The Nine Days

We hung out, went places. Monday we went, for the first time, to the National Museum for the Children's Season 2010, after reading about it on some blogs. I have been trying to arrange a playdate with my dear friend's daughter forever, but have not managed thus far because of work &/or nap time clash, so this week, we finally made it. We even managed 2 outings!

They had fun playing with the giant flannel storyboard, creating 6-legged sheep, and a ladder on a car since no fire engine could be found. They even tried to climb that little ladder. They got to try on some costume, which Matt totally hated.


I don't wanna be an insect; Izzy loving her frog costume

I also brought Matt for trial classes, first at BroadwayBabies at Kids Performing, and Kindermusik on another day. We both liked the former very much. The trainer was very good, very animated, and the kids loved him. To be able to command some attention from Matt, now that is something. Most importantly, Matt had fun. Maybe I might just tweak my work schedule and bring him there regularly.

Matt actually listening to teacher singing with a lego mike and reading Old MacDonald had a Farm

Then on Wednesday night, I thought he felt a tad bit too warm for my liking, and true enough, that night, his fever climbed up to 38.5C! Dang! When he woke up on Thursday morning, he was cranky, and spotted a wet nose :( We decided to bring him to the pediatrician in view of the long weekend. I braced myself for a full bout of flu since the last time he was ill was in October last year. But my little boy was a trooper, he fought it off on his own without medication, as he did the last round! Most proud of him. By Friday evening, the fever had worn off, and he was his jolly self again.

We also did some home improvement. We revamped Matt's bedroom, replacing his beloved sofa with a bed so that if we sleep over with him in his room, we have a proper bed rather than a sofa. Matt protested when he saw his favourite sofa gone, and cried endlessly until we had to drive him to sleep. Poor boy!

We moved the sofa to create a "second living room" upstairs. We now have a cozy chillout area. With a lot of coaxing and reasoning, Matt finally came to accept the new arrangement.

Oh, hubs and I have also embarked on a new project - gardening! We have absolutely the worst green fingers. We previously killed the most unkillable plant, so this will be a new challenge for us.

Been a good week for us, except dealing with the maids. Urgh. Don't wanna go there!

All's Well That Ends Well

What a bummer I had to go in to work on a Sunday, but if that half hour is what it takes to free me from going in tomorrow and disrupting my plans for the week, I took it on willingly.

Plus, Matt could run about here once I was done with work since this was near workplace. We chased birds, counted boats on the river, ate ice cream and ran about trying to tire ourselves out. A great end to the weekend!

The Week Ahead

My in-laws left for Australia for a 9-day vacation, so I have taken leave of absence from work to care full-time for Matt. My in-law's maid is staying over my place, so I am a little apprehensive about TWO maids at my place.

But more than anything, I am excited. There are so many things I want to get done this week. Home improvement. So many things I want to do with my boy, too. I have quite a number of activities planned out.

It started off well. I got home after half a day's work on Friday, put Matt to his nap, cooked his dinner and got everything ready in time to send my in-laws to the airport. We had enough time to let in-laws have late evening tea before check-in, for Matt to enjoy his routine shuttle train ride, and then drive to East Coast for dinner. Maybe as if knowing that he will have mama for the rest of the 9 days, he happily chomped down his dinner. We even had time to go for a short walk at the beach. In the darkness, I swayed him in my arms as he leaned comfortably on me, enjoying the sounds of the waves and the sea breeze.

Let good times with Matt continue to roll. Even better if hubs can manage some off days here and there. Please don't let the maids kill my good mood.

Toilet Training

I have been going at this rather inconsistently. Sometimes, I feel Matt is ready, I am very "on." Sometimes, I feel thwarted by my in-laws who don't quite follow the same things I do, but I cannot force them, so then I regress.

Pee-ing. We have been going diaperless from morning till about 3pm daily, bringing him on a regular basis to the toilet as he does not know yet how to tell us that he needs to go. But if we say "lets go pee" and he has the urge, he will run along. Otherwise, he sometimes ignores us, or protests at times. So we are slowly getting there.

My problem is at nap time and bedtime. He still takes in a whole lot of milk before he goes to sleep. The diaper I put on typically gets slightly soiled. I don't know how to tackle this. Do they learn / Are they expected to hold even with that amount of fluid consumed just prior to sleepy sleep? Or am I suppose to eliminate pre-sleep feeds?

Now poo-ing, I have a big problem. Only recently did I succeed in getting him to sit on the toilet bowl after buying him the Thomas Train toilet seat for some amount of money!! But hey, if it gets the job done, I'm happy. These days, he happily sits on it. But he just wouldn't poo. I might even venture to say he can hold it in until I give up after 15 mins of watching him on the throne. I'll wear the diaper for him to take his nap, and then he'll royally do his business with the diaper on.

How man?

Changi Boardwalk

Last Saturday evening saw no rain and great weather in the evening, so we headed for the great outdoors. We decided on a different "walking material" for a change. So we headed to Changi Boardwalk. Not too strenuous like the 4.5km MacRitchie Tree Top Walk.


The Changi Boardwalk is a scenic coastal walk with panaromic views of the Changi coastline, with sailing boats gently bobbing up and down as the sun sets far down the horizon. It was a peaceful walk, with frequent stops as little Matt looked curiously at motor boats zooming by, canoes stacked up neatly in their rack, straw huts, the jetty and occasional planes flying by.

Canoes "come alive" for Matt; staring intently at the sail boats


The unmistakable father-son stride


My very happy boy

Library Books

We borrowed quite a number of library books. Matt fell in love with a few -

Ted and Fred Go Camping - Similar to another favourite book we have from the Ted and Fred series, this book teaches opposites through a fun story of two dogs going camping. Matt absolutely loves this book that we must've read it at least 50 times in the last 3 weeks. He has even memorized the book!! I hear him reciting the story in his car seat, before he falls asleep, or when he is lazing in bed before he gets up.

Pigs Love Potatoes - This book features mommy pig cooking potatoes for her family. As more and more piggies join her household, mommy pig has to cook more and more potatoes. Matt especially loves the page where he counts 1 to 9, and yells out loud that there are 9 pigs! Since this book, he has taken to eating potato with greater delight! :)

Pigs Might Fly - Inspired by the original Three Little Pigs, the authors weaved another story of how the pigs join a plane contest to get free pies and the big bad wolf tries to thwart their plan. Quite a hilarious story, which Matt enjoyed thoroughly since this involved aeroplanes and not just houses.

Red Light, Green Light - A picture book that shows how a little boy creatively used his toys, cars, animal figurines, pencils and books to build various traffic scenarios. Matt is too young to know all that subtlety, but he enjoyed the book for all the vehicles and colourful drawings.

The other 3 books were not such great hits with Matt.

He really loves the first 2 books, which made me wonder if I should buy our own copies. But wouldn't that defeat the purpose of borrowing and the concept of library?! Well, if I did, I guess it is a surer way of knowing that he will like the book if I bought it.

I explained to him how I need to return the over-due books this morning, how he will not see the books at least for a while, and how he should share, and how we will get new books, but my poor little boy could not comprehend all that and protested hard with tears in his eyes.

But lets see. Maybe other new borrowed books will do the trick.

Why Stop At Growth Spurt?

Wouldn't it be lovely if there were toddler nap spurts and sleep spurts?

The Dilemma

Matt turns 3 this year. Most kids his age are already attending pre-school. Matt? He stays home mostly, doing jack. He spends his days playing with his train set, fixing puzzles, watching Word World and Wheels on the Bus DVDs, listening to me reading story books to him, taking bus and mrt rides, running around in the garden, digging sand at the playground nearby, spending time at yeye's place learning nothing constructive. The only class he attends is his weekly swim class.

There was, and still is, a lot of inertia and reluctance on my part to start him at pre-school. I am not a cool mom when Matt falls ill, and I am certain he will fall sick often if he attends pre-school. Rite of passage, building up immunity - I know all about that, but I felt subjecting little Matt to all these were unnecessary. Not at that age, anyways. A November baby, he was barely 2 in Jan!

I wanted Matt to have a childhood where mama is around. I wanted to give Matt a childhood. A longer childhood. A fun childhood. One that he will remember playing hide-and-seek with mama, laughing hysterically when we roll around the bed, one where he kicks air instead of the ball and falls and still laughs gleefully. General silliness. A childhood that he explores things on his own - notices the lizard on the ceiling, that grass is soft, that some bugs fly, that people have emotion, all in his own time. Not through classroom learning.

And I guess I do not want him to grow up too fast.

He enjoys books, has good motor skills, speaks some, sings some, knows to share, is gentle, is cheeky, and most importantly, has fun doing all the things he does every day. I'd like to think he is developing well.

Sometimes though, I self-doubt. I know I am not doing enough for Matt. I don't have many flash cards. He doesn't learn phonics. He doesn't know colouring. He is not interested in hand painting. He doesn't really know how to recite A-Z. He doesn't know how to hold a real conversation yet. His peers are doing more or less of all that.

I look at him these days, and I know he is capable of so much more, and learning more than he is now. Why am I not taking advantage of this? Am I doing him a disservice by keeping him at home?

I finally got my act together and registered him for N2 which starts next year. I might just be the last mother standing who starts her kid in school at 4! Maybe I should be doing more in the time being. Like start him in a pre-school right away? I don't know. Inertia.

I still want him to just have fun. Being silly. At home. With me.

Changing Faces Year 2

Most noticeable change - more hair!

Changing Faces Year 1

Miss those days when Matt was chubby chubby.

Pixel Perfect

My first love in photography when I first could afford a film SLR was landscape photography. Naturally, that came with a love for travelling to places with great wonders of nature. There's something about being out there, standing small, up against the mountain so high, the sky so wide. I love it.

And then to try and capture what I see with my camera. Typically, I will try and try to adjust the perfect shutter speed and aperture, shoot and shoot, then keep my fingers crossed that the prints will come out great (those days, with film, you never know what you gonna get).

Batam, 2007

Nepal, 2002

South Africa, 2006

California, 2005

I don't get as much time doing landscape photography these days. I miss it. It has been overtaken by portrait photography. Which is, to me anyways, a completely different thing.

With landscape photography, my subjects - the mountains, seas, long stretches of beaches, amazing canyons and lakes, skies so blue, green gardens - all stand still for me as I attempt the perfect shot.

Portraits - I suck at it. My subject looks left, right, up and down. Fidgets. Runs. I am never quick enough. Sometimes, by the time I get my camera, the act is all over. My lighting is always inadequate, or too much. Once in a while, I get good ones. But never consistent. Which is frustrating. I wanna take better portraits of Matthew, and people in general. I want to take shots like they do in the studios. So nice.

Oh, and bless Steven Sasson for the invention of the digital camera. I can now practise without thinking about the costs of film and developing.

So practise I will, and improve I hope I will.

Puzzle Extraordinaire!

Children are what they are exposed to by their parents. Since about 18 months, I have employed puzzles to attract him to "settle down" given his active ways. His attention span is surprisingly long on this one.

He started with this. 2-piece puzzles. Took quite a while to get the concept of puzzles, and to piece two to make one animal. But once he grasped it, he never looked back!

He then moved on to this. Bought this from Popular for $9.95. Contains 8 mini puzzles, each ranging from 6 - 10 pieces, some as small as a 10-cent coin! They have different themes - transport, farm animals, around the house, etc. Matt played with the puzzle, day in, day out. He really mastered all 8 puzzles.

And during Christmas last year when gugu was back from Australia, she challenged him by putting out all 8 puzzles. With all the little pieces strewn behind him, he sat there and slowly worked through them all. We were impressed, part at his ability, but more so at his patience.

We further encouraged him by buying him these rather pricey 15- and 20-piece puzzles from Growing Fun. Big mistake. It took him only 2 -3 days to master each of the puzzles. But he loved them and played with them for weeks.

video's a tad bit long .. don't know how to cut

Seriously, I did not make much out of Matt's ability with puzzles, until my friend recently pointed out that her god-daughter is much much older, and is probably not half as fast as Matt. I guess ultimately, children are what you expose them to.