Child Care Fatigue (CCF)

The past few days at home has been crazy. There can simply be no rest in a household with:

• A 5-years old brother who cannot stop talking and getting jealous of his 11-month old baby brother.
• A baby who is on the verge of walking and talking, making very dangerous and wobbly attempts to stand up holding on to anything his little hands can grasp.
• A maid who sometimes feels like my third child, requiring lots of supervision and rescuing.

Over the last week, I've made coloured ice, dyed napkins, watched Transformers on DVD, made playdough using natural ingredients (Leng, your recipe works!), watched Bee movie, created a volcano made of playdough and simulated an erruption with KK. I've also fixed back the arm of Bonecrusher transformer at least 100 times and nearly thrown KK out of the house for talking back. I'm feeling "child care fatigued".

There's this trait common in both my sons, they cannot play independently. I think there's some genetic defect. KK needs a constant playmate. And since his little brother is not yet grown up, he's bugging me to play with him everytime. I try to oblige but sometimes I literaly have to command him to play by himself. Baby X, he's showing signs of this trait. He's happy just crawling around me as long as I sit nearby. But once I move off, he will follow me. Why is it that some kids can just sit on their own for 1 - 2 hours playing their toys quietly and mine can't?

KK has just finished packing his toys grudgingly and Baby X is asleep, thankfully. I guess it's time for me to think of the next activity. Let see, maybe we'll make some cut-out sandwiches with condensed milk and thousands/hundreds. I definitely need a cup of tea.

Oh My 10 Dog!

Communication with KK is getting complex and exhausting. There is a lot of explanation, reasoning, arguing and repeating necessary when talking to my dear 5 year old nowadays. Occasionally, we had no choice but to use threats and authority to move on. Here's a summary of what he is all in one.

1) The 'Ah Beng'
Recently he's picked up a lot of new phrases from his friends in kindergarten. For example:
"Come on, baby!", "What's up, baby?", "What the hell!" and " Wah lau!"

Actually, he's got no idea when I asked him if he knows what 'hell' means. He's just blindly repeating them because they sound cool.

2) The Lawyer.
KK is also getting to be more and more skillful in negotiating and arguing. Whenever we try to enforce some rules like finishing his food, he'll bargain for discounts on duration and concessions on quantity. He'll also question you 'why' certain decisions are made and argue with you till the cows come home or you give up.

Yesterday, Grandmum brought him to Toys 'R' Us and bought him his Christmas present. We told him that he had to wait one month until Christmas to play with his new toy. He couldn't wait of course. So he kept questioning why he has to wait and is it Christmas already tomorrow? Finally, Grandmum gave up and allowed him to open his present on the condition that he finishes his dinner within 1 hour that night. Even then, there was alot of bargaining and we had to reason till we were breathless before he finally finished his food and got his wish.

3) The Reader.
KK is still an amatuer when it comes to reading, though he's developing. Yesterday, he was looking at me read a message on Facebook.

The message goes like this: "Oh my god, 10 years..."
This is what KK read out loud, "Oh my dog, oh my ten dog!"

Applesauce Muffins

It's only the 2nd day of the school holidays and KK is already driving me crazy. This hyperactive boy cannot keep still for one minute unless he's playing computer games or watching TV. So when we limit his TV and computer times to a max of 1hr 30 minutes per day, technically I'm still left with 8hrs 30mins (after deducting 10 hours of sleeping time and 4 hours for lunch and dinner) that I've to occupy each day. Occupying him also means he'll have less chances of 'disturbing' his baby brother.

This morning, our mistake, Baby X crawled down to his brother's bed unnoticed and as a result, KK woke up at 0800hrs. He usually wakes up at about 1000hrs or later. Though I wanted to sleep more, I had to entertain his questions about his missing brochure, Transformers etc, in between drifting in and out of dreamland. The result: a tired and irritated start to the day.


After lunch, I decided to bake Applesauce Muffins instead of playing games. KK is supposed to help me and he did admire the sifted flour falling like snow, drill the batter using a whisk, beat up the egg and arrange the muffin cups for me. The recipe, which KK printed out from "www.nickjr.com" is really simple and the muffins actually taste quite good. I've reproduced the recipe here for those who wants to try it.




Ingredients A
2 cups Flour (sifted)
3/4 cup sugar (I use caster sugar)
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt



Ingredients B
1 large egg lightly beaten
1 cup unsweetened applesauce (I use homemade ones. Let me know if you need the recipe.)
1/2 cup of melted butter



Method: Simply combine Ingredients A and B separately then pour B to A. Blend well and scoop into pre-oiled muffin cups. Pre-heat oven to about 250 degrees celceius and bake for about 15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Easy right?


Wish the rest of the day will be easy as well.

50 Green Things at Home

It's school holidays again. Now I fully understand why some parents scratch their heads during this period. They are thinking of how to entertain their kids now that they're at home ALL at the same time.

That's why I bought this book 'Perceptive Play!' yesterday, written by Wong Li Lin. Yes, you're right. The Singapore actress, now mother of 2 children, is the author of this parenting book. In it, Li Lin provided 52 fun activities using simple home-available materials. There're a lot of learning through play ideas that provides ample opportunities for parent and child bonding as well. I like them because they support my belief that learning can be fun and need not involve spending a lot of money.

Today, I tried out one of the activity called "Colour shopping". I identified with KK that Green is the colour of the day and I got him a plastic bucket for him to collect all the green colour stuff he can find around the house. He did a fantastic job, picking out green toys, a green pillow, green sweets and even a green bottle of handwash! I awarded him points for every green item found and I asked him to record on a whiteboard. (This way, he practised his counting and numerical skills as well.) When he reached 45 points, I encouraged him to find 5 more to make a total of 50. He did it!

Tomorrow, maybe we'll try another colour or perhaps vary it to "50 round things at home". As Li Lin wrote, "the possibilities are as endless as your imagination!"

Growing in the night

I don't know since when, but 2 more teeth have cut through Baby X's gums and this brings his total teeth count to 6 - 2 above and 4 below. It's amazing, these teeth, they seem to grow in the middle of the night. One morning you wake up and there they are, two little white mountain peaks in the tiny mouth.

Talking about waking up, nowadays, I enjoy waking up. Make no mistake, I want to wake up everyday, eventually. But its the way one wakes up - leisurely, when you're no longer in need of sleep, or, hurriedly, disturbed by the alarm clock or by the thought that you might be late for work. Since I don't have to work on most days, I've been doing the 'leisurely wake-up' routine. It's a great feeling also, when you open your eyes, to see your kids' sleeping faces right next to you. The past few nights when Hubby was out of town, I have KK on my right and Baby X on my left in bed. It's a tight squeeze but the feeling is very cosy as well.

I really don't mind sleeping with my kids. Some books or people will want to encourage their kids to sleep independently in their own beds or rooms as soon as possible. But I'm not in a hurry. Sometimes, I like to hug KK like a bolster or gaze at Baby X sleeping contentedly in the crook of my arm. I always tell myself to remember and cherish these moments because they don't stay this size for long. Like teeth, children too seem to grow in the night without you knowing. Pretty soon, they'll be too big to hug and would probably prefer to cuddle someone else in the crook of their arms. So since they're all mine now, I'm smelling their skin and hair and chalking up enough sweet memories to last for the rest of my life.

The "Forever" Phase

KK is currently going through this phase which I call 'The Forever" phase. When things don't go his way or when he's upset, he'll fold his arms across his chest, pout his lips and say something like, "I'm not going to talk to you, forever!" or "I don't like Papa, forever!"

It's acutally his way of showing his extreme displeasure verbally. I think he's getting to be more sensitive about his feelings and this is perhaps one way of expressing his emotions. Of course, he has no idea what he's talking about. His 'forever' usually don't last longer than 5 minutes on average. And much as we'll like to respect his feelings, the way he says it is sometimes so funny it makes us laugh instead.

The Tissue Shredder

Baby X is gaining an increased competency in the skill of tissue shredding. He knows how to dig his little hand into the tissue box and extract the pieces of tissues. Afterwhich he will begin to tear at them, until they turn into tens of little pieces. Amongst all his toys, tissues tearing remain Baby X's favourite past time. This might sound a little earth-unfriendly but it does buy us a few minutes of peace. Especially useful when travelling in the car.

Home of the Dodos

For the whole of last week, I parked motherhood aside temporarily to don on my working clothes again. For a salary I could not resist, Iogic tells me the temporary separation with my family is worth it.

For this assignment, I had to fly 7 hours to the island of Mauritius - home to the extinct Dodo birds long ago. It turned out to be an amazing learning experience for me.

Lesson #1 - You don't have to be rich to have the sea view.
As we travelled along the coast from our hotel to office and back everyday, we noticed alot of poorly and uglily built houses fronting the beach. My boss commented that in Singapore, if you lived by the sea, you are very rich. The taxi driver replied that in Mauritius, if you live by the sea, you are poor. And it would appeared so. Before I ventured into the city of Port Louis, my impression of Mauritius was almost skewed from what I see everyday during the taxi ride. Mauritius has lots of mountains and beautiful coasts but the villages we passed by, they are not beautiful. Poorly built stone houses lined the narrow and windy road. Some were built in the middle of a plot of land surrounded by rubbish.

Lesson #2 - You don't need to be rich to be generous.
Despite the not so comfortable living conditions, the Mauritian people are the warmest and most easy-going people I've come across. The bartenders and waiters of our hotel are so likeable and they make you feel right at home. The taxi driver who fetches us everyday, he's a simple and contented fellow. The office staff who fixed us our tea and coffee everyday, they serve with such dedication and humility it puts the 5-star hotel staff to shame. Even the management people who engaged our services, they showed their hospitality and made sure all our needs were taken care of and that we were comfortable. People go out of their way to make you feel welcome and they never make you feel like you're imposing on them.

Lesson #3 - Mauritius: A Blend of East and West, Black and White
Mauritius has a multi-cultural society. 55% are Indians with minorities of Chinese, Africans and Europeans. Conquered by the English and French before, Mauritians speak English and French fluently. In fact, skin colour aside, Mauritians are Europeans in the core. Their style of greeting is the 'cheek to cheek kiss' that you get in France. Their food - it's like a blend between curry and stew. And they take it either with basmati rice or french loaves. Very interesting blend of culture.

Lesson #4 - Hindi movies are very entertaining.
I seldom watch Bollywood or Hindi movies. But over the last 6 nights, stuck at a beachside hotel, with only local TV programmes in French or Hindi, I watched quite a few Hindi dramas and movies only because they had English subtitles. Well I must say they make pretty good entertainment. There's this Hindi serial that played for 30mins everyday at 7pm. The lead actress was caught in a love triangle between 2 husbands and we were hooked to find out in the next episode which husband will sit with her at the 'pooja'. I also caught 'Nameste London' one night and hmm, some of these Bollywood Indian actresses are so gorgeous and the Indian guys are quite hunky....

Lesson #5 - Health is Wealth
One of my colleague who came with me fell very ill on the 5th day with food poisoning. He was so sick that he couldn't eat anything for the next 2 days despite a local doctor seeing him. He endured the 10 hours flight home and had to be wheelchaired out of the aircraft upon arrival. He landed in hospital for a bad case of bacterial infection. We had all our meals together for the whole week so I wondered what it was he ate that caused him to be so sick. I suspect it could be the cut fruits he ate which I'd avoided. On hind sight, when overseas, it is safer to stick with fully cooked food and whole fruits like bananas or whole apples. Some raw food could contain bacteria invisible to the naked eye.

All in all, it was a good trip. Though I wish the hotel had no ants and more English programmes, I've gained a lot of experience with my work and made friends with a few Mauritians. But after 7 days, enough. I want to be back home to hold my 2 boys again.

The Other Side of Baby X

Even with the 2nd kid, hubby and I find ourselves marvelling at the little being growing everyday in front of our eyes.

When he's not busy sinking his nails into flesh, Baby X's actually very cute. Like when:

• he sleeps in his trademark position - legs open 180 degrees wide (yes, they form one straight line across...)
• he smiles at you and claps in accomplishment.
• he smiles at you the first thing in the morning (or middle of the night).
• he crawls about wearing his elder brother's underwear.
• he babbles excitedly and loudly in his baby language.
• he bounces up and down while being carried in your arms.
• he high-fives you.
• he tries to feed himself biscuits.
• he rolls about the bed.
• he giggles happily as you tickle him.
• he wears his body hugging swim suit.

I'm gonna miss him next week when I'm overseas......