Monday, February 28, 2011

last last weekend

It was a busy weekend. Last last weekend.

After that busy morning at the playground and library, we went to Esplanade with my inlaws and their parents or so Eliza's tai-po. To catch a glimpse of the water show at MBS.

This lil excited girl.


We were quite early and the concerts that were usually indoors and at the outdoor amphitheater has yet to start. She was quite eager to listen to the concerts as it has been quite a while since we have been to one. Really gotta go botanic gardens again for another outdoor concert soon. Anyway the indoor mini-concert was a little too loud and she was quite put off by it so we went out to check out the one outdoors. Alas, it was too alternative...those tunes were just too odd and scary for her appreciation. She refused to go any nearer to the music and we had to make a detour to get to my in-laws who were further down. Some ice-cream did help. And we did sit down at a place far enough from the disturbing music but when she heard me talking about it to my in-laws again, she insisted on getting further away from it as we could still hear it. Gee.
By then the water and light show has started and we did manage to walk to the furthest end where the floating stage is to watch. Thank goodness the music from the water and light show, although quite far away, was soothing and enjoyable for her. It was a song from a "What a wonderful world" that she's familiar with.
So i guess we know what kind of music Eliza likes now.




Sunday was to celebrate Eliza's cousin Augustine's birthday. We literally gorged ourselves silly on ice-cream at Swensons. There was the earthquake, a complimentary firehouse, hotplate banana custard ice-cream, and an ice-cream cake. It's insane. It believe they were all on sugar high after that. Eliza ate half of the sugar figurine from the cake. ewww...

They had a great time though...eating and running like mad at the airport.


Cute Xuanxuan watching her brothers eat fries which she's not allowed too. :)

Monday, February 21, 2011

Photos 2

My cooking with Eliza. We had spaghetti which she loved (without the sauce), + broccoli & fish cake on the side + pepper lemon baked fish (for me only cos she doesn't eat fish like this) + our leftover wedges which she didn't like cos it was getting too hard.


Next day we made pizza for dinner. Love the ease of making pizza from pita bread. It lasted us two meals and some for my mum's supper.
It was the same spaghetti sauce for the base, leftover bacon from my roasted potato the day before, sausages my mum bought from cold storage and canned pineapple. Though it probably cost about $2.99 for shredded cheese (from Cold storage..that's the cheapest i can find), $1 for bacon, < $1 for pineapples which i still have half left over, $3+ for the 5 pita breads & $3+ for the Bratwurst sausage (that was quite big). That probably works out to $11 for 2.5 meals? Hmm...not the cheapest for a homemade meal though. Think i'll venture to using other ingredients next time too. :)

Spot the pizza with a face? That was our first batch. Though i realized that there's not enough ingredients for a face-pizza to be enjoyed so i added more later on. I love it with a lot of pineapples :) Eliza joined in to enjoy the pineapples which was quite delighted cos she always picks it out when we do eat Hawaiian pizzas.


Making it helps her enjoy it.


With no one at home in the evening and i need to take my evening showers, this is what i usually do actually. I leave her with her favourite BabyTV, which is about the most tv she watches, especially if we are out all day or at my mil's place. Sometimes with her drinking her before-bedtime-milk.
Actually why we're generally afraid is mainly cos my mum's place on the 7th storey has no grills *~shudder~*, so we are quite afraid that she'll climb up a chair to look out if there was some noise that attracted her or something. As much as we can, my mum's policy is to never place furniture that can be climbed on near windows. So far, she has no propensity to climb and look out, thankfully.
Still i bathe really fast and generally she's still at the same place i left her at, else she'll actually come and look for me in the bathroom and wait for me to finish bathing.


Her school has been giving out homework every fridays to be completed over the weekend. Actually the first week, it wasn't that easy to get her to finish. Especially that she'll do it halfway and hop off to do something else!
But i think it has gotten better over the weeks, also probably because they do writing in school which she enjoys too. So i have gotten activity books for her to do. I love the Kumon pre-school series and this Sticker and Paste one from Popular. It has been a week and she has finished 34 of 40 pages already! :O ok...it is really easy to do...the first handful of pages were just pasting stickers. Later pages were more like pieces i will cut for her to paste, and puzzles to paste etc.
This book isn't cheap!! especially if you think about buying all the rest of the series which includes colouring, cutting, folding. Quite good and fun practice skills for little ones like her. Anyway i have found cheaper options on the forum selling for $8 for this pre-school series...and erm...some online that i can print instead. It's the colours and illustrations that's really pretty!! So i'm thinking of cutting them up and using them for other learning stuff.

Here she is applying glue. She has improved much with her use of the glue since a few months back, when she literally smeared and depleted the glue stick in one or two sitting.


We all need some outdoor play don't we? Anyway the LUP thingy at my estate has just destroyed all green spaces and playgrounds so there isn't much places to stroll. So on saturday we went to the nice big park & playgrounds at St.21. There were very nice gardens where the residents grew fruit trees like lime & papaya & banana trees which i love pointing out to Eliza and there were 3 playgrounds to choose from!
Somehow, she isn't too keen when she sees too many kids (even if it's 2!) at the playgrounds and would rather explore other places. Still it isn't too crowded on a saturday morning at about 930am which is great.
Not sure if you can spot her here...


She was hungry after all that play so we had to walk quite a distance to the mamashop. Saw this cute pair of granite monkeys (the other not pictured here), holding a polished granite piece. It's so cute cos the monkeys were frowning! So is Eliza here...:P


After that it was a one or two bus stops down to the library where she borrowed 4 books in 5 mins and declared that she was done and ready to go. (what? when i haven't even browsed anything much!) She still did wait for me anyway, till i browsed some of the paperback children's books and my parenting books.
They brought Singa lion to the library! hoho

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Photos

I have been taking a lot of photos lately so that i can send it to Ww and it's really quite easy taking from the iphone and just sending it via whatsapp. Just that Ww's silly super old iphone self drains like mad cos it keeps turning itself on, so most of those photos are limited to home ones unless i'm out for a while. So we have been exchanging photos here and there and it's great :) It's how we have been communicating so far, chatting on whatsapp, and if Ww's parents are around we'll use the skype voice. Only we don't chat after Eliza sleeps cos it's like 1am for him in Canberra. So most of the time it's during her afternoon nap and the morning school time.

So some photos....Eliza doesn't seem to miss daddy now...she retorts that she doesn't miss him cos he's not around...her logic.

We play Legos...this is her photoframe or camera per se...

She and her drawing...she's into drawing 'monsters' or whatever creature. She drew something that she called a dolphin though i thought it looked more like a whale.

The first time she wore her school sports attire...not that they'll go out for P.E., sadly. nevertheless she was happy to wear it. This is how she poses nowadays


I had to practice cooking...somehow!! Can't depend on my mil's cooking and this little girl doesn't like it all the time either. So i made roasted potatoes with broccoli & fish cake

She's mad over doing the Kumon sticker and paste activity and in 4-5 days she has done 32 pages. After all how difficult is it to paste stickers??? She just cannot stop. geez.
This particular activity we were supposed to stick the flower stickers, but she wanted to colour it instead...and sticker the flowers elsewhere.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Saying sorry

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Even as a toddler Eliza felt the difficulty of saying sorry. We learnt from sign language the basic courtesy of please, thank you, sorry very early on. And when she was able to understand the meaning of sorry well, we insisted that she apologizes for her wrong actions ie hitting people, defiance, doing things she knows very well she should not.

We also teach her to say sorry for accidentally knocking or hitting someone. This though wasn't too difficult because we model it easily. It was cute to hear her, knocking into us and saying her "sori sori" in her cute Eliza manner.

But it is the wrongdoing part that sometimes takes us and her a good 5-15mins to utter those words. I guess when she did something wrong deliberately, esp out of anger or frustration, she wasn't going to relent by saying sorry and that's why it takes so long.

Initially it was only a hug to make up for the verbal sorry, then we moved on to signing sorry (cos saying it is always more difficult). And now she is able to apologize verbally or at least understand that it is part of the reconcilation process.

This evening during bedtime I was quite upset that she was still so playful after so long. My patience was also running thin. Anyway, in my frustration, I almost took out the cane. I also expressed I that I was angry with her because she wasn't being obedient too. Somehow a while later, I was surprised that she told me something like "mummy I am sorry I made you angry". Aweie, I was so surprised and touched. I just had to say 'i forgive you' and give her a big goodnight hug. She also guai guai slept very quickly after that. BlogBooster-The most productive way for mobile blogging. BlogBooster is a multi-service blog editor for iPhone, Android, WebOs and your desktop

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Cooking and eating

Today is the first day i start cooking for us (Eliza and me for now).

I've thought long and hard for something both of us will enjoy eating and that is not too much for a mummy & toddler. Of course with daddy around, the portion will be much more.

Lunch was roasted potatoes with bacon + steamed broccoli with fishball. No rice cos i thought we had enough of that the past 2 days at my mil's place (with my fav braised pork!). Eliza took to the roasted potates (which she saw it as fries) with tomato sauce...although the bacon roasted too long became too hard and she somehow wasn't too keen after 5-6 wedges. Still good progress, she had her good share of broccoli which she usually likes.

Dinner was the leftover roasted potatoes with spaghetti + broccoli & fishball and not so hard bacon + baked fish (which she obviously didn't eat but that was for me anyway). I heated up the tomato spaghetti sauce but didn't add to the spaghetti in case she didn't like. And the purist she is, she loved the plain spaghetti. No sauce added. Just like the way she loves plain rice. Though she also ate the fishball and broccoli and bacon on its own as well. It was great :) Maybe there was also no snacks after her nap & before dinner other than a few grapes. She wiped her plate clean. + almost a packet of chocolate milk. :O and much to my satisfaction anyway.

I'm kinda worried she won't eat well cos when that happens, she'll usually be wanting to eat other things i'm not usually keen on, like crackers & sweets & chocolates & some snacks. Usually as long as she eats the carbos i'm fine.

We'll see how it goes, tomorrow we're making pizza for dinner. Something i'm not sure will work out since i realized she isn't too keen on the tomato sauce. Hope the ham & cheese & actually making it will help :)

Anyway i'm back to reading blogs that inspires which i really like...check out this article on "Eat your food or else" which i felt i've been guilty of at times. Especially since now this little girl has been greatly introduced to sweets and chocolates which i cringe at times at the thought of how unhealthy some sweets are. We have kept Eliza's diet relatively healthy with a lot of fruits (which i'm glad she loves with some exceptions), well....till she started school :S and all the goodie bags with the unhealthy snacks i don't even eat entice her. I hope to continue to remember these 5 tips for healthy eating habits for no.2 too when it's her time to start on the wonderful world of food :)