Happy Birthday Caden!!

Both of us are on leave today to celebrate Caden's 3rd birthday by bringing him up on the Singapore Flyer. There is an opening promotion which comprises of 2 paying adults with 2 free kids entrance passes. So Caden gets to go in free (otherwise we have to pay $20 for him!).

Caden had his fav breakfast at Ya Kun in Compass Point in the morning after we dropped off Ethan at Grandma's place. He was happily chatting up with a younger boy (29mths old) who was seated next to us. We were glad that he is beginning to become more sociable and the exposure in Playgroup seems to have made some progress on his social skills.


Eating his french toast at Ya Kun

We then proceed to the Singapore Flyer as PaPa is afraid that he will throw out all his lunch in the event that the height is too high for him to adapt. We also thought that Caden will appreciate better during noon time, before his afternoon nap period draws near, in case he gets cranky. We have to find ways to make Caden feel excited abt riding on the Flyer before boarding as he is usually height phobic.




And true enough, the moment he is in the capsule, he started looking worried and clinged onto PaPa tightly.. Mummy has to quickly warm him up in the capsule by walking around, hopping abit and making him feel excited abt the moving wheel.. and thankfully, after a short while, he began to feel more at ease and started walking around and even taking pictures for Mummy and PaPa!

Looking worried as the capsule takes off

After the warm-up


Playing around with PaPa


Caden's masterpiece


End of the ride


We were lucky enough to be alone in one whole capsule as today is a weekday and we rode during lunch time... so it is quite an exclusive experience and panoramic view from the top. And definitely, we will only pay once to enjoy this experience cos it's simply too expensive a price to pay for a 30min ride on a gigantic ferris wheel. If not for the pandemic HFMD that is on-going, we would have brought Caden for some other children-themed parks today to celebrate his b'day..


And the celebration ended with lunch at Crystal Jade Kitchen restuarant (also his fav) where he had his usual Shrimp Wanton noodles and tim sum and had slurped up half of Mummy's herbal jelly for dessert!



Dozing off on our way home

Caden's 3rd birthday party

We decided to organise a birthday party for Caden's 3 years old celebration. It is held today at our place, and guests were kept at a minimum. Caden has been looking forward to the party as we have put up the birthday banner and decorations 2 weeks back.

Caden has been obedient enough to be able to eat his lunch on his own at the kiddo table and gobbled down 3 bowls of rice + otah, fishballs and sauages... he tried to mingle with the older boys as they play (rough) in the small room, and been running around with them.

The children were delighted with the cupcakes that we have ordered for his party. Each one of them pin-pointed their own choice of cupcakes, which ranged from pirates to parrots to owls and other small animals. Caden has difficulty blowing off his lighted birthday candles and the rest of the children helped with their saliva decorated in the process.

It was a very tiring event for Mummy as she has been cleaning up the house in the past 3 days, packing up the toys (shelving aside some that she obviously doesn't want to have any missing parts), coordination the food, ordering and making sure the cakes arrived.. etc. PaPa has also ben driving up and down to get things in the process. Mummy's friends asked if she is going to organise a birthday party for Ethan, the answer for now is no...

but who knows, we may decide to have one 6 months down the road...

Caden, completely knocked out after the party at 3pm..

Ethan turns 6 months old

Our Lil Ethan turns 6 months old today.. he is still very baby-lish, loves to sleep alot, very quiet baby, cries very loudly when hungry.. recognises his milk bottle at this point. He has also learnt to hold on to his own milk bottle during feed...

His routine has been pretty fixed. 6plus for first milk feed, 9 plus 2nd milk feed, then nap through 2-3hrs, 12 plus for cereal, 2pm for milk feed, then nap through another 2-3hrs, 6plus for milk feed, then abt 8-9pm for last milk feed before he sleeps for the night.

We were browsing through Caden's development when he was 6 months old. Caden has learnt to sit by himself at this stage then. Although Lil Ethan is slower, but we are not too worried.. so long he maintains his healthy state (could be becos of my milk), we'll be happy..

Biting his fav toy of the moment:

Always enjoying his bath time

Caden loves his school

Nowadays, we need not worry about sending Caden to his child-care centre for his 3 hour programme due to his usual separation anxiety. Mummy has been taking her leave in the last few days and tried sending him to school. He was able to guide me to his school from Grandma's house though it is a 10 mins walk. The moment we reached the school, he couldn't wait to take off his sandals, and say goodbye to me, then dashed to the classroom, to join his friends.

He loves to quote his school friends to me, they are, shawn, dennis, aidan, ya wen, claire. And when I peeped through the school's window, I saw him happily running around with the other boys and talking to them. Just yesterday, he managed to recite a "Xiao bai tu" poem in mandarin which Chen Lou Shi had taught him...

It's a pity that we will have to switch his school next year to Living Santuary located in Hougang for logistics purposes. In order to make Grandma's life easier, it is more efficient to send Kimi and Caden to the same school and same time slot. Hopefully he will adapt fast enough there in year 2009.

Ethan's first cereal meal

We were late in getting Ethan started his cereal diet as he was down with stomach flu last week. Anyways, finally bought the instant cereal for him to get him start on semi-solids food. Our first attempt was such a failure, Ethan wasn't used to spoon-feeding, and the look on his face told us that we were stuffing some foreign particles into his mouth..we will continue to feed him with the instant cereal till he gets used to it.. the pictures below illustrate all..




After the attempt was made, Ethan suddenly cried loudly.. we then gathered that he was crying for his usual milk feed!

All's well

Finally, everyone has recovered from the stomach flu bug.. the latest victim was PaPA when he went into a weak state on Mon and Tue. Yesterday, to bring the kids out for a fresh dose of air, we decided to go for a walk at Parkway Parade.. mummy's idea of course, so that she can shop around the place with topshop, perkins and club marc.. more impotantly, we needed to get Ethan's cereal as he is due to start his semi-solids diet..

Ethan is down...

On Friday, I received a phone call from home, my MIL asked me where have I kept Ethan's fever medicine, and to my worry, Ethan was down with fever. When we reached home from work, we found out that not only he had fever, Ethan also had diarrhoea for 3 times. We gathered that it must be the same strain of stomach flu virus which has attacked Caden, Mummy and Grandma so far..

On Sat, which was the first time that we brought Ethan to Dr Sim for an illness, he was given 2 types of diarrhoea medication. Dr Sim advised that if Ethan spit out the med we should cover his nostrils which will naturally make him open his mouth and swallow them... True enough, Ethan was smart enough to spit out the foreign liquid which was injected into his mouth, so we had to cover his nostrils.. He cried a big time but no choice, the med is supposed to make his stools harden and stop the diarrhoea...

Fever did not recur since Sat, but to date (Sun), Ethan is still down with diarrhoea. We have been providing 100% breast milk (lucky I still have extra stocks) to overcome this (cos cow's milk is no-no for time being), but didn't seem to improve too much, although the stools became more pasty.

Hopefully our dear lil darling recovers by tomorrow and poor Mummy can't be home early tomorrow cos she has a deadline to attend to in office..

One week ago, when he was happily well..

This weekend, when he's a bit more tired and lethargic

2 long weeks

It has been a long and dragful 2 long weeks to Mummy. Papa left to serve his national call since last Tues and be back today. During this period, I was either on leave full day, if not half a day, to make sure that I don't reach home late at night without car transport.

So going to work each morning is already a drag.. I was so used to being ferried around since I always have my usual big tote, breastpump bag and laptop bag which I carry to and fro work. Staying in Punggol makes my journey worse as I need to switch to different lines of the train tracks.

Then came bad news from work. Can't elaborate too much since some of my work colleagues may have access to my blog - so hush hush for now, but definitely its bad enough to dampen my mood for the last 2 weeks..

Then Caden came down with a bad hit on stomach flu since Friday night. Today he is still vomiting in the morning and have been very reliant on me to provide my attention as usual.

Then to top up the worst day of the period, I have been contracted with gastric flu as well.. I have no choice but to be on medical leave today despite having my reporting period starting today..

so it makes a lot of sense to have both parents around when you have young children, otherwise one will end up suffering like me (not to mention the sleepless nights from the 2 crying babies) in the absence of one. I kept telling my ah lou that his NS is more lax than my "NS" at home...

Anyway, ah lou will be back this evening.. my nightmare will be over soon, provided my flu bug goes away quickly as well..