming to get out and only wanted me to carry. Luckily Mandy agreed to go with hubby eventually, so I could take the boy.

What can I say? Luge was FUN! We kept stopping to take pictures! And I was going pretty slowly. Knowing myself, I'd better play safe.

That is Mandy saying she wanted to go on the ride and luge again. :)

While waiting for Philip + Philson and Trix (with Jared this time) to go on their 2nd round of rides, the kids busied themselves with raisins (courtesy of Dee), tatoos and photo-taking.

And here they come!

Love that last picture!

After that, we walked a mighty long way (drats, no tram rides that day!) to the food centre behind the underwater world. After lunch, we walked all the way back to Luge, and further on to Palawan beach, which we thought was the ideal beach for the kids.

Dee and Trix's family were smart enough to take the bus. Ha. The rest of us couldn't, with our 2 strollers and limited manpower. But that was ok, because it wasn't hot and Mandy, Barry, Hannah and Sarah were both sleeping on the way.

Got ourselves a nice spot. Near to wash area and foodcourt.

The kids got to it quickly, without much prompting. It was cloudy and cool. I guess Mandy was already familiar with this group of friends (since we've been meeting quite often) so she didn't need me to be by her side. That's quite an achievement for her!

Meanwhile.... I envy him....

Sleeping contentedly under the tree. So shiok.

This time, Jared treated me to some milo, some chocolate cake and some worm cake. Eeeks.

Barry woke and looked daze for a while.

We spotted an impressive sandcastle nearby

I spotted a couple of trees that were close to each other a few metres away and was eager to try out my new hammocks! Well, I grew up with hammocks at the beach and I remembered I loved them. So I really wanted to let the kids have a go swinging or relaxing on them.

Trix was very nice to help when nobody would. Even hubby. He wanted to lie on the mat and read papers. Hmph!

Our first customer! A very pretty one.

It worked!

Since the hammock was quite far off, the other kids were unaware that their friend was swinging over there.

I went over to call my kids to try out some swinging. I beckoned 'didi' (ie Barry) to come, and immediately, Philston stood up, looked at me with that dazed expression, dropped his spade and walked towards me. Very classic! (I should have known my boy wasn't the only didi over there. Ha.)

Anyway, instead of bringing over my 2 kids, somehow, the rest of the kids followed. And they had a blast at the hammocks. (We put up another one later because it was so popular!)

Since the others couldn't sit on it, they helped to swing.

Finally their turn!

Philson kept laughing while on it. Very funny. Haha.

The kids had many more rounds, sitting with different partners. While I almost broke my back swinging them, carrying them on and off, and making sure they don't fall off. Philip did a lot of work too but I guess he's not as physically weak as I am. Haha. Oh, thanks, by the way, for helping me keep the hammocks.

I thought it was a wonderful oppurtunity for the kids to learn how to take turns.

All that physical exertion was killing me and I haven't even tried the hammock yet! So I chased the kids back to the sand. Hubby and I took turns at the hammock before taking them down. Passersby were eyeing them.

Shiok! I nearly fell asleep.

Meanwhile, Philston was busy flinging sand mixed with seawater all over my boy. Haha. That was why Dee and Trix were laughing.

See the state Barry was in.

I was surprised he didn't squeal after getting flung at a few times by Philston. Ha.

They played for a solid 2 hours at the beach, till 3pm. After washup, Audrey and Trix's gang went for ice-cream while the more auntie group (me and Dee lor!) went to the foodcourt to munch on a big box of longans.

It started raining so we parted ways. Mandy fell asleep in the stroller shortly and napped for a good 1+hours.

It was a wonderful way to spend the holiday! :)

Yvonne was stunning!

2010-11-04T23:27:00.000+08:00

Last sunday was my cousin Yvonne's wedding day. When I saw her, my first thought was "Wow! She's all grown up now! So beautiful. So mature." She's really unlike the little girl I remembered her as. Now, she's somebody's wife! And soon (hopefully), she'll be somebody's mother!
Anyway, hubby took quite a lot of pictures that day. Enjoy.

I know it's a lot of pictures, and a lot of duplicates of the same scene. But I think my relatives would want to see them. Not all of them have access to my FB.

By the way, Yvonne, I have to tell you this. I heard the best wedding speech that night. Although it was long, but Nic did good. He focused so much on you, showered so much compliments on you and your parents. Then, it was how fortunate, how happy and how proud he was to have you. (I've heard some wedding speeches where the groom actually ended up praising himself and his own parents more than anything else! Unbelievable.)

Nic was so sincere, so genuine, so loving, he almost moved me to tears. I wonder how you could keep yourself from crying! I'm very very happy for you. :)

And yes, like Nic said, you were stunning that night. Happy marriage!

The most important meal of the day

2010-11-04T15:36:00.000+08:00

Was preparing egg mayo for today's breakfast last night when I recalled how difficult breakfast used to be with the kids.

Mandy used to whine, cry and sulk every morning during breakfast. She would refuse to drink her milk and eat only a few mouthfuls of dry cereal begrudgingly. Barry used to throw tantrums, and... food. Both hated bread.

But I didn't allow them to go about the morning empty stomached and I know just how important the first day of the meal is. So I never gave up. I tried and tried. I introduced different foods, I played food games, I did food shapes...

I'm proud to say that now, they willingly eat quite a big variety of food in the morning, sometimes in big amounts!

Here's what they will eat:

- kaya and butter sandwich (they take white bread, enriched bread, wholemeal or softmean bread, occasionally fanciful bread like sweetcorn bread or banana walnut bread)
- jam sandwich
- butter sandwhich
- jam and butter sandwich (ya, I'm just trying to make the list longer!)
- cheese sandwich
- peanut butter sandwich (usually in shapes)
- egg mayo (+ seed mix) sandwich
- ham and cheese sandwich (only ham for the girl. And only cut ham, not the reconstituted meat kinda thing)
- plain bao leftover braised meat, egg and mushrooms, much like kong bak bao
- plain bao with scrambled egg
- ready to eat chicken bao (kong guan)
- store bought chicken/meat/charsiew bao
- garlic bread (ie plain hotdog bun with garlic spread, wrapped in foil and toasted for approx. 7 minutes)
- baby cereals (Heinz's banana or vanilla custard) + some instant oats + wheatgerm + seed mix, topped with dried apricot/cranberries
- pancakes (homemade)
- Hotcakes (Mcdonalds'), about once in 2 months
- french toast

Once in a while, I tabao noodles or chee cheong fun for them. Once in a longer while, I might attempt to bake. Recently, I tried an apple bread and butter pudding recipe. They seemed to love it! (Though Mandy only liked the toasted bread and Barry only like the raisins. Hmmmm) They ate quite a lot of it for snack and breakfast the next day.

I am also pretty into shakes and smoothies right now. But let me digress a bit.

We bought a juicer some time back and thought it was a great investment. If they're not sick, we can have fresh, yummy and nutritious juice once a week! By the way, pure fresh juice gives more nutrients then just eating the fruit!

Back to shakes. A few days back, I made avocado milk shake for the family and it's soooooooooooo delicious and surprisingly easy to make. Just blend avocado flesh with desired amounts of sugar/honey/sweetener and milk! Enjoy!

For now, it's the only way to get avocado into the kids' (and our) tummies. Raw ones are so...bleah!

Had banana and pear milkshake (with seedmix) just now. Yummy too!

Previously, I saw no reason to make milkshakes because they eat fruits and drink milk readily. But I'm quite sold. Might incorporate some shakes into their breakfast menu to spice things up a little. :)

I'm still trying to get some seeds into the kids everyday. Mandy hates them and she has such sensitive tastebuds! For Barry, all I need to do is this:

He eats it as a snack, in the raw. Me too. :p

Oh, since we're on the topic of food. Barry has mastered the kiddy chopsticks! And he's SO proud of it. He would hold whole cheery tomatoes and beckoned us to watch before he popped them in his mouth. He can hold slippery fishballs and mushrooms too.

Let him show you!

He is very smug about it, I tell you.

Ok, this is getting too long for a food post. And I haven't even told you about our lunch/dinner and snack menu. *grin*

Halloween party at Connie's

2010-10-31T23:48:00.003+08:00

Wow.

We had a great party last night. There was the excitement of finally showing off the costumes that I came up with (and did with the help of my mum), the good food and great company and the surprising highlight of the evening - Trick or treats walk around Connie's estate. Little did I expect that her estate was so happening!

The kids looked every bit as I first envisioned weeks ago. I have to thank my mum for helping me with all the sewing. I cannot sew to save my life. Haha. 谢谢你, 妈妈! She reads my blog ok? So got to thank her here! :)

Little red riding hood.

I bought 2 pieces of cloth from Daiso. My mum provided the red lace and helped me sew the hood. Hey, I didn't do much for this costume huh? Oh, bought the basket from Daiso too, the nice hanky was a gift. So total cost = $6.

She loves the hood so much she actually wore it all the way from home, till the end of the walk, with no complaints. And she wants to wear it again. Hmmm. The kids also started some role playing at home because of this. She is Little Red Riding Hood. I am the big bad wolf. Hubby is the woodcutter. And Barry is the grandma. Ha. The boy keeps calling himself popo these days. :p

Fred Flintstone

When I first came up with this idea, I was so excited. I knew my boy would look adorable as Fred. And he did! Perfect!

My mum cut and sewed an unwanted orange polo tee of her own. I took over, cut the sleeves, stuck on the black tapes and made the tie from an unwanted tee. I also made the club by wrapping a toy bowling pin in aluminum foil, then sticking on wrapped styrofoam triangles as spikes. Cool huh? :)

Wow, this costume is FOC! Besides the cost of the black tape.

We were the first to arrive. The kids had great fun at the little house.

"Hello. Popo?" He always says

Isaac dressed as a cute little cow, oops, I mean, cowboy. Haha

Yes Connie, you can improve on your decor next year. *wink*

Audrey's family arrived.

Aiyo, this Isabelle can really pose wor!

Could see she was really excited to be a princess. Audrey and I were commenting that she suddenly became very dainty after changing into the costume. Ha. It's true. Girls hor, behave rather differently when in different attire. Mandy seemed a bit more si wen that night too.

Connie's sister dressed up as a cow'boy' with multiple gunshot wounds. Nice.

After a rather long dinner, the kids entertained themselves with the very many toys and a mini playground at Connie's house.

The witch announced the start of..... ..... ...... THE. WALK. *cue evil laughter*

The lame FBI agent gathering Little Red Riding Hood and Fred.

On the way, the kids practised saying "Trick or treats!". I guess most of them have absolutely no idea what that was all about.... until they met this poor chap...

We went to his gate, shouted "Trick or treats" twice and waited. He rushed out, quickly took a big bowl of candies and said something about being lucky that there was still some left. Ha.

As this was the kids' first encounter with trick or treats, many of them, after taking the candies, did not know what to do and stayed put. Until Isabelle and Mandy started complaining about not being to reach the bowl. Ha. Had to pull Barry away from the bowl. Saw him quickly pop the candy into his mouth and chew. There you go, his first candy.

Mandy didn't want to eat the candy though and she put it in her basket. I never saw it again. Isabelle spat the candy out later, saying it was not nice. Of course she was already far away from the poor chap. Hehe.

Scary faces everywhere. For the kids I mean. Mine hadn't even heard the word 'ghost' before, until that night. Mandy, being the older one, was not scared once she heard from me that they're not real. In fact, she would sometimes taunt the terrified Barry, saying "Not real lah! Why you scared? No more already." She still had a fright though, when she turned back and saw an apparition in black, with a mask akin to that of the Scream movie. Ha.

Can you see that scary mask in the picture?

Aiyo, once I saw that, I quickly steered the kids towards the other direction.

This lady saw Barry and exclaimed how cute he was, quickly calling the others to look at him. She also mentioned she loved his club. *beams with pride*

What's she supposed to be anyway? Angel huh?

Then came the fright of Barry's life.

We saw this ghost floating eerily at the window and we all started laughing. Seemed like there's more so we stood to watch.

What do you know? The ghost came right at us! Complete with scary sound effects.

I was standing with Mandy and deliberately laughing loudly (though it was really funny) and saying how funny the whole act was, so she wasn't the least big scared. Barry however, being more kpo, had walked up to the front, away from me. Towards the end of the performance, I noticed him hiding behind Connie's sister. He was very shaken instead. Kept saying he was scared and wanted me to carry. Poor thing.

He was so scared he didn't even wanted to go for the sweets. You can see him moving backwards to hide in this video, which only shows the 2nd half of the 'show'.

As we walked, a huge 'bat' from the side flapped its wings rapidly, jumping around in one of the garden. Haha. Quickly turned the boy away.

Then I heard screams. Aiyo, must be something scary. Ushered the kids far far away so they wouldn't see. Apparently, this apparition suddenly popped out of the drain, scaring the crap out of some. Ha, the kids didn't dare go for the sweets.

I was really tickled, and impressed. The Caucasians really put a lot of effort into Halloween.

Barry requested to walk after a while. Such a brave boy. But as he walked, he would stop and you could really see him struggle to take another step. He would frown, look around, groan and then walk again. It's like he really wanted to get out of that nightmare, but alas! that nightmare is full of sweet treats! What could he do?

Walk on, my boy.

He's very cute though. He suddenly came to me, looked at me very earnestly and asked "Not real? That one... not real? " He would also stop and say "Don't want go this way." :p

This lady said "Why did you give them such small baskets???" No experience was my answer. Haha.

Oh, one Caucasian guy saw me and told his friend "Oh look, we don't have to be worried in this neighborhood. We're protected by the FBI." Haha.

Another Caucasion guy was walking along, looking rather bored, until he saw Barry. He went "All RIGHT! Happy Halloween!". Yet another one (Caucasian guy, yes) went "Hey Flintstone! YABADABADOO!" :D

Bikini babes. Made hubby's day. Ha.

We turned to walk back. All the way back, Barry walked quietly, with his head down, occasionally muttering 'Didi scared new monkey' which is what he called the flying ghost, or 'Don't want walk this way.'.

So, as we neared the 'new monkey', I did this.

It helped. Ha.

Mandy's basket was full!

I secretly poured most of the collected treats back to Connie's big bucket though. Or Barry would want to hold the sweets to sleep again. They don't eat. But since it's their first Halloween, I let them tried the gummy burger which they both don't like. Hehe.

What an experience! We are going to do this again next year, aren't we? I'll try to come up with a less lame costume for myself. Haha.

Thanks Connie and Johnson. You both were such wonderful hosts. :)

My cute little chef

2010-10-22T15:41:00.001+08:00

Cute or not? I made the chef hat myself! *beams with pride*

I was considering dressing him up as a chef for a Halloween's party, since he is such a foodie. But he doesn't like to wear the hat and apron for long. So... made other plans.

By the way, Mandy, Barry and I are dressing up for the party. Must psycho hubby as well. Will be sure to take lots of pictures since all the children will be dressed up too!

Can't wait.

Downstairs... is good for you.

2010-10-19T21:39:00.000+08:00

We were at my mum's today. She cooked a new dish. Steamed huai shan, topped with minced prawn and water chestnut, which was very refreshing and quite yummy. The dish looked something like this:

I filled up Barry's spoon with rice, beansprouts and a small piece of huai shan. He saw and started screaming. "Dun wan! Dun wan that one!" "Huh? Which one? Beansprouts? You have to eat the beansprouts!" "Dun wannnnnn. Dun wan that one. Nooooooo...."

I insisted on him eating some vegetables and brought the spoon closer to him. Out of desperation, he pointed to the huai shan dish and screamed "Dun wan DOWNSTAIRS that one!"

When, my mum and I figured out what he was saying, we burst out laughing.

Previously, he called it radish but I corrected him. He must have forgotten what it's really called. Haha.

Numbers and maths game

2010-10-18T18:16:00.002+08:00

10 acorns are served on a tray. 10 squirrels are very hungry but they are lost. Can you find the squirrels and bring them home to eat the acorns? Find them in sequence and match the acorns to the squirrels.

Next time I'll try numbers 11-20. 1-5 for Barry. Hopefully he'll be interested.

The food seller sells his ware - a basket of food. The buyer asks for an item and pays whichever amount the seller says. They get to learn addition on the way. (Not much if Barry is always the one selling since he hardly gets past $4. :p)

Barry absolutely loves this game. He wants to play it everyday. :) The way to get through to him is undoubtedly - FOOD! Gosh, he sounds like Kungfu Panda. Haha.

p/s: click on the video to see the whole screen in Youtube. The widescreen clip cannot fit into my blog.

Plum crumble

2010-10-04T23:35:00.000+08:00

Made this yesterday.

My mum bought a box of plums for us, which were not very sweet. Then, my MIL bought another box of plums for us, which were also not very sweet. By the way, I have totally converted to pluots (a hybrid of plum and apricot, the yellow ones.) After eating those, you'll never want to eat plums again. Ha.

We had 2 boxes of plums at home, untouched, for quite a while. So I decided to try this recipe from "Smart food for smart kids" by Patrick Holford and Fiona Macdonald Joyce. So yeah, this plum crumble is supposed to be nutritious! I'm not saying I'm going to eat it for health, but I definitely don't feel so bad eating it. And it's pretty yummy too!

Here's how you make it. Very easy.

Recipe

Crumble
- 150 whole oatflakes
- 65g butter (at room temp.)
- 75g *xylitol (a low GL sugar substitute)
- 75g ground almonds

Filling
- 900g plums (halved and stoned)
- 1 tsp ground cinammon
- 100g xylitol

Preheat oven to 180 deg. cel. Whizz the oats in a food processor to grind into flour. Add butter and whizz to form crumbs. Mix in xylitol and ground almonds.

Place plum halves in base of large shallow ovenproof dish. Sprinkle with cinammon and xylitol, then top with crumb mixture.

Even out the top and bake for 30-40min, till the top turns golden brown and the plum juice is bubbling.

*More information on xylitol here I used only 85g of xylitol for the filling. Sweet enough. Can be made with less. Xylitol can be bought at Cold Storage, though I could only find the individually packed ones.

I like my plum crumble chilled. Otherwise, it's a bit too squidgy for me. :)

Candles and lanterns

2010-10-02T12:11:00.000+08:00

This is a long overdue post. Mid autumn was so long ago!

Due to various reasons, we only celebrated the festival the sunday after. Actually, it's just some lantern/candles play at a nearby park. Here are some pictures.

I spent my childhood burning lanterns and playing with candles (with no adult supervison) during Midautumn every year. I thought I'd be a gungho parent and let my kids do the same (albeit WITH adult supervision). I thought I would, at least, let them have the fun of burning their lanterns.

But... but...

I was so squeamish around the fire I didn't even manage to hang a single lantern on the tree. Needless to say, I was nagging constantly at the kids to be careful and NOT SWING their lanterns!

Also, I've become more environmentally conscious.I just thought it's not very right deliberately start a fire and risk the plants around it. Oh well...

Would you look at our handmade deer lantern? Nice hor? Hehe. Traditional lanterns are the prettiest.

Somehow, we all ended up singing the birthday song and blowing out candles. Over and over. Hah.

The kids enjoyed themselves very much. We burnt a few lanterns. Threw away the rest. Was a bit sad to part with the deer. But my mum was right. 旧的不去, 新的不来.

Till next year!

Scoopy, loopy, doopy!

2010-09-25T15:06:00.002+08:00

Ok, first off..... My darling boy is so big already. Awwww......

Got to get that off my chest. Ha.

He's such a funny little boy. One day, while he was sitting on his booster chair, waiting for lunch to be serve, he exclaimed "Didi put STRAPEY!"

"Huh? What pi? What did you put?"

"Strapey!" he pointed to the seat straps which he had buckled over his tummy. I just laughed and wondered why he called it that.

During snack time, I asked him what he wanted to eat. "Loopy." was the reply. What pi again??

He meant fruit loops. Haha.

The next day, he asked for grapey. When he wanted water, he asked for his cuppy. He was adding an extra 'y' to every word that he knew ended with the 'b' and 'p' sound. I thought it was so hilarious. But he was quite serious over his pi-s.

He was on the swing at the playground when he started shouting anxiously. I couldn't make out what he was saying. It sounded like "STOPEE STOPPPEEEEE!"

Then it hit me.'Stopy' means 'stop'! And I was right. He just wanted to join his sister at the slide. Ha. Funny boy.

For a few days, when he needed help, he would say 'beebo beebo', somewhat like the ambulance. I have no idea why because I hardly ever make that sound and I don't think I ever explained to him what an ambulance is and why it makes that sound.

He didn't make the sound for fun too.

When I was washing his hair one day, soap got into his eyes. He squinted and spluttered. "Ouch pain pain! Eyes pain pain... Beebo beebooooo. Pain painnnn!"

Funny right? Ha.

Also, he counts in a loop. Still.

He goes "Unn... tu... tri.... fo.... fai... sik.... ehwen...eh.... ay... ten.... ehwen... eh...ay.... ten... ehwen... eh... ay... ten...ehwen...."

Because he cannot pronounce 'seven' and 'eleven' properly, so they both sound like 'ehwen'. After 'ehwen' is always 'eh'! :p

He is getting really bossy these days too. I suspect he learnt that from his sister. Tsk tsk.

Yesterday, while on a walk, he saw some kids chasing birds. He said sternly "CAN. NOT. catch bird. Bird PAIN PAIN!"

When he saw 2 pigeons perched on the lamppost, he had to shout at them "BE. CAREFUL!"

When he saw a poster of a naked baby holding a toilet bowl in a public toilet, he told the 'baby' off. "Baby CANNOT hold toilet! Dirty dirty!" and fumed. He was very angry indeed. :D

He hates to have his teeth cleaned. Once when he saw me going towards him with the towel for cleaning teeth, he turned over on his front and said "Didi die." and remained motionless.

Oh, I have to talk about his love for food. When he loves his food (he likes most everything), he can eat an unbelievable amount. For instance, he once ate 2 and a quarter Mcdonald's hotcakes + one muffin (from the big breakfast) + one full cup of milk for breakfast. If he was served bread and bread, he can usually eat 2 slices. If it's chicken bao, he can eat 2 or more.

For the dinners at Thai Pan during our staycation, he wolfed down one full bowl of rice each time, complete with lots of meat and vegetables.

He also eats an astonishing wide variety of food. His ever favorite is mushrooms. But he also loves tomatoes and capsicum, even in the raw. The other time, we were at a bbq. We let him try cocktail sausages, chicken wing, fried beehoon, fishballs.... but all he wanted was the raw cherry tomatoes and capsicum from the salad. He managed to amaze some people there. If we don't stop him, he should be able to eat one big bowl of cherry tomatoes in a sitting. His record is, erm, 12?

Well, he even eats the apricot kernels (南北杏) in the soups. Really, who eats those?

And that's how my boy is like. It's a joy to be around him everyday. Love him so much. :)

Happy mid autumn!

2010-09-22T15:35:00.000+08:00

It's mid autumn today!

Anyway, I got a wee bit too ambitious this year and asked the kids what lanterns they would like. I would custom make for them. Mandy chose deer, and Barry chose giraffe.

After many hours of crouching over the cellophane and wires, my mum and I finally completed the lantern. It was then time for Mandy to decorate her deer.

And presto! We have her deer lantern, which she calls 宝宝鹿. (got the name from a book)

I think she did a great job decorating the lantern with paint. All by herself. I didn't intefere even when she wanted to paint the tail red and the ears purple. Haha.

While my mum and I, er... did not do so well making it.

We're going to play with this lantern on friday night. Sure, it can be lighted up. We tested. :)

Now for the giraffe.... Ermmmm, we'll work on it next year. :p

Mid Autumn party at Botanic gardens

2010-09-21T16:55:00.002+08:00

I really miss my childhood. I have a lot of cousins around my age and every mid autumn festival, somebody (usually my mum) would organise a huge gathering at some park. The whole lot of us kids would be playing with lanterns, candles and eating mooncakes in the dark.

They would be lots of yummy food brought by the uncles and aunties. We always had a blast playing together.

I've always wished my kids would grow up with fond memories of such gatherings too. But alas, they are not so fortunate to have a group of close cousins. So I'm really glad I have my mummy kakis. :)

It was potluck picnic at the Botanic gardens. Very nice place I must say. And the weather was quite perfect.

Dee arrived 1st, we got there shortly after, and decided we should just start the picnic. Ha.

She brought A LOT of fruits. Strawberries, blueberries, dragonfruit, guava, grapes, and even a big pomelo! I brought kong bak bao, again. Haha.

Then Audrey's family came. The 3 families chomped and chomped. By the time we're done, there were only 5 baos left. Ha.

One uncle gave the kids bread to feed the fishes and terrapins.

Would you look at my boy's belly? I might be overfeeding him... *gulpz*

Jaime brought her dog, Cookie Girl, which all the kids loved!

Initially, the kids roamed around the vast field. Then, Jaime's family sat on the slope to eat. Mandy and Barry wanted to follow. Very soon, all the kids were hooked on running up and down the slopes.

First, stand in a row.... Listen for the 1, 2, 3....

Then... RUN!

Again! Again!

They have no fear! Even when their faces get distorted during the run!

Hilarious isn't it?

AGAIN!!!! And more kids joined in.

Awwww, they look so adorable, standing in a row.

More pictures of happy kids!

We tried to play frisbee but the kids (particularly mine!) kept hogging the frisbee.

Barry kept going "Didi throw! Didi throw!" but there'll always be taller kids in front of him, so he ended up running up and down the slopes with the frisbee in his hand. Very funny.

Spectators

We celebrated Jac's birthday too! The strawberry shortcake was delicious!

Got dark. Out came the lanterns

Then, we played bubbles

And choo choo train

We played a few games. 老鹰抓小鸡, London bridge and some flying, spinning, glowing, colourful thingy. Ha. The kids loved them.

It was a wonderful outing and I'm guessing there'll be many more of them to come. :)

The 1st of many staycations with the mummy kakis and their families

2010-09-16T00:28:00.000+08:00

Woohoo! It was fun fun FUN! So fun that we're planning another again. Going to pok gai liao. *gulpz*

Anyway, I had a hard time trying to cut down the number of pictures to post, because all of them are so nice! We were all so happy. Because there were 10 kids (gosh!) and all of them were decked out in different colored clothes, every picture is so colorful! And the look of joy on all our faces... priceless!

So... more pictures, less words. LET'S GO!

Day one:
Had wanted seafood lunch at JB but the boat ride was too expensive so we settled for T3! Playground, car rides, makan, then back to hotel to soak (in the bathtub) before napping.

Megan joined us for the car ride.

Dee came too but erm, a bit too late. Hehe.

After zzzzz, a quick dip in the pool with Jaime's family. I love Changi Village Hotel's pool.

Then the 3 families had a sumptuous dinner at Thai Pan.

After dinner, we conquered erm, quite a bit of the Changi boardwalk before it got dark. I would really like to go all the way to the kelong side the next time though.

Kids held hands, some kids 'exchanged parents' (Sarah wanted hubby, Barry wanted Audrey) and we bantered all the way while enjoying the cool night seabreeze.

Group pictures of the kids, of course!

It got too dark for us to continue, so it was back to hotel.

Day two
Next morning, we got up before 7am and had time for a relaxing dim sum breakfast at a nearby coffeeshop. Audrey's family joined us shortly after. Weather was getting really hot. Drats. Hot + Chek Jawa = very bad. Ha.

On the bumboat to Ubin.

While waiting for the rest...

Despite the weather, the whole gang still managed to conquer the wetlands under the scorching sun, with nary a complaint. Oh, Jared did say he was never going back there again. *laughs*

Although it was stifling hot and very crowded (such a bad bad day to go there. :( ), our spirits were not dampened. We were still cracking jokes and laughing on the way. Maybe it's the kids' resilience that kept us from feeling frustrated. They (and we) were impressive indeed!

I am indeed super kua zhang. Haha.

Because I saw these:

There were many many more, scurrying across the path. It was quite a sight. Barry spotted them first. He was pointing at them and going "UH! UH!!!". Then I gesticulated wildly for hubby to take pictures and alerted the whole island to the wild boars. Ha. I really love wild animals sightings.

Up the viewing tower. Mandy was the leader! :)

Audrey refused to climb! Look at her gleeful face!

*clap clap* to these kids who made it up! And Jovey and Josef, though Josef doesn't count since he was in the carrier. Heh. Extra claps for Jac then!

Water, snack, rest and shade + a lot of laughs!

Barry was holding a box of raisins. The others kids found out about it and this happened:

Haha. Nobody saved him! I laughed and walked away with Mandy (she was getting restless) and hubby was taking pictures of course! Some of the mummies said they actually have lots of raisins at home but the kids won't eat! I guess the grass is greener at the other side. In this case, the raisins are sweeter in the other box. :p

We didn't see any crabs and lizards! HMPH! I don't know why there was such a crowd at Chek Jawa that day. The creatures must have gone into hiding because of the noise and activity. (But they might have chase the wild boar family out of their hiding!) Mandy was so disappointed to see so few animals.

The last 2 times we went, it was so serene. That was one of the reasons why we loved the place. Argh! Let me say it again: It was just such a bad day to go there. :(

Still, group pictures! :)

They are sooooooooooo cute.

After that was a delicious buffet lunch back at the hotel. Oh my, I really gorged myself silly on the prata and fish curry. I know Audrey was the kueh pie ti queen! Which was really good too!

It was still not too late so we quickly bathed, napped and had a combined pool time! We OWNED the pool man! YEAH!

Notice Kevin

And the sea rescue helicopter topples....

"Uncle, this hat fits so it stays ON ok?"

Hiding behind the floats. Haha

WooHoo!

The littlest one had fun too!

Tell me you don't want to jump into the pool RIGHT NOW.

Awwwwww. So colorful. So happy.

And you thought we ran out of energy? NO WAY! A quick rinse later, we're off to the beach!

I swore I heard someone say "Come to the beach must take off your shoes. Everybody takes off their shoes at the beach." So I quickly prepped the kids, took off my slippers and stepped onto the sand where most of the kids were already busy playing.

And you know what? NONE of the adults were bare feet! Hey! Practise what you preach yo!

Anyhow, I preferred not to get my slippers all sandy. Especially since *ahem* I was the only ah sum who had to run up and down to get water for the kids' cement lah, pond lah, cakes lah, castles lah. HMPH!

Besides Kevin and I playing with the kids, and hubby and Jim as the cameramen, the others, well, were just standing around...

If you've been looking at our FB pictures, you'll be very familiar with these 5 standing

Introducing the SUPERVISORS!

Very well segregated work place I must say!

Chatting and laughing were so tiring that the supervisors had to sit down.. oh, and they prefer soft hotel towels to the rough and slightly sandy poncho. Haha.

Hannah and Mandy (and the occasional Thaddues and Barry) worked together to make a sandy birthday cake. Mandy excitedly told me she pick the twigs up from the sand. There were 4 twigs altogether. How apt! 4 candles! Most of the kids there will turn 4 soon!

We sang a birthday song for everybody. Ha.

Talia also made a cake. A strawberry flavored one, which she decorated with twigs and pebbles. So fun! Thaddeus was busy burying his feet in the sand. Jared insisted he was making cement by mixing the sand and water together in the big pail. It was so wonderful seeing and listening to them talk about their creations. :) :) :)

We had tremendous fun! And don't you think the kids are gorgeous?

Time passed too quickly and we had to end the beach play for dinner, which was at Thai Pan AGAIN! And we ate the same food AGAIN! Haha. Really yummy lah.

Mandy complained the beach play was too short. Indeed. Don't worry, my girl. The next one won't be so shortlived.

Now. When?

'r' - part 2. (very long post)

2010-09-03T22:18:00.000+08:00

Keywords:
rain, rice, rabbit, robot, rocket, rough, row
(my my, so many!)

Word blend
row, run, rub

Projects:

Row

Rice art

Rough or smooth (see this blog post)

Rain

Mandy has been asking me questions like why it rains, where the rain comes from etc, so I decided to introduce to them the concept of the water cycle. Again, lots of gems to be found on Youtube.

I liked these 3:

This one gives a view of the whole landscape so the kids can 'see' the big picture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1oCoKj7b2o&feature=fvst

This song is very catchy. I'm thinking it would be a hit with older kids. For mine, they just love videos with music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okZBiy_IdBA&feature=related

This is useful. It lets the kids follow through the 'life' of a drop of water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuVRM_lZlzI&feature=related

Mandy seems to get the idea that the water cycle repeats itself over and over after the videos. Since we watched them, she's been quite fond of the term 'repeat and repeat and repeat and...'. :p

After that, we did a little experiment.

I placed a drop of water on a stool, made a huge drama out of speculating if the drop of water would disappear after a while(how else to pique their interest in one drop of water?). They were practically staring at the drop in anticipation.

I told them water doesn't evaporate so quickly and dragged them to do another experiment. We pretended the water in the shallow dish was a lake, and the damp sponge that I held above it was a cloud. Raining yet? No! The kids chorused.

I then scooped the water from the lake (let's pretend the water has evaporated into the cloud, shall we?) and asked them after each scoop if it was raining. Finally, a few drops dripped down from the sponge. "IT'S RAINING!!!" Mandy was soooooo excited.

Ah, why is it raining Mandy? (I decided to skip condensation, though I did mention in brief that the gas ie water vapour, turns to water again in the cloud, when it gets cold) She could tell me there was too much water in the cloud. The cloud was too heavy, so it rained. :)

Mandy was curious about the drop of water. It's still there. I told them it might be because the sun's not shining on the water, so it's taking a long time to evaporate. I place the stool near the window, under direct sunlight. Turned on the TV for them, instructed them not to touch the stool and went on with my cooking. The girl would go inspect the drop of water once in a while.

By the time I finished cooking, the drop was gone. In mock surprise, I exclaimed "WHAT happened to the water? Did a bird flew in to drink it???" Mandy was so tickled "NO! It turned into gas and fly fly fly up into the sky to become cloud already."

Did this after lunch:

Got the girl to tell me the direction of the water in pictures 1 and 4.

Next day, we learnt a new song "I hear thunder". I asked them what they wear when it's raining. Then we played dress up.

The kids take turn to climb on the sofa to spray water on the umbrella, pretending it's rain. They loved this activity, and made the sofa so wet! Ha.

Then, they went crazy playing with the water on the umbrella.

Out of the blue, Mandy started dancing. Barry followed. They danced and danced, as if they were in a trance. I just sat there, enjoying every bit of their little performance. It was so wonderful.

I also want them to know why rain is so important, how it helps us, the plants, the animals.. We read a book about that and did this:

Mandy loved the idea that we made the cloud fluffy (it was made up of 3 paper plates and lots of cotton) and that the rain goes 'directly' into the puddles, waterhole... etc, through STRAWS no less. Haha. She happily explained this to hubby when he came home.

There's one very informative book I borrowed from the library, which was a tad too long for Barry but ok for Mandy.

All of us learned so much from this book.

We were also fortunate to be able to see birds taking a bath in a puddle, twice. When the girl asked me why the birds 'bathe' there and then shake their bodies. I said "Oh, hmmm, can the birds bathe in a bathtub? Then dry themselves with a towel?" Peals of laughter followed.

We tried looking for worms that wriggled out from underground after a rain, but to no avail.

Robots

They are not very familiarised with robots, so before we did anything, I let them watch Robots, the animation. They liked it so much they watched it 5 days in a row. By then, I knew they were ready to make their very own robots!

We also read some books on robots. I absolutely have to recommend this book to you:

It almost brought tears to my eyes. The kids love it too, albeit in another way. Ingenious!

I have a huge box filled to the brim with recycled boxes, cardboards, TP roll etc... Actually, I have more than a box of that. So I jumped at the idea to get rid of some of them. Took half of the materials out and we made robots.

Barry was not interested. He only cared for smashing and tearing and knawing on what could be smashed, torn and knawed.

The 2 of us worked on these:

They are Mandy's brainchild(ren) really. She based the designs on the cartoon. She even named them Rodney (the top one) and Rodney's papa and mama.

Mostly, I helped with the technical aspects. She decided which materials she wanted and how she wanted her robots to look like. I also helped her source for suitable materials of course. And oh, I had to suggest the red hair. Ha.

Rockets

Here is an interesting book about rockets:

The inside of this rocket is so cool! I wish I lived in it.

We made our own!

I helped the boy a lot. He cannot sit through such a long project. Mandy could, with a short break. They chose the colour of the rocket. Mandy wanted black and yellow, like bee. But oh, it'd be sooooooo much work.... Got them to decorate it with stars stickers instead.

At night, I stuck glow in the dark stars on the wall, turned off the lights and let the kids play with their rockets! The beauty of these rockets is that they could put small dolls in it.

It was near impossible to take pictures of them in the dark, but the look on the girl's face as she zoomed her rocket around the room, was pure joy. They played with their rockets a few nights in a row, until Barry's got disintegrated. Ha.

Rabbit

This is really a time filler project. I saw collage art on Linette's and Domesticgoddess's blogs and really liked them. Decided to give it a try. It was a success with Mandy who did the piece herself. Expectedly, Barry did not like it.

Mandy's:

Look at the cute mouth!

Barry's:

He cut some of the papers, stuck on the eyes, carrot, carrot leaves and drew the mouth. Mandy said the rabbit was hungry, so stuck out her tongue at the carrot. Ha.

Songs:
Row row row your boat, I hear thunder

Woodlands waterfront and Admiralty park

2010-08-31T15:57:00.001+08:00

Since the new waterfront opened, I'd been itching to go. I love jetties and I really wanted to give the Skywald a try. Mandy is crazy over climbing and has been nagging me to bring her to a real jungle gym. Her idea of a jungle gym (saw it in a book) is like this.

I though the spider-web like structure at the waterfront would suffice.

Last saturday, we were in luck. The weather was so good.

Upon reaching there, we saw this:

*gulpz*

There's no way Mandy could get on that spider web. Hubby said that Skywald was out too. Indeed, it was for kids 6 years and above.

So we settled for the tiny and boring playground.

But I couldn't just leave without letting Mandy try! So when I saw her looking at Skywald longingly, I asked her if she wanted to have a go. She was hesitant. I assured her I'd stay behind her, and if it got too difficult, we could always turn back.

She nearly gave up. It was really not easy. Look at the distance of the rungs. They were nearly as wide as the length of her legs!

I gave her lots of encouragement and the determined little girl was so so pleased she made it up. She was practically glowing with pride. And what do you know? The little brother wanted to follow too. And he DID it too! Gosh, I'm so proud of them. Hubby said he climbed up himself, like his sister did.

Once up, they were initially a bit nervous. I was too! I was so sure their feet would get stuck in the gaps. (View when you look down)

But they got the hang of it very fast and was happy as larks, walking from one end to another, refusing to take breaks.

Mandy was especially pleased. Every few minutes, she would go "Mama, I did it! Are you proud of me?", "I am soooooo brave!"or "I climb so welll!". I love to see that sense of achievement on her face.

One couple was impressed and pointed to them, saying "Wah, you see? Baby also can climb." Ha. Not babies anymore by the way.

It was really kind of scary. The walk goes up and down steeply at some points.

And the view from up there can send chills..

So the kids should really feel good about themselves, especially when we saw a primary5/6 girl not daring to go on the walk. Ha.

I find that Mandy is very aware of what her body can do. She has high spatial awareness too. I didn't need to guide her on the walk. When she reached a downward slope, she would know to sit down and slide slowly till she felt comfortable enough to stand. The same awareness and care was exhibited when she met with other hurdles on the walk.

Going down was a concern, but Mandy didn't need any help. Barry, on the other hand, was reckless and distracted as usual. He didn't look at where he was stepping. In fact, the rung was so far apart both kids need to let go one hand so has to be able to reach the next lower rung with their foot. Mandy was careful enough to do that. Barry just kept stepping on air.

In the end, I grabbed him by the waist and climbed down with one arm.

Quite high up huh? Don't play play.

Mandy insisted she had another go. Seeing how happy she was, I gave in.

Barry was too tired to follow. But that poor thing, he looked so lost without his sister.

He kept looking and us, and came running towards us to call "JIE JIE!!!!".

So endearing.

Snack time and some monkeying around...

MW on Mandy's cap stands for Mandy Wong. Hubby and I got a bit siao one night and ordered personalised caps for the whole family. Mine is yellow and hubby's is brown.

To the jetty. Saw the usual fishes. A few big schools too. It got hot, but thankfully only for a while.

It was so wonderfully windy at the jetty. Love it.

Train at the causeway.

Since the weather was so good, and it was still 1.5hours to lunch, we decided to walk to Causeway Point. I know, it's quite a crazy idea but hubby and I so love to walk and explore.

We cut through Admiralty park, to reach Republic poly, then crossed the junction to the shopping mall. The whole trek took us 1+hrs but it was so worth it. The park was such a bonus!

Pebbled track! Made the whole place even more rustic and 'natural'.

I was concerned the kids would complain about the bumpy ride in the stroller (long live Peg Perego which can sit both of them comfortably). Instead, they were so enthralled with the surroundings that they had to remind us several times to keep quiet so they can hear sounds of nature. Once, I was talking a wee bit loudly and Barry turned to me urgently "Mama, MAMA! SHH!", as if reprimanding me. Ha. So funny.

There were very few people, mostly photography enthusiasts. Such a charming place. We saw quite a few species of birds, extra vibrant dragonflies and also monitor lizards and tortoises which thrilled the kids no end.

Mandy has sharp eyes. She spotted this leaf and said "This leaf so nice!", and insisted we take a picture of it.

She's right! She liked this too:

The tunnel:

Luscious green leaves

We finally had aircon and food at 11.30am! All of us stuffed ourselves silly with dimsum at Crystal Jade, before heading home to snooze. What a wonderful morning indeed!

'r' - part 1

2010-08-24T21:59:00.002+08:00

Since the kids are still staying home and are well and active, we have a lot of time and energy these days for homelearning. I have a lot of activities for 'r', so I'll just blog about half of them here. Will do a proper 'r' post when everything is done.

Projects:

Row

We sang the song 'Row row row your boat' and watched a few videos of rowing on Youtube. The purpose of the videos is to introduce them to oars, what they are and how to use them.

Then, they made their very own rowboats, complete with oars!

I forgot to take pictures of the finished product before letting them plunge their boats into the water. Obviously, the 'boats' didn't survive the waterplay ordeal. You can still get a glimpse of them though.

B for Barry and M for Mandy. They were to draw their faces, attach heads to the TP bodies, stick the spoons into pre-cut holes in the TP roll, before I attached the whole thing to the 'boats'.

Barry only stuck the spoons. Mandy and I did the rest. Heh.

Rowing time!

They loooooooved it. Then again, which kid doesn't like water play?

Predictably, Barry's boat fell apart after a while, because he couldn't resist scooping water with it. All the papers were floating around in the water. Suddenly, Mandy shouted "Barry's head is in the water!". She meant the paper head. Whew. Then she picked up the unrolled and soaked TP roll, said it's a crocodile and told me the crocodile ate Barry's head. *gulpz*

They had a jolly good time, with Mandy engaging in imaginative play which involved crocodiles and fishes and birds and the 2 of them on the boats. Barry was content to just scoop and splash.

In fact, they had so much fun they didn't even wanted to stop for TV. After that, Mandy bugged me to bring them rowing next time. Sounds great, but where? Anybody knows?

We 'rowed' somemore the next day.

Before that, I said aloud "Now, what shall we use as oars?". Mandy immediately jumped up and grabbed the broom and mop for herself and Barry. :)

The toy crocodile joined in the fun later. I held it and pretended it was going for their feet. Chuckles and screams filled the air as they scrambled to get away from the crocodile and tried to chase it away with their 'oars'. Very fun.

Rice art

I dyed some rice using food colorings. The kids were all "woooo" and "wow" when they saw how a few drops of coloring could change the colour of a whole bowl of water. Then, they helped scoop rice into the colored water. I stirred. And we waited.

While waiting, the boy poured a spoonful of rice into the washing machine. Arghhhhhhhhh. Made him poke his head in to pick them up grain by grain. That should teach him.

The rice was all beautifully colored and dried the next day. So we made some rice art.

Look at their intense concentration.

I am very pleased that Barry can follow instructions much better now. He didn't pour rice everywhere, he didn't smear glue everywhere, he didn't even give up and walk away like he usually does during craft time. Instead, he could use the brush, smear a bit of glue, choose a colour, sprinkle the rice gently with a spoon and then repeat the process many many times. He would even ask if he's doing it correctly. Like, before he sprinkled, he'd look at me and say "There?". After using the glue, he chirped "OK!" and handed me the brush.

And look, he did it all by himself!

Lower one's his. Mandy asked to do this project again. In fact, she has asked to do a lot of the 'r' projects again. Hearing those words from her give me such a sense of pride.

The mixed up grains would be kept in a separate container. They're so pretty I just couldn't discard them.

Rough or smooth

This is a very simple activity. I didn't plan for this but felt like bringing them to the park one morning. So I thought I'd let them collect rough/smooth objects from the park.

Mandy was so happy to be out she did a dance!

Looking out for fishes from the bridge

Time to pick!

We've got smooth pebbles, rough pebbles, smooth leaves, rough crumpled dried leaves and rough twigs. Washed and dried them. Added some more objects into the mix and did an activity with them the next day.

They were to feel the objects and sort them into the rough or the smooth box. Again, surprisingly, Barry knew what was rough and smooth. He would feel, say how it feels and place the object into the correct box! Most times at least. :)

This is him trying to smoothen out a crumpled and therefore, rough piece of aluminum foil. He was imitating me.

And so, these are what we've done so far. More to come! :)

Healthier eating

2010-08-23T22:07:00.001+08:00

I say 'healthier' because having 'healthy eating' as the title makes me sound like a health freak, and I am NOT.

It just hit me that, since I'm going to spend the money buying the food/ingredients and the time cooking/preparing them, I might as well buy the good foods and learn to cook them the healthier way. In the beginning, it might take some getting used to. But it'll become habitual, and before we know it, we will not even realise that we've been eating differently.

When I told hubby I was going to make some major changes to the family diet, he went "Why? We are already eating quite healthily!".

As a family, we eat plenty of fruits and vegetables every meal. Barry and I eat the most vegetables, I think the other 2 are not eating quite enough. Heh. The kids have a tablespoonful of lecithin sprinkled on their rice everyday. We don't eat any titbits, except for biscuits (cookies for the adults) which is hardly titbit at all.

The kids do not eat junk food. This one I must elaborate. In the beginning, when hubby and I decided to keep the kids off junk, I was apprehensive. I knew it was for their own good but I kept wondering how they would react to seeing their peers or us eating, while they couldn't. Well, it isn't difficult at all! Everytime we eat something they can't in front of them (we try not to do that, of course) and they want it, we will explain to them why they cannot eat it. Not good for small children. Too hard for small children. Gives small children stomachache. Not good for teeth etc etc. And you know what? They accept. Barry, not always though.

Mandy will even say things like "Mama, that food I cannot eat. You don't put on the table. If I see, and didi see, we also want to eat, but we cannot. Then we will be very sad." Ha.

When we read books with pictures of food, Barry will point to sweets and donuts and shake his head.

As for the fast food, we hardly eat them ourselves. Prata, deep fried stuff, very sinful stuff... we try to refrain, for our own good too. Of course, we DO eat them. And A LOT sometimes. I did say we're not health freaks.

So what are the changes I made?

1. More wholegrains/wholewheat (what's the difference huh?)

For starters, the whole family is converted to half brown rice, ie equal quantity of brown rice mixed with white rice. I'm surprised Mandy took to it so well. Of course, she sulked and whined the first time she tried that. I told her I won't force her to eat it but all 3 of us will, and the brown rice will make us strong. "I also want to be strong!". So there, she was sold just like that. She just have to down the rice with a lot of water. Not eating any less than before. :)

We've always been alternating between white and wholemeal bread. Now, I am trying different brands of wholemeal/softmeal/wholegrain/mixed grain bread. I found that there are some very yummy healthy bread out there. I love Bonjour's 12 grain loaf with flaxseeds.

2.Fish, at least 3 times a week.

I seldom cook fish. Because everytime I do, the kids don't eat. They only eat the teriyaki salmon. And fish is mighty expensive. Outside, sweet and sour fish is Mandy's favorite! But I don't want to replicate that dish because the fish slices are deep fried. Besides being unhealthy (and a waste, since the nutrients in the fish will be gone!), deep frying is very very troublesome. So I was very very pleased when my sweet and sour boiled mackerel was such a hit. :) :) :)

And I just tried a new recipe, Miso Cod:

Mandy love, love, loves this dish. Kept asking for it. I don't like cod. Too mushy. Next time I'm just going to bake it, without first pan-frying (which is required in the recipe). Did that the first time and she loved it anyway. Just baking retains more nutrients and it's less carcinogenic.

There's also another fish recipe - Steamed fish in black bean sauce, that they love. Very happy.

3. More seeds and nuts

OMG. I've been reading up on them and they're like soooooo chokeful of essential nutrients. But obviously my kids aren't going to start chomping nuts. They're choking hazards too. I intend to grind flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds, keep in a bottle and stir it in their cereals, shakes, pasta sauce etc. So far, I'm still testing for allergies. Only need to clear pumpkin seeds before I make the seed mix.

I've mixed ground sunflower seeds into their egg mayo sandwich filling, their breakfast cereal and pumpkin puree which they still love to eat. They didn't notice any difference. It is so easy.

As for nuts, I'm also thinking of grinding some and putting them into shakes and mixes, and incorporating into pancakes and other baked stuff.

4. Cook correctly

We all know fatty fish is full of essential fats, but guess what happens if we fry the fish? All the essential fats would be destroyed. Quite a waste of money if you ask me. Eggs too. They're rich in phospholipids and essential fats, especially if you buy the Omega 3 eggs (ya, I've been reading quite a bit on food), but you destroy all of that when you make an omelette. Rather, poach, boil, steam, or scramble using low heat.

The same goes for other foods, vegetables, meats... Deep-frying, pan-frying, stir-frying all kill nutrients.

I must also take care not to overcook and worse still, blacken foods and turn them carcinogenic. Of course, my greatest obstacle is the seasoning. Too used to strong flavours. Heh.

5. Take note of the nutrients in food

I have this great book. It lists down 96 foods and their nutrients, plus what they can do for the body. For example:

WALNUT

Rich in: Vit E, potassium, selenium, omega 3
Has: Ellagic acid, flavonoids
Defences: anti-allergenic, antibacterial, anticarcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant

神气 or not? Makes me want to stuff myself with walnut. Haha.

I have a checklist which shows the deficiency symptoms of nutrients. If, let's say, the kids have poor hair and skin, I can refer to the chart and roughly pin it down to the lack of B-vitamins. Then I'll cook more foods rich in B-vitamins.

Recently, I've been having mild giddy spells. I'm prone to that because my blood pressure is slightly low. So I need to consume more iron. Have been cooking spinach and other iron rich foods. Even ate a bit of beef today.

My beef dish:

Stir fry with capsicum (Barry LOVES), onions and shitake mushrooms. Hubby loves this dish but I can't take the beefy taste.

6. Shop smart

Ever since I've had Mandy, I've been reading food labels when grocery shopping. Generally, I avoid highly salted/sweetened foods, foods with MSG, artificial flavoring, preservatives and food colouring If I can.

Now, armed with more knowledge, I'm trying to buy healthier options. For example, instead of giving them toddler biscuits all them, which can be highly sweetened, I give them oat cakes. Oats is an amazing food. but is not very yummy at all.

This brand of oat cakes are recommended in this book "Smart food for smart kids" by Patrick Holford and Fiona Macdonald Joyce. The texture is a bit like dry cardboard and the taste, well, is like plain oats. Yucks.

So, I'm very pleasantly surprised the kids liked the oat cakes so much.

We were playing 'guess what this looks like' with the oat cakes. Mandy's favorite game. It keeps them eating and eating to see what the next bite would do the oat cake. She said the above looks a mother duck protecting her ducklings at night when they sleep. Go figure. Heh.

This is the oat cakes I bought:

Found it in Cold Storage. I'm going to use this to make banana cheesecake. Heh. Can't wait.

I hope that, with all these efforts, the whole family will enjoy better health, and fall sick less often. Also, eating well can affect a person's general mood, his/her learning abilities and in turn, the behaviour. It is known that changing a kid's diet to a healthier one can cut down on his/her disruptive behaviour, enables them to learn and concentrate better, sleep better and be happier.

With the past experiences of falling ill (children or me), I now fully understand that health IS the most important. So, here's to good health!

By the way, I will STILL cook kong bak bao for the family. YUM!

Correction

2010-08-21T22:05:00.000+08:00

I mentioned in the previous post that Barry can count to 5. I was wrong. Today, he counted to 10. Was I that inattentive or did he suddenly learn the other 5?

He also recognises and can name some letters. He knows some of their phonic sounds too. Well, thanks to his sister who makes him recite the alphabet after her everyday. Serious. Will film it down to show you.

As for which letters, I cannot remember at all. Ha.

I think I am that inattentive.

'q'

2010-08-20T00:22:00.000+08:00

Seriously, can I skip one letter? 'Q' was really, not very fun at all. And it was dragged through a month of illness and crankiness.

Ok ok, I'll still post about it. If it's just to prove how unexciting the lessons were. At least it'll be a short one. Ha.

Keywords:
quick, quail, quiet, quilt, quack
(I really didn't want to do 'queen' because it's like so irrelevant to the kids. When I teach them something, I want them to be interested in the subject and be able (hopefully) to understand the meaning/concept.)

No word blend

Projects:

Quick

This will be the first time a song has become the main part of a project.

This is one of my favorite nursery rhyme.

We all sang and crept slowly around the house, pretending to be snails, eagerly anticipating the cat (aka me) to come and chase the mice (them) quickly around the house. Mandy's idea, by the way, the cat and mouse chase.

I did the poster myself. Back then, I was quite 'siao on' about creating nursery rhyme posters. I did quite a lot of them. Only one kid then, must be very free hor? Though I remembered distinctly that I felt like I was soooooooooo busy at that time. Well, I'm all adjusted by now. :)

Mandy also did a worksheet.

We talked about each pair of pictures. When you're carrying something heavy, you cannot walk as quickly. The tortoise carries a heavy shell, do you think it can move quicker than the rabbit? The eagle has much bigger wings, it flies much faster than a butterfly.

I colored the first pair while trying to stop Barry from tearing up Mandy's work and throwing the colour pencils all over the place. Mandy did the rest.

Quilt

It's impossible to find age appropriate and interesting books about quilt for the kids! Grrrrrr. Nevertheless, Mandy did learn what a quilt is from 2 books that we borrowed. Coincidentally, she owns a beautiful crotchet quilt blanket made by my mum. Barry's going to get a similar one soon. Such a loving grandma. She used to make the exact same one for me and my sister. :)

Did a number quilt with the girl:

I don't do much numbers (or math, for that matter) with the kids. I did not even try to teach them to count to 20. So Mandy still can't. Ha. I'm trying now. Barry can count to five, complete with fingers. It's so cute to watch! :)

I've also finally taught Mandy how to write her name. Oops.

They also did these:

The one-eyed 'monster' in Mandy's quilt it ME. *gulp* She much preferred to scribble than draw. She said she was writing our names.

I asked Barry to draw mama and he drew an oval, muttered "hair hair hair", and drew hair all around it. So that's me at the top left corner. The rambutan looking thing. I like. :)

Quail

Wanted to visit a quail farm but we were sick and the weather was horrible. I definitely do not want to bring 2 sick cranky kids out on my own and then be met with rain. Nightmare. Oh, hubby is totally not interested. I think. I didn't even bothered asking. Ha.

Anyhow, we did some egg cracking, squishing, peeling and tasting with both quail and chicken eggs. Taught them the usual egg vocab -shell, membrane, egg white and egg yolk. They saw that the inside of both (hard boiled) was the same. Only the size was different. Ah, so the quail IS smaller than the chicken.

What about the ostrich? I asked. Bigger or smaller egg. BIG! They answered.

Gave them pictures of a chicken, a quail and an ostrich. They were to match the pictures to the eggs. Then we matched the words to the eggs. See, I was so bored I even incorporated chinese. :p

Next day, I cooked hard boiled quail eggs in noodles for the family.

They also colored.

Obviously, I colored over Barry's on the left. He had given up and I was bored. Heh. Mandy's is quite pretty.

Quiet

We borrowed some pretty good books from the library for this topic. I particularly liked "The listening walk". There were lots of brilliant onomatopoeia in it. And you know what? The 3 of us did our own listening walk at the park.

I sat them on benches overlooking the canal. It was quite a secluded spot. It was after playground time. They ate their snack and I read the book to them. Once they were done eating, we walked quietly.. shhhhhh... so we could listen to all the sounds around us.

We heard the birds, the gushing of water down the drain, the excavator in the distance, the dogs (hopefully far far away), the rustling of the leaves, the vehicles passing by, and some others. We, as in Mandy and I. Barry kept trying to sing, and that really annoyed Mandy. Haha.

Did an exercise at home.

With the kids' backs facing me, I would either scrunge the piece of paper, zip/unzip the bag, flip the pages of the book, open and close the case or snip with the scissors. Then they had to guess which object made the sound.

I explained they had to keep very quiet for this activity because these sounds are not very loud. They would not be able to hear if they weren't quiet. Mandy got it right most of the time. Barry, well, he just wanted to grab the pair of scissors. *roll eyes*

I also created a 'noisy column' and a 'quiet column' on the white board. The kids took turns to stick these pictures in the right column. They liked this activity.

Songs:
5 little ducks, complete with props.

So Barry can learn counting.

Why this song? Because there's this part that goes 'quack quack quack' mah! Comprehendo?

No particularly good books to recommend besides 'The listening walk'.

Very unexciting huh? As I promised. *blink*

Finally done with 'q'! WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

Cooking without fire

2010-08-18T15:01:00.001+08:00

Just now, halfway through cooking lunch, the power tripped.

The TV remained on (heng ah, or I don't know how to occupy the kids while I settle the rest of the food), but the power to the rest of the flat was down. The fire under my wok was still burning, so I cleverly (ahem) finished cooking the spinach (first dish) before I settled the power.

Unfortunately, I think the problem is with the hob main switch. So... no more fire.

I looked at the ingredients I've prepared, including the pieces of boiled mackerel. (yeah, I boiled instead of fry to retain more nutrients) Then at the clock. It was almost lunchtime. The kids are finishing their WOTB and Mandy has already started to whine that she's hungry.

Think Kei think.

Quickly, I mixed some sauces, salt, sugar in a small bowl and let my sweet and sour sauce cook covered in the microwave. The steamer is still working. Whew. Continued steaming my rice with the tofu at the upper rack. Arrange the fish slices on the plate and drizzle some olive oil, then topped with slices of ginger. Into the toaster for a few minutes to make the fish less fishy.

Concocted another gravy for the tofu, thickened with corn starch. Tasted good out of the microwave oven. (I don't dare try it without 'cooking' it a bit) In went the diced fish cake and spring onions. Mix mix. Place the grated carrots and mushrooms in a separate bowl, why not together I don't know. Hah. Tofu out. Gravy with fishcakes and spring onions, and carrots and mushrooms in. Steam for 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, fish out of the toaster. Onions in.

Ting! Ting! Ting! Everything is cooked. Mix mix, pour pour and we had 2 other dishes for lunch!

They were delicious! Yummier than the spinach. Haha. And we had lunch before 12 mind you. The kids ate so much mackerel (and spinach, and onions, and mushrooms and carrots)! I am so happy. It's always a challenge getting them to eat more fish. No lah, quite easy for the boy. He chomps down any food, as long there's mushroom with it.

Boy, aren't I proud of myself.

p/s: I only have time to cook once a day, but it's always at least 3 dishes. So it's the same food for dinner. At dinner just now, Mandy asked for 2nd helping. She only does that once in a blue moon. Hubby said my sweet and sour fish has 'restaurant standard'. *beams with pride*

To remind me that they're lovely, lovely children

2010-08-13T21:32:00.000+08:00

And today went well. I didn't blow. Nor did hubby.

I reckoned I'll put on a default squeaky, cutesy and gay tone of voice all day, to hide any frustrations I have.So even when Mandy threw a big tantrum just because I changed Barry's diaper in this room, and not that, and then whined long and hard for me to bao bao her after.... I didn't yell. I took deep breathes, reminded myself that I don't want another bad day, and tried to squeak some logic into her, with a smile on my face no less. Of course I still scolded when I needed to. But I didn't allow it to escalate.

Oh, it helped that whenever I see a meltdown coming, I sang songs from "Happy feet" and said lines from "Ice Age 3". That usually got them jolly again. :p

Through our fine, fine example of self control, the kids threw less tantrums and put in a wee bit more effort to be nice to each other. Though they are still ridiculous sometimes.

And Mandy got her antibiotics. *grin*

Frustrating!

2010-08-12T21:56:00.001+08:00

It's day 2 at home with the sick kids, without their daddy.. and I'm losing it! Not that they've been sick for only 2 days. Mandy has missed 3+ weeks of school, and Barry 2. I've just finished a whole course of antibiotics, after losing my voice for 2 days. The only healthy one now is hubby. But he too, it seems, is susceptible to the virus, or bacteria, or whatever!

ENOUGH!

Mandy has very sensitive airways. When she was recovering 2 weeks ago after a 10 days absence, I sent her back to school. Her school is air-conditioned. She came back coughing more severely than ever. So I told the teacher that I was going to keep her home till she fully recovers. Oh when can that be??? As I'm typing this, she's coughing in her room. Seems to be worse today. Hope and pray she doesn't get bronchitis from Barry.

Don't care. Going to demand for antibiotics for Mandy from the PD tomorrow. I know one should only consume anitibiotics when it's absolutely necessary, but hello! she's been coughing for almost a month now! Got to break the cycle before hubby falls sick and re-infect everybody in the household. AGAIN!

As a mother, I'm understandably anxious about this situation. But I also feel like strangling the kids!!! ARGHHHH. They're OMG soooooooooo whiney!!! I know they're sick.... cabin fever.... yeah yeah...

I leave them alone for 10 minutes and they fight. Now I even have to hesitate before I go take a quick pee. Because while the fighting can stop with my mediating, the crying and the tantrums don't! At least not for another 30mins. And then the whole mood is spoilt, the whole day is bad, the whinings will be endless and I cannot do anything about it.

I tried my hardest to be sympathetic and patient. I'm not prone to yelling or punishing the kids. I'm a changed person these days. I yell, I send them to their rooms, I am not patient and kind anymore. Well, the boy drove me so mad today I even used the F word on him. First time ever I spoke that word to anyone in their face. I only say that when I'm extremely agitated, which is not a lot. And NEVER in front of the kids.

Ha. It all seem so funny now but when I think of that moment of rage, I still shudder. I still get angry. There was so much tension.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I won't say what the kids did. I would just say they've been absolutely ridiculous! RI.DI.CU.LOUS. Which means, they're not their usual selves, which is good news actually. Because that means they CAN be restored to their usual selves. Meanwhile, it would take superhuman effort on my part to get through the day without doing too much damage to myself and them. I'll TRY.

Hubby and I made a pact on not hitting the kids. FORTUNATELY. Or I might have walloped the boy upside down this morning.

Having said that. Deep down, I feel sorry for what I did. I don't blame myself too much because the situation was impossible. But I want to be better. Because if we want to restore family harmony, the adults have to make the effort. And I AM an adult. Grrrrrrr. Sucks to be the grown up sometimes.

I also feel like I haven't done right by them. I'm clueless when it comes to kids' health. When I was young and fell sick, my mum would always know which tonic or soup to brew for which illness etc. I don't. I do try to provide them with a balanced diet. But I feel I can do better when it comes to their health matters.

I'm dilligently reading books about nutritious foods for the body and healthy recipes for kids. Then I'll work out a new diet plan for the whole family. That's my big project for now. My kids don't have to be scholars, but they should have the best health possible.

水果

2010-08-11T21:51:00.000+08:00

I know it's been a long time since I updated on the kids' 'letter of the week' homelearning status. At this rate, it's going to be 'letter of the monthS' soon. 'Q' is difficult. I can't seem to think of many interesting activities for the kids to do. I might just wrap it up soon so I can go on to 'r' already.

Meanwhile, started on a new theme for the CL homelearning. The past weeks have been very busy, the kids and I have been sick (and still are) and it was very tiring for all of us. So I didn't do much homelearning with them.

We have been reading quite a few chinese books on fruits, so the kids know quite a few of the names of the fruits in chinese already. I wanted to teach them new ones and reinforce the ones they already knew. Used these cards:

Then I showed them this:

Asked them to name each shape and tell me the indicated colour (revision). Once that's done, they can place the correct coloured paper behind the shape, then guess what fruit the picture is.

I'm sure you can tell!

Then, I duped Mandy into drawing various fruits. I say 'dupe' because' she has something against drawing. She would tense up whenever I ask her to draw and would get furious if I push it. But with this 'game', she didn't even realise she could draw so many fruits!

A star sticker was awarded whenever she could say the name of the fruit in mandarin correctly. And also, I included the words 大, 中, 小 in the instructions because she can read these words already. I've been using the 四五快读 books for her chinese word recognition. For revision, I've done up a simple game:

We take turns to pick out a word card, she reads the word, then we race to see who can place her marker on the correct word on the paper 1st. First person to finish all 6 markers wins. She can read all the words on that piece of paper, except maybe 3 or 4 that she always forgets.

Then, we played a 买水果 game. I sorted the 6 different kinds of fruits (from the kitchen play set) into different containers. There are 2 boxes. One box with the names of the fruits on individual slips of paper. The other has 3 slips of papers, each one with the word 一, 二 or 三. She can read these 3 words. I want to include as many words that she already knows into our homelearning sessions.

Mandy would pick out a fruit from box one, I tell her the name (she can't read the fruit names), then another from box 2 which she would read, and tell me how many of the fruit she needed to buy.

Then, off she would go with her basket to the fruit seller, counting out (in mandarin) the number of fruits and putting them in her basket.

It seems fun huh? But really quite boring for me. Though she really seemed to like it. Hmmmm. I'm going to expand this activity into a math activity in english. Hopefully soon. Hehe.

She is now pretty familiar with all the fruit names. I would have done more fruit projects with them (mostly for eating!) if they were not sick. Haiz. We shall wait then.

Oh, before I forget, my previous CL homelearning post was featured in My Playschool. It is a website filled to the brim with resources for homelearning. If you're a parent wanting to do more with your kids at home, do check out this site. Very very useful!

I have to thank Rachel for liking what I do with my kids, and to want to share it with her readers. :) I get to learn much more from the site too. :)

Durian plantation trip (JB)

2010-07-29T22:53:00.000+08:00

Another fun outing organised by hubby's school.

The kids were sick, albeit not seriously. We were deliberating on whether we should go ahead with the trip, until the very morning, when we had to wake at 5.30am to catch the coach at 6.45am. Mandy was already quite well, it was Barry we were worried about.

We had no cause for worry, for even before the sky was bright, he was running and jumping around, creating all kinds of mischief. Indeed, he was like the energizer bunny throughout the trip, never stopping his antics. Hubby's colleagues were all very amused.

First stop, breakfast. There were a few well known stalls there but we just HAD to settle for the chee cheong fun, for it's Mandy's absolute favorite. She doesn't get to eat that often either so we wanted to give her a treat. It was such a right decision. Succulent prawns, soft and silky cheong fun and very yummy sauce. Mandy ate most of it.

There were other treats, but my favourite has got to be the mouth watering deep fried 年糕.

The guy insisted that the 三合一年糕 (kiapped between yam and sweet potato) had to covered in fresh batter and deep fried 3 times. He refused to sell those that had not been through the wok thrice. I tell you, CRISPY untilllllllllllll........... And the texture of the yam and sweet potato was so good. Damn, I'm hungry.

There was a cute little girl about Mandy's age, who said Barry was very cute. Ahem, in fact, throughout the trip, many people said he's cute. Everytime the coached stopped, people would walk past us to get off and there would inevitably be someone who'd say '很可爱 hor?' :p

What? A mother can be buay pai seh what.

The cute girl

Barry playing non stop on the coach. My poor mum. She must have been so tired. But I know she was very happy. Ha.

Barry playing non stop out of the coach

Surprisingly, the noodle factory was the highlight of the trip for me. For the kids too, I think. They were so fascinated by the whole noodle making process.

First, you've got to bounce on the plank to give the dough a nice texture.

Then, the dough is flattened into a sheet, which is then placed into another machine to be made into strands of noodles! Voila!

Some are then cooked, some fried (into yee mee), and the rest left as raw noodles (sheng mian).

They're then all packed into little packets. This part of the process is the kids' favorite.

This auntie would put one plateful of noodles into the machine, the noodles would go plop! into the plastic bag and the machine would seal the bag. They were so captivated by this.

By the way, I just cooked the yee mee yesterday. It was so flavourful. Too bad I'm not such a good cook. Heh.

Finally, the plantation

Frankly, I was quite disappointed. I thought it would be more, erm, orderly. It looked like regular forest to me. Then, I thought about it and guessed it could only be this way. It was no regular forest. There so many durians on the trees. Ha!

I used to love durians. I don't know why I changed. Maybe because of the kids? Since it's so inconvenient to eat durians with kids around. I like to squat on the floor and eat durians to my hearts content, huut after huut. But now, I have to tend to the kids, give them lunch food, feed them the fruit, feed them enough water, make sure they don't prick themselves, make sure they eat their fill of proper lunch food first, make sure they don't eat too much durian, make sure they don't smear durian flesh all over themselves and the place....

It's so annoying to be doing all that when your hands are dirty. So much so that I'd rather just eat the beehoon. So I had only 4 huuts of durian while everybody had a durian orgy. I didn't eat much beehoon either since eating durians (and watermelon and rambutan) was such a messy affair. I think I spent more time cleaning the kids up.

Next stop was a bird's nest factory. Very unnecessary I find. I had prepared steamed sweetcorns for the trip. One for each kid. Fed them while the others toured the factory.

At least they had some vegetables that day.

After that was naptime on the coach. Both kids slept for slightly more than an hour before we arrived at Jusco. Hubby, my mum, and I were all not shopaholics. We were given 1.5hours and we didn't know what to do with it! Luckily, there were very cheap kiddy rides.

RM1 for one ride. OMG. So cheap! They had 10 rides. Haha.

After dinner at a chinese restaurant, we headed home. Hubby and I were soooooooooo tired the next day. Really old liao. Ha.

Kong Bak Bao

2010-07-21T22:08:00.000+08:00

Hubby's Uni friends came for a potluck gathering last Saturday. I made kong bak bao again.

I think I'm going to do this dish over and over at gatherings or parties from now on, since it's so fuss free. No frying means no oily kitchen, means no mopping and wiping afterwards. And everything can be cooked in one pot. Very convenient indeed. Not to mention, YUMMY!

I don't care what you think, but my kong bak bao is awesome.

Well, as long as my family loves it. :)

Why are stay home parents so busy?

2010-07-21T15:15:00.000+08:00

First off, I'm sharing this because I cannot find a better way to answer my non-married/childless friends when they ask me "Why are you too busy to come out for dinner?", "What do you do all day? Take care of baby only what. What's there to do? Change diapers? Can change whole day?" Ya, I've got that before. I wasn't offended but I didn't know how to answer him either.

And.... I'm not saying working mums aren't busy. But I think most childless people question the stay home parents because they cannot believe life can be pretty (very!) hectic at home. Well, most peoples' first response when they heard I was going to stay home 4 years ago, was "Wah! Good lor. Good life hor. Can stay home and shake legs." Ha.

So there. Read this: (click to enlarge)

I should add, when you have more than one kid, you spend a considerable amount of time breaking up fights and squabbles. Also, it means two arms to two kids. I don't know what to say about stay home parents with more than 2! Heh.

形状

2010-07-18T10:53:00.001+08:00

It's been so long since my last homelearning post huh? *guilty*

Finally, I did something chinese! Aiyo, at this rate, when will my kids be able to converse fluently in mandarin? *guilty*

We took 1.5 months to finish up the theme on shapes. Oops. Here's what we did.

The basic sorting, which I do with the kids, once in a while:

If you find this familiar, you have a good memory. I used this board for 'colours' the last time. I think this versatile board will prove very useful for various sorting activities. I used blue tack to stick on the words and shapes. :)

圆形

As with every shape, we would play a 'shapes hunt'. The kids would look around the house and see who can find more xxx shapes faster. I'm surprised Barry managed to point out a few shapes correctly .

Taught the kids to draw a big circle in the air and say ' YUUU - AAAA- NNN' loudly. Asked them to teach their soft toys by holding their hands to draw big circle and asking them to recite 'yuan' too. Haha. It worked. They remember the name of this shape very well. We also drew circles on the white board.

Then, I gave them a box or round stuff - bottle caps, old cups, small bottles, cookie cutter etc, to print circles with:

正方形, 长方形

Played shapes hunt and counted the sides of the square and rectangle. Asked them what's the difference between the two. To help them conceptualise, I explained the rectangle is like a longer version of the square, and hence the name 长方形.

Circle and oval are the same. I did this to help them understand:

Now it's a circle... now it's an oval!

Naturally, Barry had to tear one of these

Gave Mandy a bit of a challenge. I provided her with 6 ice cream sticks and 6 cotton buds and asked her to make one big square, one small square, and a rectangle.

She immediately set off to work on the big square. Not much problem with that. I forgot what she did next. Haha. Too long ago. But with some hints and some help, she managed the activity pretty fine.

三角形

角means corner. A triangle has 3 corners, hence the name. Did the shapes hunt (which was difficult), counted corners and traced the triangle on the board. Then did this with Mandy:

Since a traingle has 3 corners, I drew 3 points and taught the girl how to join the corners with straight lines to form a triangle. Took the chance to let her practise the using of ruler.

We did tracing (with paint or markers) of triangle, square, circle and rectangle.

Mandy would do two, and Barry one. Taught them 一 and 二 at the same time.

Mandy also created this out of different shapes.

There's a clown's face, 5 houses which she designated owners, and a playground for them to play at. There's a swing, a slide and a seesaw. Can you guess which is which?

Finally, I created a simple shapes game for the kids to play. It's very simple, though pretty time consuming to prepare. See this video and you'll understand:

Reinforced 颜色 at the same thing. Mandy loves the game! :)

My 29th birthday

2010-07-13T23:49:00.001+08:00

Gosh, I'm hitting the big 3 soon! Surprisingly, it doesn't mean anything to me. I guess hitting the BIG 4 will have a much greater effect. Anyway, I'm more amused that I'm actually, well, not young anymore. You wouldn't guess that I often see myself as a little girl, would you?

Up till now, it still hits me once in a while, that I'm a mother of 2. Really scary business this motherhood is. I don't know how an immature, clumsy, irresponsible girl like me can be looking after 2 toddlers by myself. I fear for them sometimes. Ha.

It was a great coincidence that hubby got a day off from school on my birthday. Got to love his P. He gave the whole school a holiday to celebrate the good A-level results. We think he purposely picked the date because the world cup finals was in the morning. How considerate. :)

Anyway, hubby let me plan the day, which he, on hind sight, thought was a great mistake. You see, he's NOT a beach person (think 'Ewww! You have sand on your fingers, don't touch your hairrrrrrrrr!!!!!'), and he's not a travel far person, especially with 2 toddlers and a huge bag and a big camera... at 8am!

So there was a lot of grumblings and "Why did I agree to this?" and "Next time no more.." and "I should have overruled you." Geez. I would just turn to him and say "DUNCH CARE! It's MY birthday!". :p

Reached Coastes (as recommended by Linette. See her blog post.) at 9+am. The kids wasted no time and set to play on the sand.

See my 大小姐 who insisted on wearing his shoes and only stepping on the rock.

Our marvellous, marvellous breakfast!

The bread, together with the butter and marmalade was absolutely heaven. So simple yet so divine. The mushrooms were yummy too and Barry ate a lot of that.

We ordered 2 sets of this and one set of pancakes for the kids. I know hubby, it's not cheap at all. So although, you grumble and complain, I am grateful to you for obliging me. Not just the breakfast, but the whole crazy early breakfast, picnic at faraway beach thingy. Thank you. :)

Sandplay under the shade

Ice cream on the beach, just what the girl had been asking for.

Snack time after a quick shower

They're sharing a banana

We then watched a very lame primate show at the Palawan amphitheatre. Don't go!

It started to rain, so instead of the initial plan to have a kong bak bao picnic on the beach, we had it in Koufu foodcourt. Duh...

The sweetcorn and banana (yes, I had one more!) were not in the picture.

Had a short tour on the tram because we were so tired from walking. Took a cab from beach station. Both kids slept on the way home. We all slept early that night. :)

Children's Festival at SAM @ 8Q

2010-07-07T22:32:00.000+08:00

Through a couple of mummies' Facebook and blog, I found out about this festival at SAM. I was a little puzzled because I had read about other mummies bringing their kiddos to similar exhibitions at some other museum. The pictures don't match!

After some digging, I found out that the museums organise Children's Festival every year. Different museums will set up different exhibitions/activities. The one at National museum is over. The one at SAM is still ongoing, until 19th July. The SAM one looks really fun! So we shelved our plans for Jacob Ballas on monday (ya, hubby gets a holiday on youth day too! Ha!) and headed for SAM.

We were there at the opening time, 10am. No crowd. Yay!

Walter's garden was... nice. Really nice.

What were the ladies behind Barry looking at? Well, Diana Ser just trotted in with her daughter. Later, we saw Karen Tan with her daughter too, though they didn't go together.

Funky forest was quite ingenious.

We could grow a tree by standing still in front of a large screen. To keep the trees alive, and to maintain the health of the whole forest, we had to constantly water the trees. Branches would grow, leaves would sprout, flowers would bloom, insects would come... There's a meter at the side to let you know how healthy the forest was.

'Logs' were also provided to divert the water from the waterfall towards the trees. We could then use our hands or legs to splash water at the trees. Pretty fun.

Mandy growing a tree

Next door, there was a floor full of daisies. The daises would 'wilt' when a shadow was cast over them. Then, they 'grew' again. The kids had fun running all over the place, trying to make big circles or create large holes or long paths.

The stop motion exhibition wasn't hands on, so the kids didn't like it much.

We were all intrigued by these though

See how the artist create layers of pictures to tell a story? Very cool indeed.

Floribots was a disappointment.

Supposedly, the flowers would grow upon sensing motion. But once one grew, all would start growing, so you cannot really tell which motion set the flowers off. Anyway, we moved but the flowers didn't. We didn't move but the flowers did. From what I observed, they moved every few seconds anyway. So... Well, I couldn't really appreciate it,

Enchanted forest lived up to its name. Lots of details in the pictures. Many things to point at and go 'Wow!' all around.

It was almost time for the kids' lunch but the plan was not to rush through the exhibits, so it's snack time!

They ate a muffin on the seat at the staircase landing. Haha.

After that, the kids read some books, saw some works of other children, and did some crafts of their own. Barry was restless, as usual, and couldn't even sit down to colour. So I taught him how to use the scissors. That kept him occupied for a while.

Then we all headed back to the garden.

The kids ran wild, throwing cushions all over the place, running and jumping and rolling. I really wanted to grab one big cushion and lie down and sleep. But lunch was calling, so off we went.

Great morning. :)

Barry is 2!

2010-07-01T23:07:00.000+08:00

Actually, he was 2 yesterday.

As usual, my mil cooked up a storm to celebrate his birthday. The whole family (which is only 10 people including the 2 kids) will gather at her place for dinner, with lots of red eggs which nobody eats. Ha. She does that for all the birthdays of her grandchildren, ie, my 2 children.

He received a remote control car.

SIL and her husband gave the siblings (and me!) matching tees which they couldn't wait to try on.

Awwww. They look so cute. They were holding the pose for a long time. When we said "Hug some more! More more!", they would gamely embrace each other again and flash their grins. :)

The last minute off-the-shelves Elmo cake which hubby complained endlessly about. Ok what. It didn't taste that bad. The kids liked it and Barry chose it. Plus, it's cheap and small. Haha. Ok lah ok lah, next year, we buy Prego lah.

At least this time, Barry had a chance to blow out the candles and cut the cake. At the chalet, before we knew it, Mandy had leaned over and blown out the candles. She already had the cake knife firmly in her hands before we even started the birthday song. Tsk tsk.

On the actual day (yesterday that is!), we headed to Sembawang Park. It was a pure coincidence. We didn't even remembered it was his birthday until we were there. Ha.

This time, I didn't cycle.I shuddered when I thought of all that upslopes. So I and Barry took a cab. Haha.

As usual, the kids were super thrilled on the swings.

We reached later.

Smiling at jie jie. He's so sweet.

I know the grey socks are very obiang. But the kids get quite squeamish when the sand gets into their shoes and they will refuse to walk on it. I would too. The sand is not very clean over there. As expected, Mandy is having big fat rashes on her arms and legs today. Haiz.

Proud that she did it!

Swinging again. They didn't want to come down. Ever.

Jetty.

So windy. Love.

Happy birthday my darling little boy! Love you so much. *muark*

Here's a video of my funny cheeky boy to end the post. :)