Kumon - My First Book of Cutting

Ian has completed this workbook, finally! I let him start off with the simpler exercises in the first few pages, concurrently with the beginner series (Let's Cut Paper and More Let's Cut Paper).  He loved doing the exercises in this book!

A Not So Happy Easter Weekend

Ian came down with a fever on Thursday night, and we started to give him Panadol on a 4-hourly basis.  Unfortunately, on Friday, the fever went up to over 39 degrees, and we started him on Neurofen as well, on a 6-hourly basis.  The fever did not subside throughout the day, and in the evening, Hubby decided to try the suppository instead of Neurofen.  It worked pretty well and the fever went down that night. 

Early on Saturday morning, we brought Ian to see his PD.  She diagnosed his illness as a bacteria infection and also prescribed an oatmeal powder bath for the little rashes on his body. 

Ian still had a slight fever until Sunday.  It was a tough weekend because he had been cranky, coupled with a poor appetite.  Whatever he had eaten would cause pain in his mouth (we wondered whether this was due to the ulcer that developed after his bump in the school).  It was a blessing that he still loved to drink milk, because whenever he did not eat sufficiently for his meal, we could still supplement with milk.

A photo of our boy, eyes puffy from a lot of crying in the past few days, and hugging his two favourite soft toys on Sunday morning - his "Pluto" and Mickey Mouse - while sitting on the sofa and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV.  He had been asking me to buy him the Mickey toy for a few months.  We saw the new ones at Guardian on Friday afternoon, and finally bought one for him, hoping it would replace the dusty "Pluto" that he hugged everywhere at home.  Unfortunately, it only served to keep his other arm busy as well, as he now had 2 favourite soft toys to hug around at home!

Stickery Fun

The sticker book that Ian completed over the last couple of months at my Mom's place.  As compared to the first few sticker books, now he could gauge when the sticker was going to tear and try to peel it from another side.

More Clothes + Diapers

Newly arrived today were a few more pieces of clothings from OshKosh (9m-24m dresses/tops/leggings for baby princess, 2 tees for Ian).  I also threw in a Carters french terry jacket for Ian as this material was not as easy to find as fleece. 

The DHL guy also brought us more of the cloth diapers today - what I had collected through various sales (about 40-50% off): 2 fitteds from Earth, Mom and Baby, a Rumparooz pocket and cover, and the 4 AppleCheeks that were hard to come by (the website crashed while I was trying to buy, and only managed to order through email 2 hours later hoping that there would be cancellations).

Scan @ 28 Weeks

It had been a month since we last saw our Princess on the U/S machine. Her head was still on the top, but Dr kind of assured me that it would turn down later on, when the head grew bigger.  She did a quick scan and showed us the head, and her stretched out legs and toes.  As of 28 weeks, her estimated weight was 1.2kg.  According to Dr, the weight was good and she was expected not to be lighter than Ian.  I did not know whether it was such a good news because when Ian was born at 37 weeks, his weight had already reached over 3kg!  I had already stopped taking Anmum for over a week and was taking calcium tablets as a replacement.  But I guessed it was because of the extra servings of food that I had been helping myself, and not to mention the sinful cream cakes that Hubby had been treating me for breakfast.  Anyway, both Hubby and Ian got to take a good look at our new darling as well.  I wonder how much Ian had understood when he was looking at the U/S machine and calling mei-mei.

Review of His Development

Hubby took the afternoon off to accompany us for Ian's appointment with the child development doctor.  It was supposed to be a review since our last visit in Dec.

We had lunch first and here was a happy child, waiting eagerly for his fries at Burger King...

At the doctor's office, we relayed the feedback that we had gathered from his childcare and she did a quick assessment on him.  She said he was pretty OK, but probably slower in expressive language development from what we had described.  He was still largely in the parroting stage of language development, which happened to most toddlers when they were 2.  But because of his earlier delay in speech, any language development problem might also show up more in the later stage of life.  She also suggested that she paid a school visit to check on how he was doing in school.  Guess we just had to wait for her feedback after her visit and see whether a further course of speech therapy was required.  Our next review would be due in August.

Cloth Diapering

After discussing with Hubby, we decided to try out cloth diapering our #2 because it would be more cost-saving in the long run, and we would stop adding so much landfill to the environment as well.  Besides, we would be expecting more laundry with another child, so it would not be too much of a hassle to wash the diapers on a daily/every other day basis.

The kind of cloth diaper that we are thinking about is not the traditional flat piece of cloth that you fold into a triangle.  We had plenty of those and used them during the first month with Ian.  But, they just did not work out because I was so sick of having pee all over me whenever I carried Ian.  Actually, we did not know that they should be used with a cover and so we did not have one.  But since the confinement lady left us, I switched to the disposables immediately because they absorbed more and were convenient.  I only found out recently about modern cloth diapers that were much more absorbent than the traditional types.  Some mummies even used those for overnight and had lesser problem with explosive poos (we had leaks with disposables too).  There are other benefits too, like lesser problem for sensitive skin, and earlier success with toilet-training.

And so... here are the very first 2 diapers we have in our stash from Earth, Mom and Baby - the Bumboos...

To prepare them, I handwashed them twice in some dish detergent. A lot of lint appeared in the water, but it was normal in the first few washes.  In the 3rd wash, I used some Country Save detergent and washed them until the water was free of soap.  I will probably throw them into the machine for one more wash, before letting Ian try them on at night.

Clothings For The Little Ones

Bought a few pieces of girly clothings in preparation for the latest addition to our family, so that she will not have to appear in her brother's clothings all the time, and have something girly for special occasions like full-month, etc. They are in various sizes from 6 months to 12 months.

Of course, not forgetting our Prince.... and an Elmo tee for him (I showed him on the screen before I added it to the cart, and he loved it!).

It was a pretty lucky spree, since the package came in a plastic bag and BDL charged me the exact weight.  But I realised that as the clothes sizes get bigger (for Ian's case, we're buying kid sizes already), the heavier the parcel gets. :(

A cozy blanket and a dream blanket from Aden+Anais, bought before the price increased on Amazon, and also used my 3rd and last $10 coupon on one of them.  These are mainly because Ian would need extra blankets for his childcare from next month onwards, so we would have enough to rotate at home between the two of them.

Unfortunately, the dream blanket came in a huge box this time (unlike the swaddles which was packed very compactly), so shipping was small blow.

Kumon's Book of Uppercase Letters

After months of practice, Ian has finally completed this workbook.  He is still not proficient in writing his uppercase letters, but he is able to recognise them, and write some of the simpler ones like "M", "W", "Z", "H", etc.  We will continue to work on his letter-writing skills using other worksheets and perhaps, we can start to try writing the lowercases too?  As of now, he is able to recognise most of the lowercase letters, though sometimes, he gets confused by "I" and "l".

Oops! He Did It!

We visited Courts this afternoon to check out the washers since our current one was in an unstable state.  As we were on the way out, I wanted to show Hubby the La Gourmet water flasks.  Just as he walked towards the shelves (with Ian in his arms), Ian struggled and used a back kick to knock off one of the flasks on display. 

To our chagrin, the plastic top broke off on the ground.  We had no choice but to pay almost $20 for the display set that I would never, ever have paid for if I had wanted to buy.  We were pretty upset with Ian's mischievous behaviour when he was outside (he normally ignored us and ran around expecting us to come after him), especially when he broke something this time round, for real.  I left him standing there for a while, until he showed some remorse of what he had done. 

It suddenly occurred to me, that I should really bring extra cash out whenever he was around, just in case I needed to pay for something that he might break again!

New Laundry Detergent

I was doing some research on cloth diapering (I would perhaps write a separate post on this topic later), and came across detergents that would be cloth diaper friendly.  Perhaps cloth diapering is not that popular in this part of the world, and so it is not easy to find the recommended detergents in most of the supermarkets and departmental stores.  Each box of these detergents is not exactly "cheap" at first glance, but you only use a very small scoop for 1 load, as compared to 1 huge scoop with our usual detergent. And, they are not supposed to leave residue on your clothes and you do not need to use softener with them.

If anyone is interested to check out cloth-diaper friendly detergents, here is the link.