Posted by: tituteo | December 31, 2009

Merry Christmas Ho Ho Ho

And so last year Seth was too young to say the words ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Santa Claus’. Not that he could understand any of it too. Nevertheless, every time we came across anything ‘Christmasy’ I would exclaim in excitement, “Merry Christmas Ho Ho Ho!”. He was too young to speak then and could only absorb those words like a little sponge. Fast forward one year and when he saw the picture of Santa, he went,”Ho Ho Ho!” And that is how I know I shouldn’t mumble vulgarities thinking that he wouldn’t understand them anyway. =\

We signed him up for some classes to familiarise him with the school environment (read: kiasu parents!) He really enjoyed the classes and loves the various different activities. Poor boy doesn’t know the trouble he is getting into going to school at 3 years old. Imagine the many decades of school he has to go through after this! =S Let’s not spoil his fun for now though.

Homework can be fun too!

On the home front, other than training him to go to the toilet by himself, I am now training him to pour water into his cup. Heh. He also learned to sweep the floor with his little dustpan set too! That, plus being able to line the bins after I clear them. I’m making a house-boy out of him!! :p My grandma’s complaining though. She accused me of shaking my legs and living a good life while my son self-sustains. Ha!

Christmas is a special occasion for us! I want my son to grow up loving this day not for the trees, the Santas and the gifts, but the love that God has for us. And since he is too young to really comprehend more than “Christmas is the birthday of Jesus!” he shall dwell in his showers of presents for now!

Not to forget the tree he helped set up!

There were many Christmas fun acts and activities during this season. We went for his first Bob-The-Builder Show which he enjoyed but refused to take pics with the big-headed characters. Then he had a chance to go on the pony rides at JP which he enjoyed and posed like a real cowboy indeed!

The Changi Airport had this huge bouncing castle set up for the kids too! Seth went onto it with the Man and I really couldn’t tell who was the happier kid. =\

And I tried my hand at making log cakes for the first time. I was about to give up and just go for cupcakes instead when my Mum exclaimed,”What’s Christmas without a log cake?!” It was really sugar overload but no complaints as long as it looked the part! :p The success in rolling the swiss roll for the log was a feat in itself and I am certainly not too keen to try it again anytime soon. :S

I decorated some Ikea Ginger Crisps to go with it too!

And finally, I decided to chop off my long hair before I go bald. With the amount of hair I sweep off the floor everyday, it’s really a miracle I have hair left on my head still!

So here’s wishing one and all a very Happy New Year 2010!!

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Posted in Child's Play, Gushes and Kisses, School Daze, What's Cooking

Posted by: tituteo | December 29, 2009

Blame It on Facebook!

Ok. There has been a blogger’s block recently due to the convenience of Facebook’s status shoutouts. It seems to be so much easier to update things on that than to get my butt down to blogging here! :p

So here’s some photo diarrhea starting from where I left off.

I’ve been having much success trimming Seth’s hair ever since the lure of McDonald’s and it’s fries and ice cream sundae took effect. He has been sitting still and allowing me to perform my duties as an in house stylist. Oh well, as with all specialists, sometimes accidents do happen. As in the time i turned one notch further and reduced his crop to nothing more than 6mm in length (from the usual 9mm). Ah…. Safra really should have let me in on their membership privileges.

My little army boy at the wheels!

And we drove up to the land of Tea and Strawberries (aka Cameron Highlands) with the family. The ride was bumpy and definitely not enjoyable though the view was fantastic. The place was below expectations but the company was great! The most memorable part of the trip was our homecooked steamboat dinner and bbq without which, the trip would have been forgettable!

Seth had a great time there though. He had fun bonding with the other half of the family that we so seldom got to see.

The cheeky boy made this silly face every time his photo was taken.

He has been getting cheekier by the minute. Always up to tricks and silly antics. We always joked about his small eyes and nowadays he would do the big eyes ‘glare’ when we asked him. Or squint and make his eyes even smaller on demand. Sigh.

Big Eyes vs Small Eyes. (Heh! Most times, the mouth also corresponds to the eyes!)

And not forgetting the time he decided to wear his new ‘beanie’ in the car. And insisted on walking back from the carpark to the house with it on his head. We had to dive for that hole in the ground when a big family walked by! :S

This prompted me to get him a real beanie though.

In November, we also had the wedding of the year with my buddy finally getting hitched. I’ve known Kevin since my uni days and we’ve both came a long way since. It felt so heartwarming to see him walk down the aisle with his beautiful bride that I actually teared a little. *sniff*

Blessings in a Cupcake!

Seth was given the most important task of opening the car door for the groom! And luckily for him, it was an SLK and he was able to reach it with ease! He had such a great time that day that ever since then, all brides he sees are named Jean-Yiyi. =\

And finally on the 25th November, at 2 years 8 months old, the boy finally said goodbye to diapers and pull ups! Ever since his success in staying diaper free in the day, we had been taking it easy for the night weaning. We did, however, prepare him for it and suggested that he stop wearing someday. He started waking up in the nights to pee and would wake with dry diapers in the morning for about 2 weeks. Eventually he asked me to stop putting his diapers back on after he woke up at night . Maybe he was just too sleepy to wait for me to do it. :p Nonetheless, Yay!

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Posted in Child's Play, Family, Gushes and Kisses, What's Cooking

Posted by: tituteo | September 19, 2009

Planting Rice Is Never Fun

6 years ago when the Man and I were dating, he used to boast about how he could whip up a mean fried rice dish. He promised to cook it for me and I was convinced that a guy who cooks is a guy I can marry and rely on. I was duped.

Not that he is not reliable. But he never got down to cooking the rice at all!! Till today! Loe and behold!! He declared he wanna cook lunch! And he proceeded to call his mum up to get the ‘recipe’. Alamak!! My mother-in-law must have fainted after passing on some skills, for she hung up and called us back again within 5 mins (after she regained consciousness?). I picked up the call and in a somewhat-worried voice she asked after me. 1) She couldn’t figure out WHY her son is cooking if I’m not sick/dead. 2) Even if he is just cooking for the fun of it, she can’t figure out why I don’t know how to cook fried rice!

See! In that few minutes of the first phone call, the Man has totally tarnished my reputation in his mum’s heart!! =S There goes my years of trying to ‘act’ confident of my cooking and assuring her that I am not starving her son of yummy home cooked food. What have I been cooking if I can’t even whip up a simple fried rice dish?!!!

I had to assure her that I was fine and her son just misses his “Mum’s Special Fried Rice”. And no, I wasn’t sick or dying and of course, I wasn’t laying on the bed and shaking my legs, waiting to be served!

Oh well. The fried rice was without doubt, “Yummy Yummy Nice Good Good!” in Seth’s words.

The long wait must have been due to the need to plant rice and rear pigs for the sausages!

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Posted in Gushes and Kisses, Love is All Around, What's Cooking

Posted by: tituteo | September 19, 2009

Drama King

We had an early morning scare today!

Seth woke up and started tumbling around us, as was his daily routine. And in one final tumble, he twisted his arm and started crying. Now. Those who know my boy knows that he is a tough kid. He is very prone to injuries but gets over them as fast as he picks himself up.

So this time round when he cried non stop in pain, the alarm bells in our head were raised. I held him in my arms and managed to placate him only to have him wail all over again the minute he moves his arm. And so I hugged him and soothed his arm while he lay very still and sobbed for an hour. We tried to tempt him with treats of playground, gai gai (shopping) and swimming (ha!) but he rejected them all! He just wanted to lay on my arm with his little arm bent slightly and unmoving.

Usually when he injures himself, we will soothe him by applying antiseptic cream on his wounds. To him, cream is his miracle healer! And so the Man dug out the little musclerub sample we tucked aside long ago and did some ‘psychological’ healing while I took a quick shower and got ready to rush him to the hospital.

Ever so gently we changed him out of his pajamas and while I was pulling his shirt over his head, he instinctively straightened his arm and that was it!! He has been healed!! “No more pain pain.”

Sigh…. back to the monkey bars again!

You know how they say when you are dying, your life flashes back before your eyes? This morning while I was laying there with him, the Man’s life flashed before me. How he told me he was a naughty boy who often injured himself. He would jump on the bed and fall, tearing apart his eyebrow. Or he would be using the dumbbells and split his chin. His face is a battlefield of scars and stitches. I imagined my mother-in-law’s pain when he got hurt and I could totally empathise as my ‘injured’ boy lay crying. I imagined Seth with his arm in a cast and bandage and swinging on the monkey bar with the other arm….

Thank God my agony has been postponed. Yes. I’m sure I will not be spared in the future. Ah… the woes of a Mother!

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Posted in Child's Play

Posted by: tituteo | September 19, 2009

Word Play

We bought a labeller and started putting up stickers of words all over the house in an effort to promote word recognition in the lad. We labelled the furniture, the electrical appliances and the different rooms and spaces.

Seth followed us around as we stuck on the tapes and repeated the various words after us.

When it’s time for his shower, PaPa brought him to the bathroom and pointed to the word ‘SHOWER’ and asked Seth to read it. My confident boy proclaimed in an English accent, “Pong1 Pong3!” (Baby Language for ‘Bathe’). =S

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Posted in School Daze

Posted by: tituteo | September 19, 2009

Little Chef

I had been thinking of getting a play kitchen for Seth for some time. It’s an irony how everyone says play kitchens are ‘girlish’ and yet most famous chefs are male. Anyway, I finally found an ideal ‘macho-looking’ kitchen playset and the Man was immediately taken to it too! I called up Ikea daily to check on the availability status of the set and went down to grab it the moment it hit the shelves. We spent 45 mins fixing it up and our ‘dream kitchen’ was all set to fire up!

It was certainly money well spent when I could finally cook in peace while my little chef prepares his own meals instead of bugging me for snacks! Heh! But alas, he kept bringing his food for me to ’sample’ while I was busy cooking up a storm. =S

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Posted in Child's Play

Posted by: tituteo | September 19, 2009

Playdate

One of the advantages of Facebook is that I was able to track down and get back in touch with many long lost friends. And when old friends meet up, the best form of ice breaker is a common topic that never fails to generate ALOT of interest. Parenthood.

I, or rather, Seth was recently invited to a playdate with my Secondary school mate whom I’ve not met nor kept in touch for 15 years! I jumped at the opportunity to catch up and also for Seth to enjoy himself in the company of little friends.

And so the day before, I decided to bake some cookies for the date so we won’t arrive empty handed. Seth woke up from his nap just as I was about to cut the dough so I roped him in to help too! Armed with several cookie cutters in hand, he eagerly stamped out the cookies while I dutifully rolled out the dough. He loves the smaller cutters and will mutter “pmall pmall” as he cut. Yeah. Somehow he seemed to have forgotten his ‘S’ and has taken to replacing all ‘S’ words with ‘P’. I suspect it stemmed from the word ’spoon’ where he pronounced ‘poon’. It’s weird as he used to be able to say ’square’ but has now switched to saying ‘puare’. Sigh. Show of rebellion?

He loves to say “Yummy Yummy Nice Good Good” nowadays!

At my friend’s place, he thoroughly enjoyed himself playing (and terrorising) the 2 little girls. He loved the little cottage and cooking stuff Megan has and busied himself making burgers and coffee for us all. He toyed with handicraft scissors for the first time and was totally fascinated with it. It’s really seldom that my boy stays focused for long periods of time and I must say he broke his own record this time! He must have been cutting for more than half an hour!

I gave up trying to teach him to hold the scissors correctly since he seemed to be enjoying himself nevertheless!

As Megan had dance class later in the afternoon, we decided to tag along for fun. I was keen to let Seth do a trial class if he was interested but my boy has his own agenda on his mind! First he ’swam’ all over the place. Then he disturbed the others by running across the room (and screaming) as the teacher was dancing. The final straw came when he led them all on a rebellion (aka distracting Megan while she was learning a new move). I packed our stuff and shooed him out of the place as fast as I could before we got kicked out!

See how he enjoyed ’swimming’ on the floor while little Elyza was floating so gracefully? Megan looks disgusted though. :p

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Posted in Child's Play, What's Cooking

Posted by: tituteo | September 14, 2009

Potty Breakthrough

This is a moment in history that just has to be noted down! Last night, 1 day after his 2.5 year old birthday Seth finally managed to indicate he wanna poo in the potty! Hooray!! =D

Right. He has been pee-trained for a while now. But we have been having difficulty getting him to poo directly into the potty. The past few successful times had been rather forced with him giving the constipated look and us forcing him to sit on the potty till the poo comes. It was quite a horror and he has resorted to pooing in his sleep for the past month. We would walk into a “fragrant-filled” room every night and had to clean him in his sleepy state.

And last night…. Holly Golly!! He went up to Daddy and said, “Want poot poot” followed by hop hop hop on the spot. And had to repeat that a few times before the Daddy figured out his intent in disbelief! And that was when our little hero pooted his very first willing poo!!! Yay!!!

Okie. Grossed out message over. =p

On to a totally irrelevant note.

We got him a pair of training chopsticks yesterday and today is his first attempt at picking up red kidney beans. I must say he picked up the skill rather fast!! Pun intended! ;)

Ask him to pose only and he really put it in his mouth after that!!

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Posted in Child's Play, Gushes and Kisses

Posted by: tituteo | September 12, 2009

Update 2.5

The little imp turns 2.5 yrs old today! I’ve lost track of his various milestones and developmental abilities in comparison to the “world standards”. =p

He has not been putting on much weight since a year ago but just recently he has finally managed to tip the scales above 13kg. I’m not too anxious about weight issues for I’m sure with my genes, he can’t go too far off! :p It’s his height that we are more worried about! Heh! He is still rather “mini” and vertically challenged! My only consolation is that he looks “cute and tiny” at the moment!

He has been uncontrollably agile and jumpy lately. Choosing to jump instead of walk, he will hop around imitating the rabbit, kangaroo and (leap)frog. He climbs the window grilles and everything else with gutso and swings from them as he chants “Monkey Swing!” He loves to do somersaults on the bed, followed by free falls and jumping jacks. He jumps and runs so much that whenever we bring him out, we get weird stares from passers-by who must be thinking “He’s finally been let out! Poor kid must have never gone out before!” I swear we bring him out every weekend and sometimes on weeknights too! We can only conclude that he is HAPPY to be out anytime! And we have a really HAPPY child!

He knows his ABCs well and can recite the alphabets easily. Right.. Occasionally he’ll mix up his LMNs and he pronounces his W as bear-bear-you. But they sound cute anyway! And thanks to the Leapfrog DVD, he knows the phonics of all the alphabets by heart! He can count from 1-10 and recite randomly from 11-20 too! Seven is read as ’seh-yam’ and eleven as “eh-yam”. It’s so cute I am gonna feel sad when he finally manages to pronounce them correctly! He is able to count the things given to him up to a total of 10 items. Anything more and he’ll get really confused! He is not speaking in long sentences yet but mutters a spattering of words all the time. He never fails to amaze us with the new words he regurgitates and we find ourselves asking each other who taught him those words. He says “Oops” as “Oos-pu” and loves to say “Yup! Correct!” as his affirmative.

With tone-deaf parents like us, it’s a wonder when he first started ’singing’ Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Ok, he only managed to sing the first line just this week. And apart from the ABC Song, this is his very second nursery rhyme! So, Hooray!! We signed him up for swim lessons but after crying continuously throughout the whole session for 4 weeks, I finally waved the white flag and pulled him out. Sigh… guess my little flying fish dream is just not meant to be…yet!

Lately he has been super clingy and attention seeking. He will cling onto my legs, hang onto my skirt and simply just stick to any part of my body within his reach ALL THE TIME! Sigh. He takes a long while to warm up to a group and it’s really getting on my nerves! In my perfect world, boys should be independent and left to roam (and terrorise!) wherever they are. So I get very irritated when my boy hangs on to my thunder thighs and falls short of crawling under my skirt when we are in a gathering! Double Sigh! I guess it’s finally time for me to sign him up for some classes to rid him of his shyness! :p

Ah… the Kiasu parent’s search for the PERFECT school begins!

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Posted in Child's Play

Posted by: tituteo | August 22, 2009

Lil Playmate

I ended my babysitting stint 2 days ago. It was a temporary arrangement from the start when I was approached to help some friends care for their then 6 months old baby. I took up the challenge partly to experience how it would be like to take care of 2 kids. Heh… it’s no mean feat, I tell you!

Initially I was not sure how Seth would react to a baby in the house. However all my worries were unfounded when he took to little Meimei (sister) immediately! Albeit too lovingly! =S He would kiss her (even her feet!!) and hug her (sometimes too tightly!). Sometimes, he would even offer her his food (to my horror!). He would wait by the side while I bathed Meimei and rush to kiss her the moment I placed her down to get dressed. Once he eagerly offered to hold her milk bottle, but I found him feeding the high chair instead as he watched the milk drip with interest. =S Oftentimes, he would offer to burp her too and will grin with delight when she gave a not-so-ladylike bletch! And for the past week, he even managed to climb into the cot to play with his little Meimei!!

Now that little Appy has got her grandparents to care for her, we’ve gotta say goodbye. Seth has been asking for Meimei the past 2 days. I guess he does not really understand why his Meimei is not coming anymore. He would say “Meimei go In-dah” when we asked him about her. Ah… My Sweet Little Boy!

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Posted in Child's Play

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