Speech

B's grasp of communicating and his vocabulary amaze me all the time. I find myself being pleasantly surprised often. Things that I did not think would register, did. Those books were right I guess - speak to them like you would to an adult, no baby talk and keep communicating with them from day 1.

Not because I am following instructions from those parenting books,  but because since confinement days, I am usually home alone with him and to keep my sanity, I talk to him a lot.  "Baby, mummy's gonna change your diaper/feed you/give you a bath etc". When playing with him, I generously threw in the "I love yous" and "mummy's sweetie pie". You know,  a bit like Tom Hanks and his basketball friend Wilson in Castaway.

Besides imitating the sounds animals make, he recognises a lot of the flash cards. . Even though I stopped flashing for a while.  We've been reading a lot of Peppa Pig lately - he seemed to have moved on from Goodnight Moon. With Peppa Pig, his favorite pages are those that he can show off his "grrr", "oink" and "roar".

I'm On A Roll

Well... I decided since I'm free now (DH went for his gathering with army friends and B is knocked out), might as well blog what I had originally planned for tomorrow.

Check out the mess.

But what is this bit of mess if it brings me 20-30 minutes of peace and quiet? B is pretty self sufficient in that sense... he doesn't bug me to play with me, unless he sees me loitering about. Most of the time I feel so guilty that he is playing alone I go and disturb him and offer to play with him. Sometimes I just enjoy the peace and go about doing my chore or cook. But we get so tired of clearing up his books and flashcards we decided to get a proper book shelf. This was shared by a few mummies and I absolutely adore it. B loves it too! Makes it easier for him to pick and book and throw on the floor.

DH took the day off to accompany me to Dr Wong's today for my routine pap smear. I had initially wanted to bring B alone but the appointment clashes with his nap and even if he wasn't asleep, I know there is no way he would let go of me and therefore I can't get my checks done.

It was soooo good to see Dr W and be back in her clinic. The clinic assistants were happy to see B, while B on the other hand, was obsessed with the toys there. It was even more surreal for DH and I to ne sitting there, looking at the card I made for Dr W and looking at all the first time parents expecting their love.

One of the first question Dr W asked after B was delivered was "is other of you mixed blood? He looks a bit mixed". Today, Dr W asked again, she was pretty sure there must be some mixed ancestry way back up the family line. It was quite funny.

Well, who knows when is the next I will see her right? Since DH and I are taking the not-trying-not-preventing approach.

Let's see.

Let's Talk Crap

Excuse the language, but I meant it literally.

My poor boy suffered from constipation 2 days back. And by constipation, it's not the usual have-not-pooed-for-few-days kinda constipation. It was the rock-hard-poo-stuck-at-anus kinda constipation.

Well, sorry for the visual imagery you might have now, but I reckon since most of my readers are mothers, you probably also hold a major in poology.

It started when he was doing his usual straining, as he always does, regardless the texture of his poop. And after awhile after he stopped, we thought, "ok, time to change him". Turned out, nothing on his diaper. We scratched our head but let it be. Almost an hour later, the straining started again, and we checked, and yet nothing. This time, B started whining a little. The whines became louder and it evolved into cries. I checked his anus and saw the poop already there but it was too hard for him to force out. Poor baby. We didn't know what to do, he was crying, we were helpless and the poor boy had to suffer. So I tried to lift both his legs to his chest and he cried even harder. I undress him and took him to the shower and spray water up thinking it might perhaps help. No idea what I was thinking. In fact, I wasn't thinking.

We decided to stop and let him rest when I saw "it" gone back up. He stopped crying. Took and chance and gave him dinner, surprisingly he still had an appetite and finished dinner. I thought maybe some form of exercise or movements might do his bowel movement good, so we let him play/chase bubbles. Then it happened again - this time he started crying at the first strain because he knew what was coming. No choice we decided to help him dig it out. Now is the time to skip to the next paragraph if you do not want visuals. Not wanting to injure the area around his anus, we took cotton buds and tried to dig the poo out. Indeed, the poo was rock hard, it was difficult to even dig the middle portion out. All this while I was carrying him, knees to chest and DH was trying to help. It did work though, within seconds IT came out. Poor baby - the look of relieve on his face. This is something I do not want him to go through again.

Prevention is always better than cure, and I have been conscious to make sure he gets his fruits servings every day. Usually apples, blueberries, papayas and kiwis. As for his water intake, boy, does he love water. I almost need to refill his magmag 2-3 times everyday. Our group shared before fruits that causes constipation and those that relieve it. The 4 Ps are good to relieve constipation - prunes, plums, peaches, pears (I'm surprised papaya is not one of them). A simple way to help relieve constipation is to get the BRAT out.

B = banana
R = rice
A = applesauce
T = toast

I think probably what contributed to B's constipation was too much bread and rice and apples! He has toast for breakfast almost everyday because he has no interest in other food. He has rice most of the time, and his favourite fruit is apple! I had introduced prune juice (diluted with some water) and gave him dragon fruit and papaya this week instead of apples. He was fine yesterday, but today no bowel movement. Hope it will be smooth sailing tomorrow.

Mourning

Being a mother changes my perspective on many things. For examples, I am more tolerant towards a crying toddler in public instead of finding them a nuisance. I am empathetic when I hear news of miscarriage.. I get very emotional when news of toddlers injuries or even death spreads around.

In recent light of both MH 370 and MH 17, my heart wrenched every time I read or hear the news report.  It could have happened to our beloved national carrier,  carrying people we know.. "so and so ' s friend was on that plane. ..", our nation could be mourning instead of our neighbours.

Life is so unexpected. Always treasure our loved ones.

The Little Actions

I think I have a cheeky monster. A cheeky monster who knows who he can take advantage of.

Yesterday while trying to get him to nap, he kept asking for water. After the 3rd request, I got tired and lazy and refused to budge. He asked again  and pushed me off the chair to go get it. The beginning of my slavery. May seems funny at that time but we think it probably is time to start disciplining.

Then for his second nap, he was clearly fighting the z monster and was already dozing off. But he decided to jump up and take his pacifier off and give me his megawatts grin which will melt you instantly. After he could no longer fight and realise he wasn't getting out of a nap, he fell asleep really quick.

This morning, as I was pouring him a cup of fresh milk for breakfast, he went "moooo". Then I realised it was the cow on the magnolia packaging. Too funny.

And again as we were prepping for nap, I asked if he can call me mummy. He did, but threw in an extra "daddee". His father was so happy to learn that.

As the days go, he's more aware of what's happening and constantly surprises us with his little actions. It's when I find myself laughing and grinning all the time that I realise this boy really is my everything. I am nothing without him and my hubby.

Quiet Birthdays

I wonder if its true that as we get older, birthday is yet another day.

Even before B came along, DH and I had stopped our partying ways long ago. We did drink very often, but not to the extent of waking up with a massive hangover. As far as I remember, except for his 40th, the last few birthdays were pretty low key - dinner at a nice restaurant followed by drinks at a fancy bar. Just the 2 of us.

Last weekend, we celebrated his 42nd birthday, which is today. Asked him what he want to do and he said, "Just quality family time with both of you". I had wanted to do a last minute staycation at Ritz and was this near to booking it. But after sleeping on it, I decided against it, for we just came back from Shang, this was too last minute, I didn't want to take advantage of our good times at Shang and do it again without proper planning and risk B possibly ruining what could be one of the most expensive night stay in Singapore for us. Hahaha. But it is crazy expensive - one night stay in Ritz could bring us two nights at some other hotels, even Conrad!

Anyway, we were glad I didn't make a rash decision and decided to cook for him instead. So after B went to bed, we enjoyed dinner over a bottle of really nice Chardonnay. Best thing? Everything cost less than $100.

O...kay.....

So I managed to get the picture back in the header, but I really can't be bothered to do the same for the rest of the pictures on the blog. So... let's move on.

DH is on the way back as I type this and its the start of a long weekend for him! He took the day off on Monday so we can have more family time together. I, on the other hand, have yet to decide what we are going to do to celebrate his birthday.

***

For the last few weeks, some of us have been taking turns to host play dates and it really is great fun for both mums and bubs. Unfortunately most of the pics were in my iPhone so not able to post.. mostly involved the mothers trying to get the babies' attention and failing badly.

Are My Pictures All Gone?

Can someone tell me if it's just me or all the pictures on my blog are gone?

I've recently gotten a Samsung S5 because my iPhone dropped and cracked. The thing about Android is it somewhat automatically sync your google+ stuff.. I think. So I ended up having loads of pictures from the past in my phone, which for some reason couldn't be deleted. I had to google (haa!) how to remove those pictures.

It seems that problem was solved but another has risen? If that's the case, I have to "redo" the blog design. Crappity crap.

Well on a separate note, DH is away, again. And I'm moping, again. This must be the 8635th time I've written here about being emotional when he's gone. But I can't help it. I guess we should both be somewhat happy that we are feeling this way after almost 8 years of marriage and more than 10 years together.

That said, his birthday is coming up next week and I'm freaking out because I have not planned anything. Well, we weren't able to properly celebrate both our birthdays since B came along. I was glad I did the big 40th bash for him before we were expecting. And now that I do not have my own income, there are lesser things I can do.

Any suggestions and recommendations on what we can do as a family?

I Am Wang Year Old

Driving home from yoga last night, I thought of the conversations I had with B and chuckled out loud in the car. It went like this:

Me: Can you tell Mummy what's your name?
B: Buuuuuuuad
Me: How old are you?
B: Wang

He is "wang" year old. Hahaha.

Not being able to pronounce his Rs... he differentiated "Brad" from "Bad" by dragging the B.

Buuuuuuadley.