Fighting with a mild fever with minor cough and phlegm

We are a believer of that a kid/adult should not be administered medicine unless one is feeling lethargic and very ill, or as instructed by PD/GD, else one should be given enough time for his/her body or immune system to react to or fight with the invaders, hence strengthen his/her immunity further.

For us (me and hubby), it's easy. As we know very well when it's time for us to take medicine. We generally don't take medicine at all, and let our body recovers on its own. A visit to the GP is a must though, as we need to get a medication certificate for our absence of work :-)

For young babies (my definition is before one turns 1 year old), extra care must be taken as their immune system has not matured and mild sickness may lead to complication unnecessarily. Hence when baby is sick, we will bring her to see PD and administer medicine as advised. This applies to Xi Yu.

For toddlers, I think this is the important period to help them build up their immunity. Their immune system is developing, and is strong enough to fight with the common or not so potent bugs. If they are too heavily depended on the medicine, the immune system won't have the chance to learn how to fight with the bugs. One should monitor the toddler very closely, let them fight with the bugs for a few days, and take necessary action (i.e., consult PD/GP and administer medicine) if the toddler becomes more ill. This applies to Hao Re.

This is what we practice. Of course every parent has his/her own view on this.

Back to the topic of today.

Hao Re is running a slight temperature from Sunday afternoon. His forehead was pretty hot to touch, but no fever recorded when we measured using a ear thermometer. The temperature comes and goes throughout the day and would peak (>37.5C) at night time and early morning. We didn't give him any fever medicine but we monitor him closely. Finally on Wednesday morning, he broke out a cough with a bit of phlegm. Xi Yu was ill a few weeks ago. So I think most likely Xi Yu passed the bug to me, and from me to Hao Re. I am actually having a slight cough and quite phlegmy throat, but I am totally fine as I have quite a strong immunity. Hao Re got the bugs from me, and with his semi-mature immune system, he is running a temperature when his body reacts to the invaders. Early this morning (Thursday), his temperature went up to 38.8C at the highest. When we were discussing if we should let him stay at home to rest, his temperature has dropped to 37.2C. I guess his body is still working hard fighting with the bugs. I hope he would win the battle. Would continue to monitor and intervene as necessary. I hope we don't have to pay a visit to Dr Keoy this time :-P

During the car ride to school this morning, I asked Hao Re repeats after me, and repeated exactly as what I said: "皓皓在跟细菌打仗, 加油, 加油, 加油!!!".

Confession of a very guilty mummy.........

Xi Yu turns 8 months old on the 21st April 2010. She is growing up very well, putting on weight steadily (weighing 8.9kg now), and achieving all the major development milestones. She has started to stand holding on to something pretty steadily. She started to cruise (walking by holding on to a piece of furniture), with me being her favourite "furniture" to hold on. And for the fact that she is sleeping so much better at night, I think she might be gaining more weight the coming month, and hope this beauty sleep helps to strenghten her immunity further. And she is taking solid pretty okay too. Everything is just fine.

Except - the mummy, i.e., me.

I remember I wrote a post (replying a tag) on "Was it love at first sight?", a few months after I gave birth to Hao Re. I just re-read it. I didn't bond with him at the first sight, but only after 1 month or so. I love him so dearly since, and my love for him just grows more and more everyday, till it challenge the King's position (ops!).

But for Xi Yu. I was very scared deep down in my heart. And I felt very guilty, as I still can't give her that much of unconditional love, now that she is already 8 months old. And I feel that I am just doing my duties and a mum. I feel lousy at times. I feel I am a very bad mum.

Hubby said I am such a good mum to Hao Re. I am ever so patient and caring, I can take his many different reasonable or unreasonable requests, I can spend lots of time and effort on him, I can try everything I can to make him laugh, etc. And honestly (and thick-skin-ly), I do feel I am doing very well as a full time working mum, in fact, I am actually very proud of myself!

Xi Yu girl girl is not so lucky, unfortunately. What she has is a mum who is so impatient. A mum who doesn't take her nonsense and scolds/shouts at her. A mum who beats on her little tights (lightly) when the mum runs out of patience. A mum who doesn't spend enough time to bond with her. A mum who seldom makes her laugh. A mum who doesn't give her enough attention and love. A mum who just doesn't work hard enough to be the mum she should be!

I feel VERY GUILTY. I know I shouldn't be like this. I know I have to stop this and become the person who I am. I know. But I just can't.

I was tired. I was very tired. Not for the fact that I have to take care of two kids. But mainly because of Xi Yu's poor sleeping pattern. Thankfully Xi Yu has been sleeping much, much better after the nearly 1 month struggle, else I would have already raised white flag, or even broken down, and things may have gone even worser than now. Luckily, thankfully things have gone better and at least now I have time to rest, to pause, to do a self-reflect, to make some changes, and to be a better mum.

I hope I can be and I want to be a better mum for Xi Yu. I will try my very best to. I will remind myself of this. And I will definitely need the support, reminder and understanding of my dear darling too!

First up on the reflection list - I have a very wrong mindset to start with. On the very day, when baby Xi Yu was still in my tummy, when we knew our little one is going to be a girl, I told myself hubby is going to love her very, very much, as hubby has always wanted a girl. And so from that day onwards, I told myself to love Hao Re more, since meimei is going to get more love from daddy. That's a very, very, very wrong thinking. Totally wrong. Utterly wrong. Cannot be any worser thinking than this. I have to change my mindset. I have to. No matter boy or girl, we have to love them equally. We shouldn't show our preference on one over another. I have to be the same mum to Xi Yu as I am to Hao Re, why have I become a different mum to the two of them? Change. I have to change. I will remind myself everyday to change, change, change (I am changing already.......).

Then it's about my dear Hao Re. Before the arrival of baby Xi Yu, Hao Re and I spent so much great time together. And he is such a great kid, who never gave me any major problem since young. He goes with everything easily. No sleeping problem. No eating problem. Even when come to teething (including molars!), he never fussed (and hence we never suffered). Everything is so smooth-sailing. And he achieves all the development milestones well and on time. Have a very good temper. Very sensible. Very healthy. And probably one of the happiest kids among his peers. You see, Hao Re is so perfect to me. I tend to compare Xi Yu with him, which is not fair. Because I cannot really remember how Hao Re behaved when he was at Xi Yu's age, so most of the time, I wrongly compared her with the present Hao Re. How can a 8 months old baby be better or easier to deal with with a 27 months old toddler, right? Okay. Stop comparing. No more comparing. Each of them is growing up as who he/she is. In one of my previous post, I proudly said that I made Hao Re understands that I love him most. And he actually understands it! Again this is wrong. I have to correct this. I love them both the same. There should not be 最爱, but should be 爱你们兄妹俩 :-) I am very sure Xi Yu is also another perfect kid, because she was made from the "factory" with the same "materials" afterall :-)

Okay. I am not trying to be a superwoman. But I honestly think I can manage my 2 kids. With hubby's active involvement, I can sure take care of them both. Unfortunately, I have to admit, I am a bit over-estimate of myself. I am just a normal person afterall, who only has 24 hours a day, and 1 pair of hands. No doubt, I am very sure their basic needs are very well taken care of, for the fact that both of them are growing up really well and steadily. But I don't have any extra time or energy left to do the extra bits with them, i.e., to spend time to play with them during the evening of the weekdays. All the bonding can only leave to weekends. Not an ideal situation, as I think the bonding activities should be carried out on a daily basis, not have to be a long time, a quality 10-15 minutes is way better than none. When Xi Yu needs my full attention (i.e., cling on me and don't allow me to do anything), she annoys me as this means I cannot spend anytime with Hao Re. And this subsequently annoys Hao Re also. He has no problem to play on his own for more than 1 hour. But if after than 1 hour, I am still unable to spend time with him, he would show his temper by throwing all the toys he can reach from the shelves to the floor :-( I just felt so helpless. I think I just gonna take things easy. Don't over stress on this, I can only do the best I can, as long as I try, I think there is no rooms for regret. And also hoping the mighty hubby can spend even more quality time with the kids (he is a very good daddy already, but can still be even better if he spends less time of FB, **hint hint**).

Wonder if this is the "fate" of a second child? As in we as a parents already experienced all those very excited "first" with the first child - first flip, first claw, first walk, first talk, etc. For me, it's really not that much of excitement to see Xi Yu acheiving her many firsts. Worse thing is I, again, unconciously compared her development with Hao Re's! It is so difficult to not to compare, but hope I don't make negative conclusion out of the comparison, then I am safe. Also, I don't have anytime to read anything on parenting books/magazines.  I tried, but even when I have time, I was so tired that I would just sit there stoning and still on the same line after 10 minutes. While for Hao Re, since it's only him, I had plenty of time then to do lots of reading. Now I still flip the books and magazines, but nothing much goes in. I hope I still remember clearly what I have done for Hao Re, and using the same parenting methods on Xi Yu should be okay, seeing them Hao Re develops really well. I try my very best, at least I will monitor Xi Yu's development carefully and not to miss out anything. I myself am a second child. And I did well. So supposedly I should worry too much about this :-)

Last is about the breastfeeding. I have totally stopped breastfeeding. The weaning off process was surprisingly a very smooth one. I should post another post just for my breastfeeding chapter. But what I want to say now is I sincerely hope I would have followed my heart/feeling at that time and stopped BFing much earlier because I don't enjoy the process. Anyway, that's history already.

With this confession and reflection, I hope I will change to become a better mum for Xi Yu. I think I will, and I sincerely hope I will. Wish me luck!

Till the next update :-)

Guess what's Xi Yu first word?

B.A.B.A.

Despite the fact that I breastfed her for 7 months, depsite that I am the one who put her to bed from day 1 till now, despite the fact that I am the one who feeds her milk and solid food........ her first word is not mama, but baba :-(

Oh well, people said daughter is baba's past life lover. How true!

Actually I am equally happy that she called baba rather than mama. No issue with me. She babbled the sound similar to baba (爸爸, 抱抱, 拜拜) on Wednesday night for almost 30 minutes, non-stop. Funny thing was hubby had not arrived home yet. When he arrived, Xi Yu stopped the babbling. Luckily I recorded down as the proof to show hubby, else he would think I make it up.

Besides that, she really likes to talk/babble/scream/shout...... she just likes to make noise. Mind you, she might start talking at very a very young age just like her yiyi (my young sister, who started talking at 9 months!).

Now, when would she call M.A.M.A........... (not that I mind, just wondering :-))

Keyword for today - 全部！
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Mum: 皓皓，你喜欢mickey mouse 还是donald duck?
Son (想了一会儿）：全部！
Mum: 全部有谁？
Son：有mickey，donald，daisy，minnie,....... Incredible (learned from the Disney on ice show)......

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Mum: 皓皓爱谁？
Son: 皓皓爰妹妹！
Mum: 皓皓有没有爱爸爸和妈妈？
Son: YES! 皓皓要爱妹妹的。
Mum: 喔，为什么？
Son: 妹妹没有naughty, 妹妹是good boy 来的。(he is still not quiet sure about the gender different).
Mum: 皓皓还要爱谁？
Son: 皓皓爱全部！

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While playing with his stickers......
Mum: 皓皓喜欢car, bicycle 还是 fire engine?
Son: (paused) 皓皓喜欢animals 的！
Mum: 喔，皓皓喜欢什么animal?
Son: 皓皓喜欢giraffe......
Mum: （can't hear him clearly) giraffe and 什么？
Son: (speak very loudly and slowly): mama, 皓皓喜欢giraffe and elephant!
Mum: 皓皓要不要去动物园？
Son: YES!
Mum: 动物园有什么？
Son: 有giraffe, elephant, lion, monkey, 还有很多、很多！
Mum: 很多有什么？
Son: 有这个、那个，有全部！

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ya, right. Mummy is getting lazy (on blogging and other things) here.
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For the Good Friday long weekend, the King was ill, which I have noted down here and here. We only managed to go to the Singapore Science Centre, especially for the Pixar 20th Years of Animation Exhibition, on the Easter Day, before the King fell sick.

It was a pretty nice outing to the Science Centre. Though Hao Re can't really understand and appreciate the science, but he explored all the stuff with full of interest. When we were at the Pixar exhibition area, when he saw the first (black and white) sketches and the (white) models, he said "爸爸, 你看, 这个没有colouring!". It was so funny that he said that. And throughout the whole exhibition, his only concern was which has colour and which hasn't! He behaved so because he was very much into colouring this few weeks. It's amazed that he can link his daily activity to the stuff on display :-) We didn't know there is a pretty nice waterplay area there, so didn't pack anything for that. Only let Hao Re played at the outdoor garden and called it a day!

So the rest of the Easter Day, following Saturday and Sunday are pretty much stay at home day. Hubby was too sick to bring the kids out. His headache was too serious. I joked that because he had 1 "extra" day (i.e., the Easter Day) to rest, and so his body couldn't adjust to it, as it's too relax for him :-)

We managed to bring the kids to the shopping centre downstairs for a walk and let them have some fun at this merry-go-round machine. Kids are easy to be satisfied  (sometimes, not always) :-)

Note how well Xi Yu can stand already! And look at my handsome boy, isn't he cool riding the batman bike :-)


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The next weekend (10-11th April), it was the princess' turn to fall sick, which I have blogged about here. And no thanks to the rainy days.

So again, most of the weekend was to stay at home. Good thing was I can cook healthy meal for Hao Re and the family, though just simple one. Hao Re ate a lot and that made my days :-)

The only "achievement" this week was to have thier hair cut. Xi Yu cried badly from the beginning to the end, and the good thing was with this cry, she puked out some phlegm. Hao Re was very cooperative throughout the haircut, because - he was bribed with sweets!

This is the new haircut (sorry for the blur-ish picture, as these were taken with my iPhone)


Oh no, I forgot, we actually made a trip to the botanical garden on Sunday afternoon. Hao Re enjoyed the garden so much and he just ran wild! Xi Yu, who stands with support very well, and just starts to cruise, also observed her surrounding with great interest and breathed in some nice fresh air! For us, we always like the great outdoor, so it's good for us too, win-win situation. We had our dinner at the restaurant there, terrible waiting time, and food was not good, service was pretty lousy (slow), should have ordered the pizza (which was nice the last time we tried) and maybe the whole experience would have been nicer.

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For the weekend which had just passed, we were a bit busy running around, but not that much of "excitement". Went for JB for some "fresh air". Wanted to buy a kitchen set or any other play-pretend toys for Hao Re, but to no avail, he is just not interested in any of the play sets. Luckily didn't come back empty handed. Hao Re chose (with my help, of course) a 54 piece puzzle, a chinese educational vcd, and a couple of Chinese books (of my choice).

Let the kids take nap at home. Then we went out again in the afternoon. To get a second hand stroller as our cheap-but-very-useful-and-heavyduty-stroller is almost dead, after serving us faithfully for the past 27 months. Went to IKEA Tampanies for dinner. To what I expected, Hao Re loves the meatballs, he ate about 5 meatballs, the drumstick part of the chicken wings, 2 chicken nuggets, some french fries, a few mouthfulls of carrot cake and some frizzy drink (ops!). That's a lot of food, but since he enjoyed eating it, we just let him be.

On Sunday, brought Xi Yu to Yew Tee CC for the baby show. I wanted to test out if she is really so cute. Almost everyone who sees her says she is so cute! But, haha, she won nothing, can't win over the judges' heart :-) It doesn't matter at all, as we know she is surely a cute little darling.

Went to the CCK park in the afternoon. A little incidence happy which made me so guilty....... I was carrying Xi Yu and the camera. I wanted to take some photos of the kids so I put down Xi Yu on the flat end of a slide. She was sitting steadily. At the very moment when I looked away to search for the sight of Hao Re, I heard a "thub" sound, and when I looked down, Xi Yu fell face down. It was a very minor fall, but unfortunately there was sand on the slide (the whole playground was sitting on a pool of sand), her nose was bleeding slightly. Felt so bad and so scared hubby was going to scold me hard. Saw him walking towards us (he went for a run), passed him Xi Yu and he went to the toilet to clean her off. She only cried for a couple of minutes after the fall and when we applied the disinfectant on her, she didn't cry, so must be not that painful hor (try to console myself). I don't want to post her photo here, but she is quite cute with a little red nose now, thanks to her mummy :-) Hubby didn't scold me after all, which added to my guilt :-(

We packed our dinner on the way home. When we were having our dinner, Xi Yu  wanted me to carry, so I carried her and have my dinner at the same time (still feeling guilty so treating her nicely :-)). After 1-2 spoons, Hao Re left the table and went to his pool of toys. The first thing me and hubby did was to shout/scold him "come back to have dinner, cannot play now". You know what he did? He actually went to look for Xi Yu's toy and passed the toy to Xi Yu! We both felt so guilty of scolding him for being such a nice boy. We said sorry to him and gave him a kiss :-)

At last, do enjoy some of the very artistic creation of hubby! He is doing lots of reading and testing of his DSLR (finally, after almost 2 years!) these few weeks. These photos are taken with some special techniques, didn't involve any post-processing of the photos with software. Expect to see more and more nice photos!

Get ready and laugh your lung out!!!!!

Just realised I didn't post my favourite videos here, how could I miss it out! Probably it's because I posted on FB, so I thought I have posted here as well. Maybe hubby is right, I shouldn't be too greedy to post things everywhere. Okay, let me think of the best way.

Anyway, here you go! These clips were taken during Chinese New Year at my parents', when Hao Re was trying to entertain, and he was very successfully! Xi Yu loves her little big brother! Note how creative Hao Re was in trying different ways to make Xi Yu laughs, how he would help meimei to wipe off the saliva, and how he would give meimei a hug from time to time.

Enjoy the videos!


Play and fun time between Hao Re and Xi Yu - Part I from TJ Kam on Vimeo.


Play and fun time between Hao Re and Xi Yu - Part II from TJ Kam on Vimeo.

[After note: Thanks CS Yiyi to point it out I have already posted this before. How more blur can I be........... Apparently I have posted it here but not on Facebook (I thought the other way round, keke). Sorry readers, pardon me for my blur-ness and good thing is you can hear them laugh for a second time :-)]

Guess who says this?

Definitely not me. I WANT to sleep, as much as I can, and I dread for a long long long undisrupted sleep, the more the better!

Definitely not hubby. He WANTS to sleep, too, as much as he can, as he is so tired/exhausted/burnt out with his work.

Xi Yu has just recently got back her beauty sleep at night (see previous post). She may not want to sleep in the future when she knows more stuff like her gorgor now, but definitely not now.

So, yes, you guess it right, it's Hao Re. Since last week, he started to test our limits, especially with hubby, as he is the one who puts him to bed at night. He used to follow a routine, whereby he would drink his milk while watching the tv for a short 10-15min, then it's off to bed.

It started with hubby taking longer and longer time to make him to sleep. From a short 10-15 minutes, dragged to 30 minutes, to 1 hour, to now when he didn't sleep but stayed wide awake after 1 hour! And after that, every night when it's time to switch off a set of the lights, he starts to chant, 我不要睡觉, 我不要睡觉, 我不要睡觉..................

As a results, his bedtime has been pushed back a little, from 9pm to 9.30pm. And if he still didn't sleep after 30 minutes or so, hubby will leave him in the bedroom. And went back in after 30 minutes or so, when he is, of course, still wide awake! He, somehow, falls asleep in this second round, luckily, I would say.

Actually since he was 18 months old, when he was promoted to the toddler class in the childcare, he was already trained to sleep on his own, for his nap at school. Totally on his own. Lie down on his bed, and sleep within like 5-10 minutes. He knows how to make/soothe himself to sleep (most of the time by singing to himself, I was told by his teacher yesterday). But we have never asked him to do so at home, we have no hurry to make our dear darling too independant as of now :-)

We have not come to a conclusion on how to solve this. At this moment, we try to talk to him, to explain to him why he needs to sleep early, ask him why he doesn't want to sleep, ask him what he want to do, etc. We give him some times, maybe another 1-2 weeks, to do whatever adjustment he needs to do, to test whatever he wants to test on us or on himself, to explore whatever ways that he sees available to him. We should keep our cool and remain positive, as much as we can. But eventually, for healthy reason, he would have to go to bed at 9-9.30pm again.
Till we solve this "problem"...........

Nursing/recovering from a viral infection (bronchiolitis) and the "cure" for her poor sleeping  

The bad (sick) news.............
The first time when Xi Yu fell sick was about 2.5 months ago, when she was at 5  months old. That was a very mild cough and with no fever at all, and she recovered very fast and only took very minima amount of medicine.

Now, this time is a bit more than mild. She slept very poorly on Friday (she was already not sleeping well, and that night was even worse!). We first detected her fever when she woke up on Saturday morning. Though it's only 37.8C at the max. And the fever totally subsided before noon time. We monitored her fever throughout the day and it's never come back, phew! She has a bit of running nose, which only lasted for the Saturday. And left with the phlegmy cough, which is our main worry. So this explained why she slept so poorly on Friday.

On Saturday, she was quite ill. She was not actice as she usually is, and kept wanting me to carry her, exactly like a koala bear. She made so much noise to get my attention (not that I didn't attend to her, but she wanted me all the time!) until she lost her voice! This poor little girl. We hardly saw her put on any smile the whole day!

On Sunday, she woke up and almost back to her normal self. Just a bit of cough now and then. But we were still worry because she started wheezing. Not a good sign. Wheezing means the airway has become narrower and she may face breathing difficulty or if unluckily, may lead to complications.

So we brought her to PD on Monday afternoon (I was predicting there would be a big crowd in the clinic on Monday morning so wanted to avoid that). Didn't know Dr Keoy changed his clinic opening time. He doesn't work on Monday afternoon. So we brought Xi Yu to see Dr Janice Wong instead (who used to share a clinic with Dr Keoy).

Dr Wong said it's a viral infection, which left untreated, may lead to bronchiolitis (similar to bronchitis, but it usually affect young babies, when their lung and the trees of bronchi hasn't fully developed). So was given 3 medicine to help/improve/cure wheezing, cough and phlegm (the usual Ventolin, Muscosolvon, and Singulair sachet, similar to the medicine presribed for Hao Re when he was having a bad cough back in January this year).  Ya, right, I know the medicine so well already.

She is a lot better already. Dr Wong said usually kid is back to normal after 5 to 6 days. Hope with this round of viral infection, her immune system has streghten even more. Stay healthy, my dear princess.

The good news............
I took the chance to consult the paediatrician what could be the cause(s) that Xi Yu sleeps so poorly. She was very confident that it's due to teething! She suggested applying teething gel, and assured us it's very safe to use despite that baby will swallow some of the gel. Hubby agreed that we should try. And BINGOOOOO!!! On the very night I applied teething gel, she slept so much better, only woke up twice throughout the night till 7am the next morning, as compared to she woke up close to or more than 10x a day!!!!! Gosh, poor gal suffered more than a month due to mummy's negligence and ignorant :-( I didn't link her poor sleeping to teething becasue I didn't see this in Hao Re at all. See, every kid is different! Hope with more/better sleep, she stays (becomes more) healthier and happier :-)

One thing for sure - the mummy,i.e., me, is definitely happier. Finally I CAN sleep!!! And more importantly, with this improvement, I think I will become more patient with Xi Yu, and with this, I hope she will become a happier baby (hubby said Xi Yu is not as happier as Hao Re when he was this age). You know how bad temper a person can be with lack of sleep for a few weeks consecutively, and all the night wakings and poor sleeping did really drive me crazy at times. Hopefully that's all history....... don't ever return!

Stay positive, always be positive :-)

I have stopped updating Hao Re's development since he turned 2 years old. In just a blink, 3 months has passed and he is already 27 months old (on the 4th April 2010)!

I want to note down something about him.

Hao Re is absolutely a wonderful kid! After he had gone two the "terrible twos" phase when he was about 23 months, which lasted for 1-2 months, we have no major complaint of him since. He is sensible, independent, approachable, willing to listen to adults, talkative, observant, keen to learn, loving and caring (his meimei, Baba and Mama), etc. In short, he is a happy kid, and very much lovable :-) Nobody is perfect, so for sure sometimes he still throw (little) tantrums, sometimes doesn't listen to us, but those are minimal to negligible.

I love him, love him so much, very much!

Oh no, wait, we actually have 1 problem with him. After we came back from 2-week CNY holiday until today, he still cries (not loud cry though) every morning when we send him to his childcare, no matter what we have done and tried. His teachers said usually after we left, he stopped crying almost immediately. So we take that he only wants our attention. So that's okay, though it's not a nice thing that we have to go through this every morning. I hope one day he decides that he has had enough crying and would not cry anymore. Meanwhile, we just remain very calm and say goodbye to him after leaving him with his teacher. There were times that he would tell us ", 我不要去学校, 我要跟妈妈去做工". I explained to him that being a responsible adult to the society, mummy and daddy have to work so that we are contributing. Hubby and my mum said he couldn't possibly understand what I told him. But I reckon this answer is better than the standard "We have to work for money" :-)

Okay, done with the problem. Now it's all good things about our dear Hao Re :-) It's going to be a long post....... bear with me.......

He is speaking so much and so well now. He speaks in full sentences (like the above example). He tells us what we want, and he can catch/learn new vocabularies and phrases very fast. He usually repeats after us right immediate when we have just said it, and subsequently [in hour(s) to day(s)] we can hear him using that new word/phrase already. He can count from 1 to 20 in English, able to say a few colours, name his friends, and starts to form questions already. Being living in this multi-cultural environment, it's unavoidable to speak some "rojak" language. Hao Re is already talking "rojak", i.e., he mixes English and Chinese to form one sentence. As much as we want to speak properly, but we ourselves also speak "rojak". Same as his teachers, and literally everyone else. We will try our best, especially to teach him the proper English as much as possible, though we don't really speak good English ourselves :-) I will be so traumatised if one day he asks "You eat what?" For now, I think it's better to use Chinese as much as possible. But he sure catches the Singlish from school, and this is also unavoidable.

We are very happy that he has gained back his appetite and eat more since a couple of weeks ago. He lost his appetite before we went back home for CNY, and ate very little when he was at home, and lost interest in almost everything, including fruits (he used to love fruits, all types of fruits). But the weird thing was I checked with his teacher and apparently he was eating well at school. As a results of his poor appetite, he lost 1+ kg! It's such a precious kg, at his age now, it's very difficult to gain 1+kg in a short time. Anyway, he is eating more and more now, and also starts to eat fruits again. But now he surely prefers meat than vegetables. He has gained back 0.5kg already in just 2 weeks, and I am very, very happy :-)

Talking about food. I promised myself, after came back from the CNY, I should start cooking dinner and cook more often during weekends, so that our family can start eating more healthily again. But, I can't keep to this promise. Both of them are actually quite independant and can easily self-entertain themselves (whilst keeping each other accompanied) for an hour. I could have used this hour to cook for our dinner. But after some thoughts, I decided that I would rather spend this precious hour with them than keeping myself busy in the kitchen. But for weekends, I try, as long as we are at home, I will try to serve the food to my loved ones. Just last Sunday, I cooked some very simple ABC pasta for Hao Re, and he loved it, that made me super happy!

When comes to play, his current favourite activities are colouring/drawing and stickers. Puzzles are still his all time favourites. He still like music and movement, and he likes to hop/jump. He can sing better and better now. Lost interest on books. And also no more interest on tv (which is a good thing), as in he rarely requests us to turn on tv or play the DVD for him. The good thing about him is that he can play on his own for a long time. He would come to us when he needs help with something or when he tries to engage us in his activities.

His baby sister Xi Yu has become his playmate. Nowadays he doesn't mind sharing toys with Xi Yu. He actually knows which toys we usually give to Xi Yu and which we don't and he follows. There was one day I lef the 2 of them in the living room and went for a quick shower. Before I left them, I told Hao Re to play with and take care of meimei because Mama wants to have a shower. After I finished my shower and came to the living room, Hao Re was sitting beside his baby sister, hugging her and playing with her! I was so touched seeing this.

He is very good in imitating us. The way we speak, the way we laugh, the way we make funny faces, the way we walk, our action, everything. After imitating us, he would end it with a laugh :-) This is just so cute.

A funny thing about him is that he is kinda a clean freak! He cannot bear to see his hand/body has a tiny bit of food/dirt. He would say, "妈妈, 肮脏猫!" and ask to get himself cleaned. He would surely get his hands and mouth wipe/wash after every meal. Probably trained in his school. It's funny most of the time, but sometimes can get on our nerves :-)

He finally gets to like brushing his teeth, after we bought a singing/barking toothbrush for him. There is a button to press and to tell him let's start brushing, and there was barking/singing sound all along, and when he finishes, it says great job! He loves that, and is willing to brush his teeth every night, though he doesn't really brush correctly and thoroughly, but it's a good start. He starts to learn to gargle too, and he finds that very fun.

No luck with toilet train. He can say pee and poo (in Chinese), but he is just not ready to tell us when he wants to do his businesses. Nowadays, he actually can control his bowel, as in whenever he wants to poo, he would find a spot, squad down and then push. Whenever we take off his diaper in the toilet, he can pee well in standing position. So we have no hurry. We are not rushing him. We are just waiting for that one day, when he decides to tell us he wants to go pee/poo. He is only a 27 months boy afterall. Jia you, Hao Re!

His sleeping schedule remains about the same. Locking in a total of 11-12 hours of sleep everyday (2 hours of afternoon nap plus 9-10 hours of night sleep). But sometimes he would spend up to an hour with hubby in the bedroom and still hasn't fallen asleep! He continues to sing, talk, play, roll, even jump, until he decided to call it a day. That's really testing hubby's patience, and I hope this won't last long, else we will have a new found problem to deal with.

Oh, and this is what I am most happy about - he doesn't have any eczema outbreak for at least the past 2 months!!! I hope this is a promosing sign that he has outgrown the eczema (I am keeping my finger crossed). Though his skin does look dry at times. Eczema, eczema go away, don't ever come back! It's such a relieve that we don't have to see him suffers from his eczema. Come to think about it, we haven't brought him to a swimming pool for the past 2-3 months. Is the swimming pool the culprit, as what Dr Keoy suggested? Now, should we or should we not bring him for a swim??? We are actually planning for one as Xi Yu seems to like water very much.

And to end this post, I would like to share how I train him to be a loving person:

Everyday, without fail, I would repeat this conversation with him:
Me: 皓皓最爱谁?
HR: 皓皓最爱妈妈 (he would change to his sweetest and softest voice when he says this)
Me: 皓皓有没有很爱爸爸?
HR; 皓皓有很爱爸爸.
Me: 皓皓有没有很爱妹妹?
HR: 皓皓有很爱妹妹.

And then followed by a mouth-to-mouth kiss :-) And if it's possible (as I mainly do this during our car ride), he would plant a kiss on Baba and meimei as well.

Or sometimes I would ask:
Me: 妈妈最爱谁?
HR: 妈妈最爱皓皓.
Me: 哦, 不是喔, 妈妈最爱妹妹/爸爸喔.
HR: NO, CANNOT, 妈妈最爱皓皓的........

I just love having this conversation with him. And I love to kiss him and get kisses from him. The more the better, and I never seem to be getting enough :-)

My dear Hao Re, please continue to be the happy and healthy boy, as you always are!

Hubby's headache wasn't getting any better. After breakfast he popped in more pills and knocked out soon after that (about 10am). Again, left with the 3 of us.

There was no food left. I have to cook for Hao Re at the very least, and knowing that we would be going out today, I think a trip to the wet market was unavoidable.

Pushed Xi Yu in the stroller with hand while holding Hao Re with another. Off we went to the wet market, which is, luckily, just a few minutes away from our flat. We did extensive marketing, stopped by a few stalls to get chicken, pork, fish, vegetables, fish balls, and noodle. Well, how could I manage? All thanks to my two super cooperative kids, both didn't make any fuss at all! Hao Re even followed my instruction and said thank you and goodbye to the aunties :-)

I thought I should reward him with something. So I bought an McDonald ice cream for him. This little fella insisted he only wanted to eat the ice cream when we reached home and don't allow to lick the ice cream either. When we reached home, obviously it has melted. I think Hao Re is a clean freak. He kept wanting me clean his hands as soon as his hands touched the melted ice cream. At the end, he was only able to eat very little of the ice cream as most have melted away. He was satisfied :-)

Then played with them. Fed Xi Yu some purée, and then milk and then put her for her mid afternoon nap. During this time, she did get on my nerve, but luckily I can still keep my cool. While she was sleeping, I quickily cooked our lunch, with Hao Re being the little helper, and our soup noodle (Mi tai mak aka mouse tail noodle) was ready in a short 10minutes. And we both having a great time eating and chatting.

Three hours have passed just like that. And I woke hubby up for lunch. His headache has gone then, phew!!! And so it ended my 3-hour supermum experience.

I certainly wouldn't want to experience this again. I think I can cope but it's stressful and if the kids were not well behaved, I could have gone mad. So ya, hopefully, no more similar experience in the future. But i am very happy to find out how sensible Hao Re is and how much he know what's happening around hime. That's why I wanted to blog this down as this is very special to me :-)

To all those wonderful stay-at-home-mums, especially those with 2 or more kids without any helper, my hat off to you! Kudos!!!

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Hubby was having very bad headache and so he popped in some paracetamol. Then he his head turned super heavy and he had knocked out at 8pm, leaving the 2 kids with me.

I was totally amazed that Hao Re seemed to understand when I told him that Baba is not feeling well. He pretty much played with his puzzle on his own all night (by the way, he is now challenging a 40 pieces puzzles though not successful yet, but it's looking good)

Even Xi Yu was very well behaved.

When came to thier bed time at 9pm, I decided to try handling them myself so hubby can continue to sleep. So I fed Xi Yu her milk while Hao Re drank on his own, both with me in the same room. Surprisingly, Xi Yu fell asleep almost immediately after finished her milk. Hao Re quietly waited for his turn while playing with his and my shadow.

He was initially scared and then amused by the shadow.

When it's turn to sleep, he lied down beside and fell asleep in about 10min. Hugging me tight, and said good night, I love you, and gave me a wet kiss:-)

So here I am. Kinda free before 10pm. It's my turn to sleep after finish with this blog. I am actually very tired already and I was not able to take a nap. I hope I will have a good sleep with my 2 lovely darling accompany me. And hope hubby will get better after a good night sleep.

Good night, everyone!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I find this information useful. So I note it down for my own reference and to share with my friends and fellow readers :-) Remember though, each child is different, so don't be stressed if the child isn't eating as much (or eating too much) than suggested, just use it as a reference and you should know what's best for your kid!

Published on: Singapore Kid's Dining Guide, volume 1, 2009/10 (page 46-48)
Source: Health Promotion Board (HPB), Singapore

7 to 12 months old
1-2 servings rice & alternatives
half serving fruits
half serving vegetables
half serving meat & alternatives
750ml milk

1 to 2 years old
2-3 servings rice & alternatives
half to 1 serving fruits
half serving vegetables
half serving meat & alternatives
750ml milk

3 to 6 years old
3-4 servings rice & alternatives
one serving fruits
one serving vegetables
one serving meat & alternatives
500ml milk

7 to 12 years old
5-6 servings rice & alternatives
two serving fruits
two serving vegetables
two serving meat & alternatives
250-500ml milk

13 to 18 years old
6-7 servings rice & alternatives
two serving fruits
two serving vegetables
two serving meat & alternatives
250-500ml milk

Example of one serving:

Rice & alternatives
- 2 slices of breasd 960g)
- half bowl (rice bowl) rice (100g)
- half bowl noodle, spaghetti or beehoon (100g)
- 4 plain biscuits (40g)
- 1 thosai (60g)
- 2 small chapatis (60g)
- 1 large potato (180g)
- one and half cups plain cornflakes (40g)

Fruits
- 1 small apple, orange, pear or mango (130g)
- 1 wedge pineapple, papaya, or watermelon (130g)
- 10 grapes or longans (50g)
- 1 medium banana
- a quarter cup (250ml) dried fruit (40g)
- 1 glass pure fruit juice (250ml)

Vegetables
- three-quarter mug (250ml) cooked leafy vegetables (100g)
- three-quarter mug (250ml) cooked non-leafy vegetables (100g)
- 150g raw leafy vegetables
- 100g raw non-leafy vegetables

Meat & alternatives
- 1 palm-sized piece fish, lean meat or skinless poultry (90g)
- 2 small blocks soft beancurd (170g)
- three-quarter cup cooked pulses (e.g., lentils, peas, beans) ( 120g)