Fever

Faith's gotten a slight fever today. Her temperature was about 37.9C when we measured at close to 2 pm today. Originally, we were supposed to go for a trial lesson at Kindermusik today. I called the school to cancel our trial lesson. Coincidentally, R smsed me this morning to tell me that Partha was down with cold too and wouldn't be able to go.

Usually, the signs of fever would give me the jitters -- after 13 months of motherhood, I still get upset each time Faith falls sick. What with the recent Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD) ongoing, I'm absolutely paranoid about it especially when all the newspaper articles on HFMD seemed alarming and worrying with the high number of kids infected with it this year.

I've given her a dosage of Progessic and her fever seemed to have gone down a little. Would monitor the situation over the next few days. Since last night, she had some discharge from her left eye and there was a thick, sticky clump on her eyelashes and eyelids when she woke up this morning.

My mom said that Faith could be "heaty" given the horribly scorching weather these past weeks. She could also have caught a cold going from a hot environment into air-conditioned places like cars and shopping malls.

Regardless, we've been giving her some herbal and/or cooling drinks like chrysanthemum with ginseng, luohan guo with chrysanthemum and the likes for the past few days and will continue to do so.

Meanwhile, am on alert and am checking her palms and feet every so often. Hope its nothing serious but just the hot weather *fingers crossed*

The day the father fed his baby crepe dipped in chilli sauce

Blame it on jetlag, but I think Louis must have been a little comatose when he arrived back in Singapore on Saturday afternoon after 3 days in Beijing. He actually fed Faith a wee bit of crepe, doused liberally in a sweet chilli sauce that night during dinner!

We were having dinner at the newly opened Zhou's Kitchen outlet (under Tung Lok) at Square 2. As usual, Louis was waiting for me to fed Faith before we both eat our dinner with the family. These days, Faith wants to eat food off our tables or plates and the dish on hand was Peking Duck. To pacific her so that she would continue to eat her own porridge, her dear father started pinching little bits of the crepe in which the duck skin was wrapped in.

Before I go on further, let me rewind back a little and share about Faith and her latest greedy little habit of eating from our plates :) For the last few weeks, whenever my mom or I eat in front of her, she would come crawling to us. Standing and wobbling on her feet while hanging on to us, she would grunt to us to give her some of our food. One day, out of curiosity, I decided to give her a little of my fried bee hoon (vermicelli) that was stained with some chilli.

Faith lapped the bee hoon up, chilli and all with nary a twitch of her eyes and grunted to us to give her more. We tested it out again on another separate one or two ocassions, each with similar results.

Hence, when we were heading home from the airport on Saturday, I recounted to Louis these incidences.

And dear Louis, in his jetlagged state, had thought that his daughter was now a qualified, full-fledged chilli eater. At the dinner table when he first offered her a small piece of crepe dipped lightly with the sweet chilli sauce, she swallowed that and looked to him for more.

I have to tell you that this father is putty in his daughter's little hands. Of course, he willingly obliged with more crepes. But the second time, he liberally swirled that little bit of crepe in the sweet chilli sauce and before I knew what was happening, popped the item into his daughter's waiting mouth.

Lo and behold, the 2 seconds after that bit of crepe entered her mouth and touched her tongue, the piquant bits of chilli swimming in the sauce must have hit her palate senses. She turned to me, giving me a panicked look and let loose with a volley of loud wails.

Faith spent the next few minutes bawling her heart out and Louis, stricken and thoroughly apologetic about the deed he had just done to his little one :) That night, after she slept and the two of us were chatting, he was telling me that he didn't know what striked him or why he had thought that Faith was ready to move on to chilli items based on what I had told him.

I had found the whole episode highly amusing. My philosophy about Faith is that I would like to expose her wherever possible to as many range and variety of food/cuisine as long as she's willing and able to try.

Eating chilli is certainly one of those things that I hope she would learn to accept and enjoy as she grows older. After all, we are Singaporeans and living in Asia where chilli forms a large part of our culinary heritage. Although not now cos she's still so young. I hope that as with young kids, the incident would fade from her memory very quickly and not frighten her off from eating spicy food in the future :)

Away

It is strange how as a consultant, I am still "unaccustomed" to travel. Or rather, it is this feeling of being away from family.

Just last week, I had returned from a 2-week stint in reservist. Each day of my reservist, I actually managed to come home, even if only for a few hours. Even though it was a little tiring, I wouldn't have changed anything. Being home makes me feel like everything is okay. It reminds me of why I'm working hard in the day, or why it is okay to endure perhaps not the most pleasant things during an average day. In other words, being with Eve and Faith gives me perspective. That at the end of the day, my life is defined not by my job, or my being a company commander. But by the fact that those are only means which make life better for my family - either through making me grow, or simply by bringing in the dough.

I believe in Fate. And Fate had made it such that my trip to Beijing - originally planned from Sunday has now been pushed to Tuesda, giving me more time to spend with Eve and Faith. As I sit in the airport lounge writing this (with a plate of fresh fruits and bottle of water by my side), I am reminded about how grateful I should actually be. No matter how "tough" this job is, everything is really worth it.

Hoping to be home soon....

Weekend at the Fairmont Singapore

Weekend came early this week for us. Thanks once again to my MIL's generosity, we checked into Fairmont Singapore for a free 1N stay at the hotel due to the issue of the leaking ceiling/pipe at home.

Elder BIL was on leave that day, so he came along with us to use the gym at Willow Stream for his workout. For reasons that I did not ask but am thankful for, Louis was able to take off from work the rest of Fri afternoon. Astee, my elder SIL, her mom and the 2As turned up too in the evening.

Apart from the fact that we'd gotten the room for free, staying at Fairmont Hotel is a very good choice for several other reasons too. Compared to the Swissotel the Stamford which is just next door, the Fairmont has been recently renovated and the rooms are nicely furnished with a modern look and feel. If you stay at the Fairmont, you get to use the gym for free while guests from the Swissotel the Stamford have to pay for access.

For another, the location is great. The hotel is smack where Raffles City Shopping Centre is and with recent upgrading of the shopping centre and the newly renovated and expanded basement, there's really a lot of shops and food outlets to spend your money on if you so want to :) Of course, the MRT is also located exactly at the shopping centre, so its convenient to zip back and forth to wherever. I think this is an excellent hotel to stay in if there are friends visiting from overseas, especially for leisure.

Coincidentally, our soon-to-be younger SIL was also staying the night at Swissotel the Stamford (thanks to another of my MIL's vouchers) for her hen night party with her friends. Astee and I headed there around 10 pm, hoping to glean a little of the "action" that was supposed to be going on. Unfortunately, we were there a little too early cos the "action" hadn't yet arrived. Yes, I'm beating around the bush on this one but its supposed to be a secret :)

Had a nice tea session with my mom at Ya Kun Coffee at the basement, served up with caneles from Canele. Adrian gave her a lift home after his gym workout, on his way home to bring Astee and the kids for dinner and some shopping.

Anyways, we brought Faith for a dip in the pool in the late evening since the weather was good. She had a lot of fun playing in the water, with me pretending to "chase and catch" her around the pool. She was tired after and napped until almost dinner time.

Originally, we had wanted to dine at Shoduku, the Japanese restaurant at the basement of Raffles City, but the queue was unbelievably long when we went there slightly after 7 pm. Decided at the last minute to head out to Wah Noogeez at Carlton hotel instead for dinner before heading back for some quick shopping spree. Astee bought a pair of shoes to match her dress for the wedding. Adrian a shirt for his suit and me a casual top :) Louis and I even bought some snacks for supper and bread for our next day's breakfast.

We congregated back in the hotel room after that for some R&R. Took the opportunity to take more pictures of the cousins together and here's one that turned out great. The 2As each took a picture with my camera too. But as usual, Faith was playing with my camera after that and as always, manages to erase the picture that Anthea took. Oh well...

After breakfast the next day, we took Faith to the pool again for a swim. Parents-in-law came by for lunch before we headed home. The 2As unfortunately weren't able to come since they were coughing a little. Otherwise, I think it would be a fun time for the 3 cousins to be splashing about in the pool.

On hindsight, this 1N hotel stay was rather relaxing and fun even though it was unplanned. I definitely love the excellent location, complete with all my favourite food and shopping stores.

Wedding preparations

Yes yes... everybody in the family has been rather busy and hyped up with eager anticipation for the last of the Tan brothers to get hitched. Yes siree! My youngest BIL and soon-to-be SIL are getting hitched in May.

My FIL has tailored a pair of pants to go along with his jacket recently -- it was a suit he made for our wedding 5 years ago but the pants' missing. My MIL said she will go shopping when she's on leave. Elder SIL has already shopped for her dress at Celia Low and a flower gal dress for Anthea. Older BIL said he will wear the jacket that he wore to our wedding, but probably have to get it taken in cos he's lost quite a bit of weight since.

Louis had tried on his jacket suit, complete with shirt, tie and shoes weeks ago and declared he's all prepared. He's got a new pair of Paul Smith cuff links to wear, compliments of our Korean friend, HY, who swing into Singapore last month. Hmmm.... seems like the guys seem to have it easier. They can always "recycle" their suits and nobody would be none the wiser. We females have gotta shop for new clothes cos we do not want to be seen wearing the same piece of dress we wore years ago. That or partly becos we can't squeeze ourselves back to the dress we bought years ago ;)

I did some shopping for Faith and myself this week. After prowling through a number of baby clothes outlets, finally got a fairly decent off-white dress with a short brown cardigan at GAP. For moi, I went to a shop recommended by K and gotten a dress and matching pair of shoes too.

Since this is going to be the final wedding for our family for a long while to come (till the next generation weds ;)) , I guess we are pulling out all the stops and aiming to dress ourselves to the hilt. And we've booked a room for ourselves at the wedding hotel too on the actual day. For once, Louis and I won't have to leave the party early so that we can put Faith to bed. This is one wedding in which we intend to stay till the last dessert course :)

Yippee!

Leaking pipe in the house - Part II

There's going to be more on this saga about my leaking pipe, although I do hope once this problem has been solved, it would be the last time that I hear from HDB or my downstairs neighbour. *Fingers crossed*

A silver lining in all this hoo-ha with the leaking pipes and ceiling is that our home renovation contract comes with a 5-year guarantee. Thus, we have not forked out a single cent for all the repair works that had been carried out.

Since the cost is to be borned by the renovation company, it comes as no surprise to me that they are requesting for a further confirmation that indeed, my neighbour's dripping ceiling is due to a leaking pipe from our house. Becos the cost of this repair work certainly wouldn't be cheap and its not going to be something as simple as the past, with just patching works involved.

Hence, they have requested for us to not use the water in our house for a 24-hour period so that they can take the meter reading and also see if there's immediate improvement to the leaking ceiling downstairs. If it is, then, it can be sure that our pipes are the culprit. You can just imagine that if we are not to use any water for an entire day, we need to find alternative accommodations for the night.

After some discussion between Louis and myself, we decided to check ourselves into a hotel and to do it soon at that. Thanks to my MIL, who joined a few hotel membership programmes, we are able to make use of one of her vouchers for a free 1-night stay at Fairmont this Friday.

If there's still no improvement in our neighbour's ceiling after this 24-hour period, the next step for us would involve some hacking and drilling into our existing kitchen cabinets so that they can install and redirect live water supply to a new pipe.

Call me an ostrich, but I don't even want to think about the trouble and mess that would bring! Meanwhile, I'm going to just enjoy the 1-night stay at the hotel, together with Louis and Faith. Hopefully, the weather is good. Then, Faith can have some splash time at the pool.

Building confidence

Faith and I are thoroughly enjoying ourselves at the Little Gym class. One of the important things that kids learn through being at the Little Gym is about building confidence. Yesterday, I learnt something else too about myself. It is that even I myself require confidence too. Confidence and bravado in doing some of those tumble and play activities so that Faith can see me having fun at them and be willing to try some of these activities too.

The typical routine for the class would start with everyone gathered in a circle and the instructor would bring out a box of bells. The kids are encouraged to go forward to the instructor and pick out a bell for themselves from the box. That by itself requires confidence especially in some of the more introverted or reserved kids to be able to walk forward, reach out and take a toy. With bells in their hands, the class would start singing a welcome song, jingling and banging the bells on the floor.

After the song, the kids would put the bells back into the box and the instructor would start sharing about the lesson theme for the day. Last week's lesson was about the importance of giving ample hugs and kisses to children and yesterday's was about nutrition. Then comes the fun stuff, where the instructor would show or demonstrate with some willing kid various tumble and play activities. So far, these activities include doing somersaults, walking with their hands like a wheelbarrow and many others.

What we did yesterday seemed more like an acrobatic stunt to me. It required the parent to sit on the floor with their knees drawn up. You then place your child's back leaning against your propped up shin, with your feet in between at the base of their backside. The child should be looking forward. Putting your two hands on their shoulder, you lower yourself onto the floor, with shin lifted to be parallel to the floor. With a quick flip of your lower legs, you toss the kid up and over your head, with her landing on her hands and knees slightly farther from where your head is.

As I was doing it the first time with Faith, I couldn't help but "hear" the voices of my mom and MIL, wondering if they would be berating me or gasping in shock at what I was about to do. Blame it on the Asian background. But coming from one, I know my parents and my late grandma would always be nagging at me to be careful with children as their bones and all are still fragile and it can be so easy to twist/break/strain their hands/legs/neck/back if you're not careful. Whenever we see the Caucasians tumbling around with their kids or doing dare-devil stunts, we can't help but mumble under our breaths, saying "Aiyoh... crazy Ang Mohs... not afraid to die...".

Despite the slight fear and the possibility of getting my ears blasted off (by my mom) should anything untoward happened, I said a quick prayer as I tossed Faith up and over my head, landing her (thankfully) safe and sound on her knees just above my head.

Upon landing, Faith had this look on her face. Its the one where she is deciding whether she should be laughing in glee at this new act or to scrounge her face up and break into loud wales. Deciding to act fast, I make a big to-do out of clapping my hands, telling her "Wow, Faith! Wasn't that fun?"

And then she smiled... *thank goodness*

That's why I said it require the parents themselves to build confidence in their ability to carry out some these activities and not worry that harm would come to their kids. Truly, I appreciate that every lesson, the instructor would remind the parents not to have any undue expectations of their kids and never to compare what their kids can do vis-a-vis others. Yes, the idea is to expose and let the kids play in a safe and controlled environment. However, if they are fearful or do not want to do any of the activities, don't force them. It just means that they are not ready for it now.

As for Faith, we tried the feat a second time and this time, she happily broke out into delighted laughter. Now, she's confidently flipping somersaults. I just tried it this morning with her and I was surprised when she allowed me to fold her head downwards onto the mattress and flip her over. She was giggling and laughing as she landed softly on her back on the mattress.

Even though it has only been 3 lessons at the Little Gym, I can see that Faith is starting to slowly open up and enjoy herself at class. She's less afraid to reach out for the toys when they are offered to her, she crawls merrily all over the floor of the gym and mostly, she screams loudly and clap her hands in joy. The other stand-by instructor in the class was remarking yesterday that she didn't know Faith had it in her to be able to scream so loudly :)

So yes... my little baby is slowly and steadily building confidence in herself with each Little Gym experience. And this mummy finds great joys in watching all her little accomplishments.

Good job, Faith!

Leaking pipe in the house

Did I just say that there's nothing that I don't love about our house except for those unwanted intruders? Make that two things I don't like about the house!

To be frank, its really not the fault of our unit. Blame it on the fact that the flat is old, or that our renovation was the culprit or even perhaps, our renovation contractor was not savvy/thorough enough. For the last one year, there was a constant problem plaguing us and our direct neighbour one floor below us. The problem is one of water leakage, most probably arising from the copper pipes running through our kitchen or the bathrooms.

The very first time our neighbours notified HDB of a leaking ceiling in their kitchen, we had gotten our renovation contractor to come in to patch up the water outlets in our common bathroom and kitchen. While that seemed to solve our neighbour's problem for a while, it appears that some 6 months later, the problem resurfaced.

At that time, it appeared that the leak was now coming from the toilet ceiling in their master bedroom. Hence, our contractor was contacted again. The solution? Fully patch the water outlets in the 2 bathrooms and to apply a coat of water proofing sealant on our bathroom floors. Apparently, the first time that they patched the water outlets, they didn't do a good enough job. The HDB clerk-of-works officer asked that they fully seal up the drainage holes found under the water outlets.

As for the water proofing sealant on our bathroom floors, we later got our contractor to sand it off again becos our bathroom tiles, which were non-slip, became so slippery with the coating. We fear that my mom or Faith might slip and fall when there's water on the floor.

Again, that stop-gauge measure seemed to work for a little while. Alas, last week, I opened the door in the morning to find my neighbour from downstairs standing outside, looking rather apologetic. She told me that her kitchen is leaking again and if it was alright for her to contact HDB about it. I told her to go ahead as we have tried a few solutions on our end too. I can't think of how else to resolve her problem.

Despite the inconveniences to her, she was really very nice about the entire saga. Even though we had to carry some of these repair works on our end, its rather minor compared to the inconveniences and distress the leaking ceiling might have caused to her and her family.

Yesterday, the HDB officer came to our house, along with my renovation contractor. After checking around, she shared her hypothesis that the problem might be due to a leaking pipe. But she couldn't confirm that with certainly becos all the pipes have been concealed during the renovation work.

They decided to test the hypothesis by asking us to stop using the water supply in the house for a few hours today. At the agreed time, the HDB officer came over to note the meter reading, returning 3 hours later to check again. Apparently, the meter moved 12 units during this time. She noted that the movement for this period was considered to be very high especially when we assured her that we didn't use the water at all during this 3-hour time frame.

Hence, the problem indeed was a leaking pipe. But becos everything has been concealed, she has no way of seeing where the problem area lies. A probable location is the T-joint (whatever that means) or anywhere along the pipes running to and from our kitchen and bathrooms. Regardless, the situation on hand now doesn't look good becos it would certainly involve hacking into my existing kitchen cabinets no matter what. Sigh...

I'm now waiting for my contractor to get back to me. My worry about the entire situation is any hacking and drilling would bring not only inconveniences but possible hazard since we are nearly always at home and we have a crawling toddler that's curious to explore anything different. On the other hand, if I put myself in my neighbour's shoes, I can most definitely empathise with her and should therefore look towards an early resolution of the leaking pipes issue. Sigh... a most vexing problem...

Let's hope my contractor has good news for me, although I think it would be a miracle is he really has a solution that does not involve any hacking on my end. Double sigh...

The unwanted intruder

Louis and I have deemed that the purchase of our current house was one of the smartest choice we ever made. There's absolutely nothing that we do not like or love about our house. Except for one little problem... there are some unwanted intruders that pop in every so often that drives me crazy.

Mosquitoes! My most hated insects of all. I have a love-hate relationship with them. They love me (or rather my blood) while I hate each and every one of them to the core. For exactly the same reason that those blood thirsty vampires seemed to love me for.

Our unit is located in the middle of a 19-storey flat. Right outside our balcony window, there's a tall tree. Across a little road from our block of flat, there's a nursery. I suspect that the mosquitoes come from either the tree or the nursery, especially when they fumigate the place every so often.

Usually, the mosquitoes would grant me their first (few) kiss of love. But when we put Faith to sleep earlier at night, she usually sleeps on her own until we are ready to go to bed. It is at these times when she's more susceptible to mosquito bites since Target #1 (i.e. myself) am not on hand to provide food for those blood sucking vampires!

Last week, a mosquito bit her all over her face. She's got bites on her forehead, side of her head, on her right eyelid and another on her hands. Unfortunately, Faith's reaction to mosquito bites are like mine. She develops allergies to the bites and they would swell and turn a bright red. Those bites took almost a week to subside and clear.

The very next day, I hit the pharmacy and NTUC to buy calamine lotion and 2 different types of mosquito repellents to put in the house. I first tried one of those "air-freshener" gel-like canister, placing it on the open window sill of our bedroom.

It seemed to work for a while, but just on Sunday night I'd gotten a mosquito bite on my left arm. Incest, I crept out of our bedroom in the middle of the night to read the instructions on the other pack of insect repellent. This one is an electric mosquito repeller, which you affix a mat into the grill of the heater, shaped in an electrical plug which you promptly place into an electrical outlet. I seem to suffer no further mosquito bites for the rest of the night. Thankfully, Faith didn't have any mosquito bite on her when I checked her first thing on awakening.

While these mosquito repellents all seem to work one way or another, their effect is rather short term. They usually last for a 12-hour basis or the effect seem to wear off after a short spell -- like the gel canister. I would like something that works well on a longer term period, rather than to have to change or plug some sort of insect repellent on a daily basis. But I rather suspect that there's nothing like this available commercially. For now, we just have to be more diligent :(

The above picture shows Faith with her mosquito bites. The circled number representing each bite on her face.

Fastest milk drinking record for Faith

I hope I wouldn't jinx things just by writing about it. But its the first time today that Faith drank her milk so quickly... 100ml in 5 minutes. For me, that's even better than hitting jackpot or striking lottery.

She went for her Little Gym class today and the timing was at 3 pm, which coincides quite closely for her afternoon milk feed. What with all the exercises, she must be ravenous and thirsty after. We gave her a bottle of milk and she drank it very quickly, stopping with only a few intervals to catch a breather. Yippee!!!

This class that she's in is a much smaller one than the weekend. There was only 5 sets of mother-child participants, including ourselves and one other who was there for a trial class. The kids in this class are however older, and with the exception of the "trialer" and Faith, the rest of the kids are walking and around the age of 18-20 months.

While at The Forum, popped in very quickly to a bookshop to grab some books for Anthea. She's celebrating her birthday this weekend and my SIL requested for books as presents cos she said that Anthea's been doing some bedtime reading on her own these days. Hope these books would be just right for this young budding reader.

Pick up stick

The rate at which our little baby develops and the sheer capacity of her little mind's ability to absorb and learn about the world around her never ceases to amaze me. After all, I've been with her every single day of her life and have watched her grow from a wee little thing who started out in life sleeping, eating and pooping on a 24 hour basis to (what seems suddenly) a budding toddler that is ready to take on the world.

Just like a brand new computer with high speed RAM and hard disk that efficiently uploads and downloads information, Faith's carefully watching all of us and learning so very quickly new skills every single day.

At the Little Gym last week, we only tried twice with her to lift her upper body and legs off the ground, letting her walk with her hands. Yesterday, as I was trying to practice those exercises and show my mom what she had learnt, Faith immediately started walking with her hands the moment I lifted her body and legs, like a little wheelbarrow.

In a separate incident, I had introduced a curved stick (like curved handles of umbrellas) to her and showed her how to use the curved end to hook out her toys some weeks ago. This was in a bid to reduce the number of times I have to retrieve her toys and balls from under our TV console :)

At that time, she made a half-hearted attempt to hook out one of her pin balls that rolled under. Just as quickly, she decided to abandon that mini project. Still grabbing the stick in one hand, she crawled and stood up on the other end of our TV console. Using the stick, she tried to hook and yank at some of the photo frames and pictures sitting atop the console instead! As much as I was bemused at her reaction, I had to applaud her for her quick thinking. Talk about improvisation.

Today, I was just sitting unobtrusively in one corner of the living room, watching her play with her toys. When one of the items slide under the TV console, Faith automatically turned around to look for the curved stick. Using it and wriggling her butt to lay flat on her belly, she tried to prod the item out with her stick. Looking at her, I can't help feeling a little proud that my little baby is taking teeny-weeny baby steps towards gaining independence and confidence in herself.

No longer does she first look to us, pointing and grunting in the direction of the toy, waiting for us to retrieve it for her. Well... technically, she still does. But only when she still can't pull out the toy despite her impatient yanking and hooking, which is quite often cos her control of the stick isn't good yet. Hence, she mostly ends up pushing the item further inside than outside :)

Almost on a daily basis, I'm surprised by the things that she picks up and learn. But she's really so adorable now... so full of fun and surprises :)