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...

three cents on breastfeeding

and so it became the gold class standard that in order to be a mom that provides the best for your kids, you had to exclusively breastfeed for that first six months of your little joyful bundle's life...

sounds like no problem at all you think...at this point i would request persons with overactive visual sensors or friends with no kids and don't know what the hell i am talking about to just shut the screen and tune back in for the next post. sometimes ignorance can really be bliss....

so as i was saying...breastfeeding contrary to secular belief does not come naturally to all moms. There is nothing natural about fully grown women trying to figure out how to bring a biting and furious or sleepy and disinterested baby to the breast, a squirmy subject whom incidentally happens to be only a few hours old and figuring out how it works for the first time too.

Oh man, with Aly, i had to battle with milk not coming in, pressure from the confinement auntie, bloodied nipples from all that tugging and biting. All of that emotional trauma i never experienced and the sunken feeling that i possibly may not succeed at being a good mom. It literally and figuratively sucked. Thank god for lactation consultants and nipple cream! We eventually managed to overcome the initial road blocks and i managed to breastfeed Aly for close to a year (though supplementing with fm from month 5 onwards)

With asher, all the nightmares of breastfeeding which i managed to forget came back all over again. Although this time i managed to avoid seeing blood but the issue of undersupply as usual crept in around the same time as asher was about 4-5 months.

The law of basic economics is a wonderful thing but somehow in the world of breastfeeding, mommies just can't find that equilibrium which is supposed to oh come so naturally. Oversupply leads to pumping and bags and bags of frozen milk that gets eventually thrown away when they expire not to mention a higher risk of engorgement and mastitis for the mom and baby throwing up from the overfeeding. Not fun. Underdemand? A very skinny baby where parents worry and wonder if the baby is having enough nutrients.

Undersupply and overdemand. I think the most traumatic of the lot, emotionally wearing down the mummy who feels inadequate and lousy for not being able to provide and poor baby of course, always fussy and hungry for more.

Overall, i salute all breastfeeding moms, no matter how long they manage to keep it going. It is not funny having a few kilograms of weights strapped to your chest every 2-4 hours to suckle. Waking up at all inhumane times of the night to latch little bub back to sleep is the hardest especially when mommy has to be fully functional during the day too. Furthermore, working and studying moms have to lug pumps, bottles, ice packs, cooler bags and detergent to work / school everyday and suitable facilities for nursing are not always readily available for all.

I was going to post this much earlier on but i accidentally deleted the post. Now Asher is already six months+ and thank god we have made it together this far and i am still breastfeeding even though i have to supplement with a bottle of formula for the last feed at night.

I am going to try to make it till a year i hope but who knows. Despite all the difficulties, the bond you feel with your child when breastfeeding is irreplacable. When you hold your baby and watch him snugly fall asleep with a satisfied "milk face", the tiredness washes away. I came across the article below on breastfeeding as well which is absolutely funny. So hoping this would spur other mommies to continue their efforts too. Kanbate!

http://ouradoptionfaithwalk.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/world-breastfeeding-week-salute.html?m=1

the emba journey begins

today marks the last day of a very long week for me. i decided to embark on further education sometime back and this week was the first week at school. i spent this week occasionally mulling the consequences of my potentially reckless decision, constantly wondering if i would emerge from this in one piece. the only saving grace was that i am still in between jobs at the moment, so work commitments have not found its way to the equation yet.

within a day or two, i soon realised balancing a very demanding school and family was going to be absolutely herculean. it wasn't just me taking an emba...the whole family was taking it along with me. mom and hubby were fully mobilized for the one week exercise, transporting and caring for the babies, milk, diapers etc on a full scale basis from 7am to 10pm. babies x 2 have to wake earlier and sleep later and neither  were particularly pleased.

i slogged through the first week of strategy, organizational behavior and statistics classes, struggling to keep up intellectual discussions or network with 37 other classmates (mostly enthusiastic alphas) wondering where all their energy come from. networking itself does not come naturally and i found it at times more demanding than the lessons itself. the lecturers were amazing and made boring subjects come to life and surprisingly i never felt inclined to doze off despite the sleep deprivation at night. in between breaks, i pump to try to maintain the milk supply but the volume dipped as the week wore on.

finally Sunday came and as i finished off the stats exam paper, a huge feeling of lightening embraced me. after lunch, we headed to east coast park with the kids. as hubby brought Aly for a walk and i sat on the bench facing the sea and feeding Asher, i decided there was no better moment to blog than now.

i pondered if i was being fair to my family for cutting short their family time with me. i wondered what my groupmates thought of me for missing part of the case study discussion as i had to rush off or pump etc. and i really wondered if i had just concocted and consumed unwittingly the recipe for disaster. cognitive dissonance was at its all time high.

as the wind blew in my face and i looked back at the week past, it dawned on me that i was seriously overthinking this stuff. who doesn't struggle in life or constantly juggle conflicting priorities? even though i have brought it up a notch personally, the core values don't change. family still always comes first to me. :)

with that, i head over to Brussels sprouts for dinner with the hungry and sleepy kids and sign off here. unfortunately no beer for nursing mummies now so i'll just have to wash down my revelations with some cold iced water. most of all, i have to thank my super mom and super hubby for supporting me in this journey despite where the road leads.

Try not to be a lazy parent

That's what i continuously try to remind myself all the time...and it is ridiculously hard not to take shortcuts every now and then. It's too easy to settle the kids' meals via takeaway, go to a mall instead of having an sweaty jaunt outdoors, shove them an ipad at mealtimes to keep them quiet or turn on the tv the whole day instead playing and talking to them. I had so many values to uphold when raising kids before i actually had any kids but many have given way to sheer parenting exhaustion. The national day "long" weekend that just passed certainly couldn't have felt any longer...to a mommy of two demanding babies.

However this long weekend, i reminded myself again not to be lazy and we were so rewarded though super tired! To avoid a super long narration of the super long weekend, here are just some highlights!

1. 7 august grandma's (ah ma) birthday. Aly made her very first birthday card for ah ma by herself (though instructions, layout and 10% help came from me)

2. 8 august - supposed to have a marina barrage picnic planned with 12 adults and 10 kids but rain dashed the plans. Wet weather program was activated at changi t3 viewing gallery where a few sloping structures and lots of open space to run kept all 10 kids ridiculously happy for free...

3. 9 august - playdate at godma house where we stuffed ourselves silly with mee siam, tongheng eggtarts, homemade cowboy caviar super yummy salsa and chips, home baked chocolate chip cookies and more. We ended the day with Aly watching her first ndp on tv although we had to keep stopping her from trying to switch the channel to okto Haha.

4. 10 august - off to ah ma's house again for a big family reunion. My mom wants to bring all her siblings together by having cookouts once every two months. Great idea :)

5. 11 august - hanging out at parkway parade, great lunch at ichiban where Aly happily ordered her own meal informing the waitress that she wants the children's set B. Followed by mommy indulging in fabulous finds on clothings 50% off at mothercare...hello kitty pj grab! Peppa pig swimsuit grab! We followed with a stroll around our katong neighbourhood and picked up a box of macarons to bring to my brother-in-law's (dua pek) house. We ended the day with a great swim session with Aly and her two cousins at dua pek's. It was the first time we got Aly floating by herself with the two star armfloats and the ring float she refers to as "zero". Happy!!

Oh dang...i still ended up with a super long narration! Oh well...but the super happiest part of the weekend was hearing Asher laugh for the first time! A real proper laugh! :) kisses to the boy who has already stolen my heart with his coos and smiles!

Hello Asher!

Asher ng jing kai is baby number 2, now just a teeny 3 month old. He was born on 21 April 2013, weighing in at 3.19kg and 51 cm (almost the same measurements as big sister 3.17kg). With his arrival brings the number of stubborn taurus babies in my family to the grand total of two!

Asher whom we like to call Asher boy, also has a head of showstopping hair drawing bountiful comments from aunties young and old... "wah his hair a lot hor!" is most frequently heard, followed by "girl ah?". Alyssa at the same age was almost always mistaken for a boy, even when fully decked out in pink ruffles. The naughty curls didn't appear until after she was one year old.

Asher is always full of smiles, whenever anyone smiled at him, he always gave a big grin back! But he always saves the biggest, gummiest and toothless wide smile for mom and dad. I guess that's our reward for the mountains of diapers and poop ploughed through to date :)

Asher being so social and all, is terrible in the carseat, unless you had the energy to talk to him throughout the whole ride...thank god Singapore is small. Asher is also a uber light sleeper which makes putting him down for naps oh so tough. So glad for the miracle blanket again which Aly also loved that keeps him asleep for longer at night!

We look forward to crossing all the baby milestones with you too Asher boy! Stay oh so dashingly cute!