I'm Still Here!

Just wanted to leave a quick note to say, yes, I am alive and yes, I'm still here. I know I ought to be flogged for being such a terrible blogger (i.e. shamelessly and guiltlessly carrying on reading other blogs as I ignore my own) but so much has been happening, it's not funny.

1. Coming down with the flu... TWICE (ugh)
2. Wrapping up 2 projects, 1 with a children's performance at the end :)
3. Starting a new project
4. TRYING to get started on my journal articles, which are due in less than a month's time :(
   
5. Hosting my lecturer from the UK
6. House hunting (double triple MAJOR ugh!)
7. Packing up and moving house
8. Starting DN in school/childcare
   
9. Growing a baby
   

Yup yup, you read right, DN is going to get a little sister in ... da-da-da-daanggg... early September. Yikes. That's only 4+ months away, and I have to finish my dissertation by then too! Why do I make life impossible for myself, I want to know. I might as well stab myself in the foot. It's probably less painful. -___-"

On the DN front, here are some updates.

Toilet Training

He has conquered toilet training! Whoopee! It was SO quick and painless, it felt like someone was hiding behind the wings, waiting to jump out at me and say, "Gotcha! You're not getting off that easily, ha! DN, pee on mommy's leg!" But honestly, it was SO easy, I actually feel bad gloating about it. Er, okay, maybe not, ha ha!

I was so scared of potty training, I literally didn't want to start. One (brave) day, I decided to just give it a shot. And in my panicky state, I brought DN to the potty every half an hour. In 2-3 days, both of us got used to the routine and within a week, he was telling us when he wanted to pee and poo. After 2 weeks, PF and I even tried going out diaper-less, and it was FINE! I really wanted to give myself an Oscar / Golden Globe / Nobel Peace Prize / President's Scholarship. Er... but we haven't done it since. (Okay okay, take the statue back!) We've been doing lots of house-hunting, so to tell people, "Er, sorry, can my son use your toilet please? He really needs to poop." just doesn't cut it. So unless we're going to a nice(ish) mall, he still has his diaper on when we're out. (Okay, take the scholarship back too!)

Attack of the Cheese

DN had a "major" allergy attack a couple of days ago because of his parents' lack of judgement and bad junk food habit. You see, my favourite chips are tortilla chips and I just lurve the Doritos Ranch Chips. Now, when you think "ranch" you think "cowboys, horses, stirrups, chaps and yee-ha" right? You don't think "cheese" right? Yeah, so we allowed DN to have some quite a bit of ranch chips and in 5 minutes, his mouth turned all red and soon after, his eyes started turning red and puffy too. The poor guy kept rubbing his eyes and we knew it was an allergic reaction and the culprit was the chips! I quickly gave him his anti-allergy medicine. This time it took longer than usual to settle down but thankfully it did in the end and DN looked normal again. Phew. The only good thing that came out of this is, he doesn't bug us for those chips anymore!

Starting Childcare / School

Because of Bessie's impending arrival (will explain why we've nicknamed the baby such soon), PF and I decided to start DN in school. We know that when she arrives, all hell will break loose and soon, we will start looking like what the cat spat out and dragged in. We figured it would help if DN wasn't around so that we can devote all our time to Bessie and make sure we don't put diaper cream on her hair in a sleepy stupor for example. It might also help DN deal with any jealousy because he won't be around to see us fussing over the new baby. Well, we'll see if it works.

Anyway, today was DN's first day in school and it went "alright" I guess. It wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't a total disaster either. Alright. So-so. Okay. Can lah! I'm allowed to sit in / hang around for 3 days in total so I'll blog more about this later this week. Stay tuned. :)

Ai-See Kweem!

Yup, that's how DN says "ice cream". He's still not very good with the S consonant clusters (/sk/, /sl/, /sm/, /sn/...) and he seperates the /s/ sound from the next consonant sound. So "scoop" becomes "ser-coop", "spud" (Bob The Builder's scarecrow friend) becomes "ser-pud" and "mosquito" becomes "moh-see-kee-toh". Hur hur hur...

Okay, back to ice cream. When he was almost 2 years old, his grandfather gave him some ice cream. He scooped a little bit on a spoon and DN had a little taste. He spat it out straight away (I think he didn't like that it was cold) but a minute later, the area around his mouth burst into red rashes. Oh dear!

For the past 2 months, I'd been searching high and low for ice lolly molds. NTUC, Cold Storage, United Square, Phoon Huat... but no luck. Finally I called Howard's Storage World and hooray! They had a set there for $11. But because I'm such a lazy bum, I didn't go down to Parkway Parade or Harbourfront. In the end, I still got my ice lolly molds, and for only $3.90 at Ikea. Woot! (It's good to be a lazy bum!) And it was DN who found the molds... at the outdoor furniture section, go figure!

So last weekend, I decided to make some safe, milk-free ice cream (or ice lollies rather) for DN. Because I was going to mix fruit and juice together, I needed my blender. I bought some mangosteen juice and soya milk (er yes, I tried to make soya ice cream) and used some leftover fruit I had in the fridge. You can also make juice lollies if you want, just pour juice into the molds, easy peasy. Many recipes I found online suggest mixing yoghurt in for the creamy taste but of course, DN can't take that, so his were just pure fruit and juice.

After blending the fruit with the juice (I made mangosteen-apple-banana ice lollies), I poured them into the molds. The one in the top right is soya-milk-banana. Er... let's just say I'm not trying that again!

I got DN involved too. He helped me pour the juice into blender and helped me put all the lids on. Of course, immediately after he put the lids on, he tried to pick them up straight away and eat his "ai-see-kweem"! LOL.

It took LOTS of explaining before DN would let those ice lollies go into the freezer.

When we got home that night, the ice lollies were nice and frozen. I took one out and tried to shake the lolly out of the mold. *SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE*! But to no avail. After several teeth-chattering moments, I finally used my "blain" and dunked the mold into a cup of water to melt it a little. The lolly slipped out and I presented it grandly to his majesty.

It was DN's FIRST ice cream and he absolutely LOVED it! He finished the entire lolly and has been bugging us for lollies morning, noon and night. I think the next time, I'll try a pure fruit lolly, no juice. That probably wouldn't melt so quickly and turn my son into a sticky, walking, talking mess!

This is definitely going to be a regular treat in our house. It's healthy because it's pure fruit and juice so I really don't mind giving it to DN more often. It's cheap compared to those pure fruit lollies you can find in Cold Storage ($5 for a lolly??!) and it's so easy to make. And of course, it's milk-free. :)

I think I'll try mango-banana-dragonfruit ice lollies next. If you're adventurous enough, you can try mixing some spinach (the salad kind, not the eng chye kind!) into the mix. The sweetness of the fruit should mask the vege taste and it's a way of sneaking vege into your toddler's diet. Oooh, sneaky sneaky. But it works, I read it online somewhere...

I wish I could do something about the colour though. It looks like cement!

Milk-Free Orange Honey Muffins

DN's milk allergy is really strange. Sometimes, he can take cakes or biscuits with traces of milk in them and be perfectly fine. Sometimes, he eats a chocolate wafer biscuit and bursts into rashes. Up until now, we still don't know how much he milk he can actually take and we're not going to feed it to him bit by bit until he reaches the tipping point either. But thankfully, his allergy is really not that serious. At least he can take traces of milk, and even a little bit of butter.

Until he gets over this allergy (when he was 7 months old, his PD said some babies outgrow it by the time they're 1... I guess DN is not one of them!), this means no ice-cream, no yoghurt, no milk chocolate, no cheese and not too much butter. This also means we have to be careful with food when we eat out : no pizza, no creamy pasta, no cheese baked rice, no cream-based soups, no mashed potatoes, no scrambled eggs , no milky fish soup noodles. As you can probably guess, we never go Italian.

So before we baked muffins on Sunday, I surfed around for a milk-free muffin recipe. I rejected many recipes because they called for way too many ingredients. Gluten free soy compound? Err, I don't think my NTUC will have that. Rice milk? Who's going to drink the rest?! Apple cider vinegar? Eeep!

Finally I found this easy recipe that called for 'normal' things like honey, orange juice, sugar and flour, whoopee! The only thing I did differently was add 2 eggs instead of the egg substitute, used real butter instead of soy margarine and added banana chunks into each muffin. DN had a ball mixing all the ingredients together...

... adding (or flinging, at one point -_-) the banana chunks...

... and staring at the muffins as they baked in the oven.

They finally came out, nice, brown and smelling delicious! And we all sat down with some cold barley tea (soya bean milk for DN), butter and jam.

Try the recipe if you like light, fluffy muffins. If you like your muffins dense like cakes, then this is not the recipe for you. It's very light and tastes really healthy because it's not oily or sugary sweet. And it works as a basic muffin recipe because I can see it working with fillings like raisins, cranberries, apple chunks or chocolate chips. This recipe is going to be a permanent fixture on my fridge for sure. :)

But all good things must come to an end... and we can never escape from the bothersome washing up. *sigh*

Got milk?

The first time we realised that DN was allergic to cow's milk was in April last year. According to my MIL, it was BAAAD. The few gulps of formula milk (FM) he had made him break out in blister-like rashes. For hours.

Dr Keoy (DN's PD) said some babies would outgrow it by the time they turned one, but DN hasn't. He's had "accidents" with cheese, ice-cream and salad dressing (?), accidentally eating a bit and then turning red (usually the area around his mouth). Because it's just a little bit, like a lick of ice-cream, the redness goes away in 30-45 minutes.

Qn : What would happen if he ate an entire ice-cream sundae?
Ans : He wouldn't. I would!
*cue : pitiful laughter*

Okay, I digress.

Because of this allergy, DN cannot drink almost all FMs because they're mostly cow's milk based. So we tried soya-based FM and hypoallergenic FM, but he didn't like the taste. I don't blame him, crap probably tastes better. So we tried goat's milk. As luck would have it, he's also allergic to that. (Damn you, Murphy!) A drop that touched his skin turned it red immediately. Oh well. We might try rice milk or hemp milk next.

Because of his cow's milk allergy, I kept up with the whole rigmarole of breastfeeding and expressing in the office for about 19 months. Last month, I decided to stop breastfeeding so DN doesn't drink any milk at all now. He does gets cereal (with NAN HA mixed in) twice a day, but that's it for his FM intake.

Now what's the first thing a mother does when this happens? Panic right?!?!
"No milk!? He's going to be 80cm tall for the rest of his life!"

So I did some reading up and what I've found out is, it's okay for kids not to drink formula milk. I guess it's such a norm in our culture that it seems essential, but it's not. As long as they get their calcium from other sources (700-800mg a day for young toddlers), they're fine. Phew. :) So here're some calcium rich foods that have got to be staples in DN's diet.

1. Salmon
2. Tofu
3. Broccoli
4. Calcium fortified orange juice
5. Soya bean milk
6. Spinach

Dr Keoy suggested giving him tau huay jui, so we tried it out. He drinks it! Yay!

(But the paranoid me still dilutes it with some water first.)

(And yes, we still haven't thrown away our CNY love letters. Ack.)

Sabo!

On Saturday, PF and I went on a mini-getaway. We left DN with PF's parents and checked into Royal Plaza on Scotts for 1 night. Finally! My first time sleeping through the night since DN was born. I was very excited.

As usual, I had grand plans and many tasks to accomplish during this "relaxing weekend". I wanted to shop for new tops, collect my phone from Motorola, laze by the pool, get a tan, read a book, cut my hair, get my eyebrows done, watch a movie, go for a romantic dinner and (haha) REST.

I'm a high achiever okay?!


We had dinner at Sushi Kikuzawa @ International Building, a nice little cubby hole of a restaurant / sushi bar. Ahhh... it was nice to eat SLOWLY and with BOTH hands, without a baby on the lap and drool on my skirt.


Shake Sushi

My favourite! It was cooked with a blow torch (is that what the chefs call it???) and had a little swipe of wasabi underneath. I hate wasabi, but this was so good. I don't know why!


Ebi, dunno-what-fish, Unagi

It was a buffet, so the chef just put on your plate what he thought you should be eating. When he wasn't looking, I quickly transferred the prawn sushi to PF's plate. :D



Spinach Salad

Wow. This was good. It was cold and the bonito flakes were delish!




Unagi Sushi

I've never tasted better Unagi. It was sliced so thin, it melted in my mouth! *phwoargh*!





Chicken Broth with Gingko

Nice and light. But only ONE gingko nut. Hmmph. -_-





Dinner was good, slow and relaxing. But I can't say the same about breakfast. We ate breakfast in 15 minutes because at 8am on Sunday morning, PF's parents called to ask us to come back and bring DN to the PD. He was covered in rashes, from head to toe!

Gone was the slow breakfast at the hotel restaurant, gone was the 3 helpings of scrambled eggs and waffles, gone was the nap after breakfast... *sighhh*

When we picked DN up, he was quite red and blotchy. His face had red patches all over, his back was red and so were his elbows, armpits and thighs. But he didn't seem uncomfortable and was happy to see us. Apparently, the redness had already gone down. It was worse at 4am. He had blisters on his body!

But wait, get this, on the way to the PD, it totally cleared up! He was as right as rain by the time we reached TMC. It was probably a weird case of heat rash. So we kept the air-conditioner on the whole day and all 3 of us just camped out in his room. DN had us all to himself for the whole day, the manipulative little thing.

DN sabo us big time!