I ate my lunch all by myself!

On and off I have been teaching Elric to feed himself. I can tell he is eager to do so. There were times he would reject food which I placed at his mouth and insisted on putting them into his mouth by himself. 

However, the lazy mummy and daddy would fall back to feeding him because the process to coaching can be tedious. Imagine the kind of mess the child can create after each meal? You will have to clean him, his clothes, the table and even the floor. It is always seem simplier to feed him and get the meal time over and done with. :/

Now that Elric is 19 months old and has, I believe, very good motor skills for his age, I do not want to steal from him this joy of learning a new skill.

So this afternoon, I was all prepared for Elric to make a mess with his food. @__@
I thought I would close two eyes and do the cleaning up that would follow. To my surprise, Elric did fantastically well!

What's more delighting was to see the pride on his face telling me that, "See? Mummy I can do it!"

I'm sorry Elric! Mummy have belittled your capability!! You did an excellent job! :D

Here's a video proof! NVNT*!

Growing with my child
As I watched my son eat, it reminded me two things:
1. We need to give our children the chance to fail in order for them to succeed. In fact, even if it have been a messy meal, so long as he has achieved the objectives, he succeeded. He will surely get better at it.

2. As adults, we need to put down our pride and be willing to fail in order to continue learning new things. The fear of failure prevents learning. Only with humility will we truly get to grow continuously.


Didn't they say? 失败乃是成功之母。。。 (failure is the mother of success.)
aiyoooh... my son is Successful and I'm a Failure.

Die Lah!
hur hur hur...


Happy Mummy

*NVNT - No Video No Talk

Interesting Magnetic Book!

"I bought a book for Elric!"

Whenever I told this to Alphonse, he would give me the there-she-go-again stare, followed by asking, "How much is it?".

If it is not cheap - in his standard - he would continue, "Why you waste money? We can always get it from the library mah."

(To alp: correct me if I'm wrong... but I know I'm right. :p)

The point is, I stopped buying books a quite some time even though I found some of them really interesting and believed Elric would like to have them.

So recently when I was hanging around Funan during lunch time, I saw children book fair and got attracted to it. My intention wasn't to buy books, but to see what interesting ideas I could get to DIY my own art & crafts activities for Elric.

Right. I got distracted. I spotted this interesting magnetic book ($13.90. It is not exactly cheap).

   

If you went like, "CHEY!!! This is nothing new Loh! Magnetic book is common lah!"
It's alright. Go ahead. I am still very amused by it cause it didn't exist during in childhood. :P


This is basically a board book with a magnetic sheet embedded in each page.
Comes with it, is a compartment that stores 20 water creatures magnets for the toddlers to play scenes with the book!

Look at that! It's like the book came to life! I can tell my son a story about the Nemo's adventure with the clown fish magnet or story of a diver finding some treasures in the deep sea. (ok... a few of the 20 nagmets are not water creatures. :p)

See? There are starfish, dolphin, hermit crab, seal and many others.

You can even bring this magnets to the fridge and let them play while you do your chores in the kitchen! hahaha... I haven't explored that but I may try. :P

On a serious note, one day if Elric gets tired of this books, I will probably just recycle these as fridge magnets. Good idea right? Recycling is good!

Elric loves playing scenes with the book. In fact, he also like to identify the creatures by matching the magnets to the picture list at the last page of the book.

He can now remember starfish, turtle, lobster and a few others!

Alright. Here is a short clip of Elric playing with the book and identifies 2 of the creatures. :D

Alphonse likes the book too!
Because such book can never be found in the library!
All the magnetic pieces would be gone after the first child borrows!! wahahaa...
Alright... that's it for this book.

Good night!
 

Love,
Mummy Kaye

Elric greeting his 2 grandmothers

The parents are most worried when a child is sick.
However, grandparents would probably be very certained too. 

So... last night when Elric was feeling better, we told him we wanted to take a video of him for his two grandmothers since they must be worrying for him. Elric nodded and so Kaye took this video of him. ^^ My cute son it is!

The Episode of Stomach Flu Invasion

Air quality has been bad recently because of the haze, and the burning of incense during this Hungry Ghost Festival is not helping at all. (Hungry Ghost Festival happens during the 7th lunar month. Believers would offering incense like joss paper to their deceased ancesters as a show of filial piety.)

Many people are down with flu, cough, sinus, sore throat and also headaches. I was thankful that mine was mild. I had a sty on my right eye. Irritating but because I behaved myself, not to wear contact lense or put on eye makeup, it recovered within 4 days.


Little Elric and Alphonse wasn't as fortunate. They were both mega down with stomach flu. It's not quite caused by the air quality, but it definited was noy helpful during the recovery process.

Elric's fever started on 8 Sep Saturday morning. It was considered mild and we thought it might just be fever caused by teething. We thought little about it and just fed him with chinese medication to bring down the fever. Elric had diarrhea too and we thought it might just be the symptom of teething.

On 9 Sep, Elric's fever refused to bulge and he vomited. I was rather surprised as I never heard teething would cause vomiting. We fed Elric with paraceptamol but it didn't quite help either. That night, Elric's temperature shot up to 39.4C.

We brought him to the PD on 10 Sep (Monday morning) and he was diagnosed with stomach flu. (and HOW ON EARTH DID HE GET THAT?) Elric was very grouchy and uncomfortable but as his usual self, he still waved and said hi to the people he met. (This is my PR-pro son.)

We sponged Elric with cold water through the night and the temperature kept fluctuating. Any Chinese sinsei would tell you not to let a child with fever sleep in air-conditioned room. The GPs would also advise against it because the germs in the air would pass to another person easily. For us, we didn't have a choice. Which the air quality the burning of incense directly under my bedroom windows, opening the window wouldn't do any do. (I stay on level 2, by the way)

Alphonse was over-stretched and came down with stomach flu on the following day. Elric was still vomiting and having diarrhea, but I was relieved that his high fever came down.

 

New problem arised soon after when rashes appeared all over Elric's body. He could not sleep well and was waking up many times in the night. Poor whiny Elric was itching all over and kept lying face flat on the floor to cool down his body.

Elric had no appetite and couldn't absorb the food he took. Minutes after he ate he would puke them out. :'( He was more sleepy than usual but still willing to carry out the daily activities like reading and drawing.

 

What made me worry was when I noticed Elric wasn't taking in enough liquid and not peeing enough. Elric became very restless and sleepy on 13 Sep. Which could be a sign of dehydration. He vomited on the bed that night and again in the morning of 14 Sep. I was ready to send him to the hospital when Alphonse told me that he had diarrhea twice. I rushed home from work but my mum and Alphonse said he managed to gulp down some breastmilk without throwing it out. So we decided to observe till evening.

On the evening of 14 Sep, Elric ate about 3 tablespoon of porridge. Do you know how happy I was??? FINALLY!!!! I knew Elric was also happy that he didn't puke. In fact, his appetite came back. He asked for more but I didn't want to be too ambitious. We fed him some H2O drink instead. Alphonse felt better. He was very tired though because he was watching Elric in case he vomitted when sleeping.



15 Sep:
Good news! Elric had diarrhea only once and NOT PUKING!
HURRAY! I hope that means we no longer have to change him 3-4 times a day, wash of his clothes and change the bedsheets so frequently.

Bad News: Mummy Kaye is feeling unwell.
The stomach flu infection didn't spare me.

BUT...

I WILL SURVIVE!!!! (=__=)  Gambate!!


LOVE,
Kaye