All About Your Child

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Here’s something fun for your Children during this festive season. *wink*

Have a go at this, its nice.
When you finish putting it together, watch what happens.
Click here: Santa’s Jigsaw

HP and Cartoon Network have teamed up to present
Toon Creator Awards – A new interactive platform to inspire creativity in kids through technology.

If your child is aged between 6 to 14, they are eligible for the contest. Creating their very own 25-second toons using either Ben 10: Alien Force and Chowder (to be released in mid-August) characters; and stand a chance to win attractive prizes.

The competition is open to applications for individuals and schools in Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Its an online voting at www.ToonCreatorAwards.com and the winners from each category will be determined by a combination of online votes and a professional judging panel from HP and Cartoon Network.

The ultimate regional Toon Creator Awards winner could even see his or her creation broadcast on Cartoon Network in November 2009. Whoo-hoo! So get those creative cells working!

Though my boys were ‘underage’, Keatkeat tried it out.
OMG!!!!!
It was so cool!
Completely awesome….
We were spoilt for choices when it come to the effects, sounds, motion, etc.

But seriously, it truly takes time and effort man! We took 30mins just to figure out the unlimited possibilities of combining this and that just for the first scene. But once we got the hang of it, we took less than 20mins to create the remaining 12 scenes!!! Easy Peasy.
Still its all fun!

For those of you who missed out my ‘Making it Official’ post, Keatkeat is known as Zac now. *wink* Have 38 seconds to spare? Watch his creation won’t you and leave a comment for him, so that I can relate to him?

So far 27 has viewed his creation. He is checking his number of viewers every now and then, seeing the number increases just makes him really happy.

Toon Creator: Ben Ten fights bad guy by keatzac

Like it? Create your own at Toon Creator. It’s free and fun!

…the two of you eventually met. Its the same, for things that you USED TO LOVE doing; you’ll never know how much you’ve MISSED doing them, till you did it again.

Remember my post about Sundays Not being the same again? Because my eldest niece’s swimming lessons had been changed, hence we have not been meeting up like we used to in my PIL’s place on every Sundays.

CH has slimmed down alot as her dark skin tone explains the reason for her smaller frame now.

As usual she brought lots of self-created games with her. Some were fun, others just doesn’t make much sense, while the rest needed to be improvised.

Today IS a special day. Its a day when ALL Chinese (would) celebrate: Dong-Zhi. Below is an extract from Wikipedia:

…..Traditionally, the Dongzhi Festival is also a time for the family to get together. One activity that occurs during these get togethers is the making and eating of Tangyuan (??) or balls of glutinuous rice, which symbolize reunion. Tangyuan are made of glutinuous rice flour and sometimes brightly coloured. Each family member receives at least one large Tang Yuan in addition to several small ones. The flour balls may be plain or stuffed. They are cooked in a sweet soup or savoury broth with both the ball and the soup/broth served in one bowl…….

This was the Tangyuan my MIL made. Sad to say, out of the 14 of us in the family, only my 2nd SIL, her daughter-CH and I love to eat it. 3 of us love to eat those with peanut-fillings. As for me, if given a choice between with or without fillings, I prefer WITHOUT.

Finally after months, I get to see CH there on Sunday, even though there were these 3+hours she had to go for her swimming lessons, but that period zoomed passed easily while teaching ZY Primary 2 maths.

Hey, did you think it was my idea? NO way! On such occasions, I would love to play Play PLAY, why would I ‘torture’ a 7 year old kid doing maths sums on Dong Zhi!? My FIL needed to know if she could do it. For ZY, as most of my regular followers know, she doesn’t really have someone to ‘teach’ her any subjects except Mandarin… *sigh* that would be another story in itself….

So the kids got their Christmas presents today! Allan was feeling creative the other day and chose to draw their faces instead of writing names on the wrapper.

Presents for CH from Allan (left) and I (right) :

In case you are wondering what was mine? It’s a foldable Storage Box (3rd pic).

Presents for ZY from Allan and I :

Presents for MY from Allan and I :

Presents for WD from Allan and I : (please don’t ask me why he didn’t draw WD, cos’ I don’t know…)

In return, these were the presents Keatkeat (left) and Binbin (right) received:

Other than my realization of how much I missed CH and all her self-created games, I missed playing JENGA!!! A game I used to play in my much younger years. This was one of CH’s presents. I was jumping when CH wanted to play it that very moment!

Its a Wonderful Family Gathering today! I hope you had a great day too! *cheers*

The kids love to follow his dad to his office at Toa Payoh….because of THIS:

Its normally very crowded. Completely packed with kids hopping, jumping and kicking on that mat, while the virtual camera, on the ceiling, flashes all sorts of graphics for the kids to exercise their feet.

Its really amazing how the graphic could react to the kids movement. For example, when Binbin stepped on those yellow balls, it will ‘bounce’ away from him.

This was taken early in the morning, after Keatkeat went to school, Binbin and I followed Allan to Toa Payoh. While the man was in his office, my Binbin was having his morning exercise on the mat.

Then another kid came along and the two boys of the same height were having tons of virtual fun!

It was a perfect timing to be there, that is if you want your kids to enjoy themselves. When noon time comes, there is a chance that almost 12-15 kids try to squeeze onto that mat of size about 5ftx6ft. That’s when there is a higher risk of your child’s foot being stepped on by other kids.

These 2 little ones were having ample space to move around and it was hilarious at one point when both of them gave each other ‘eye signal’ to jump together! *laugh*

Other than Toa Payoh, this is also available at IMM. Do you know of any other place which has this?

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?” )

Kids Magic Trick – Click here for more amazing videos

This is what you need.
A Deep Plate
Water
Pepper
Dishwashing Liquid

I was curious yesterday to know how you guys feel about bringing kids for hospital visits….Totally agree on the germs and virus part…today there was a new ‘neighbour’ beside my FIL, he had tuberculosis before and it seems that he is back to the hospital to check if the illness came back to re-visit him again.

When I heard that from my FIL, I was shocked. Tuberculosis is a highly variable communicable disease, how could the hospital allow him to stay in such ‘normal’ wards?! Anyhow, the moment we knew about this, my eldest BIL and SIL brought all the kids down to get some tibits, and kept them entertained with the nibbles for as long as they could.

I’m really unhappy with the ‘way’ this hospital handled certain things, especially towards my FIL. He can eat solids on his own without vomiting or getting choked, but they still put drips on him, causing him to have terrible water retention. His hands are like boxing gloves and legs are like baby elephants. Over the last 8 days in hospital, he has gained 10kg!!! – ALL WATER, as he hardly get to eat solid food till yesterday afternoon.

My frustrated MIL requested to get the drip off my FIL but was rejected. Their reasons were: “we still need to give him the antibiotics every 6 hourly, and we could only get it into the body through the drips…”NOW THAT’S SOMETHING NEW to me (at least).

We were all concerned, so we stayed longer than usual, but the 6 kids were getting impatient at the lobby. So I (the usual kids’ nanny for every Sunday’s family gathering at my parents-in-law house) went down and played quiet games with them, while the others continued to stay with my FIL.

We played the guess-which-finger-tapped-on-head game, count the number of cars passed by the drop-off point, count how many people wore a-particular-coloured top (this kept them entertained the longest, ‘cos all I need to do is just change the colour), count how many people carry a basket of flowers get into the lift and the usual scissors-paper-stone.

Of cos’ the un-unison toilet visits helped to kill much time off too. Before long, the adults were down and ready to leave. Keeping kids entertained is easy, but keeping kids entertained with their voices down is tough, when they are such easily-excitable-creatures….

What do you do to keep the kids’ volume down but at the same time making sure they are not bored? One rule to this question – no electronic hand-held games please….

So I guess, I’ll not be bringing my boys there till my FIL’s ‘new neighbour’ is discharged or relocated.

(Thank you all of your concerns, well-wishes and prayers, especially imbeingheldhostage, thank you for keeping my FIL in your prayers still)

Since I gave some tips on how to get more petrol for the price you pay on yesterday’s post. I guess today’s post on cars would be more than appropriate, with a slight twist….

“Come Mommy…..we’ve got a surprise for you……” cried Binbin

“Look! I made a multistorey carpark for my cars. Now they’ve got a place to park so the police cannot come and fine them….” reported Keatkeat.

It’s definitely a surprise, it was the most constructive, thoughtful and useful thing this little guy had ever made with his limited number of building blocks given by his grandma, my MIL.

Me: “Oh! That’s provided they have bought season parking ticket like what Papa did.”

Keatkeat: “Don’t worry. They buy already.”

Me: “Oh! Wow!” *Laugh*

Keatkeat: “So can you play with us now?” (as usual I was scuba diving in the bloggy-ocean)

Me: “Ok!” And this was my kind of game!

Keatkeat: “Mommy, one more, one more….”

But the white car didn’t make it to the top….shucks! so sad! That intense expression on Keatkeat’s face was what kept me stacking up higher and higher…its so fun to watch how all his facial muscles all squashed up….*laugh*

So who was the one who say cars are boring toys, which can only roll on four wheels? Hhummm? How is this? With its irregular shape, it’s kind of challenging. *wink*