Drying Monster

Somehow, Sam has never stand/sit still sedately & let me dry him off after his shower. Except for the times when I've given him a big scolding of course! Usually, I end up having to chase him around on our queen size bed, torn between wanting to just give up & let him play around naked till he's consented to the clothes & diapers, and worrying about him catching a cold with his still-wet hair (esp. with Mummy's & MIL's warnings in my ears).

So had invented a few games to keep Sam happy & gives me the chance to dry him off, fun style. Well, it doesn't help with getting the clothes on yet, but at least he'll be properly dry.........

This time, I'm the "Drying Monster", chasing Sam with the big towel while he squeals in laughter & run around letting me chase him - ya, if I don't chase him he'll go "come, come"! I'll mention each body part I'm drying, and Sam will try to cover those areas with his little hands, and yes, squealing in laughter as he's doing so.

Wonder how long he'll find this game fun before he loses interest again............

My Fav 2008 Christmas Trees

This year haven't seen much large X'mas trees in the shopping malls, partly cos not convenient to bring Sam to go shopping in town, partly cos a lot shopping malls scaled down the X'mas deco due to the economic downturn.

So just have 3 trees that I like this year:

Left: Elf in tree, Ground floor of VivoCity. I went past this one on 2 separate occasions, both times viewing it from the 2nd level only, didn't have chance to go see it face-to-face!

Centre: the soft toy tree in Suntec Convention Centre, in aid of charity.

Right: am so glad Takashimaya Shopping Centre have their usual tree, this year with my fav gold & red colour combo! This year, they used solar panels to power LED lighting on the tree, thus reducing plenty of electricity usage & helped keeping the earth a little greener.

Sam's 1st 'Painting'

Decided it's high time to expose Sam to some arts & crafts, since he hasn't attended school for nearly 2 months now. So let him tried the painting at the Creative Art Corner in West Mall, level 2. Chose a helicopter design for him, since there wasn't a car-related one. This small-sized picture costs $5, but the lady-in-charge was very nice.

Initially, my mum insisted I not waste the money, as Sam is 'too young' to paint. But by then Sam was excited about getting his own 'copter', so I thought just to let him try & see how fine his motor skills are.

Surprisingly, Sam allowed the lady-in-charge to hold his hand and guide him on squeezing out the coloured paints and filling up the voids with a toothpick. He refused to let me do the guiding!

10min & 4 colours later, Sam had picked up the concept of squeezing the paint, to the extent we had to keep stopping him from flooding the entire picture with the same colour!

The lady-in-charge helped cleaned up the picture to give a pretty final presentation. After heating in the oven, the paint dried to a rubbery finish:

The helicopter now resides on Sam's bedroom wall, ready to be joined by Sam's future efforts, especially since the chain has promotion: collect 9 stamps (1 for each $5 or $8 picture) and get one $5 picture free. It's just opened a new outlet in the Jurong Point extension, level 3, so now there's somewhere more meaningful to spend Sam's time instead of just wondering around the shops.

The chain's 3rd outlet is in Causeway Point.

Sam Threading Beads

I had been a bit worried about Sam's fine motor skills. So today bought him a box of wooden numerical bead for him to play with. After about 10 min of trying & demonstration, he could thread a whole string of beads all by himself:

His choice of colours a trifle funny: he went for the black zeros 1st (I guess they resemble his fav wheels), then the light green number 8s. The reds & oranges lay untouched........

Perhaps I should have just splurged & gotten the $20 branded box of animal beads in Toy 'R' Us, instead of this $13 Made-in-China box that I'm still wondering if the paint is toxic-free. Then perhaps the zeros & eights will have their holes in the centre, and the holes for threading would be smooth, & won't keep snagging on the shoe strings that came with the box. But then, after Sam mastered the skill of threading he'll probably lose interest in the new toy, so..........

Sam showing off his masterpieces:

I'm not an imaginative person.......wearing the threaded beads like a belt, around the neck like a necklace & carrying them around like a bag are about the only uses I can think of for the finished strings of beads. Dunno how long Sam will find that entertaining...............

2-Word & 3-Word Phrases Now....

Sam has finally begun to speak 2-word English phrases (2 words spoken rather accurately & naturally one after the other, and not having unwanted pauses in between). It's rather exasperating to find out that despite all our efforts to encourage him to say things like "Open please", he picks up phrases like "taxi stand" & "car park" almost immediately after I speak those phrases to him in passing! What is it about cars that keeps so much of his attention?????

His 1st 3-word phrase???

"la la tang" - in Mandarin, meaning: spicy sweets.

It came out when we were going home in our car. I suppose he was trying to tell us what he wants to eat, but I have absolutely no idea what his "la la tang" is. Who on earth would give a child spicy sweets?????

I'm still wondering what was it that he wanted to eat.............

Wonderful Neighbourhood Hair Salon for Kids!

My mum suggested I try this hair salon near her place after she heard about my disastrous attempt to cut Sam's hair at the one near mine. I was very doubtful initially about her recommendations (based on years of experience), but this time, I'm so glad I took her advice!

The hair salon in question looked just like any old small salon in a neighbourhood centre, but it's filled with toys to entertain its young customers - cars, dolls, electronic moving & singing mobiles etc. The owner even has a containerful of lollipops to coax children with!

And the 2 hairdressers are obviously experienced with dealing with children. They are deft & quick with the haircut, gentle when coaxing the children, and knows when my son has reached his limit and not to insist on the finer points of the hair style.

So for the 1st time in Sam's 2.5 yrs of life, my son actually has a hair style instead of just an all-head shave!

Yes, Sam is still sucking on his lollipop after the haircut!

And it only costs me S$6!!! The hair salon near my place who couldn't even get Sam to wear the plastic cover around the neck wanted to charge me $16!

Thanks a lot, Uncle! I'll definitely be back!

Gg Unisex Hair Salon
Blk 166, Bt Batok West Ave 8, #01-248.

How I Spent My Birthday

For the benefit of my sis, I've decided to blog how I spent my yesterday:

Got woken up by Sam at abt 7.:45 am as usual.
Ham & cheese sandwich for breakfast. Took me one whole hour to get Sam to eat his.
Sam got me angry overturning all the clothes my MIL was folding on the sofa. Smacked his arm so hard the red mark stayed for half the day.

Brought Sam down to the playground downstairs to play at 10.20am. Kena a class of what looks like K1 or K2 students from the NTUC Childcare centre downstairs. Those children shoved my son, knocked into him on the slide (not on purpose, but no apologies from any of them) and generally didn't seem to know how to treat a younger child at the playground at all. And none of the 3 teachers overseeing them did anything!

So when one of the boys stopped my Sam from crossing the 'bridge' the 3rd time, & even pushed him away, I told him off (and not politely, I must admit). Only then did one of the teachers came over to tell the boy to give way to the "di-di".

After this episode I'm damn glad there's no vacancy for Sam at the NTUC Childcare downstairs!!!! I don't wanna my son to spend so much of his time in a place where they don't seem to teach manners!!!!!!!!

Anyway, after letting Sam play at the playground for abt 20 min, I took him away (I had enough of the children there). He then ran around the void decks for a further 15 min, after which I got him upstairs.

Then I surfed the net for abt 45 min while FIL watched TV with Sam.
Lunch was fried noodles, courtesy of my MIL.
Sam pooped, I showered him, got him to nap at 1.45pm.

Only managed to watch half of the Taiwanese variety show 王牌大贱谍 guest starring my fav singer 周华建 (promoting his concert. Thanks to Sam I'm in no position to go), before Sam woke up from his nap at 3:30pm.

Fed Sam, kept him entertained from in-laws watched the dunno-which-hundredth episode of 意难忘.
Ikea delivery & assembly of our bookcase, so thereafter started re-packing some of Sam's cars into the new plastic containers, easier for Sam to take & keep his own toys.

Showered. Tried new pumice scrub & foot rub lotion, a birthday present from MJ.
Dinner of fried rice (courtesy of MIL again).
Watched half hour TV, then started bedtime routine of Sam at 8:30pm.

Hubby came back in the midst of the storytelling.
I nipped off for a piece of choco I asked hubby to help buy (to help ease my bad mood on the 1st day of period) while hubby did the before-bedtime toilet training for Sam. Hubby had 2 boxes of choco, I opened the most convenient one (the unwrapped one), which was Lindt's milk chocolates, which was way too milky for me, so I returned to Sam in an even worse mood.

Got Sam asleep by 9:45pm. Opened the wrapped box of chocolates, hubby's attempt of birthday present amidst his long working hours (even had to take cab home to be in time to see Sam awake) - Lindt's champange truffles. These were good.
After eating 4 of those in succession my bad mood abated somewhat.

Watched last episode of the Taiwanese idol drama 不良笑花 on internet. Will miss the comedy love story between Rainie Yang & Wilbur Pan and the lovely ending theme song (带我走 by 杨丞林). Fortunately, Channel U will be screening it from next Monday at 7pm, so still can watch the trailers on TV.

So that was how I spent my 32nd birthday.

Finally, an End to Breastfeeding!

After 2.5 yrs, I think I can finally say that I've finally stop breastfeeding Sam! He hasn't asked me for milk for >2 weeks now, even when I'm cuddling him.

Thanks in part to the house moving, and all the shopping in Orchard for the past month, which tired Sam out sufficiently for him to nap by himself in the afternoons without me holding him in my arms, now I can finally try to find time to go myself some new 'normal' bras to fit my fat self.

Yes, none of my old bras from before pregnancy fits now, since I've gotten from M to L size for clothes. ;P Had been using my nursing bras with the help of extension hooks for the past 1.5 yrs in fact!!

So now's the time to buy some new ones while there's the X'mas sale going on...........