It’s Teachers’ Day tomorrow and I helped Joey draw Thank You cards for her teachers. :)

Joey is always talking about her teachers, and telling me what they taught her or told her, so this is the best chance for her to appreciate them. I thought it’s also a good way to teach her to respect those who educate her and impart knowledge to her.

As expected, she had lots of fun drawing and designing cards for her teachers. And I held her hand and wrote the names of the teachers and the wordings in the cards.

And this is the card for her most favourite teacher – Teacher Judy! Incidentally, Teacher Judy is also one of the Children’s Church teachers in my church! =)

To all the teachers out there, HAPPY TEACHERS’ DAY! Thank you for imparting knowledge and positive values to our kids!

Was at Hard Rock Cafe last weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday and the two kids had a great time!

Hard Rock Cafe may have been around for the longest time, but I’ve not been inside for more than 3 times my whole life. Never dawned upon me that it’s such a kid-friendly restaurant! Do Rock ‘n’ Roll and kids go well together?!

We made a prior reservation for dinner and when we arrived, there were already 3 colouring sets on the table for the 3 kids in our midst. :) Nice touch.

The back page of the activity handout is actually the kids’ menu page. :) Good selection, and a kids’ meal costs only $10 complete with a drink, and optional top-up for a scoop of Haggen Daz. :) I ordered Mac & Cheese for Joey and Jayne to share and Joey gobbled everything down so fast! She said it was super yummy. :)

Joey took this lovely photo of me and Jayne. You should be able to guess I snatched Jayne’s balloon away from her to pose. =P

I’ve always known that Baby Jayne has a great sense of rhythm and basically enjoys music, but that night, she was all jammed up! 80% of the time, she was staring at the projector screen showing different rock concerts, and just grooving along. She was probably the one who enjoyed the most that night! Haha!

Go rockers!

And this was what set us free. :)

Brought Jayne to see her PD this morning and after examining her, he declared she’s totally well, and very fortunate that her case is a very mild one! :) Thank God for healing and protecting Joey against getting it from her. Finally, we’re set free from our quarantine, and to celebrate that, we went for breakfast at Coffee Bean’s. =D

I’m pretty sure Jayne was every bit as excited as me, to be finally out breathing in fresh air and seeing a different environment apart from the 4 walls in our house!

Our breakfast! No joke, she alone finished 2 slices of the bread and some egg whites! I’m sure you can tell how deprived we are of a good decent breakfast.

Nom Nom Nom

So yummy, she even had her leg up. =P

By the way, on a sidenote, I was in ION shopping mall and rather happy with their baby changing room. Even though the room was small, it had nice little touches which showed their sincerity and kindness to parents!

They have the usual changing deck and chair for mums to breastfeed, and a little fan by the side for added comfort.

 

This is useful. Diaper dispensing machine!

Hot and cold water dispenser

And best of all, even a bottle warmer! Very nice of them indeed!

I’m gonna come by ION more because of this!

Back to Baby Jayne, I had to keep reminding myself that I should still keep baby out of crowded areas even though she’s already declared well. It’s hard because I’ve been cooped up at home for 8 days! Every single shop I walked past had something I wanted to buy!!! I curbed myself and told myself to quickly go home. Talk about self-control!! *Chant fruit of the spirit.. fruit of the spirit*

And we did eventually make it to the MRT station in one piece. It was one of the rare times Baby Jayne got to travel in an MRT! Thank God she was sufficiently entertained by me throughout the journey, and didn’t make too much fuss. phew

The sun has started to shine once again. Thank you for all your prayers. :)

P/S: No new posts till Monday! I’m going out to play tomorrow!

Today is the 6th day of my Jayne’s quarantine, and I am beginning to feel like a frog in the well.

My world revolves around a tiny little darling and we basically spend all our waking moments together. I actually don’t have anything new to update you because it’s been status quo since I last updated you. Jayne sleeps, drinks, eats and plays as per normal, healthy as can be. In fact, she has been pretty well-fed in my opinion, in the last few days, and I am really happy with that. In between vigorous feeds of porridge, milk, biscuits, bread and cheese, I have also been puree-ing apples and feeding her the yummy and puree full of goodness to her everyday. So far, she loves the puree and seeing all the fibre and vitamins go into her system makes me really happy and contented.

 

Plus, she spends quite a bit of time willingly inside this enclosure, even though signs are showing that she’s beginning to realise it’s not that much fun after all. Still, I try to keep her inside as much as I can (or as much as I can pretend I didn’t hear her screams) because in the last couple of days, she’s taken on a new hobby of pulling half-dry clothes off the bamboo poles. She pulls with such strength that the clothes pegs bounce off and flies to an amazing distance and that gives her such pleasure. Little wonder, since she’s quarantined anyway and there’s nothing really very interesting going on in the house all day.

Tomorrow shall be my last day of quarantine and I’ll be bringing her back to the PD for an assessment. Pray for a good report!!!!

Yesterday was what I call a very good day.

Some people know that I am a workaholic. So, for me to stay at home with my kids and not being able to work in the office is actually pretty torturous to me. Joey was at home for more than a week cos my mum-in-law was free to look after her. So I was pretty much cooped up at home with both kids, both screaming for my attention.

Yesterday, Joey went back to school, and because the house is a lot quieter *ahem* when she’s not at home, Jayne actually got a lot more rest. She took 2 long naps of two hours each during the day, and in between, ate lots of porridge, bread and biscuits. Mummies are easily contented. As long as the kids sleep and eat, everything else does not matter.

And the reason why yesterday was not just a good day, but a VERY good day, was because Jayne actually willingly stayed inside this for many, many hours (actually, almost all her awake hours the whole day):

May I now proudly announce that this ‘enclosure’ thing was actually transformed from Jayne’s old cot by yours truly. :) The platform for the mattress was screwed off and has now become such an important equipment in my house!

Jayne is extremely active and touches every single thing she sees on the floor and shelves, so watching her every movement is really tedious. Now that she’s ok with staying inside with books and toys, it really frees me up a great deal! Plus, the cot has wheels and she can push it wherever she wants to go and yet stay within safe boundaries. Perfecto!!! =D

I should count my blessings.

I am a living nightmare to a cleanliness freak. I am messy by nature, leave my stuffs everywhere and can live with untidiness generally. Going by that logic, I obviously hate doing household chores, and I get headaches just thinking about making my bed in the morning (which I don’t most of the time). Don’t judge me, please. I’m trying to be neater by the day, I promise.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my mum-in-law, who lives with me, is a cleanliness freak (Please refer to Para 2, Sentence 1). And so, since I am not anointed in the area of cleaning up, she has taken upon herself, the responsibility to train my Joey (so that she doesn’t turn out to be like me, I suppose =.=).

Joey enjoys doing housework. Bless my soul. I can’t understand why anyone can enjoy doing such horrible stuffs. Can you see that genuine smile of enjoyment on her face while …. while….. while… folding clothes?!

She has a talent for that, I tell ya.

After sufficient training, I will start her on folding Isaiah and my clothes as well. Ahhh.. see the benefits of having children now?

While it all sounds very rosy, in actual fact, it does irritate me at times. When I don’t make my bed in the morning, Joey comes in and starts her lecture on what an untidy person I am, and how I leave everything on the floor in a mess. Then she would go on and on about how important it is to keep everything neat and tidy. I roll my eyes every single time because she throws her toys and books everywhere too and I had to keep nagging at her to keep everything too!!!!!!!!!!!! *breathe in… breathe out… breathe in.. breathe out….*

I might be raising a naggy housekeeper in my house.

Life’s funny like that.

I was just gloating to myself the other day about how blessed I am because my kids had never gotten HFMD before, even though most of my friends’ kids have. Some even got it two or three times. And then BAM!

Jayne got it.

It all started innocently when she started getting feverish, grumpy and whiney early last week. She even vomited out her lunch. Last Wednesday was the worst. She was crying most of the time (for no apparent reason), fussy and refused to drink her milk. She kept drooling and pointing to her lips, sulking.

Then last Thursday night, we found 3 ulcers on her tongue! It dawned upon me that she could have HFMD! I almost fainted at that revelation!

Took her to see PD at Gleneagles and I was relieved for all of 5 seconds when the PD examined her and said so far no signs of HFMD even though there were ulcers on her tongue. Then he shone a torch down her throat and found 2 ulcers at the back of the throat, and decided that yes, it could well be HFMD. *sian to the max*

And so my 7 days of quarantine began.

I thought about what I was going to miss out in the next 7 days: An exciting blogger event that I had been looking forward to attending (free food in a nice cafe and some me-time!!!), church service, work for a whole week. Urghhhhhh! And a dread came over me when I suddenly realised that Joey and Jayne had been playing together in the past 2 days cos both were at home. I could only pray and hope that Joey didn’t get it as well. I couldn’t deal with both kids down.

So far, we’ve been trying our very best to keep both kids apart. And it was really tough. The moment they see each other, they behave like magnets and gravitate towards each other. We had to keep drilling it into Joey that she might have to deal with painful ulcers on her tongue, hands and soles if she didn’t stay away from her sister. It was very hard. She understood, yet she didn’t.

It didn’t help that I started to feel unwell too. Vomited and had diarrhoea all in one night. :( Then the next day, Joey vomited as well. I might look back on my life one day and point to these few days as the darkest period in my life.

By the time you’re reading this, it’s already Day 4 of the quarantine, and while I try to keep myself sane from the excessive whining and crying, I thank God that Jayne’s HFMD condition is pretty mild. She only has ulcers in her mouth and no where else. No rashes on her hands or feet either. PD said hers could be a very mild case. And actually, I’ve secretly suspected in my heart that hers might not be HFMD afterall! She’s back to 90% of her usual activeness and has been drinking milk and eating porridge pretty well today. Her fever had also subsided and everything seemed pretty normal.

Getting cooped up at home with hyperactive kids is no fun at all. I just pray that I would be able to keep my sanity and stay in one piece by the end of this week!

Be well, Baby!

I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but it’s not like I can do anything about it.

Girls are supposed to be genetically more talkative advanced in their speech development, so it’s little wonder that Baby Jayne can already blabber and even say sensible stuffs now at 15 months.

Here’s some of her vocabulary for now:

Mama
Mummy
Papa
Daddy
Jie Jie
Nai Nai
Bye
’Xie’ (thanks)
Ball
’Mao’ (Cat, which also refers to Mickey Mouse in her context)

And she makes a lot of descriptive sounds like ‘Boom’, which means fall down accompanied by a slapping action on her head.

Basically, you can more or less guess what she’s trying to tell you most of the time, so I’ve been contemplating for a while now when to start her on phonics classes. (OK, I’m joking.)

I don’t even have to hint to you and I’m sure you already know that her favourite word is Papa. She says it super a lot of times a day. I have a video just to prove my point.

Friends tell me that daughters are more attached to their daddies, so since I already have 2 girls cling-stuck to their Daddy’s ankles half the time and star-struck with their Daddy’s handsome-ness for the rest of the time, I should have a boy to make up for my loss.

But nay, I figured it’s not worth the trouble at all. =P

My kids are blessed to be able to grow up in a nursery with a magnificent view.

On some mornings when I’m very early, Jayne and I would spend our time sitting by the window looking at the cars, the Suntec fountain and talk about life. It’s actually quite therapeutic. :)

I dare say Baby Jayne enjoys such soul time with Mummy.

The strange thing is even though I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand a word I say now, she actually ‘looks’ like she understands a lot. The way she looks at me when I talk seems as if she is thinking and digesting what I’m saying.

And that’s really the reason why I keep talking to her even though she doesn’t respond half the time. You never know what she’s picking up!

And it warms my heart that she will give a smile even though she may not fully comprehend. =)

And of course, there’re times she behaves as if she has some sensible advice to dish out to me. If only I can decipher her ‘blah blah and woo woo-s’.

I was pretty bored that morning as you can see. I decided to shoot through the hole in my camera bag.

 

Pretty cool! =D

Morning soul times give me strength for the rest of the day. =

Do you know that the drawings your kids draw say a lot about what they think and feel inside of them?

That is why I felt especially touched when I saw this drawing that Joey drew. She was drawing her sister,  Jayne…

And in her mind, her sister is an angel. :)

When she told me that, it brought a smile to my face and I felt so touched in my heart.

I kept praising her for being so edifying and for drawing so well! So, she decided to draw the whole family as angels! Haha!

And then the kids’ real angel came back home from work and brought them a Tigger soft toy each!!! It made them so thrilled. =)

Clever Papa Isaiah knows that if he’s buying a soft toy, he has to buy two soft toys and two EXACTLY THE SAME one so that there’s no fighting! Haha!

I spent the first three years of my life living in a small Hakka village in Malaysia with my grandparents while my parents worked in Singapore. Obviously, I don’t remember anything about my life then, but I do know that my grandparents love me and took very good care of me. I was like their prized possession and pride, and every morning, they would bring me to the market to meet the rest of the villagers. Apparently, everyone knew everyone in that village.

How did I figure out that they brought me to the market every morning? That’s because when I went back to the Hakka village once in a few years, people who recognise my dad (he grew up in that village) would exclaim, ‘Oh! This is Ting Ting!’ I recognised none of those Uncles & Aunties, but from the way they fondly called me, it’s obvious they knew me very well as a kid. Pretty heart-warming feeling actually.

I also remembered very clearly the moment when my grandmother passed away. She breathed her last breath on her own bed at home with her children and grandchildren all around her. I was in Primary School school, and I remembered I ran to my bedroom and cried my heart out. I probably didn’t understand the concept of death, but I knew I was sad.

So, I’ve always felt that it’s a blessing to be able to grow up around one’s grandparents. My kids are blessed to be able to live in the same household as Papa Isaiah’s parents and once a week, they visit and have dinner with my own parents. So precious. :)

Baby Jayne enjoys being at my parents’ house. And as I was taking these photos, it was pretty nostalgic for me, because I spent many, many years living in that house. Even though, admittedly, that house is very messy and has tons and tons of stuffs that ought to be thrown away. =P