The Original Juice

...To override that gross blog post. hahahha

Ayah brought out the 2-men tent in preparation for their night in the sky outing and the kids were having fun with it.

Fri night, we went to the library and T met another boy his age to play with. Turned out he was Eka Marina's son. I've ever heard her name before but totally don't know who she is but my sis said someone popular.

My thought when i saw her, "Hmmm She seems to be talking in Bahasa Indonesia but she sure doesn't dress like a maid with a blue rimmed specs and jeans." And she actually asked me, "Ini boy ke girl?" and T was wearing the outfit below. ARGHHH

Afterwards, we went to Metro. While kakak Syifaa' went to deposit something at the toilet, Tufeil played with the sample toys

He IS interested in the laptop *wink at Titi*

Hmmm notice my shoe? Nampak sah (obviously) so tired i just slipped it out.

Was afraid he might not like a toy laptop preferring the real one.

I was gonna hit the shower when I noticed something white by the door just above the lock hinge at my eye level.

Needless to say, I SCREAMED!!!!!!! Then immediately stopped for fear it would jump into my mouth!!!!

Then I was soooo overcome with rage than I totally SLAMMED the sliding door. TWICE for good measure! and pressed hard to the end.

Sunday, 7th Nov 2010 (19.5month)

It was quite difficult to search for a playgroup for Tufeil's age group that's conveniently located. My googling resulted in just one that's fairly walking distance - Kidz Campus @ The Woodgrove (Woodlands) about 10min walk away. and Sunday he went for a trial lesson.

Came back with a TERRIFIC sticker!

I was googling for chicken nugget recipe wanting to cook something bite sized for Tufeil so he'd be more interested to eat when I stumbled upon this at http://www.wholesometoddlerfood.com/

NANA'S CREAMED PEAS & NUGGETS
4 cups peas, fresh, frozen (or canned as a last resort)
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste
pieces of chicken, fish, or beef

Melt butter in a large sauce pan and whisk in flour- allow to cook for 1 minute. Slowly add milk, whisking to prevent lumps. Add salt, pepper and other spices as desired. Cook until sauce begins to thicken. Add peas, stir and cook until peas are heated through (about 5-7 minutes) Add meat Serve warm alone or over multi-grain toast.

**Other veggies may be added if you desire, however - ensure that ratio of veggies equals 4 cups!**


I have no idea how it will turn out but the ingredients are very basic and I have them all so I thought I give it a go.

First Hurdle: I didn't know if they mean COOKED chicken or raw. From the instructions, it asks to add meat at the end and straight away serve without anymore given COOKING time. So i deduced it should be cooked first.

BTW, i defrosted the chicken in the microwave and some of the corners are almost white = cooked. THEN i diced them into smaller pieces. I hope this is correct cos how was I to cut them while frozen yeah?

Second Hurdle: No peas nor any other veges only corn pieces were left. and of course our favourite, mushroom.

Third Hurdle: I wanted to STEAM the chicken first but the rice cooker still has yesterday's nasi lemak and I was soooo lazy to wash it so i opted to stir fry them instead.

And then I got "creative" adding seasonings at my whim: All Purpose seasoning (only a few dusts came out cos they all got hard from the fridge), ground pepper, ground chilli and chopped basil leaves.

It came out like this

Fri, 5th November

Today was Deepavali (aka Diwali) public holiday. I wanted to do something special. After a long afternoon nap, we went to Sembawang Park for a little fun.

Tufeil got wet even before we got into the car!

First shift was mine while Ayah ate.

Should have taken out his jeans first!! But crocs is definitely a good shoe to bring to beach.

He sprayed sand all over himself!

Washing up was EXTREMELY difficult!

First shift over, my turn to eat and Ayah brought them to the water.

Tufeil absolutely LOVED the water!

Sat, 6th Nov 2010.

At first, my appointment @ NY skin was to be at 5pm, but nobody could babysit Tufeil except for my sis. And for the occassion, she wanted to bring T out to East Coast. Then as it happened, the treatment center had a cancellation for 12pm slot making me able to join them after all.

Second reaction was, "*slap forehead* I could have got a whole afternoon to myself if i hadn't accepted the time change." Third reaction: OK nevermind, we'll get to cycle together."

This time around, i remembered to dress him in bodysuit so we can remove his pants before sand/water play.

The beach was much longer and he discovered wet sand is very fun!

So are the splashy waves!

Even tho there were some tools, he prefer to use his hands to spade out the sand

I forgot to take off my shoes and they got extremely wet. It wasn't crocs.

Afterwards, I rented the bike after having walked to two kiosks to get one with proper height (for me) as well as a good baby front seat. Tufeil actually WALKED the distance. I'm so happy he didn't ask to be carried. Much.

Washing up was A BIG CHORE!!! Hate it hate it hate it! At least for now Tufeil is still small so we just washed him out front with a long hose. It's an even bigger chore because T hates getting water in his face. I saw a fellow mum washing up 3 kids no problem sey. So easy. PLUS we went to the toilet near the skating rink. It was defunct lor! TOTALLY CRAP! YUCKS!

Then the floor was sandy so I cldn't get T's feet properly clean. Just left it bare to dry and swept the sands off before climbing into the car. Again the change of clothes was another bodysuit sans pants.

In the end, it was soooo tiring! Like I said to my mum, actually the DAY is great until we had to go to the toilet. And my dad added, "Yeah lah to change ourselves already so troublesome, what more to change the little one." I almost swore to myself never to come to East Coast again EVER.

Final thoughts: Thank God I came. I don't know how they would have managed handling two kids on their own! Cause someone needed to sit on the mat to guard our things to essentially one adult to 2 kids.

Another month has passed, and he's shown a few more things that he could do.

1. Holding a pencil

Good boy

Oops... Are you colouring the floor?

Ok actually he's known how to hold a pencil a longggggggggg time ago. Right after we got our walls painted, he HAD to run a test of endurance? haha But I haven't been encouraging to draw mainly because I have no equipments. The colour pencils are all Syifaa's which she brought over sometimes and I'd like to get him the jumbo washable crayons/pencils. When I have the time, no money. When i have the money, no time. AIYOO

2. Ride the "Motor"/Car?

Vroooom

eeeekkkkk *brake*

He started walking at around 12mths, but he was not confident to ride this thing up until recently. The last couple of months, he had been trying but he seem to keep leaning to the back I was afraid he'd fall off! Neither did he know how to get on / off and TURN and he can do all these now. Nice~

3. SINGING

His other MAJOR development is SINGING a whole line. Of course from whatever months he knew the words at the end of each line, or could sing E I E I O very slowly with focused concentration. Now.. He sings like this..

- "Twinkle Twinkle star!" Everytime he sees a star

- "E I E I O, moo moo there, moo moo there" Just out of the blue and many times too! Very diff to catch on video. He used to fill in "And on his farm he has a ____" with a COW, now can insert other animals with sounds too. With much coaxing though.

4. Adjectives

His vocabulary has expanded to a handful of adjectives. Mainly: Big, Small, Long and short. It's totally my fault that I introed him these words very late but I've only managed to find such a book that could hold Tufeil's attention. Also, making funny voices animatedly while reading helps. Example: a deep voice and expanding arms when describing BIG and a squeaky voice with squinty eyes to describe small.

Thereafter, I just happened to remember that instead of just pointing and saying BUS, I could say "LONGGGGGGGGGG Bus" for the bendy buses that are common in the north. He also has two different turtles as bath time toys so I describe one as BIG and the other SMALL.

God, I know there are a lot of things that i'm not teaching him but what else eh?

I'm happy to report that I managed to stretch $50 food money for 11 LONGGGGGGGGG Days!!!

Phew~ I really don't know how I survived that. I certainly didn't buy any dinner all those days, and i didn't go out / spend at all at the weekends. (Hid paid for lunch @ Swensen's yest.) Just scouring for food at home. Bringing packed lunch helped but I still bought something extra but at minimal cost.

Of course this does not include the $32 grocery shopping two days ago, which i charged to credit card anyways. Was gonna make Beef Meatloaf for the friends but it got cancelled. Oh well.. more for us to eat!

I just found out that a friend with a secretarial cert only about 2 years older than me is earning 3.3k as an Exec Secretary. Me with an A level and diploma earn much lesser than that. Hell I think some grads earn less than that! I blame it all on my first job with i worked for a pittance and took me 3 whole years to get out of. I should have waited for a better position to start out with. AIYOOO

Ok ok I probably had a smooth transition coming out from an All-girls All-muslims all-malay school i was at for 12 years and I definitely met interesting people and learnt many valuable lessons. And probably there are much better things in store for me in the future. But right now, I just wanna whine it out.

Sunday, 31st Oct

Hid and I wanted to meet. She's gonna lend me her books. But I asked her along to IMM. It's been a long time since I went out with Tufeil for his fun. My parents drove us over.


I read from Dirah's blog that there's a playground there. But I totally didn't anticipate that there's gonna be a HUGE WATER park. OH no! I didn't bring any change of clothes for T. So I only let T play at the dry section. Although he loves the spinning wheel, we found that he kept wandering towards the BIG LURE of water.

That's it. We're buying him a new shirt! HAHAHA.

New onesie courtesy of Aunty Hid. THANK YOUUUUU!!

Touching the fountain.