Songs

Today, the OSTs of Descendants of the Sun and Goblin accompany me at work...

Both shows' OSTs are nice.. DOTS' songs are romantic and somewhat pop-pish.  Goblin's songs are whimsical, romantic, dreamy and romantic...

I think I will have withdrawal symptoms when Goblin ends its run on 21 Jan...:(

Past Few Days

Friday evening
Had an allergic reaction to some Indian food I ate. The dinner was part of the group's offsite activities. I felt a strange yet familiar itch starting from my insides as it radiated out to my scalp, my eye lids, lips, and arms...my eyelids are usually the first to get affected...

This time round though, part of my lower lip swelled up and also felt numb with a slight throbbing sensation. I started freaking out because that has never happened before. Wanted to leave immediately but I couldn't get a cab. It was Friday evening, and I was along Race Course Road....cabs were impossible. I couldn't even get through any hotline. Grab and Uber were useless as well.

I called K eventually and he came to rescue me....Took lots of water and an antihistamine pill and the hives and swelling went down by midnight....*phew*

Till now I have no idea what caused it. Could be a prawn I ate, could have been some of the spices that were used in the Indian food.

Saturday
Woke with diarrhoea. Xian max. Went to the doc immediately. Went to the toilet maybe 6-7 times throughout the day even with medication. I was still holding out pretty ok though. I could still look after the girls......

Sunday
The morning was pretty alright. Things changed after I had a late lunch at 1:30pm. By 2:30pm,  whatever I had for lunch ended up in the toilet bowl...It's been a long time since I last vomitted (I didn't even vomit once while expecting both girls) and the feeling of retching was quite bleah.

I was flat out and just lay in bed for 3 hours after that, half dozing, half awake.

Monday
Ok in the morning and afternoon, queasier in the night.

Tuesday
Back to work. Fingers crossed that my tummy will settle down soon.
It has been a queasy morning so far....


Last few weeks/days of the Monkey Year...jiayou jiayou...
Tides should be changing soon??

I wonder...

When I look at some people....they can sing, dance, act, play musical instruments, and are also good in a sport (or two), and can cook, and do well academically...and they look good...

Then I look at myself and wonder...

What am I good at?
What can I do?
What have I achieved?

Yes, I'm 36 going on 37 but I do still have self-bashing moments.......

Gong Yoo

It was through the movie The Crucible that I came to know about the Korean actor Gong Yoo. The move was released internationally as "Silenced". I'd read about it and decided to watch it online one weekend back in 2012. It stirred my emotions up so much that I researched on the movie, its background and its main actor Gong Yoo.

I started liking him since then. He was the one who championed for the production of the movie and in the midst of doing so, brought much attention from the entire country (of Korea) to the plight of the disabled children who were abused. The social uproar the movie caused eventually even brought about positive changes to the country's laws on handling abuse cases. Now that's something.

He isn't just a pretty face. At least he got out there and did something to bring attention to a social issue, even if indirectly.

I don't really chase K dramas. But during that period of time when I first came to know of Gong Yoo, I ended up watching the show "Coffee Prince". It was actually released in 2007 and I only knew about it and watched it 5 years later in 2012.

While he hasn't exactly been very active in the drama scene....he has got here a silent supporter. :)

And so now he has a new show "Goblin"...this silent supporter is doing what she has never done before...she's actually chasing the show now haha....

Peanut @ 15 months

She's such a cutie. Very lovable. Quick with her smiles and cheeky grins. Her actions are charming and totally adorable.

Height:
Roughly 77-80cm
That's 50th percentile for her age

Weight:
Roughly 9.5kg
That's also around 50th percentile for her age

Speech: 

• Besides the baby gurgles, her speech pattern resembles our speech pattern more these days. 
• She can say "mama" and "dada" and "cheh cheh" and also..."cheese" lol. I didn't expect that one of her first words would be "cheese" but it is. Maybe her love for cheese helped haha.
• It's been 2-3 months but she still says "shhhhhh" when you ask her to say "fish". Hahaha.

Comprehension:

• She understands "give (someone)", "pick it up", "stand up", "sit down", "no", "milk", "mum-mum", "change diaper"......
• She also understands "tiger", "lion", "dog", "head", "nose", "eyes", "mouth", "head"...
• She understands her favourite foods too. Stuff like "papaya", "watermelon", "mango"...and or course "cheese". I think she understands "bread" as well.
• She will respond with her version of a roar when you ask her "What does a tiger say?" or "What sound does a lion make?". She "barks" when you ask her what sound a dog makes...

Motor skills:

• She can walk on her own, although she is still not too steady yet. BUT...she chooses to hold on to our hands and walk because she knows she can walk and run faster if she is holding on to us haha.
• Her pincer grip is getting quite good. Maybe because I have been giving her small pieces of snacks for her to feed herself. :)

Food:

• She's not a milk junkie like her older sister but she loves her yoghurt melts, cheese and biscuits as much as her older sister does lol.
• She started out on porridge earlier than Nadya did. 
• She hates sweet potato and pumpkin
• She loves potato, carrots, papaya, mango and watermelon. 
• Cheese trumps EVERYTHING. Lol.
• She seems ok with pork, chicken and fish (though the fish needs to be fried)! Thanks goodness.

New foods for her to try soon:

• Baby pasta....She spit it out the first time we tried it a couple of months back. Hopefully she'll be more open to it soon. 
• Barley
• Oats. Same thing. She didn't take to it the previous time I tried. Hopefully she'll take it better now....
• Honey?
• Yoghurt?
• More eggs

And it's January 2017

New Year. Fresh start.

It's a slight deviation from my past years' thinking where the difference between 31 December and 1 January is only that the date is not the same.

This year...I hope for the fresh calendar year to be a new beginning of sorts. A clean slate again. A fresh start to things. Brand new year, brand new start, brand new hope, brand new fulfilment.

I wish for the girls to be happy and healthy and strong.
I wish for K & I to be happy and healthy too.
I wish for both my parents to be strong, healthy, happy and for many more years ahead of them. 

I've in mind some stuff that I hope to get going in the months ahead...
I hope I don't get distracted or lose the motivation....

Fighting!!

Friends

Parents are leaving on a cruise today.

At 1-plus, after lunch and while the cruise ship was still docked in Singapore, my mum whatsapped me a photo. It was a group photo of my parents and all their good friends. All in all, including my parents, there were 5 couples.

I felt all warm and fuzzy looking at the photo and seeing all of their happy smiling faces.

While I can't say I know each of the other aunties and uncles very well, I can safely say that I spent a considerable time with all of them when I was younger. All of them definitely saw me more often than my brother.

They all used to be members of the same country club and often went dancing or swimming or karao-k-ing together. My parents often brought me along with them...By then I was already in secondary school. On hindsight, it was actually odd for a young girl to be hanging out with a bunch of "oldies" haha...

That was some 20-odd years ago. Now the oldest of them is already in his 80s. Gosh...The youngest of them is at least 60 I think. All but one of them are retired. And each of them have their own fair share of health issues to grapple with.

What is heartwarming is that, everyone is still in touch with each other and still remain good friends. They explore places together, new shopping centres together. They go for senior citizen discounted buffets together and go for many cruises together. They lim kopi together and hog the seats at T3's foodcourt for 4 hours at a time just so they can chat together.

I think such friendships are hard to come by.

I'm happy for my parents to have such a circle of friends around them.

And I wish I would have my own similar circle of good friends too when I get to their age......

Now for another mad rush?

CNY!!!!! 28 Jan 2017.

Gosh, only a month more. Luckily I'd gotten my dress early on.
Now to concentrate on K and the girls and the stuff to get for both sets of parents....

I don't think I have the time to plan and execute a coordinated family look this year...
We went Peranakan last year :) And I'd actually hoped to do something cheena this year with cheongsams and such...but I guess...I'll have to leave it till next year haha...

Xmas 2016

It's been a long while since I'd last gone this long without a single post.
My last post was 9 Dec. It's 27 Dec today.

I guess it was a mixture of rushing to get everything ready for Xmas. Plus tending to the 2 girls. Plus tending to Nadya who was having a bout of diarrhoea. Plus attending various gatherings. Plus....Plus....Plus....

And so it was a whirlwind Xmas. From the months of preparations of all the gifts and the wrapping and the planning and research...and the flitting to and from 4 gatherings/parties. I had to miss the gathering with the sec school buddies this year due to a clash with K's family Xmas dinner.

I hope Alyssa enjoyed herself. While she may not understand the concept of receiving gifts yet, I think she had fun looking at all the different houses and she definitely had fun at my brother's place. She was shrieking and crawling and laughing and playing with balloons for a long time while she was there haha.

I think Nadya definitely enjoyed herself. She had fun opening her presents and she's gotten herself attached to several of those gifts. Namely, a pair of Frozen fork and spoon set from my parents, a butterfly bag from Ally and a Frozen storybook from my brother. I've had to go through every single picture on every single page of the book at least once, if not twice, for the last 2 nights before her going to bed. Mind you, there are 174 pages in that book. Zzzzzz... haha.

I'm happy to see the two girls happy.
I'm happy to see my friends happy.
I'm happy to see my parents happy.
I'm happy to see my parents happy when they play with the girls.

Today is Friday!

Thankful that I was part of the team to work from home today as part of my company's Business Continuity Planning exercise. We were role-playing a flu-pandemic scenario....

So yes, I didn't really do much work today. But I still had to stay online both on Watsapp and Skype as well as clear my emails promptly.

I was thankful though, for the opportunity to wrap the remaining gifts stashed away in the storeroom. And thankful to have had some time to finish crafting some of the gifts. I was wondering when was I going to ever have the time to do them up and finish wrapping the presents actually haha.

Am I all set for Xmas? I don't know. I hope so. I hope I didn't miss out on anyone's present!

Now lemme see....what should I wear for the annual Xmas eve party at my uncle's place...

hmm....mother liao but must still look nice...hmm hmm....:D

Of Songs and Classics

And so...these are the recent sound tracks we've been playing for Nadya...and....she's loving them...
I'm loving them too...:)

On occasion, we'd let her watch the videos on YouTube...When she's older, we'll definitely let her watch the movies as well. These are absolute classics that I love and I hope she would love too!

1. Shall We Dance - from The King & I 
2. Getting to Know You - The King & I 
3. Do Re Mi - The Sound of Music 
4. So Long, Farewell - The Sound of Music  
5. Spoonful of Sugar - Mary Poppins  
6. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - Mary Poppins 
7. Beauty and the Beast - Beauty and the Beast 
8. Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo - Cinderella 
9. So This is Love - Cinderella 
10. A Whole New World - Aladdin 

Things I am thankful for today

1. On hindsight, I'm just kinda glad that Nadya's sudden fever on Saturday was probably due to her teething. One huge-ass molar is cutting through her gum on the upper right corner. And it's making her cranky and painful as hell. Just glad that the fever was not due to something else. 
2. Peanut is walking already...:)
3. I'm wearing contact lenses today and my eyes seem pretty ok. Woot!
4. I had a lunch with PQ and TH. We chatted, gossiped and chatted somemore. Although talk revolved almost 90% around our kids and child-rearing experiences, at least it brought me some laughter and respite. 
5. I have a new monitor in the office. With better and sharper resolution so it helps relieve some of the strain on my eyes. 

Stuff I'm not so thankful for today haha...

1. I miss Peanut terribly.  I didn't get to interact much with her yesterday and I left the house today without seeing her because she was still sleeping. But she'll be going back to school tomorrow though...And I'm glad that we're going back to the usual routine of things. 
2. My eyebags. :p
3. My fingers are itching to do online shopping again. I've been doing too much of it recently...too much. 
4. I keep snacking!!

5 December 2016 Monday.

Peanut took her first unassisted steps on 5 Dec 2016. :)
At the "grand" age of 14 months and 11 days old.

I didn't manage to video it nor get any pictures of it but I shall endeavour over the next few days to do so. For posterity's sake. :)

She had been cruising for months and we were all waiting for her to gain just that little bit more confidence and bravado to walk on her own without holding onto us.

Voila, it finally happened.

She seems to understand that she's hit a milestone too. She seemed happier and more energetic yesterday haha.

Way to go little girl! Soon you'll be running around with jiejie. :)

It's that time of the year again

The smell is in the air...
The smell of Christmas. And family. And friends. And happiness. And joy.
That crisp air. That brings with it some tingle of excitement and anticipation.

While I've been bogged down by things at home...and by the endless amount of buying that comes at this time of the year.

I'm glad for all the Christmas songs I am hearing...they do bring a certain happiness to me...

Seeing Nadya get excited that Christmas is coming is also lovely...She's older now and more aware of such things.

We set up the tree over the weekend and she was happy and rather excited about it. We have 3 little maroon coloured birds as decorations for the tree and she has been patting one of them on a daily basis. :) "Mama! I patted the bird!" She would say haha...I had purposely placed that one within her reach.

This morning I noticed she had gold glitter on her face. "Did you touch the decorations on the tree?" I asked her this morning. "No...oo...ooo...." came the unconvincing reply...."So how is it that you have gold glitter on your face?" I only had a cheeky grin as a reply...haha.

Alyssa is too young to understand the significance of Christmas but she's loving the tree and the lights and the baubles on it haha. She gets a kick out of touching the baubles too...and squealed with delight when I let her touch the prickly tree branches for the first time on Saturday.

I hope Christmas retains its magical wonder for the girls right up till they are mothers themselves...:)

Here we go again

Nadya was fine for the last 5-6 days save for some diarrhoea in the initial few days. She is feverish today again.

I thought I would be able to have a smoother time this weekend. I thought too soon. 

My patience bucket is drying out. 

This is the 3rd or 4th consecutive weekend looking after a sick kid. 

And so the story contnues...

And so. Peanut went on hunger strike last night. She only had porridge for dinner and thereafter rejected all milk and only took some sips of water from 8pm till this morning 8am.

I was so worried.

She was also extremely cranky and irritable. She fussed from 1am to 4am. The helper and I were taking turns to look after her....and I was juggling between looking after Nadya and looking after Alyssa. Thank god Nadya was on a rare day of pretty good behavior and slept quite well, despite Alyssa's loud fusses and cries.

I brought Alyssa to the PD today again when the helper and I noticed that se had ulers in her mouth.
I was xian-half and rather worried that it might be HFMD.

Alas, the PD said she had contracted Herpangina.

What? Simi vagina? were the first thoughts in my head when the PD mentioned it to me.

Oh. Herpangina.
Mouth ulcers at the back of the mouth. No red spot on hands and feet. But caused by a similar virus as that causing HFMD.

My poor baby...When will this end??
She's suffered enough already! Her weight has dropped to below 50% percentile!

Sigh....and so the story continues...

Nadya's doing ok now and doesn't have any diarrahoea already.
I'm well.....Tired AF. Ad yet trying to clear some work because I'm on Work From Home today....not on leave hor, so I am supposed to do some work.

End of the Year

Time to sit down and plan some things out.

I didn't do it over the last 2 to 3 years because the focus was by default on the family and the kids.

Now...I think it's time to start tweaking things abit and bringing myself into the focus abit more.

Family

Busy is when you are trying to clear work.

Knowing you have only half a day in the office to be really productive.

And at the back of your mind you are thinking whether your sick kid is doing ok.

And then your Dad texts to ask if you are busy and whether you can call him back.

....

This usually means he needs my help for something. I called him back immediately even though I was trying to settle my work quickly.

Why?

Just because.

And also because I value family over work. I have my family's back, they have mine. I'd want to be there for them, any of them, if they ever need me. No matter how small or mundane a task or errand.

And yes, also because the parents are getting on in age. If me and my brother are not there for them, who else can they turn to? I'm just glad they are actually really independent already...

thoughts

I'm supposed to be asleep. But my mind is filled with many thoughts. Some fleeting, some recurring.

Was on half day PM leave to go karaoke with the sec sch folks. It's been 5 years since we had a k-session and we had wanted to relive that. I'm usually suay like that. Murphy's Law has happened to me on countless occasions I've gotten used to it. The school called just when we finished lunch. Peanut was having a fever. Ok, I told the school, I'm on my way there to get her. 

...thoughts about whether we should still put her in infant care. Why is she falling sick so so so often? Is her delay in walking a direct result of her falling sick so often? 

...would it be possible if I took no-pay leave for a period of time to watch her at home? How would that impact her own growth and mental/emotional/physical development? I'm not the best teacher around and I'm a lazy mother when it comes to educating my kids academically. 

...would we have enough money if I took no-pay leave? Why do we need so much money in the first place? Do I need a change in lifestyle?

...is the house "unclean"? Is the fengshui not good for my family, especially the kids? Do I need to do something about it? What can I do???

...I'm already a social recluse. Even my rare day out with friends was cut short to just a lunch. 

...find myself getting more socially awkward. Age has brought me more awkwardness or maybe I am just more aware and do not wish to waste time on small talk and people who don't matter much.

...I'm not an ambitious person. That said, while I don't wish to race to the top or climb up the ladder quickly, I would still appreciate having a small team to look after. Even a 1-member team would be nice. At least I'd get the chance to learn more about people development and management. 

...I'm supposed to be practicing mindfulness and calming the mind. But here I am letting my thoughts run amok in my mind. Not quite the person making an effort here. I'm so lax.

...Self-doubt. Self-honesty. Self-exploration. Seeking understanding and awareness. Or just badgering around like a blind mole?

...my fitness plan to allocate every Wed late afternoon to start exercising has been all scuppered. I've only gone for one session so far. And that was a mini trial/test session to force myself to wear my running shoes and exercise attire and at least get on the treadmill. But family committments and looking after sick kids last wed and this wed as well...I just can't find a chance to do something. Help. 

...hope my eyes are ok...floater in the right eye is buggering me. The recent eye infection has also given me quite a scare. Anything to do with her eyes make me queasy. Except eye makeup. Heh.

...randomness 

Conversations with a 3year-1.5month-old

There was an Awfully Chocolate voucher on the table yesterday.

N: Dada, what is this?
K: You can use it to buy chocolate from a shop called Awfully Chocolate.

*N saunters over to me*

N: Mama, you know? We can go shopping centre and use this to buy UGLY chocolate from the uncle!


Lol....awful doesn't always mean ugly sweetie...
I didn't have the heart to correct her haha...