Pesky Pantry Pests

Bugs bother me.

While I’m sure they are useful in nature in some peculiar way, I still generally do not like them. The very sight of them makes my hair stand on ends, especially so if I can see them moving, squirming and wriggling away. In.my.bottles.of.dried.spices.

Pantry pests as they called it, are pesky little creatures in my mind. I have no idea how they have gotten inside those tightly closed bottles, but somehow they just do, and they keep re-appearing no matter how many times I tried to clean out the “infected” bottles. Be it a bottle of paprika, fennel seeds, basil leaves, curry powder (all dried) to name a few, those pantry bugs are just relentless. They can even be found in new and unopened bottles of dried spices.

And man! Those things are annoying.

Many a time I have resorted to throwing away the food that I was cooking halfway, just because I was too late in realising that the dried spices I have used were full of bugs. Sometimes I managed to sieve them out if I caught them in time, but those times had been quite rare.

More often than not, the sheer volume of them was too much to be sifted out, and they also happened to just quickly integrate with the food I was cooking on the stove, and sieving became an impossible task.

I try to make a conscious effort to check my dried spices before I put them in my food by looking at them really closely. Most times, upon closer look, I can easily notice the spice leaves moving or that I see black clumps wriggling away.

Sometimes upon checking, I see nothing outright, but actually those pesky bugs were actually buried way at the bottom. So only after I use some of it do I see more movements.

Which is just ewwww.

It is so easy to miss them sometimes, especially when I am not consciously remembering that my new bottles of dried spices have got darn bugs!

Those pantry pests are pretty harmless apparently. Regardless, I still do not like them very much.

Did I already say they are bloody annoying?

Recently, I encountered yet another case of just a-few-seconds-too-late in realising that a bottle of a rather new paprika powder I was using was infested with bugs. Luckily, the powdered paprika full of live, squirmy bugs fell on the ladle and I reacted quickly enough for it not to get mixed in to my gravy.

I then scooped out the bits that went into my food and poured out some of the powder from the bottle into a small sieve. And I took a couple of shots just for you:

How frickin’ disgusting is that!

[I'll leave you to figure out what is what in the pictures above when you view them really close up]

Share the Happiness

This happiness campaign made its way to Brazil this time.

I Like!

Weekend a-tumbling

The excitement level last weekend went up a few notches higher as my parenting skills (or the lack of it) were put under a different level of tests as our almost 11-month old baby Spud continues to tumble around, giving herself battle scars of bruises and bumps.

The first was completely my fault. Thinking that Spud now has a better balance, as she has shown that she is capable of turning herself around, feet first, then her bum if she wants to get off the couch, I had, without much thought, stupidly placed her on the sofa and left her there for a few seconds just so I can dump stuff in her tote bag for us to get going to her swimming class.

The moment I turned my back away from her, just about less than a nano-second later…(I heard) THUD! The next thing I knew, I saw Spud tumbling on the floor (of course it had to be that one day where I just did not put the play-mat out!), and in an instant, a loud, “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” followed.

Despite feeling a little frazzled, I decided to wait it out just a little bit, and almost immediately, Spud came crawling to me, bawling her eyes out. As I checked for injury, I discovered a nice bump was starting to form, complete with a dash of a bluish tint on her forehead. Ooopsy! It must have been quite a fall, that. But it was over as soon as it started, and within minutes, she was all smiles again --- as if nothing had happened.

I don’t know why I did not put her on the floor; I guess I was just not thinking straight as it has been quite a stressful morning for me. I was just stupidly not thinking. Oh well. I guess she has to fall sometimes, like every other babies on this planet.

On the Sunday, while Spud was playing with my mobile phone in our bed, she then suddenly started wailing. As it turned out, she has accidentally banged up herself on the mobile phone which earned her another bruise on her left cheekbones, underneath her eyes.

Later that afternoon as we tried to settle her for her nap, she decided that it was also a good idea for her to be jumping about in her cot while holding on to the sides/rails. She looked so happy that I excitedly blabbered “Jump, Jump, Spud”, which by no means made her more excited (yes, silly me, I know. But she looked so happy doing it!)

As I turned my back, another “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” came abound. Apparently, she had hit her chinny-chin-chin on the bar of the cot when she started going up and down, and in that instant, gave herself quite a hard knock, as her teeth sunk in the insides of her lower lips. Some comfort and a little blood later, Spud is as good as new.

Ahhhh…the peril of being a parent to a very loopy, active kid!

My weekend has certainly been far from being boring!

An All-Dutch Brekkie

Happiness comes in the form of cardboard boxes filled with a variety of evil chocolate sprinkles or ribbon-ny flakes as well as fruit or aniseed flavoured sprinkles all ready to be spread on your bread.

The chocolate version comes in both pure and milk chocolate. I like the fruit flavoured stuff the most; and believe you, me, those things make your bread taste so, so awfully good! So addictive they are that I am rationing the quantity of my intake to make them last longer as we are fast running out of them. My guess is that this sinister De Ruijter spreads craving will be here to stay.

Just check out those colourful flakes on this bread. Tell me that does not look at all inviting!

I blame Silver Bullet for my addiction to these really, really evil De Ruijter stuff. Wholly. Solely. Completely. Let me say that again: It was all Silver Bullet’s fault. Wholly. Solely. Completely.

Like the poffertjes and bitterballen, this happens to be just one of those things the Dutch does really, really well. 

And this, my friends happened to be one of those weekends where our breakfast could not have been more Dutch --- simple, sweet, filling and superbly entertaining.

It's like having dessert for breakfast; and regardless of age, it is totally legit!

Rice Husks

Spud loves these Baby Bites which I hauled back from Singapore a while back. They are made from rice husks and come in several differen flavours.

I started introducing them to Spud when she was about 7 months old, in my attempt to give her some familiarity to finger food. It took her 2 months before she figured out how to hold it with her hands and stuff it in her mouth. Even when she has figured it out, she sometimes gets lazy and will just open up her mouth when she sees the wrapper, refusing to hold it herself.

They are great  for snacks, I think, and is especially helpful  for when Spud is teething. Just don't ask me if I think they are healthy food to give to babies as I do not know. I assume they are and I try not to give them to her too often.

Powershot: Pasta Arrabiata

Homemade pasta Arrabiata with minced beef for dinner:

The above was captured on automatic mode by yours truly with my new Canon Powershot S95, while the one below here was a test shot by Silver Bullet. Not bad an image quality, eh! 

Nappy rash cream:Sudocrem

Spud has not have any severe nappy rash so far (touch wood!), but I have, for the longest time, been on a lookout for the most effective nappy rash cream for Spud to rid of those nasties whenever she gets it..

All this while, we have been using Bepanthen as recommended by our pediatrician and tested a few different ones, but I have never been entirely satisfied with the results whenever Spud gets a little nappy rash...until I found this:

And ironically, the only reason I got to know this brand was by sheer coincidence when we were in Holland. Had we not run out of a diaper rash cream whilst we were there, I would never have known anything about Sudocrem.

What was more surprising was that I had no prior knowledge of this brand whatsoever, and I just happened to pick this one up after comparing it with a Zwitsal, a brand synonymous with baby cleaning product. I don't know what drew me to this boring looking Sudocrem, but I reckon because it looked so boring and has a somewhat no-nonsense look, I reckon like it would be a good bet versus the more brightly coloured Zwitsal.

And in this case, my gut feel was right. It was the best and most effective nappy cream for Spud ever! Her nappy rash literally clears up within a couple of hours upon application, leaving her skin smooth as if the rashes had not been there.

It's nice to see something that really works for a change. It's a bummer we cannot buy it here.

Canon Powershot S95

Feeling a bit handicapped since my Olympus died on me, I decided to spend some time in the last few weeks looking for a replacement.

Half-heartedly.

(and also because, I am not very motivated to spend money on having to buy a new one)

I am, admittedly, to a fault, just lazy to want to spend time researching on something I’m not eyeing. To add on to that, I am also a bit more less techie than I used to when I stopped using Mac stuff a few years ago. So I really cannot be bothered, and all I did was asked a few friends here and there, but not really actioning on it.

Given my inertia, Silver Bullet was only too happy to do the research and recommended this:

I have only had it for about a week now, and still trying to familiarize myself with it. So far, the picture quality looks quite awesome. I like some of the funky functions they have like the fish-eye, panorama and nostalgia. I am still wondering what is so miniature about the miniature effect setting…

Currently, because I am an idiot, I am not in a position to review the technical aspects of it like people do when they review techie stuff. So, that will come later when I am more familiar with the functions and actually know which function is used how and for what. (Don’t count on it though, because I am a lazy fart and am an auto-mode kind of chick)

For now, it works great and I certainly like it for its light weight, compact size and its sleek design that comes in matt black!

Sunday meandering

With Silver Bullet away in the weekend on a business trip, I made an impromptu decision to spend the Sunday afternoon with Spud to Siam Ocean World.

I love the idea of taking Spud to the ocean world. It felt like a nice thing to do, and while she may be too young to understand anything, I hope that she’d just enjoy the excursion all the same! If anything at all, at least it was some sort of a contingency plan to keep the both of us occupied for a couple of hours. Not only will it provide some distraction for Spud, but it will also be a key activity to conserve my sanity in case Spud decided to be difficult while I was alone with her.

So, with Spud and the precious tote bag in tow, off we went to Paragon, riding the BTS with every intention to savour a memorable afternoon. I had a nice picture in my head: Just the both of us… mother-daughter bonding, and strolling away blissfully at the basement of Paragon, gawking at sea life. I’d point to her all the interesting things in the oceanarium, and Spud will be so into the sights that she’ll be too distracted to even be cranky.

I had a very nice thought, didn’t I?

That vision, well, remained in my head as my plan went completely off course. What happened was this:

Spud has been squirmy all morning. She resisted being worn, preferring to be on the floor, so by the time we got to Paragon, her patience started to wear thin. With such ants in her pants, I thought the best thing for me to do before we head off to Siam Ocean World was first to try find a place where I could feed her some food, give her some milk and offer her a little bit of freedom without being strapped to me. Sounded like a reasonable plan, right?

Again, that was in my head.

I had to search for a good 20 minutes going from one end of Paragon to the other in search of a place that has a high-chair. And mind you, if you know Paragon, I had to cover quite a distance walking back and forth before ending up at McDonald’s for the 2nd time (I left the first time because the queue was too long!). By the time I finished ordering my Sprite, Spud was decidedly antsy. I was exhausted to say the least, but was glad that I could at least have a drink and place Spud in the Mcd’s high chair. I know for a fact that this would work, since Spud does not usually mind being in a new high-chair (for just a little bit) and especially if she’s being distracted with food. Usually, her patience would last for 10 minutes and I was hopeful that it would work.

She was decidedly happy when I put her down, but as soon as I flipped the food tray that came with the chair right in front of her, she started crying. Quite loud, too.

After a few tries of putting the tray away and putting it back in front of her, I understood the reason.

It turned out that she got scared of the pictures on the tray! And while trying to look away from the tray in front of her, she had inadvertently turned her head to the back of the chair, and immediately got spooked by the image of Ronald McDonald on it! Needless to say, that sent her into a major crying fit and she calmed down only when I took her out and pushed the high-chair out of sight. I ended up feeding her on my lap, instead. She refused to finish her meal, and was in no mood to polish off her milk either.

By the time we left McD, she was quite a cranky little baby. She burst into tears again when she saw the life-sized “wai-ing” Ronald by the door…enough to make me decide that we both were certainly not up for Siam Ocean World that day. [Damn you Ronald McDonald's and friends]

Instead, despite having no need for any groceries, I hauled both of our sorry asses to the supermarket about 100 meters away from McD and carted Spud around the supermarket in the shopping cart for almost an hour. I don’t know what is with Spud and shopping carts these days, but whatever it was, it kept her spirits up. And, by the time we were done with the shopping cart adventure, Spud was happy again to be worn for us to head home.

So, that was our weekend. Just the both of us; mother and daughter, going round the supermarket with an empty shopping cart, mother chattering away and pulling silly faces to entertain the little imp; baby daughter smiling, laughing and happily blabbering while sitting in the supermarket’s trolley…both completely oblivious to the world around us.

I can’t say I did not have a memorable day now, can I.

Hilarious Translations

Anything foreign needs to be adapted to Thai to cater to the Thai palate, and so it is not uncommon to find international magazines wholly translated into Thai, as well as Hollywood movies being dubbed in Thai.

While I am very much aware of the above, it never really occurred to me that Hollywood movie titles are being translated into the local language as well. Given how well I can read Thai (not!) , the notion of translated titles is obviously something I am not conscious about. Hence, whenever I see a movie poster in Thai, it went right over my head, thinking that the titles would just be the same in any other languages!

How daft am I, right?

Well, now I certainly know better after stumbling upon this article which left me laughing quite hard while I was at my desksometime last week, as my colleague watched me and wondering WTF got into me!

From the lens of Silver Bullet

More of my favourites...

Aren't they all just priceless!

[3 of 3]

P.S:
Drop me a note if you want to see more of Silver Bullet's photography posted up in his own not-so-public but a personal online gallery, and I'll direct you to the link.

From the lens of Silver Bullet

Here are a few more of my favourite from the Keukenhof series from our trip to Holland last April...

a) Tulips, tulips, tulips! I had to try very hard to keep Spud's little hands away from plucking those blooming tulips as we walked in the fields.

b) These pictures make me smile every time I see them. Her expressions are priceless. (And I was actually reminded by a couple of pictures of me when I was young in a somewhat similar setting [and the facial expressions] of me mucking about on the grass. Really gotta find those when I get home!)

[2 of 3]

From the lens of Silver Bullet

Here are some of my favourite shots from our trip to the south of Holland and beyond from the eyes of Silver Bullet:

a) Getting ready for a stroll in the woods at De Lommerbergen



b) Happy shots of the little imp while we were in Dusseldorf.

[Series 1 of 3: The next few favourites will be up in a couple of days. Stay tuned!]

Supermarket Moments

Nowadays, our shopping cart tends to come with this one regular item where I believe, is probably the only other thing the supermarket's staff has forgotten to stick a price label and a bar code for scanning...

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This, without fail too, will illicit a smile from the staff whenever we try to make our payment. There has been times also when the cashiers got so engrossed in cooing her and trying to interact with Spud that they somehow forgot for a whole 5 minutes that they should be checking out our groceries instead!

Spud much rather prefer this than having either one of us wear her these days. For us, grocery shopping has become that little bit more bearable and it is actually quite a nice to be able to stick Spud in to that little seat in the shopping cart.

Quite convenient, really.

Well...at least for now; until she figures out that she wants to be doing something else when she learns how to walk.

Fat Boy Slim

"We've come a long long way together,

Through the hard times and the good,

I have to celebrate you baby, I have to praise you like I should"

I guess we have come a long way, baby! We braved our way to a cool concert, leaving a sleeping Spud in the hands of our Nanny while we spent some adult time together jiving away with Fat Boy Slim. Indeed. Our first time ever in months since our last concert when Spud was still in my stomach; and I reckon will not be our last!

With Fat Boy Slim making his entrance at past our bedtime (about 10 pm), we really did wonder if we'll ever make it till the end.

It was an energetic act, with certainly more than lively music to keep ourselves awake, and for the first time ever too, we managed to get right to the very front of the free standing section. After about an hour into it though, we felt kind of old considering more than 15 years has passed since we were so into Fat Boy Slim's music! Silver Bullet thought Norman Cook looks a little bit loopy. I thought (from the way he behaved), he could easily be one of those interesting people to hang out with. It was, nevertheless a fun concert.

We made it back home intact, but felt really, really spent. So exhausted that I almost regretted that we had a late night, especially when Spud let our her organic alarm clock at 6.45 am! I guess we are just not used to the late nights anymore. I'm sure we'll paying for this for the rest of week with lots of sleep and rest to catch up on.

Here are some pics taken from my mobile phone. I thought the laser show were pretty fascinating!

Baby Food: Capsicum Rice Porridge

I was getting more experimental on the different food flavours I'm making for Spud and decided to try this combo out of nowhere...

Ingredients:

• 1 capsicum finely chopped
• 500g minced chicken
• 1 cup of rice

Method:

1. Boil the minced chicken to death.in some water.
2. Drain the chicken and set aside the broth in which the chicken was boiled in
3. Rinse the rice and put rice in the rice cooker
4. Add the chicken stock from the boiled chicken (enough liquid to make rice porridge)
5. Add in the chopped capsicum into the rice and chicken broth as well.
6. Cook in rice cooker.Cool them and stash them up in ice-cube trays to be frozen. 
7. When ready to use, just microwave it for about 10-15 seconds, with an option to mix it with breast milk or formula to make it less lumpy. 

Note:  You can choose to add in the cooked minced chicken into the boiled rice, or just freeze them separately to give variety for later use.

Verdict: Spud loves this meal, and certainly is a good alternative from just brown rice.

Singapore's World Record

Do you know that Singapore holds the world's frickin' record of having the highest income gap when compared to other 23 rich nations?

I didn't know either and I guess, this article here proved it so.

The cracks from the past are slowly starting to show...

SQ-us for the inconvenience

The people behind the current finished product of the Singapore Airlines new website ought to be fired. I now officially declare the once very highly-esteemed Singapore Airlines and its fuss-free, convenient online booking highly repulsive and stupidly appalling!

Between Silver Bullet and I, we both have clocked up a good 4-5 hours minimum combined, in trying to book ourselves a flight back to Singapore for sometime in August over the last three days. Seriously, who does THAT these days? Three days later, a few phone calls and a couple of complaints later, we still have no tickets booked!

To give you the gist of the problem we have been facing, here is a complaint letter which Silver Bullet wrote to SQ:

" For the past 3 days I have been trying to book tickets for my family and myself from Bangkok to Singapore and back. Until now, I have not succeeded in doing this. I have been forced to enter my particulars several dozen times in the process, and have been greeted by a plethora of error messages. The final error message that prevents me from progressing onwards tells me that the combined titles, names etc, for the passenger and the infant (we're traveling with our 10 month old daughter) cannot be longer than 34 characters. Yet I have to fill in all the names as specified on the passports. Obviously if the names combined are longer than 34 characters, there is nothing I can do about this. Perhaps SQ would expect me to go and officially change my or my daughters name to something that does fit in your database?

The first call to your ticketing office for assistance was brushed off by the lady that she WAS able to do the booking and if I would please try again tomorrow. Following said instructions I met a different error the following day, and the day after the original was back. A second call in the mean time was answered by, dare I say it, an answering machine. This on a supposedly 24 hour call center. When I called again this evening, the gentleman on the other end of the line calmly explained to me that i would have to book the flight for the adults only, then call back and ask to have the infant booking added to the original. When I dryly mentioned that I was already on the phone with Singapore airlines and requested if he could take the booking for all 3 passengers right now, I was told the same rate could not be given as on the website.


While I understand that some problems will arise whenever a new system is implemented, the fact that the call center starts off with a message that the new website is experiencing teething problems, that I am asked to leave messages on an answering machine, and that 3 days later the problem is still not solved all proves that the company was woefully unprepared when the decision was made to use this new site. But apparently it was deemed more important that people can address themselves as Venerable, Duke, Earl, King, His Royal Highness quickly rather than first test the heck out of this system. Considering that it is not possible to book all flights online, a little more flexibility for telephone booking would have been an obvious and customer friendly solution. Yet here I am after calling 3 times and speaking to a call center employee twice, and I STILL do not have my tickets.


I will try to book the tickets for a similar price through a travel agent tomorrow, and if that is not possible I will fly another airline, no matter what the cost. I used to choose SQ because of the overall excellent service, but the way that this is being handled is beyond belief. I sincerely hope that some people are listening to the complaints that are no doubt pouring in, and that lessons are being learned from this. Shameful does not begin to describe this blunder.


Sincerely yours, Silver Bullet"

The new site is just awful, awful and incredibly awfully stupid. Not only do they italicised the fonts (which essentially, is just a "no no" on a corporate site), they have got like a LIST of prefixes which you can select from their drop-down menu before you key in your name. And I mean, not just simple, Mr., Mrs, Ms but a bunch of them which included things like "Earl", "King", "Duke" and  "President" to name a few. I mean, WHO DOES THAT?! It makes me wonder if they had hired a bunch of fraudster to design and manage their website or something.

As soon as the complaint was sent, Silver Bullet got an immediate (automated, no doubt) reply:

I thought it was hilarious that he chose HRH from the drop-down button on the online feedback form! A nice touch, I must say. The reply to the feedback of course, sounded so non-committal and impersonal; it makes me wonder if they are ever going to do anything about it. Googling about it further seems to convince me that they probably are just gonna be sitting on their asses

This is simply because, we found a discussion forum about this matter and apparently, this issue was raised a few weeks ago already. And guess what, to date, they have not done anything about it! How disappointing is that?

Coming from a very reputable airline and one of the strongest global brand, I am utterly disappointed with how they have handled this. It makes me wonder if being all successful and global have made them too conceited for their own good.

And those prefixes...I just cannot get over it. Five fucking seven of them. Seriously, what the hell is with that?

10 Months

2 more months before reaching her first birthday, and Spud certainly knows how to win your heart over.

She is certainly more pleasant to be with these days, and a hundred times calmer than she used to be as compared to even just 3 months ago.

Although the frequency of her day-time naps still averages about 2 in a day, she is now getting slightly better at it. By better I mean, Spud is now able to:

1. fall asleep in.the.daytime.in.her.own.bed. and no longer needed to be carried and rocked
2. not scream bloody murder for longer than necessary (less than 5 minutes) and fight her sleep less when she’s spent
3. sometimes stretches her nap to more than a full hour. (not all the time, but at least 1 out of 2 naps are at least an hour!)

It took all but more than 9 months for us to get there, and THATreally is one of the biggest milestones for us. On this, I don’t think we did anything particularly different to improve her sleep pattern. I think I can only attribute the improvement to the fact that when it comes to day time naps, Spud did what she did when she is ready. Of course, there is a chance that I’ll just be jinxing it by writing all this down. But then again, we have been so used to Spud not sleeping in the day-time that I think we will just be resigned to that fact if Spud ever reverts to her old ways again.

These days, Spud’s into big, slobbery kisses. She now officially has 4 teeth, and the top comes with Madonna's gapped front teeth! She was, however, a little off last weekend --- she drooled a lot, had a slight fever with a little bit of a snotty nose and did not want to eat or drink very much, which we eventually attributed to her teething since the only way she was comforted was when we gave her some frozen fruits in the mesh teether.

She likes playing rough, too. She laughs her hysterical laughter if you wrestle her down and nuzzle her stomach and armpits as she tries to pounce on you like a cat with her mouth wide open to give you her drolly kisses.

In the last 2 weeks, we noticed that Spud is able to point out to things she recognises. If we ask her where is Papa or where is Mama while looking at some of the pictures we framed, she will point out to our pictures accordingly. The same thing goes for Lenny the (Snowy) Leopard who is now her trusted bedtime buddy.

She does blabbers with a lot of grunting sounds and strange sounding noises that do not make any sense at all. She has also begun to shaking her head if she does not want anything. (which makes perfect sense!)

Nope. Spud’s not walking yet. She is still trying very hard to balance herself on 2 legs without support and we are still waiting for her to take that few steps to walking. She usually gives up after about 10 seconds and goes on all fours again, as I guess she does get around quicker that way.

Spud’s been quite a joy these days and at her 10th month update, I thought I’d leave you readers with a video taken a few weeks ago where she was just laughing her head off at my silly antics from behind my now-kapoot camera.

It warms my heart, this.

Enjoy. (I hope it buffers ok)

Thai Tongue Twister

One of my colleagues shared this little video with me today.

While I did think that it was a little bit "off", I like the quirkiness of it and and I actually thought it to be quite hilarious! Unfortunately, the promotion has ended and this was shared just a tad too late!

Nevertheless, here it goes. It is kind of loopy, but I like!

Earth's Best

This is the kind of jarred food we feed Spud when I get lazy to defrost the food I have made for her:

They are organic and also convenient to tot around. Spud really like them so far. These days, she is able to finish a jar at one sitting.

They come in a variety of flavours...there's one Prune and Oatmeal flavour. It turned out to be a sure-fire way to get Spud's plumbing system going! In massive, smelly amounts too.

Earth Best seems to be available only in Villa Market here in Bangkok, and I have yet to see this brand being sold elsewhere. My only gripe is that Villa Market don't regularly stock them up often, and that to me is just plain annoying.

Sippy Cup in Review

From all the different types of sippy cups I bought, this was the only one type which came the closest to Spud’s little mouth when she allowed it (and very briefly too!) during the initial trial of weaning her off the bottle. The rest did not come close, as Spud clamped up her jaws immediately as soon as the spouts touched her lips.

For some reason, Spud was just a tad tolerant of this one; and despite her reluctance to drink from the sippy, she still managed a few sips from this Tommee Tippee Explora Li’l Sippee Sipper Cup.

Image from Google Images

 And hence, I really have no other benchmark to compare since this was the only one which Spud eventually took. Anyhow, what I like about this Tommee Tippee Explora Li’l Sippee Sipper Cup are as follows:

• Soft Spout – Spud took better to the soft silicone, and I read somewhere that soft spouts tend to support baby’s oral development for first transitions. However, I have also come across the controversies of soft spouts being bad for babies. So I don’t know, really. My take is that it works for Spud, and I don’t think it will be harmful for her since she does have a breakfast, lunch and dinner routine. Her milk intake follows right after that, with some water and juices in between for after snack time. And that means, the sippy is not constantly hanging in her mouth for her to develop any speech impediments or being prone to cavity.

• BPA Free – a very important feature!

• One piece valve – easy to clean. No need to figure out the different types of components that comes with the other types of sippies.

• Minimal spills or leaks – I said mi.ni.mal. Spud trashes this thing around, and depending on how and where it falls, I can attest that it is almost leak or spill proof for 99% of the time. 

• Colourful and funky looking.

Some sources quoted that it can be used for up to 3 years old. (I do hope Spud will fully be on cups by then, but if she doesn’t I don’t think using a sippy can be much worse than using a bottle)

My only gripe is that this Little Sipper does not come with any measuring indication. And that is a pain in the arse, simply because we have to use another bottle for a more accurate measurement when mixing formula. And oh! Another thing is that it does not come with an attached cover, and being a dodo head like I am, I'll just be waiting for the day when I lose that darn thing.

Other than that, I am quite happy how this has worked for us. It is really not quite a bad buy, and we bought a couple more since then to ensure that we have extras for when we are out and about.

Who would have thought there’s such a big deal surrounding sippy cups!

Big and small...

Top view of the soft cover & spout