The Original Juice

It is truly unfortunately that I have to arrive to the decision of scrapping the 12D trip to Turkey at year end. The trip for one adult costs more than my monthly salary! Now that Tufeil is more than 2 years of age, his plane ticket alone is $1,800 excluding the land tour fee.

That means I'll be missing these...

Topkapi Palace

Blue Mosque

Grand Bazaar

Sighhh... well better that than plunging deeper into debts.

Instead, now I'm planning to go for Qodariyah's 5D to Shanghai. I think it's winter there too in december, right? Even if no snow, temp lower than say 10 deg c would be good. hahah And it costs only $858 per person! (Budget airline???)

Afterwards we can still go for a beach resort...

I wanna stay in a villa with private pool

Get in house massage...

and snorkel!!!

Tufeil would be delighted to see the fishes up close and personal! Wait, would he be able to snorkel?


I just can't decide which beach. PLUS most of the nearby islands would be affected by the monsoon season or something in December, isn't it? So WHERE would be a good place???

My parents are going to Vietnam next week Mon-Thurs. That means I hafta take leave too to take care of Tufeil. Of course, ideally I should go to. Alas, @ $595 per adult and god knows how much for toddler, I can't afford it. Saving for December holiday, instead.

I'm a little nervous at the prospect of being with my own child 24 hours a day for almost 8 days straight. Almost because, I'll get a brief respite on Fri when I get back to work before the weekend hits again. Having said that, my schedule is quite jam packed already. We'll be going out almost everyday... Or rather, T would. We'll be meeting two of my housewife friends I haven't met in so long and we got a birthday party to get to this Sunday.

Actually, the biggest fear I have is a second start to weaning T off breastmilk. Because I've been through it before in March and it was VERY VERY VERY VERY TOUGH, I almost dread to face it again now. But I told myself, June should be a good time to start. For one, he's almost 2yrs 3 months. Another, it's the school holidays, so whatever sleep he's gonna lose due to discomfort wouldn't affect school.

This time around though, I'm gonna arm myself with vinegar. I'm just trying to figure out how to apply it in the middle of the night when T wakes up and cries. I mean, I can't just leave him in the room to go to the toilet and put it now, can I?

I've heard of a friend's friend who took 6 weeks to wean off their 2yr. He cried for 6 weeks straight. Imagine that! But I bet the child slept through the night, so at least that's bearable. Tufeil wakes up every 2hours. Everytime he woke up the last time I was training him, I'd hafta carry him around for another 30minutes or so before he'd go back to sleep. Even then sometimes, he would instantly wake up again when i tried to put him down on the bed.

Why can't he be an angel and accept my hugs and kisses and soothing voice in place of the BM???

URGENTLY looking for someone to accompany me to go to Bintan / Batam or wherever this coming weekend. Without babies.

5th & 6th Feb 2011

The weather was glorious these two days. It didnt rain neither was it too hot. It was super breezy I opened all our windows wide.

Saturday was spring cleaning day for me. Vacuumed and mopped the floor and even did a load of laundry (which I RARELY ever do) while bathing and feeding and playing soap bubbles w Tufeil in between. I could get used to being at home like this but then I would need someone like Ayah to whisk T to the playground so he won't get underfoot.

We were supposed to go swimming at my Uncle's condo, so my parents could meet with my grandparents too but I begged off at the last minute cause I was so beat I encouraged T to take a nap with me despite having napped earlier.

Instead, I brought him to the library (to collect my Insatiable by meg Cabot!!!!) and to Causeway Point for KFC and Each A Cup for me. I purposely did not take the stroller with me to encourage him to walk more = exercise / get him tired. This simple outing lasted close to 2hours because Tufeil stopped often to "smell the roses" (read: watch the ants and shadows and Fire Engine and whatever else).

By the time we reached home, it was Shower Time, snack or dinner time then ....

Fri, 24th Dec 2010

We woke up extremely late!! we had a lil under an hour to get ready and eat BF! AIYOOO!!!

Hotel Entrance. See my shadow haha

We can SEE the airport but its about 5-10min drive away.

It wasn't cold at all the night we reached there. In the morning it was slightly crispy but nothing like Amman or Damascus.

I was a bit nervous at the prospect of an 8hour flight. But Alhamdulillah we had 3 seats together by the window and not the front row. Plane food was great, we ate Mum's as usual. Tufeil was entertained by Cars the movie, he slept twice for 2 hours each. I wanted to watch something as well while T was asleep, but couldn't stay interested in any of the listed movies!! I started to watch The Killers (Ashton Kutcher) but I kept nodding off I gave him after an hour. What a shame! What a shame!!

Nonetheless, I'm very grateful that T was very well behaved in the plane. It helped that we had Hannah sitting in front of us and Banana in the fruit trolley.

Reached Singapore 9pm. Syifaa' and family came to pick us up. We had dinner at Burger King first as we were famished. Thank God all 3 luggages managed to fit into the trunk. Just before moving off, discovered T pooped and got some stains! LOL the last time we came back from Perth, his pee overflowed all over my clothes! So me and Mum went to wash and change him. It was very difficult with no jet spray in the cubicle, we had to wash him in the sink. Made us quickly realise how much better the toilet experience the past 10 days had been.

Felt great to be home! But browsing through the photos, and writing the blog entries made me feel wistfully sentimental. Although most of the time there, I was super tired of the travelling in the bus for hours and scared of the next surprise coming, fearful of T's tantrum / comfort level, and generally being out of my comfort zone, in restrospect, it was a truly nice experience seeing NEW places and getting to know NEW people. Truly a Breath of FRESH air.

Thurs, 23rd Dec 2010.

We were told the night before that there was some confusion in the itinerary. The group that came from Singapore (others were direct from Haj) had an overnight connecting flight from Dubai back to Singapore. This is an oversight from the agency and so... they rewarded us with a night's stay at Holiday Inn Express DUBAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were reminded to pack a sleepwear and the next day's clothes in our hand carries as the other checked-in luggages will NOT be with us in DUBAI!

I WAS LIKE JUMPING FOR JOY!!! A blessing in disguise. What a damn shame that he told us VERY LATE in the Day!!! we could have made arrangements to see friends and/or relatives or even to extend on more day there since it's the weekend and go sightseeing or something!

ANYWAYs, we had to leave our luggages outside our rooms at 7am for the porter to bring them down! And BF was to start at 8am, leave at 9am. That made no sense. If Bfast was to start at 8am, I would only shower at 7am then how to pack my dirty laundry?? GRRR In the end, we did manage to wake up 6.30am and was down for bfast at 7.30am. BTW, Ayah did not come with us as he had some tummy problem! Oopsie. Fortunately, its already at the tail end of the vacation and someone brought along the charcoal pills.

As our flight wasn't until 3pm, we had 1.5hr to kill at the bazaar! Mummy and I carefully watched where we went, lest we got lost since Ayah didn't come with us and opted to rest at the mosque instead. We basically bought more of the socks (finally got the correct one i like!), chocolates, sandbottles, etc... But most importantly...

Wed, 22nd Dec 2010