Mid autumn festival 2013

Absolutely too lazy to head to town to buy any mooncakes this year...not a bad decision considering the inflation rates for mooncakes is higher than that of developing third world economies.

We head to my mom in law's house as usual to celebrate and turns out she already had 3 boxes purchased by the other siblings, so much that we even tapao-ed some without being contributors this year.

Soooooo the kids as usual couldn't wait to rush downstairs after dinner. There were already quite a few groups downstairs, the families as well as the usual teenagers taking the opportunity to "legally" play with fire, vandalize and destroy public property.

Aly and her two older cousins, aged 5 and 7 made a beeline for the playground. Nobody wanted to play with the lanterns! Haha...we adults were forced to carry them while the monkeys went to play.

Now the only kid i could manage to interest in the lantern was asher boy. Asher's ah gong bought him a real sweet hello kitty lantern complete with disco lights flashing to the loud tune of gangnam style...an uber cool choice for a five month old boy Haha. I turned it on and sure enough he was at it in a jiffy with all arms and legs kicking and extending. Within seconds, lantern went from grubby hands straight to the mouth...a real slurpy treat that was...oh well.

Ku-Ku brought with her bubble solution and soon became the life of the party at the playground. There is always something about kids and bubbles combined that makes instant magic. Oh well, if lanterns don't do the trick...

We only managed one decent photo taken by handphone. All in all another fun day!

Of duck confit and coffee shop bars

Enjoying some me time is absolutely fabutastic after five months taking care of asher full time. So i went for an interview today and left both kids with mom.

After the interview, i came home to grab dinner and shower first. Had a nice relaxing bath without worrying about asher bursting into tears outside...ahhhh simple pleasures. hubby was meeting customers at home, so i took the opportunity to scoot out and find some eats in my neighborhood.

No lack of choices in katong...i settled on the coffee shop - bar at the intersection of joo chiat road and east coast road...Ali barbar. A place i always wanted to try but not exactly the most kid-friendly. This was an old coffee shop recently renovated into a chill hangout that still served up coffee shop nosh in the day but converts into a cool bar at night.

I managed to get a seat, lucky considering the place was always packed. My reason for picking the place? I wanted to try the famous French cuisine stall that had been operating in the coffee shop even before the renovation - la petite paradis.

I am a sucker for ducks so naturally i order the duck confit which set me back 14.90. I could have added foie gras for ten bucks but i decided to save that for another (hungrier) day. They handed me one of those blinking devices that would vigorously vibrate to inform you when the meal was ready for self-collection. I ordered my coke at 1.60, cheapest bar i have ever been to...wished i could have ordered beer Haha.

My table faced the big tv and star sports was on (not F1 though) so i was kept adequately entertained while i waited for the food to arrive. The duck did not disappoint and the picture i tried to take with my phone doesn't do it any justice. Crispy, juicy and well seasoned on a bed of mash potatoes and salad on the side. Yum. I am sure eating the meal without time pressure and baby in arms also helped but the food was good! Definitely worth another visit to try the rest of the menu!

Afterwards, i proceeded down joo chiat road to check out the neighbourhood community centre. Yes i have one! Pleased to see 2 badminton courts available...it has been soooooo long. I popped in the reception to check on classes available for kids, unfortunately they have nothing at all for children below five, oh well...

All in all, i was out by myself for slightly over an hour. But the benefits immeasurable; recharged, relaxed and blissful :) i guess i don't need much these days...Haha. I also decided the next round when i do this again, i shall target to take on the pork knuckles and sausages at the newly opened brotzeit across the same intersection...except will take Hubby along next time!

Little Asher has a cough :(

So i was led to believe that exclusively breastfed babies below the age of one had excellent immunity against germs and viruses. Or perhaps it is true for most but here is four month old Asher, coughing away sounding exactly like me in one of my 100 day cough episodes. Poor boy :(

We brought him in to the doctor yesterday and he received a standard issue of cough mixture and nosedrops. The doctor said that very young children tend to be at higher risk of having the cough spread downwards to the lungs and developing infections simply because they are weaker and also have a shorter windpipe. Thank goodness Asher's lungs were clear for now and we were instructed to bring him back in case he starts to make wheezing sounds. So we are really praying he gets better soon!

I know its a bit silly to blog about a mild cough but it just made me think about whether it was true that the first child in the family gets the better genes (not necessarily in terms of looks or intellect but more in relation to health). Asher has definitely had more run-ins with the paedatrician as compared to Aly so far. I myself also thankfully avoided inheritting my dad's asthma that my younger sister and brother got.

Asher had jaundice after birth (though not uncommon and not at levels requiring treatment) so we had to bring him back for checks every other day in his first 2-3 weeks. When he reached 2 months, he developed bad ezcema and we went back to the pd once again where he was prescribed cream and shower foam. Both the items were not available in retail pharmacies and cost a whopping 75 bucks in all excluding pd consultation costs which were always in the 80-120 dollar range. We were also instructed to discontinue usage of mass market brands for Asher like Johnson and Johnson and kodomo as they would likely exacerbate the ezcema. We joke that Asher was such an sk-2 baby but i certainly hope for him that this ezcema is childhood related and would go away as he gets older...

It is quite interesting that with Asher being a boy, i seem to be worrying much more because with any minute illness, i would immediately start thinking about how he would cope in the Army next time e.g. With Asher's ezcema i immediately worry about the associated risks of asthma (with the family history) and reading about a recruit dying from an asthma attack in a gas training just freaks me out. I know army days are not for another 18 years but its funny how i can't prevent such random thoughts from creeping in.

With Aly, the daddy definitely bears the brunt of all the worrying. Daddy freaks out at every single fall, bump or scratch. Aly is only two now but i can imagine all sorts of nightmares the daddy has or will have including those involving Aly's future boyfriends and him walloping every single one of them for not being good enough. The terms "daddy's girl" and "mommy's boy" ring so true...sigh.

So anyway, i hear horror stories all the time that once kids start school, the whole family take turns to get sick and the cycle never stops. Aly starts school in January and i shudder at the high potential of flu, chicken pox, hfmd and whatever onslaughts coming our way. It seriously sucks when your kids are sick, no matter how big or small the illness is. There are simply no appropriate words to describe it especially even more so when the illness is a serious and life threatening one. Never have i been so morbid and paranoid until i became a parent...fear is an understatement.

Well...enough about the topic and i hope Asher springs back to his smiley healthy self very soon. I know there was a huge gap between this and my last post because i accidently deleted a very long post on i was writing on breastfeeding by mistake...fat fingers on the mobile phone sucks. I will try to reconstruct that post soon...