All About Your Child

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*

Did you ever notice that whenever you shower your kids, they yawn?

I love to see that expression. They fell so relaxed and simply enjoyed the water running down their hair…

My boys loves to create BIG BUBBLES from their belly during bath time. This is how they do it.

1. They put the shower foam on their belly and chest.
2. Then they cross their arms tight.
3. Slowly they un-cross their arms.
4. The bubbles start to form between the arms and their belly.
5. Then they blow into it.
6. (Sometimes) when they blow it right, the huge bubble is blown out and float around the bathroom for a few seconds and ‘pops’.

What do your kids do during bath time?

For the experienced mummies, you know how short the lifespan of toys are, especially when their fate is in the hands of a 2-year-old.Their Christmas presents, as expected, were mainly remote control cars. Allan and I were already expecting the outcome of the fate of these cars, errrmm…not so much of the cars but the controls’ antenna.

Binbin loves to pull them out to the maximum and then push them back. I guess he enjoys playing with it more that getting the cars to work by pushing the buttons on the control.

Extending the antenna is easy. The difficult part is when Binbin tries to push it back down. You know, my 2-year-old is a ‘muscle-kid’, he is even stronger than his 4-year-old brother.

Whenever he tries too hard to push the antenna back, it BREAKS INTO 2! He will run to us with the panic look,”Mummy, spoil already. How?” Then we would just unscrew the antenna out and he will have to control the car from a near distance.

This time, it was the same, the only difference was we found blood on one of the broken end of the antenna. We searched for the source of the blood stain all over Binbin’s body, by the way my little one was still giggling, thinking that we were tickling him.

Then we saw the blood stain on his shirt, tilted his head up and saw the 4cm cut at the bottom of his left cheek.

“Is it painful?” I asked the most silly questions in the world.

“Nope.”

Ever since Binbin was able to crawl, I learnt that my boy had the highest level of pain threshold that I have ever seen in any kid in my life.

He can fall from his crib and all he did was a loud ‘waiy’ and then he is quiet.

His walker can turned upside down with him in it, and he didn’t even made a sound.

He can knock his head on the wall with a huge bump and he don’t even frown.

I am not exaggerating, I truly have an amazing boy when it comes to pain tolerance.

Do you have an amazing kid like mine?

Finally my 4-year-old Keatkeat is old enough to play a decent game of Snake and Ladders, without throwing the dice so far, you could hardly locate it…and refuses to slide down when bitten by the snake…sigh…yes, all those days are gone now…..

Its ”Good Etiquettes” Snake and Ladders. It teaches you what you should do (gives you a ladder to climb up) and what you should never do (get ready for the slide down the snake).

The longest ladder goes to gardening, *scratch head*, maybe because you need to put in lots of love and care, from 28 to 84, up up and away!

Riding a bicycle without holding onto the handle will cause you to slide down from 87 to 24. I guess children that perform bicycle stunts wouldn’t agree then…*wink*

At last, Keatkeat can tell me the number of dots on the dice in less than 1 second. Of ‘cos, I still need to do-the-walking for him most of the time, ….with the pictures its really hard to see the tiny numbers on a board that is smaller than the size of my 2 palms put together.

Ever played snakes and ladders with your kid? The next game on the list…Tic-Tac-Toe…he still doesn’t know when to ‘block’ my move….