Books from the Book People

Recently, with some help from a AN's brother who came back from UK, i ordered some books from the BookPeople. Love the children's books they sell there cos it's quite cheap, especially the book sets. If i go UK one day i'll buy more back.
It's really great cos i saved loads on the shipping part (super thanks to AN's bro!!). I love the books cos the illustrations were really bright and fun. I've cut down the number of books to the budget of S$80, else Ww will give me the 'look'!.

This is the loot.


Most of them are a little to difficult for Eliza though....and she doesn't seem to be as interested in them as her usual books at home. Maybe it's the soft cover...i think she's so used to those board books and hardcover books.

This book which is only about $8...is her fav. Yeap...her fav part is spilling all the felt animals out. Of cos and mummy will try to arrange it nicely like this...



hmm...for now the books are more for mummy than for Eliza?? hoho...will wait till she's a little older to enjoy these books! :D

Meanwhile Eliza's having fun clowning around....wearing her helmet and taking the bus.

Marina Barrage water play

Last sunday we went to Marina Barrage to find Eliza's cousins and maybe go have dinner after that. Obviously, the main reason Eliza will bother about is the water play area. Once the water play area is in sight she was running towards it with her usual water battle cry.

I'm not fantastic at taking photos of her at the water cos usually Ww's the one taking the photos and this time he was stuck at the entrance watching the rock climbing competition that was going on. This is only one of the few photos i managed to take of her...facing me!!! a lot of it was of her back and her running away to somewhere else. she doesn't stay at one place for long anyway.


My SIL's helper really likes her and helped me watch/follow her around...especially when Eliza initially kept missing the step in the water and slipped at the metal cover that didn't have any friction sticker.


She wasn't too keen on doing what her cousins were doing....and watched them warily.


Here she is walking over to the fountain to try catch the water


Didn't manage to get this clearly but it was the highlight of the area.


A good thing was that Eliza was able to play quite long without feeling too cold as it wasn't too late nor too windy. She was a happy as can be water girl. :)

Randoms

I figure as she gets older, the more challenging part of parenting begins. It's the guidance and teaching that one needs to do. And a big part of my challenge is my struggle to stay patient at night and to be consistent.

Patience....
There are some nights when i just have no mood to entertain a demanding toddler who wants me by her side at her cot (not even on my bed! i don't mind bringing her to my bed to sleep in the middle of thenight but she'll change her mind and want to go back to her bed...i think when she sleeps with us she doesn't have space to move about). Other requests that frustrate me are: milk at night when she's not really hungry but she just wants to go out of the room, wants me to carry her, wants water then milk then water then milk, cries for no reason. Then again, most of the time i guess her scratching wakes her up and frustrates her and she'll eventually take about 1/2hr to 1hr to go back to sleep. These few days, the scratching is bad. (there are good and bad days) That means i lose about 1/2hr to 1hr of sleep every night. :S
I wonder why she's such an angel in the day but such a little grouch and demanding lil toddler.
Last night was bad....which means we had a crying session at 1am till almost 3am. sigh...i was so zombied out today i snoozed late, snoozed while she played in her playroom, and took a good nap when she took her morning nap.

Being consistent.
This is a tough one cos sometimes i find that what i don't allow her to do, someone else allows her. And then it gets confusing for her. With 10001 things a toddler can't do, it's hard to list that 10001 things. So we try to state out the rules when we meet the situation. Few things are a sure no: no touching the power sockets, no playing with the air-con remote, no wearing of shoes in the house, no pacifer if she's not in her bed...etc. there are stuff that we do like saying grace before meals. somehow she'll almost auto do it when we eat together...but not when i feed her her meals. and there are many times i'll forget it. not too big a deal but these are the little things.

Shoes
God help me here. I await the day she'll wear other shoes. For now it's only her red maryjane crocs which is already too small for her and she'll have blisters if she wears them. And the only shoe that she wears is her pediped shoe which is still ok but doesn't have much friction at the bottom. The new crocs were too big for her and it still is too big...it doesn't help that she's now not interested in wearing them. bought 2 more shoes and she wouldn't wear it at all. How???
So i'll wait....and maybe try shoe shopping until she finds one she's willing to wear.

Talking
She's into saying a lot of gibberish these days and it's quite interesting. Just that we cant' understand her. It sounds like she's holding a conversation with us. really cute.
Recently she's saying words like
'OK'
'Please'
'Xie xie ni'
which is really nice...especially hearing her say 'please' after she's been signing it so often.

This is really taken quite some time ago....finally transferred the photos from my mil's hp to the comp.
Eliza trying to be like a little tigress


There was this initially period where she was really helpful with washing the clothes....

Well...at least until she started scratching the dirt stuck at the washing machine and putting in her mouth.

This little bag really fits her and she's always so excited to carry it out.


My in-laws were quite happy to bring Eliza out gai-gai during the school holidays while i'm at work. Eliza posing for a photo.

Photos of holiday week

The zoo day:

Family photo


How can we miss Rainforest Adventure water play area. Eliza did her 'battle cry' and tottered very quickly to the pool once we got her changed. Ultimate delight!


Obviously we had to try the slides. Eliza wanted to go down fast and she wasn't too happy that i was stopping for a photo.


Getting water in eyes is part and parcel of water play...and she always looked like she was going to scratch out her eyeballs or something.


This is the 'safest' area to play. The water is at the right enough height, no water falling from above and wetting her face. So she hung around there for a long time


We couldn't stay in the water for long cos it was quite windy there and we took her out to change when we saw her shivering.
Still there's the playground to play!
Hair stand!



She loves swinging like what she does during MyGym class


Museum day.
Ww said that there's this kids area where we could bring her and that's actually all we did at the museum. let her play there.
Practice her climbing skills.

She's getting more steady with her balance nowadays..


Some other kids were having fun poking the colour pencils into the brushy weird installation and Eliza joins in the fun.


Found a less crowded place to continue playing...until the staff told us not to let her do it. geee...


Botanic garden day
We took a 1.5hr bus ride to Orchard..would have taken half the time but there was quite a bad accident on the highway. It was so boring Eliza fell asleep which was a good thing.
Since we arrived a little to late for a morning walk at botanic gardens we went to Dempsey hill to look for lunch....we walked all the way up. Yes we did. (and we walked all the way down as well) It was quite an exercise that day!

Ate @ Prime society. Eliza had bread and paper fish

Told ya she was into bread...


Ww's steak


I ate pork ribs....best ribs i've ever tasted!!

while Eliza at her bread, some mashed potato, some beans she was quite 'on' about and the fries which she couldn't stop eating, such that we had to eat it quickly and tell her there's no more left.

Botanic gardens is SUPER hot at 2pm....the swan lake is the best place...
Eliza doing her peek-a-boo. it was the only way to get her to look at the camera


Seeing real swans is really fun. She kept pointing at them...and then at her favourite water

Our june holiday week

Last week i took a week off to spend some time with Eliza & Ww, to go outings together. My in-laws went to Genting for 4 days and we happily enjoyed being home alone those 4 days. Not exactly home alone, actually we were out most of the time.

Still it's nice to have the house to ourselves. Make a mess...ie leave the clothes unfolded in the living room and go out, leave things around until i bueh-tahan (ok i have a low treshold for toy messes though), pile up the wash till i can max out the washing machine, etc. I admit: i don't really like housework, in particular the vacuuming & mopping so Ww does that. I'm ok with the clothes part so i do those. And I cook while Ww washes the dishes and as usual, Eliza's bottles.

So a summary of what we did that week
Monday: Airport
Tuesday: Zoo
Wednesday: National Museum - MyGym freeplay - East Coast beach - MyGym class
Thursday: Dempsy Hill - Botanic gardens
Friday: Visit Beaty - Ww's Cell dinner
Saturday: My Cell lunch - MyGym class - BKHuey housewarming
Sunday: Church - Marina Barrage

It's like we jam packed lots of things. and then i have lots of photos (later)


There were some challenging times cos Eliza was teething (we suspect) and having diarrhoea.
Eating issues:
She wasn't eating much or drinking much milk. But she's a super snacker. So she survived on bread on one of the days. Every where i go it she'll be chanting 'bread bread bread'. Later in the week she was chanting 'cracker cracker cracker'. Hm....did i just say she was having eating issues? Anyway, she was being super picking on her food and refused to eat her porridge. It got better at the end of the week when her appetite returned and i added our food to her every spoon of porridge and she ate it up really really fast. No need to watch tv....she wants to eat!

Pooping issues:
She was pooing 3-4 times a day, so it was a lot of diaper change and pants change cos sometimes it gets so much it stains her pants/skirt.
The zoo trip had a mega poop outburst during her lunch. I wanted to change her after she finished her lunch but she was already propping her leg up and sitting uncomfortably. When i carried her up, the poop was all over the high chair and her pants and leg that i had to carry her horizontally in case my clothes got stained. She was super cooperative, as she usually is. She must have known this isn't the best thing to happen. Ww cleaned the high chair and he said that the cleaning person ran away when he saw what was on the high chair.

Sleeping issues:
She fell asleep quite well during bedtime, maybe becasue she only had one nap and by 8pm she was ready to go to bed. BUT she'll wake me up at least twice a night to ask for milk and not finish her milk! I realized that asking for milk was her way of making me go out of the room and bring her out as well. It was quite frustrating to wake up to make milk when she isn't hungry at all.
One night i thought i bring the milk in so i don't have to go out to the kitchen to make. She wailed even more when i told her the milk was in the room and she wanted to go out. It was a total breakdown for her...sigh. i wonder why she's so emo at night. Anyway, she eventually calmed down after a good walk outside the room and Ww's great idea of watching her fav babysigning time.

Of course the great thing about the time we spent together was that Ww got more time to spend with Eliza. And Eliza's kinda more pro-daddy these days. :)

Saturday grocery shopping

I love saturday grocery shopping with Eliza and my in-laws. We'll go to Shengsong and NTUC at Bedok and have early lunch if time permits. Else we'll be on our way home and hopefully Eliza will take a nap on the way.

Grocery shopping is a fantastic time to show Eliza the real stuff we've always seen in books and pictures. Shengsong has those huge fish tanks with live fish / prawns / crabs / frogs / clams etc seafood. And we'll always go check out the fishes. Eliza's not too keen on the black slithery catfishes or those eel looking ones, neither is she excited about the blackish crabs. She'll shake her head and say 'mai mai' and signal me to move away.

On the way out. She must walk up all the steps with our help


All dressed up in the right gear: hat & bag


Happy with her loot: sweets...not that i'll let her eat them


Getting a little too elated about it

This is Sat's time!

Yes Eliza's teething

Seems like a bad bout of teething..her "vampire teeth" are pushing their way out through the gums and we guess this explains the
- lack of appetite and selective of foods (she used to enjoy a lot of foods but these few days she'll reject quite )
- erratic eating / drinking milk (she'll ask for milk at the oddest times...like before her morning nap today and after her morning nap yesterday)
- lesser milk intake (she used to easily finish at least 100ml of milk..these few days it's 20ml and she's telling us 'mai mai mai', or she'll be so hungry and she'll wake up at night for milk)
- diarrhoea (yeap we hear the watery sounds)

I discovered a new sign created by Eliza. It's "Cream". geee took me quite a while and her frustration to figure it out! Cos it was bedtime and i forgot to put cream for her and she was sliding her hands like the word 'nice' but it wasn't it. It is the action where she has cream in her hands and she rubs her palms together. I thought it was 'wash hands' but her hands were faced horizontal and not vertical like washing hands. Anyway what relief it was for both of us to get it figured out.