All About Your Child

Its NO LESSONS day today! The school is celebrating Children’s Day today in lieu of tomorrow.

This is the first ever Telematch for Keatkeat. He was excited and so was I! Seeing him in action with his friends is something that I could only visualize behind those closed doors and windows of the school.

Different ‘levels’ have different telematches. Nursery level had one of the easiest and Kindergarten2 had one of the most difficult hurdles.

So for the K1 it was challenging but far from what you may consider tough.

He is on the extreme left.

Balancing the green rubber ring on his head.

Then he needs to get through the hula hoop with the rubber ring still on his head

(of cos, all the kids cheated by holding on to the ring with their hands)

If I took this just 1second later, Chen Lao Shi would be blocking my screen completely! *phew*

Keatkeat nearly dropped his ring after the hula hoop…he was adjusting it in the picture….

*Arrrggghhh* My camera’s battery was so low…., if not you and I would be watching the video now instead of these ‘lifeless’ photos.

Oh how can I say that its ‘lifeless’?! Its my son alright?! Oh me and my self-talk…

Ok, let’s continue with the actions…..

Then he is supposed to jump over a box

(which I couldn’t get it into the picture).

And this is HIM! Completely satisfied with his performance! *laugh* Look at that full-of-pride smile! Ohhhh….how I missed that smile on camera.

He hardly smile like this on camera nowadays…he is always making funny faces everytime I hold up my camera.

And ONLY AFTER I give him the “smile-properly-or-you-will-not-be-in-the-picture” stare, before he is willing to smile ‘properly’ when I click the button.

But most of the time, *sigh* I just couldn’t be bothered…well, ‘monkey faces’ is what he is good at AT this age, so be it then…that’s why if you had noticed, I seldom put up his monkey faces photos other than the one in the Mid Autumn Post (which he stood with his cousins)……

And these were the presents he received for Childrens’ Day this year. Those presents which are not (labelled) from his teachers were given by the School.

School started an hour later than usual. Which happens to be Binbin’s wakey-wakey time.

So he was with me throughout the telematch having almost as much fun as his big bro.

He didn’t go home empty-handed too. *wink* I got this white balloon off the wall for him, as his Childrens’ Day gift. *laugh*

And tomorrow, my boys are going to have a super fun long day (that is IF it does not rain) with his cousins and if I don’t get back early to post for tomorrow, here’s wishing all Children of my blogger friends and All the Children in the world - A JOYFUL AND FUN-FILLED CHILDRENS’ DAY!

(off the topic…Announcement:

‘Pretty-Birdie’ died yesterday night. Nobody know the reason. My MIL called and said she has a headache now over what she should do with the birdcage and the birdfood which Allan bought….hmmm…

My boys’ FIRST reaction to the news?

Keatkeat: “How come Pretty-Birdie died?”

Binbin: “How come Pretty-Birdie lives one day only?” )

Sandra tagged me with this memorable meme…

1. Were you married at the time? Yes!

2. What were your reactions when you found out you were pregnant? Well, we planned for it but I was surprised at the ‘effectiveness’ of once-tried-and-you’ve-got-bull’s-eye! *laugh*

3. How old were you? 26, my ideal age for my 1st child.

4.How did you find out you were pregnant? Pregnancy test kit

5. Who did you tell first? My Dearie of cos!

6. Did you want to find out the sex? Of cos! Though I was pretty sure its a BOY! Well, we did what was instructed by my (expert)friend, in order to get a boy….and we did have a boy! *wink*

7. Due date? 2nd November 2003

8. Did you deliver early or late? Early

9.Did you have morning sickness? Oh boy! Yes! It was horrible!

10. What did you crave? Chili!

11. Who irritated you the most? Hmmm…am I supposed to be irritated? No way, I was treated like a Queen by everyone around me!

12. What was your first child’s sex? Boy

13. How many pounds did you gain throughout the pregnancy? Not much, about 10kg.

14. Did you have any complications during your pregnancy? Nope!

15. Where did you give birth? KK Hospital

16.How many hours were you in labor? Slightly less than 2hours

17. Who drove you to the hospital? We took a cab

18.Who watched? My Doctor, the nurse, the midwife and My Dearie!

19. Was it vaginal or c-section? Vaginal!….

20. Did you take medicine to ease the pain? I had Epidural. Damn! I was so sure I could handle the pain without it. BUT MY DEARIE CAN’T STAND SEEING ME IN THAT hoo-haa…hoo-haa STATE. So he INSTRUCTED THE DOCTOR to give IT to me….*sigh*

21. How much did your child weigh? 3.51Kg

22. What did you name him/her? Loh Cheng Keat

23. How old is your first born today? 4years 10months 28days

Many of you have talked about the birth process of your first child, so this time I’ll be tagging people whom (I think) haven’t mentioned the story yet…

Melissa, Physiomom, ContentedMom, Suhanya, Dominique and Cendrine.

Yesterday was probably one of THE most exciting Sundays I’ve had.

Finally, able to rest well after taking care of the very-sick Allan for 2 days. Allan hardly gets beaten down, but when he is down, he is REALLY flat on the ground. Miraculously, Keatkeat did not wake up in the night (mentioned before that he has been sick for 7months and we have not been able to sleep well since then, I still owe you this full story, haven’t I?), I really had a good night rest, woke up at 10am on Sunday and I thought “Wow! Today is going to be a Great Day”.

Then I smelled something! *Ewwww….* It was a very familiar smell which I’ve long forgotten. Binbin urinated on his mattress. I re-wind the ‘tape’ in my head and got an answer to the disaster - We were so tired on Saturday after watching the F1 qualifying round, the kids just collapsed on their mattress without peeing first. Keatkeat’s mattress was super dry so that was a relief.

How would you feel when the first thing that greet you in the morning were stinky smelly urine, accompanied by a little yakking toddler that smelled as if he had bathed himself with his own pee, “Mommy, I shh…shh.. on my bed…very wet…now I cannot sleep on it…” (ya, tell me about it!) and not forgetting the washing of the mattress cover, the pillow cases, the bolster cases, mopping the urine stain off the floor and blah blah blah!!? I would tell you - You have woken up to the reality of being a mother!

It was way too stinky, in-fact it was almost dry when I laid my hands on that uninviting mattress.

So we decided to WASH the mattress and the pillow and let the sun do the job. When we came home from my in-laws place, they were still not dry yet.

So, Binbin slept on my bed last night while I sleep on the couch, no..no..no…don’t pity me, I fought for it with Allan (he didn’t want to sleep with Binbin too *laugh*). Sleeping with my practice-his-karate-kick-in-his-sleep baby is the last thing I wanted.

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Yesterday, my 2nd bro and his family did not come to my in-law’s place, so there were NO arguments between the 2 primary school girls - *Yeah* Free from being a peace maker for this Sunday…

But the real excitement came at about 7pm, my MIL, who was in a super-good mood, yelled from the kitchen, “Its a big butterfly…no…its a bird! Its a bird!”

The easily-excitable-good-old-ME was the first to jump off my chair and ran to the kitchen. “Oh its beautiful! Papa (my FIL) come and see! Come and See!”

FIL: “Close the windows…catch it…I’m coming…I’m coming…”

The bird didn’t fly much and was easy for my FIL’s non-agile hands (FIL had a serious car accident when Allan was only 5-6years old, he was ‘paralyzed’ for a very long time before he regained his ‘muscles’ back to an independent man again. After 20+ years, he is still not as good as he should be at this age of his).

We covered the bird with a plastic cover with lots of holes on it - meant to cover food to prevent flies from attacking the yummies. The hundreds of holes was good enough for the bird while the 4 adults (FIL, MIL, Allan and I) were busy preparing for the temporary cage.

FIL and Allan drilled lots of holes in the plastic container meant for Chinese New Year egg rolls. Then MIL and I tied 2 small containers for food and water. MIL also found 2 short wooden sticks to poke into the container for the bird to stand on.

The kids were having their dinner when the bird flew into the house.

Allan: “Whoever finish their food fast will get to go with me to buy the new cage and food for the bird.”

Go ahead and use your wildest imagination on how fast those kids REALLY ATE!!! Our car couldn’t fit all the kids in, so only ZY (my favourite girl) and my 2 boys went with us. (Sorry MY (ZY’s sis) and WD (ZY’s bro)).

Off we went, skipping and semi-running towards the car. Got the cage and the ‘correct’ food for the bird after we gave a clear description of it.

On the car ride back to my in-laws place, Allan suggested that we should give the bird a name.

ZY (my niece): “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Allan: “how would I know?”

ZY: “Then how to give a name if we don’t know?”

hmmm…that’s quite true isn’t it?

Binbin: “I know what we call the bird. ‘BINBIN’ just like me! I’m so cute and the bird so cute. So the bird is just like me! Call ‘Binbin’!”

*Laughter filled the car*

ZY: “how about Mary?”

Keatkeat: “I know I know, its called Birdie!”

Me: “I like BIRDIE!”

ZY: “I don’t like Birdie”

Me: “How about ‘Pretty’? The bird is pretty isn’t it?”

ZY: “Yeah! I like ‘Pretty’!”

Keatkeat: “I DON’T LIKE ‘Pretty’! I like Birdie!”

The clever Allan: “Let’s call it ‘Pretty-Birdie’!”

“YEAH!!!!” Everyone in unison!

And so we have it, ‘Pretty Birdie’ the new found pet in the Loh’s family after the 3 cats (more than a decade ago), which one died about 2 years ago, so now left with 2 - still alive and meowing.

When we reached my in-law’s house, the happy mood was completely taken over with pity. My in-laws found Pretty-Birdie to be a crippled (look at the yellow circle) Every kid was going “OH NO!…”

We washed the new cage, put super absorbent paper underneath it and Allan did the transfer.

Then we poured in the food we bought and the water. Pretty-Birdie was so excited, took a sip here and hopped over for a bite and hopped back for another sip. IT must have been really hungry!

Several hours later after watching the F1 final night race in Singapore, we bid farewell to Pretty-Birdie who was all puffed  up like a furry ball…sleeping… FIL was so considerate. He covered 90% of the cage with cloth so that it would not be so bright…its like ‘lights-off’….

What an exciting Sunday from the usual hi-bye-eat-play-Sunday routine to my in-law’s house!

This should cheer you up! *wink*

Funny Children - For more of the funniest videos, click here

I’ve always love ‘greenery’, Allan found this place - Bottle Tree Park by chance when he was on his way to meet his client in Yishun.

He knew I would love it and so we went.

The place itself took my breath away! It was BEAUTIFUL!

There were alot of stuff you can do there, like buying Home Grown Vegetables and Fruits for $2per pack;

Visit their Wine Shop;

You can fish in their ponds for $35+ per day…

Or you can let the kids go down to the ‘Longkang’ (Drain) and have fun with LongKang Fishing at $10per child.

They provide you with a Tank and a Net for ’scooping’ up the Guppies, Swordtail fish, Goldfish and many other species.

There is also a Paintball Shooting Gallery. Yup, its PAINT-ball… “Aim, Squeeze and Fire” Get ready to have some paint fun. When we were there, the area was closed for maintenance, so we couldn’t really see the actions.

Then there were prawn fishing too. $14.50per hour, $29.00per 2.5hours or $43.50per 4hours.

They provide you with Rod and the Bait.

You can also sit on their duck ride at $9per 15mins for 2 adults and one child.

If you do not like water fun, you can pay $2 to rent the Pool Table for a game of Pool

Or you can let the kids sweat it out at the playground.

Did you realise that we were not ‘into’ any of the games, cos first of all, we did not want the kids to have fishes as pets, secondly, Allan and I find the place rather over-priced.

But when we saw the kiddy bumper car, we knew that there’s no escape. But IT WAS A BIG MISTAKE!

The ride is $3 per car and it only lasted for a few seconds. The blue car that Keatkeat was on did not last for more than 15seconds and the green car that Binbin was on, COULD NOT EVEN START!!!

So the person-in-charge carried Binbin to another car - a red car. It was too fast for him to react and bumped into the bricks. He wailed! “Mommy, I don’t want already! I’m very scared! Very Scared!”

So since Keatkeat’s blue car refused to move, he took over Binbin’s red car. That’s when another accident happened.

The car-ride area is a rectangular shape. Two sides were framed with mini brick walls, but the other two sides were framed by a single metal bar that was NOT SECURED TO THE GROUND!

Keatkeat couldn’t brake in-time and knocked onto the metal bar and the metal bar swung and hit onto a woman’s ankle who were standing one feet away from the metal bar. “OUCH!” She screamed! She glared at Keatkeat, almost wanted to scold him.

Though Allan and I were not happy with that look, we still said sorry, even though it was not ENTIRELY Keatkeat’s fault!!! The metal bar were not secured! How could the management do such a thing!!! So Dangerous!

Right after the knock, the red car died too. $6 just went down the drain in less than a minute and earned a stare from an angry 30+ year old woman!

The place is beautiful, great for photo-taking but nothing else attracted us, even the restaurant that served live seafoods sell crabs at 100g for $4.50.

One giantitic crab could easily weigh more than 1Kg. To pay more than $45 for the ’shells’ more than the meat, nah, that’s not for us, but I bet it taste good, cos before we left the place at 7pm, the restaurant was almost full with diners.

For city people like us, this place is extra-ordinary! Go have a look, if you haven’t been there yet.

Today is my MIL’s Chinese-Birthday, her English-birthday is on 2nd October.

This is guilty conscience speaking,: “over the past 7-8 years, because of the craziness of our retail business, we hardly join in the celebration for my MIL’s birthdays, sometimes, Allan went with the rest of the Loh family, while I take care of the stall.”

Now that we have the time and the extra cash, thinking that we ‘owe’ it to her, we gave a surprise!

We bought her this mountain of ‘Shou Tao’ - Birthday Peaches. They are not real peaches, they are buns coloured in Pink and shaped to look like peaches, they are filled with sweet ‘Lian Rong’ - Lotus Jam.

38 of them in that plate. 38 is an auspicious number for us, Cantonese people - 3 for ‘Shang’ - New Life or Growth and 8 for ‘Fa’ - Prosperity.

Being a very Chinese-traditional-oriented woman, my MIL was beaming from ear to ear! Cos’ ‘Shou-Tao’ represents Longevity. On top of that, she loves surprises (*laugh* Like me).

Never had anyone celebrated her birthday in this way on her actual date itself, unless it falls on a weekend, she usually have to celebrate her birthday slightly earlier or later to suit everyone’s schedule. Everyone is just too pre-occupied with work.

So this gesture of ours meant alot to her. Ultimately, we achieved our aim - Made Her Happy! *Yeah*

The inaugural 2008 FORMULA 1™ SingTel Singapore Grand Prix will take place on 28 September 2008 on a street circuit of public roads around the Marina Bay area. The race is Formula One™’s first to be held at night, and is their first street race in Asia.

Here’s a glimpse of how it would look like when the speedy vehicles are on the Singapore Circuit:

My boys were so UPSET, seriously upset that we didn’t get tickets for the race, well it was sold out so long ago and we didn’t planned to buy it anyway. Then we came to know that there will be a ‘live’ telecast shown on one of the PAID channels on SCV and we didn’t subscribed to that either, so they were angry AGAIN.

This is how crazy they are over cars. Whenever there is F1 racing shown on TV, they are glued to it from beginning till end. Seeing the cars going round and round for so many times, going into the pit stop, getting out, colliding and all of those would never fail to stick their little butt on that sofa.

So Allan and I went for a drive round the circuit before the road closure to ’see’ where we could have stand in order to get a glimpse of the excitement ‘live’….We found lots of ‘opportunities’ but they were unsuitable for the kids, ‘cos the fences are so high, Allan’s and my arm would probably be broken by the end of the race, carrying them,hmmmm….so we dropped the idea altogether.

Guess they’ll just have to make do with their hot wheels cars racing on their miniature race track at home then…..

(Add-on: Today - 26th Sept)
But hey hey hey, I just found out that the one and only night F1 race is shown on Channel 5 for 3 days starting from today…
Today 26th: 10pm-11pm Practise Session
Tomorrow 27th: 10pm-11pm Qualifying Session
Sunday 28th: 7.30pm-10pm “Live”

Yeah!!!! So my boys are FINALLY happy now! *wink*

This is definitely the year where I had received the MOST birthday wishes! Unbelievable!

Wishes from my Facebook friends,

wishes from my 18years friend who was married to an Australian and staying there permanently,

wishes from my childhood friends,

wishes from my primary + secondary school friends,

wishes from my ex-boyfriends, *wink*

wishes from my one and only sister,

wishes from my dearie,

wishes from my kids (so many times, until I lost count),

even a special birthday post dedicated to me, by dear Sandra, *muack*

and BEST of all, FILLING ALL my comment boxes with SOOOOO MANY WISHES from YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU AND YOU…….*muack* Really love All of you! Thank you, thank you, thank you for making my day sooooo special!!!

So we went for Japanese Buffet at Hanabi in Kings Arcade. It was amazing! Kids below 5years old dine for free. I’m glad WE had this PRIVILEGE, ‘cos the kids really don’t eat much. Everything was perfect except for the ending….I have weak, very weak stomach and hence at the end of the 1full hour of non-stop eating, I had diarrhea, really really bad…so bad… I couldn’t wait till I get home…

But that’s not gonna stop me from going there again, cos’ ‘ITS THE PROCESS THAT MATTERS, NOT THE ENDING!’ *wink* It would probably take a 100 men to pull me away from a Japanese Restaurant. *laugh*

So here are the snapshots of the wonderful time, its a pity we didn’t managed to get a family photo taken while we were there, too busy eating….and by the time we stop eating, I was heading for the toilet….*laugh*