The Beginning Of A Long Week

Couple of days ago, I took babyAC to the playground at Marine Cove. My ex-colleague, F, needed some kids to be at the playground for a photoshoot. 

Marine Cove isn't a place I'd usually go to cos it's so out of the way, but it was nice to see how much the area had changed since the last time I was there (years and years ago!). The playground was huge and there were many eateries around. 

It was probably also the first time babyAC had the chance to interact with a kid his own age. The boy's a friendly one, not afraid of approaching other kids, and also not afraid of grabbing stuff he wants from their hands. In this case he saw the little girl eating a cookie and he grabbed it from her, stuffed it in his mouth and immediately spat it out. Need to teach him not to do that next time. Lol. 

Having to help F at the photoshoot also meant that I had to go buy some sunblock for babyAC. The sunblock will also be useful when we go to Hong Kong this April. 

Anyway, the day after the photoshoot I got a text from F asking me to monitor cos that little girl at the playground may have HFM. ARGH. And sure enough, babyAC was burning up with a fever last night (from 38.1 degreeC at 2am and hit a high of 40.4 degreeC sometime around 5 or 6am). 

Gave him some paracetamol when I discovered he was having a fever, and took him to the doctor in the morning who confirmed that there were ulcers at the back of his throat. Poor boy. 

So today (Sunday) was spent at home taking care of babyAC, who was incredibly cranky because he was in so much pain. We were given some ibuprofen which helped relieve some of his discomfort, but by the end of the day he was refusing even the boob, so we had to force him to drink some water by using a syrnge. 

It's the first time the boy has gotten so ill but you can really tell that he's such a trooper. When the meds kick in and he doesn't feel so bad, he'll totter around the living room and laugh when you make funny faces at him. And even though he doesn't like drinking water (so painful, I imagine), he allows you to comfort him afterward. 

All I can hope is that he gets well sooner than later and that this whole week ahead isn't going to be too terribly painful for him. 

Life Is Good

I was lying in bed last night, snoring hubby to my right and snoring baby to my left, and feeling like I'm the luckiest girl in the world (I'm the luckiest girl in the universe!) 

You know that scene in The Sound of Music where Maria and Captain von Trapp are singing in the gazebo about how she must have done something good? I certainly feel that way. Hehee. 

It's the mid of March and we had birthday celebrations for Nanny (15 Mar) and +3 (16 Mar). Fish head curry and roasted duck for dinner, yum yum yum. Nanny will be going back to the Philippines for an entire month in April as well. I'm sure babyAC will miss her lots. 

We have our own little holiday planned, and will be visiting family in Hong Kong in April. Whee! 

Bekok Vacation

It's the final leg of my short little getaway to Bekok with cousinE. CousinJ was back in town and we wanted to head up north to visit and spend some time with her. +3 and babyAC were initially supposed to make this trip as well, but due to work commitments, +3 couldn't make it and so I decided to come here on my own. 

I'm so glad I made this trip. 

CousinE booked train tickets from Singapore-JB, JB-Bekok, Bekok-JB, JB-Singapore via the KTM website. Pro tip: booking individual legs of the trip is cheaper than booking return tickets. 

Tue 7 Mar: Our train ride to JB was at 1200 so we arranged to meet at the Woodlands Train Checkpoint at 1130 to collect our tickets. I dropped babyAC at my parents' place before making my way to Woodlands. Apparently, even though you've booked your train ride and printed out your ticket, you'll still need to queue up and collect printed ticket stubs. There was a pretty long queue to collect tickets when we were there. 

The train ride to JB was quick (5 min!) and uneventful. Arriving in JB Sentral, we made our way to buy banana cake (google JB banana cake) and have lunch at a nearby coffeeshop which sold really yummy old school hainanese chicken chop. 

Walked to the pharmacy, back to JB Sentral and browsed around Daiso, bought some snacks and sat down somewhere to have kueh. A great start to our trip. 

Our train ride from JB was at 4pm and we needed to be at the station half an hour before, so we had plenty of time to kill. It was nice to be able to take our time and not have to rush around like mad chickens. 

Got to Bekok at 7pm, which was relatively quick. Texted cousinJ when we were at Paloh, the stop before Bekok and when we got into the train station she was already waiting there with her mom and dog, Ozzy. 

Had a simple dinner at home with cousinE, my aunty, cousinJ, cousin's wife and kids. The three of us then went to the beer garden and had a nice catch up. 

Growing up, I've never really been very close to my cousins from Malaysia. When my parents still had the car, we'd drive up for CNY or Ching Ming but these huge family affairs never really gave us the opportunity to get to know each other well. Now that I'm older, I think it's important to try and build better relationships with my cousins, especially since there aren't that many of us. 

Wed 8 Mar: Spent the day in typical Bekok fashion, driving around eating, going back home to rest, and driving around to eat some more. Had lo mai kai for breakfast, char kuay teow for lunch, and went to a Chinese restaurant in Chaah (a nearby town, about 20 min drive away). 

We also did some touristy stuff and went to the bee farm and Hakka Cultural Center (entrance fee was 4 ringgi). Apparently Bekok is getting to be a relatively popular tourist destination! The Hakka Cultural Center also had rooms which cost 88 ringgit a night. 

Ended the night at the beer garden again, eating peanuts and drinking beer and chatting with cousinE and cousinJ about family and their life. 

Thu 9 Mar: Woke up early to pack and get ready to catch the 5.30am train back to JB. Typing this as the train ambles on. The plan for today is to take an uber to eat dim sum once we reach JB, then buy more banana cake for the Singapore folks, shop at Daiso, get a massage before taking the 3.30pm train back. 

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Unlike my Sydney trip, I didn't bring any pump because somehow I thought it would be easier to hand express. Note to self: it's not. I would spend up to half an hour in the shower hand expressing and boy is it tiring. I'm missing the little one and can't wait to see him later. 

What's This?

+3 and I watched this Key & Peele skit where they did this thing, pointing and your chest and saying "Hey what's this?" and when you look down, you'd flick the nose. Naturally, we both found every opportunity to try and flick each other's noses.

Last night, +3 decided to play this with babyAC? 

"What's this?" 

BabyAC looks down. *flick!* 

Lol. The little one found it hilarious, but he's a smart little bugger too. After two or three flicks, he caught on and would refuse to look down, or cautiously look down while holding your finger. 

Got brains, this one. 

13 Months and an Epiphany That's Really Just Common Sense

BabyAC hit the 13 month mark yesterday and "celebrated" by taking a small nibble from a piece of chicken at dinner! Woohoo! This may not seem like a big deal to most parents, but babyAC has been an extremely picky eater, and there are very few things he would eat. Oats and cerelac make up his three meals, and he would also eat bananas (his FAVE), apples (but a few nibbles), plain rice, rice rusks, rice puffs, and baby biscuits. Anything else that we try to feed him gets waved away, spat out, or even vomitted out. 

Ah well. As long as he is growing well (25-50 percentile for weight, he was 9kg at the 1year check; 50 percentile for height at 75.5cm; and 75 percentile for head circumference lol). He's really quite a healthy boy, and so far has only had a runny nose once when he was about 6-7 months old, and that bout of diarea when we came back from Indonesia over his first birthday and CNY. 

The boy loves to walk! Took him to meet some ex-colleagues for tea yesterday and he was running all over koufu. It was so cute to see how happy and friendly he was, smiling at everyone... until he got tired. Hehe. After that his sense of balance disappeared and he could only muster up a shy smile while being held in my arms. 

I had a good night's sleep last night, and I think babyAC slept through the night! I know I did (I think I did, anyway), from about 10-11pm all the way to 6.30am. Whee! Perhaps the boy did wake up and I was too zonked out to hear him, who knows. Hehehe. 

And when I woke up, I realised something that +3 had been telling me for the longest time that's really all a bit of common sense. If you don't use your phone right before bed, you'll sleep better! No distractions from sleep except a crying baby. Brilliant! 

It's a bad habit using your phone in bed, but one that I'm a little reluctant to break. The benefits of having a better night's sleep and minimising whatever harmful exposure to the phone definitely outweigh my desire of being in-the-know (latest news etc) though, so I'm gonna try to keep my phone away at night. (Actually, this shouldn't just be at night but most of the time.) 

Speaking of habits, a new thing that I want to try this year is speaking up more. It's easy to passively observe any situation and not react, but I tend to end up getting annoyed and wondering if I should have done something about it. 

Two recent examples of me speaking out- at the playground I saw a couple of boys pouring soapy water down the slide. Asked them what they did and why, and one of the boys glibly said they wanted to clean the slide. Ya right. So I said if you wanted to clean the slide, you should go get a tissue to wipe it dry otherwise if other people use the slide they'd get wet. Naturally the boys ran off and some other kid got wet, but I hope by speaking out they'd think twice about the consequences of their actions next time. 

The other example was when I was on the bus and this old man starting coughing without covering his mouth. Ugh. I passed him a tissue and asked him to cover his mouth while coughing (and was quite pleased with my approach), but HE ACTUALLY SAID NO NEED. And continued coughing! I was in shock and lucky for me my stop was coming up so I just left. But on hindsight I should have told him how unhygenic it was. 

In other news, my part-time gig has ended and I'm now looking for a full-time job. Praying that I will get one that's suitable for me, and there's one job that I've been eyeing (went for interview) and hoping that I will get. Positive thoughts!