TAIRVLYN’S BLOG

continuation from the previous post…

14th Feb 2010 – not only it’s the first day of CNY & Valentine’s Day, it’s also Sar-Ee’s birthday! :) So it was a triple celebration for our family…

We had 2 celebrations for Sar Ee. The first one was 1 week before the actual date. We went for lunch after church service at this place called “Ben’s Place” ; Sar Ee’s choice of venue. It was a cosy, quiet place with great food.

everyone's happy after a good meal.. (we were all too hungry to take any photos when the food arrived! haha)

 

with papa in the pic

 

 

Then on Feb 14 itself, we went for dinner at the Ferringhi Garden.  It was a CNY cum Birthday celebration….

CNY deco @ Ferrighi Garden..

lion head deco..

the food…

some of the food that we ordered… from top left : mushroom soup, caesar salad, grilled cod fish, grilled tenderloin steak. what's missing -> minestrone soup, grilled salmon, grilled lamb & seafood fried rice (ordered it for rachel)

check out the size of the pepper grinder!

smile (sam's missing in this pic coz he was sleeping in his stroller…)

here comes Sar Ee's birthday cake…

hazelnut cheese cake from SR

blessed 24th birthday, Sar Ee!!

Rachel helping Sar Ee to blow the candles…

beautiful birthday girl..

after filling our tummys, it was time to take photos! 

so hard to get the both kids to look at the camera….

darling and i….. the restaurant gave complimentary red roses for couples that night..Valentines Day mah…

Jee Ee & Jee Teow..

me & my darling kids.. (as usual we cldnt get them both to look at the camera at the same time…)

trying to take a family photo but this was the best we could manage…both kids just didnt want to cooperate…

Kong Kong and his pretty angels..

birthday girl with a lovely background (yup, a mini waterfall..)

at the walkway… the entire place has beautiful landscaping..

Jee Ee & Jee Teow @ the entrance..

GONG XI FA CAI!

CNY 2010, well, what can i say…. it’s Sam’s very FIRST CNY….  oh well, Sam’s still too young to fully enjoy collecting ‘ang pows’ but he was certainly excited to receive them coz the first thing that he does is to put it into his mouth! hehe.. As for Rachel, needless to say she was super excited to collect ang pows. Before CNY arrived, we reminded her that she needed to greet people ”gong xi gong xi” first before she can be given an ang pow. She said ok, but when CNY came and we went visiting, she turned all shy and refused to greet “gong xi gong xi”. SIGH… nevertheless she still enjoyed receiving so many ang pows and she told me “mama, i want to put all these into my camel..” (she was referring to her piggy box which was in a shape of a camel).

Well, besides visitation, CNY is all about feasting and feasting and feasting…… our very first reunion dinner was held 3 days before CNY!  That was together with Darling’s side of the family…

mama & her pretty princess…

the babies of the night…..Samuel, Jayden & Elias

shielding baby Elias from all forms of distractions so that he will finish his milk! hehe..

then on Friday (eve of CNY eve), we went to Tesco to do some last-minute grocery shopping. rachel had a very short nap in the afternoon so she was really tired and she fell asleep in the trolley in Tesco!

totally knocked-out!

CNY eve – reunion lunch @ my inlaws’ place. My mil cooked her usual yummy-licious CNY dishes, eg. “sharks-fin style” soup filled with lots of crab meat, sea cucumber, fish maw, grilled scallops, fried glass noodles with vege and seafood,  grilled chicken, mushroom & seafood clear soup…  Then evening, we had reunion dinner @ my inlaws place again. For dinner, we had steamboat with abalone, scallops, assorted mushrooms, vege, etc….  That was the 1st round. After we finished at my inlaws place, we went over to my parents place for Round 2. This year was the first year we had reunion dinner at my parents place. Normally we would all go to my late aunty’s place for dinner, but this year their family is not celebrating CNY due to her passing. So anyway, we had steamboat at my parents place. We were all so stuffed to the brim by the end of the night! But we had a really good time enjoying one another’s company….  unfortunately we didnt bring our camera, so no photos were taken.

CNY 1st day – went over to my inlaw’s place around 9something in the morning.

Sam : Gong xi, Gong xi, Ah Mah & Ah Kong!

now cheh cheh's turn… Gong xi, Gong xi, Ah Mah & Ah Kong!

thank you, Ah Mah & Ah Kong!

photo with Ah Kong & Ah Mah

what's that on TV??

kuih kapit + nutrigen = yummy!

After visiting my inlaws, we headed to church. Service for that day was a combined service at 10am. After church, we headed to my parents place.

gong xi gong xi, Kong Kong… ang pow for rachel..

gong xi gong xi, Kong Kong….ang pow for Samuel!

Sam : gong xi gong xi, Grandma…

rachel : gong xi gong xi, grandma..

mama & her pretty princess..

this is one of the rare occasions in which she allowed me to tie her hair..so i just had to ask darling to take a photo of this!! hehehe

Kong Kong & Grandma with their lovely daughters, handsome son-in-laws and charming grandchildren! A blessing from God! :):)

After a quick lunch, we headed to my grandmother’s place next…… the kids took their naps there and of course, woke up very happy.    to be continued…..

Our princess came down with a fever in the middle of the night on Wed night. Gave her panadol at 4.30am. Her fever was up and down on Thursday. Today (friday) she woke up with fever again and no voice!  Yup, it sounded like she had a bad sore throat. When I asked her whether her throat hurt, she said yes. So I decided to bring her to see the paed.

True enough, her throat was red and slightly inflammed. So antibiotics were prescribed along with the usual medicine for cough, cold and phelgm.

As usual, a visit to the clinic would also mean a chance to get the child’s latest weight and height. Rachel now weighs 14.8kg and is 94.5cm tall. Her paed says she’s slightly overweight coz the average weight of a child her age should only be 13kg. So I told the paed that Rachel’s tall for her age. Paed agreed (she said the average height of a child her age is about 80something cm) but however, she said Rachel is tall due to the weight that she puts on! I didnt quite understand what she meant by that but it certainly didnt sound very logical. In fact it sounded ridiculous to me coz i wld have thought that the height & her weight wld have balanced up… Anyway, didnt want to argue with her…

Then next, she told me that a child of rachel’s age (in fact 2 years old and above) doesnt need to drink milk. They should be getting all their nutriets from the normal adult food that they eat (eg. rice, vegetables, fish). Normal adult food wont make them fat, according to her. She said if still want to give milk, then it should be only ONCE a day…. All these time I’ve always believed that all growing children need milk to supplement their normal food intake and to get enough calcium to ensure they have strong teeth, bones, etc. And her definition of milk includes beverages such as milo, yogurt drink eg. Yakult, Vitagen, etc….so of all those, the child should only drink ONCE a day.

These statements made by the paed really left me puzzled…. somehow i tend to disagree with her point of view. hmm.. now i’m thinking, should i change paed for rachel? hehehe

btw, when i told darling, he was totally surprised. Then he went to search for a BMI calculator for kids and did the calculation. The results : rachel is NOT overweight! average range…..  :):)   a huge relief to hear that….. But still doesnt change my mind about changing paed (of coz, not only based on the reasons above, there are other factors too which is too long a story to tell now…)

anyway, regardless of whether overweight or not, I still love my darling princess the way she is….. cute, pretty, sweet, adorable and cheeky princess of mine! ♥

now, please pray that the antibiotics will work. Pray that God will heal her from her sore throat, fever and cough soon.

Samuel turned 8 months old about 2 weeks ago. He has made tremendous progress in the past few weeks…..

♦  teeth – both of his upper central incisor tooth erupted about 2 weeks ago. And just a few days ago, i noticed that his upper lateral incisor tooth has also cut through his gums. so he has about 4 teeth erupting at almost the same time…

♦  he can sit all by himself without support

♦  he can move from a lying position into a sitting position all by himself

♦  he can CRAWL!  and he crawls on his fours… his cheh-cheh had a unique way of crawling, she didnt crawl on her knees, instead she crawled “wheel-barrow style” (with her hands on the floor and her butt up in the air).. hehe. Sam can crawl pretty fast too!

♦  he can stand up with support. he has learnt to grab hold of something eg. the sides of the cot/play pen and pull himself into a standing position

♦  speech - his “vocab” has increased..new “words” - babababa, papapapa, mum, aaawoooo

♦  adores his cheh-cheh….he’ll try to imitate his cheh-cheh. Example 1 : one day, the cheh-cheh made the “shhh…” sound to ask everyone to talk quietly; samuel observed and then he said “ssssss….” ! hahahhaa.      Example 2 : when his cheh-cheh shouts with excitement over something, samuel will follow suit! then there’ll be a “shouting match” between the both of them! (we’ve got a video recording of this, but got to find time to upload) 

♦  likes to play with his saliva. blows bubbles when he is fed water via the spoon

♦  loves the mirror. he gets very excited when he sees the mirror and he’ll start laughing and jumping up and down!

♦  food intake – cereal mixed with chicken soup and mashed spinach, fruits, Rusks biscuits, milk

That’s a lot of progress isnt it? especially in terms of teething and his motor skills development. we are all taken by surprise at his speedy progress for the past 3 weeks…  all these time, his progress has been slightly slower compared to his cheh-cheh. but just within the past 3 weeks, he could suddenly accomplish so much. it’s as though he had a sudden growth spurt! hehe…   That’s all for now… will upload photos soon!

GONG XI FA CAI!  BLESSED YEAR OF THE TIGER!  

been busy, no time to update blog…  will try to post up the CNY updates soon…………stay tuned!

Here are some of his show of strength…

Sam's going to show u how to do some pumping

up! see effortless!

Let's have some fun with chehcheh ….*poking head up*

oops.. she noticed me behind her. hi chehcheh

and now , demo on crawling…. target red box thingo

I'm gon' get cha

I almost got ya…!

Gotcha!!

Next… demo on lifting power

testing testing… good to go

notice the camel full of coins…. heavy ….

oh no.. the 'wall' collapsed on me!

watch this! the mighty "Samson" lifting himself and the 'wall'

phewh,.. chuan already… everything set back to it's original place. Well actually papa put the cushion back for me

after a hard morning of pumping, crawling and lifting. I'm just gonna sit in my clothes box and pick my baju for kaikai

~ Tairven

Things have been really crazy at work, therefore, no time to update blog.. this is going to be a real short one.

Rachel turned 33 months (2 years 9 months) 9 days ago. My princess has grown so much…people tell me she now looks more and more like me…pretty like me..actually in my opinion, she’s prettier than me..   she can be a really charming angel at times but other times she can be super cheeky and naugthy and drive us all up the wall.

She’s about 91cm tall now, and weighs 14.7kg.

I’m happy to say that she’s now completely diaper-free except for night time.  Yes, even for afternoon naps, she diaper-free. The only time she wears diaper is night time. But lately she’s been waking up with dry diapers and she will ask for the potty to shee-shee. Will see how it goes before deciding when to take her off diapers at night too.

Her latest favourite phrase “mama, i don’t want to go to sleep”!  every afternoon and every night, she will utter this phrase over and over again. so i will tell her “ok, no need to sleep, just go to the room and lie down” or “just go to the room and drink your milk”. knowing that she will eventually doze.. hehe… she just wants to play play play..

she still doesnt like her hair to be tied/pinned. at times, i cannot tahan seeing her hair so long and not tied up. but then again, i am extremely reluctant to cut her hair short! hehe. so i’m hoping that one day she’ll be more than happy for me to tie her hair…

that’s it for now…till the next update…

Samuel turned 7 months about 1 week ago. Well, he has made quite a bit of progress…read on.

• Weight, height/length, head circumference -> no idea coz he hasn’t had to go to the paed coz he has finished all the compulsory jabs for the first 6 months. His next jab would be when he turns 1 year old.  In the meantime, I probably have to take his measurements myself.
• Teeth – still stays at 2.

• Solids – rice cereal mixed with mashed carrots. We introduced some fruits to him as well. He’s ok with apples but dislikes bananas! The first time I gave him bananas, his face wrinkled up at the first taste. 2^nd mouthful – still the wrinkled face…and next, the moment the banana touched his mouth, he screamed and cried in protest! Hahaha.

• Milk – still taking about 4oz – 5oz each feed on top of nursing direct from me whenever I’m with him.  We’ve tried increasing his milk but most of the time he’s not able to finish. So I guess he’s happy with 4 – 5oz.

• Sleeping – Sam has definitely made vast improvement with his sleeping habits much to his parent’s delight! Hehe…  At 7 months, Sam is able to fall asleep on his own in his cot at night.  Before this, we used to have to rock him to sleep. I can still remember those days when we had to rock him for half an hour or more just to put him to sleep! Rock until our arms go numb! But now,  he doesn’t want to be rocked. So after taking his milk, we’ll place him in his cot and gently pat him. He’ll turn and toss for a while first and finally when he’s satisfied, he’ll go to sleep! Although I’m glad that it’s so much easier to put him to sleep now, somehow I cant help but miss rocking my little baby… hehe… it’s such a warm feeling cuddling him close to me and seeing him fall asleep in my arms…like a little angel..
• Also, at 7 months, Sam is now sleeping through the night! HOORAY!  Praise the Lord! Sleeping through the night means being able to sleep for at least 7-8 hours straight. If he sleeps at 9pm, he’ll wake up around 5-5.30am for feed. After nursing then he’ll go back to sleep for another 2 hours or so. If he sleeps at ard 10pm, he’ll wake up around 6-6.30am for feed.  Yeay, finally I’m able to get a longer stretch (ard 5 hours) of uninterrupted sleep at night! Praise the Lord!
• Sam is also now able to sit on his own. Occasionally he can still lose his balance so we still need to make sure we’re sitting behind him just in case he leans backward suddenly.

• Crawling – well, he has learnt how to push his butt off the ground when lying on his stomach. And now he is learning how to put 1 knee in front to push himself forward. He loves to turn himself on his tummy but gives up easily when learning how to crawl. After a few tries, he’ll start screaming in protest already!
• Speech – well, we’ve been trying to teach him how to say “mama, papa, cheh-cheh”… he will always stare at me with a very focused look when I teach him those words. I think he’s processing it in his head, just that he doesn’t know how to utter them yet. Hopefully he’ll learn to say “mama” first.. hehe    his vocabulary in his baby language has grown…he loves “talking”….. some of the ‘words’ -> woh, ahgoooo, heyo (his papa says it sounds like “hello”),  boooo, ooooo, etc

That’s about it (at least for now, that’s all i can remember.. hehe). will try to post up some recent photos SOON…

~(updated photos on 18/1/10 by Tairven)

OK you people have been seeing me snacking on fruits and olives on twitter and facebook. Many speculating that I’m trying to lose weight or something. Here’s really what’s happening…

Darling has been bugging me to go on a healthy diet for a longest time ever …. and it took just one medical report to get me on it right away.  Nothing serious, all’s good and I’m not going to die any time soon  

My main problem according to the report is, too much fatty food intake is causing some things to go up, like cholesterol and uric acid. All caused by too much trans fat, despite the doctor telling me my fruit and vege intake is good. The main culprits… hawker food and fast food……. those are mostly my breakfast and lunches.  Supper has been mostly bread with ham/sausages or maggi mee, which is really really bad for you. McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza, triple bad for you, followed by hawker food.

So yeah … officially since last Thursday night , I’m on a diet…. Have to take some drastic measures to get those numbers in red back to normal.

I’m on a cereal breakfast…. which I can never get myself to do … and  here’s pictures of my new supper … which isn’t bad for me, coz I looooooooove olives. Version 1 didn’t have raw onion,… but version 2 is enhanced with raw onions yeah! dressed with olive oil with balsamic vinegar infused with garlic and black paper (the bottle in the 1st pic below).

Supper verison 1

Supper version 2 !

 So no , I’m not exactly trying to lose weight. I’m doing this for health sake. Of course if I lose weight in the process, that would be cherry on top of good health

To all my old supper kakis reading this in great horror …. leave me a comment! wuahahahha!

~Tairven