Friday, January 29, 2010

The Blog That Makes Me Go 'Aww...' and 'Wow!'

It was love at first sight.

There is just so much to adore about Chubby Hubby

Behind all those great photography and mouth-watering reviews about food, I suspect lies a very sentimental and romantic man with perhaps an awesome personality too. 

With all honesty, I find it irresistible that the man would so frequently refers to his better half as 'my darling wife S'.  His open endearment never fails to make me smile.

Go check it out for yourself and enjoy this GEM of our blogging world! 




Wednesday, January 27, 2010

My Favourite Crafts

Here is a revisit of my favorite crafts that my boys made in the last 12 months. In random order. 















Paper Peacock Collage











How nice to look back and remember the fun we had making these together. There are at least another 40 crafts which they have made since last April during the lapbooking classes but are not featured in this blog. I have to find a way to document them since we won't keep them forever. 

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Of Guns and All Things Destructive

We just can't underestimate the influence that friends at schools have on kids once they attend school. 

Though my boys don't watch Ben 10 and Transformers or any of the other cartoons/programmes with fighting themes, they will still meet kids in school who do. 

A few months ago, my 5 y.o. started getting fascinated with the idea of pretend play with guns and shooting. Since there is no toy gun at home, he makes his own with tiny Lego pieces. 

So now, even little Chipsy will create his own Lego 'rifle' and run around the house playing fighting games with his bro'. They pretend to 'shoot' every moving thing and each other with a loud 'geng-geng-geng', which is frankly very noisy, but yet funny to watch.

As much as it annoys me, I *try* not to interfere, though I made it clear that mummy doesn't like it when they play like this. 'But we are only pretending, no one gets hurt here!' is the reply I always get.

Fingers crossed that it is a phase and they will soon grow out of it. 

Monday, January 25, 2010

A 3-Year-Old Monologues


#1
Imagine you get trapped in the building and you are surrounded by water. The ocean I mean. Imagine you are too small to swim. Here comes a fireboat. The brave firefighters spray water to put out the fire. And save you. Imagine that. Imagine the cowy is also trapped. And firefighters can only save one boy. No cowy. Cowy must die then. Hmm.. I tell you, cowy dies and becomes beef. 

#2
You see, the arm of the cherry picker will go over the top here. It is too high for the man to jump down. He has to sit in the cage and be lifted up. Here comes the rain. Man is picking apples. He sees the storm clouds. Here comes the thunderstorm. Kr.. kr..kr.Ch..ch..ch..ch..  
He hears the sounds of thunder and sees the lightning flashing. Thunder roars and lightning strikes, you know? The man gets scared. Very scared. 
 

I swear, this is how my 3 y.o. talks ALL day long. I think it is pretty cool and I am enjoying every moment of it. 

Friday, January 22, 2010

My Babysitter






This 856-pieces set has been keeping my boys VERY occupied from the moment they wake, all the way till bedtime.

EVERY day in the past 3 weeks!

I bet Santa had the idea to spoil my boys rotten when he hid this huge box behind the Christmas tree. But it had worked out pretty well for me as well. 

Except when it comes to time to clean the floor. That is when ugly scenes *may* arise. 


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Watch What You Say Around the Kids

My 3 y.o. was hiding at a corner of the living room playing by himself. Out of a sudden I heard him shout 'internal bleeding' twice. 

I was stunned for a moment. 

What did he just say? Did he say 'internal bleeding'? Huh? Who? What? 

I looked in his direction. He is fine. Still playing. Alone. 

I asked 'What did you just say, Chip?' 

Without looking up, 'Huh? Mummy, what did you ask?' 

I repeated. 

'Oh. Internal bleeding. I said internal bleeding. Cowy here (he held up his toy cow which he named 'Cowy') has internal bleeding because he hurt himself.' 

Ahh... kids are so cute! :) 

But E and I just have no idea where he has learnt that term from. Kind of worrying really. 

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

See... It goes up, and it comes down


The 5 y.o designed this vacuum truck, which is supposed to be capable of vacuuming up everything in its path. 


Monday, January 18, 2010

Mate for Life






I won't want to ever live without it. But I am VERY picky and won't settle for less - it has to be Active, Raw and with UMF25+ (the picture above is not the same). 

All it takes is 3 tablespoons and 3 litres of water in one day, and preferably with 10 hours sleep too to work the magic! 



Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Learning and Growing With Friends


The foursome and their super-noisy little chat at McDonalds while waiting for snacks to arrive. 

I am always tickled watching my boys with their friends. 

The kids have come a long way... since the first playgroup when M was just 15 months old.

Though M and E's weekly playgroup was discontinued when the kids started nursery in 2007, we (E's mum and I) resumed a similar gathering for the younger siblings a year later. 

The older kids were reacquainted in April 2009 when I started the lapbooking classes and have been in the same class since. Nine months and six lapbooks later, they have acquired the habit of starting a discussion and carrying on their knowledge exchanges with each other whenever they meet (discussion units are part of our weekly lessons, so they have plenty of practice!). 

Very recently, I have initiated a weekly Chinese session for both pairs of siblings. It still has a long way to go, but with some perseverance, I am sure our efforts will pay off. 

Learning and growing together with friends is simply precious. It is the kind of memories I still cherish of my childhood. One day, I hope, when my boys read this blog, they will remember these moments and treasure the memories, as I did. 

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Standing Up For Himself

I like it that my little boy is no pushover. 



My 3y.o. looked at this photo earlier and remarked, 'I am very angry with that girl because she would not let me push that in the Paragon playground'. 

I am surprised that he remembers since that happened 2 months ago. 

He wanted to turn the 'barrel'. She didn't want it to move. 

He kept telling her 'take your hands away, I want to move this', 'can I move this please?', 'I just want to turn this barrel to make the spaceship move' etc...  she simply refused. 

She didn't even utter a word throughout

Then she let out several loud shrieks! One after another. They were all incredibly high-pitched and went on for several seconds each. 

Unfazed, he told her calmly, 'It is not nice to scream. You talk. No screaming!' But the screaming continued. 

I didn't intervene straightaway, so as to give him the opportunity to handle the conflict himself. But I was less than a metre away anyway, watching them like a hawk, in case she were to hit or bite him. 

Fortunately, none of those happened. Instead, every time he said something to her, she just screamed. It was kind of tense for me back then, but now on hindsight, it's quite comical. Imagine a grown-up man trying to reason with his girlfriend and all she does is scream instead of reasoning with him? Hah!  :P

At one point, that poor little boy turned to face me, looking exasperated and a little affected by her screaming (I remember his lips were curled downwards). 'She is not listening to me, Mummy. She just screams so much! She doesn't talk. Only scream and scream!' he whispered. 

But still, he stood his ground and stared at her for the remaining time... 

until... 

finally, the gal's mum marched over and removed the screamer. 

Monday, January 11, 2010

Going Green

Photo by: Michelle Meiklejohn

As much I enjoy my juicy steaks and savoury meat dishes, I can hardly call myself a meat-lover.

Over the years, I realize that I have an inner 'alarm clock' that emits strong signals whenever my diet lacks an assortment of colorful vegetables and fruits. 

All it takes is a few days of not munching enough of these food rich in anti-oxidants and I will feel queasy and uncomfortable. 

It is a welcoming craving which often urges me to seek out the freshest of nature's goodness. If I pay attention to what my body is telling me, I would order the greenest salad on the menu and fill my supermarket basket with the freshest, unprocessed nature's produce of rainbow colors. 

But I don't always do that. Not last year anyway. 

Now, that has to change. 

One of my resolutions this year is to go greener. On our diet at least. I plan to incorporate three vegetarian dinners per week and to make sure that the family finishes a whole basket of fruits in the same period. 

The kids will have no problem with vegetarian dinners, but I am not sure if I will get unanimous vote on this decision. (Yah, I didn't discuss nor consult before making up my mind on this one because I know the answers already!) :P  But hey, there will still be 4 more non-vegetarian dinners in a week....  *.*

As for the fruit basket, I face some challenges too since everyone in the family, except me, is picky about the kind of fruits they eat. 

My 5 y.o. eats only apples, pears, bananas, grapes and avocadoes. My youngest will happily chomp down a giant avocado daily, throughout the year, and perhaps one or two bananas a week. But other than that, I get a 'no-thanks Mummy' reaction. The husband has very specific preferences and if, offered anything else, he will usually murmur a super polite line in the likes of 'oh I ate that in the office today!'. 

Hmm.. it can get real boring buying the same fruits when the supermarket aisles and shelves are often filled with many, many other choices which my boys won't touch.

But I have decided that it is still worth a try. I shall go ahead and buy a basketful of fruits this week and hope that I can tempt someone, anyone to be more adventurous. 

And if I fail, well, at least I will be eating more fruits than I should. But that shouldn't hurt either. 

Friday, January 8, 2010

Crazy Rhyming

In the past few days, my 3 y.o. has been reading Dr. Seuss, specifically Hop on Pop with me. 


The funny rhyming style must have inspired him somewhat as he makes up crazy rhymes all day long while playing.

I overheard him making this hilarious one up while he was on the toilet seat... 

Fudge on butt
Butt on tart
Fudge parks
Butt farts
Fudge on fuzzy butt

Heehee... I made him repeat it so that I could type it out. :) 

And he just made up these ones while I was typing this post.

Hot pop
Pop is on a pup

Toy points
Toy is on a point

Mr Fuzzy and Mr Garby (I spelt 'Garby' based on how he pronounced the name)
Mr Fuzzy has a baby. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Cheesy Twists


They look like the Chinese fried dough (also known as Yau Char Kway or you-tiao) except that they are NOT! 

They are made of puffed pastry and cheddar cheese and are baked instead of deep-fried.

I made a batch of this a few weeks ago with my 5 y.o. hovering around. 

Easy peasy recipe.  Big on taste. 



Great for nibbles. In fact, so good that my 5 y.o. ate 5 strips at one go. 

To prepare 20 twists,

Ingredients: 
butter for greasing
85g to 100g grated Cheddar or Gruyere cheese
375g ready-rolled puff pastry, defrosted if frozen (according to packet instructions)
1 egg, beaten

Steps: 
1. Preheat oven to 200 deg cel. Grease a large baking sheet.
2. Sprinkle grated cheese over sheet of puff pastry. Fold the pastry in half and roll out a little to seal the edges.
3. Cut the pastry into long 1 cm (or 2 cm if you prefer 'fatter' strips), then cut each strip in half and gently twist. Place on greased baking sheet. 
4. Brush with beaten egg and bake for 12 min or until crisp and golden. Cool on wire rack. 

Viola!! 

Monday, January 4, 2010

Bathroom Surprise



'Mama, I am done!' called M from the bathroom. 

I walked in to see this.  :D 

And.. this being my first post this year... Happy New Year, everyone! 

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