Quote of the day: Missing "S"-es

This page was taken off my notebook which  I use only for work, and was given free to me by one of the largest telco provider in this country:

I just got to this page only recently and this is definitely something so typically Thai.

At the risk of spoiling how the page is looking like, I  certainly cannot help myself but to add those "s"-es in there on my own...

Only in Thailand.

Hyper babies

Two hyper babies maketh two sets of tired parents!

It was, nevertheless, quite exhilarating to watch these 2 babies "interact" with each other when we met up with some friends last week. Both babies started to bounce up and down, arms flailing away in excitement while making all sorts of weird, excited-sounding sounds when they were put together face-to-face.

These are some of the photos courtesy of  Little Dude-Baby's mom:

They seem to take to each other, sharing as well as exchanging toys and all! Cute.

But when it comes to super hyperactivity and being a chronic cat-napper, this Dude-Baby takes the cake! According to his mom, this Little Dude-Baby hardly ever sleep. Both days AND nights in the last 7 months. I can imagine it must have been really hard on her, and when I hear things like that, I told her I count my blessings for Spud not being half as bad as I thought she is when it comes to day-time naps. It is still bad that Spud does not take her naps too well in the day, but things like this reminds me that there are other people who have it worse than we do. It is humbling.

It is, however, nice to see these 2 little tots interact. If only they could talk, I bet Spud will be complaining to Little Dude Baby how her parents try to make her nap all the time, and trying to get tips from him how not to succumb to sleep!

Friday Yoga

A public holiday which fell on a Friday last week was a very welcome break. I was all too happy as I was then able to go a session of "Mommy and Me" yoga class – something I’d never get to do anymore since I started working.

Not many people came that day and we ended up as the only mom and baby pair for the class. For that reason, Silver Bullet decided that he’d tag along not only to see what such classes are like, but also taking the opportunity to hone his photography skills.

To his credit, he managed to take some nice shots!

Spud in the meantime refused to sit still and was creeping up everywhere as curiosity got the better of her. She literally kept on inching her way to Silver Bullet who was nicely parked right in the corner of the room, and moving away from me as quickly as she could. If anything, she showed the least interested in me trying to yoga it out with her.

Oh well! At least she was not too cranky that day…just a little pissy if she was not on the floor.

Here are some candid shots courtesy of Silver Bullet. And yes, I still have not lose those pregnancy weight!

I like this shot below a hell lot! A pity it wasn't me in there or it would really have made a perfect mother-daughter shot.

Finger Food

We were just trying out introducing baby finger food to Spud a couple of weeks ago to see how she takes to them. With google search and a weaning book as our bible, we picked out 3 types of food and lay it all for her to pick and choose.

She picked out the watermelon first and immediately started gnawing on it with her toothless gum. I am not sure if she likes it, and I guess at that point in time she can't decide either! The steamed broccoli and baby carrots were left completely untouched, and when I put the carrot in her hands, she immediately let go of it after putting it in her mouth while giving us a funny look on her face.

Her attention span to finger food lasted a grand total of 2 minutes before she's had enough of it all and wanted to get out of her high-chair. (read: cranky and check out those eye-bags again!)

I guess we can always try again next time. My only gripe about giving her finger food is that because it is only the introductory stage and I prepared it fresh, we ended up wasting food quite a bit to avoid keeping it for too long (paranoid that the food being spoilt).

Tell me that's normal?

The closet bully

It’s official. Donut is a closet bully in our family!

Funny that while we have speculated on this notion for a while, we could confirm this discover only recently when he started to show who is boss.

He has always been this meek, mild and has somewhat shy demeanor. He has been this one cat that would go out of his way to make himself inconspicuous to strangers, does not like attention, and most often than not, apart from being Fudge’s best friend, he will, most of the time, make himself scarce from the “public eye”. He also has got the softest yet squeakiest voice a cat could ever have. He is not aggressive and is actually quite the scaredity cat. He would jump out of his skin if he could whenever he got startled by something or someone. He does not like to be held or cuddled, and he snuggles up only on HIS terms. He sometimes sit near you, but far enough that you can almost not reach him with your fingertips. He has his favourite human (me!) and is absolutely not demanding at all. He is actually the only one of the three cats that (we think) embodies the character of what a real cat should be, and so, for all those traits, it is actually hard to imagine that he is actually the alpha cat of the brood.

So what has Donut been doing for us to conclude that he is a closet bully?

I think him being so skittish is just a facade. For some reason, whenever we hear one of the cats growling away, we’d be sure to find Donut either cornering Andy such that she does not have an exit or, that he has his paws firmly placed over Fudge’s head or his claws and/or jaws on her neck. He would look so calm as if it is the most natural thing to do, but we can tell that the 2 cats did not like it very much. They would moan and growl and finally bow down into submission.

Looking at how the scene usually pans out, I’m sure it is Donut’s way of telling the other 2 cats not to mess with him. Sometimes, it just seems like he picks on them, just because.

For a moment, there’s this certain respect for this cat who effectively knows how to show who is boss without being too bossy about it.

And then, you suddenly found him staring stupidly at the screen saver of moving bubbles on the computer for a long, long time. And that makes you laugh to bits, making you forget for a moment that he is actually quite the bully!

Cats can be so amazing.

Botak*

It has now been a week since they took away all the greeneries which had been our view from our balcony in the last few years. And guess what, I miss it already!

What is left now is just a barren plot of land. It is looking so lifeless, cold, sad and just......superbly bleeaahhhh!

How very uninspiring. 

I bet those squirrels who used to scuttle up and down those trees and along the electrical wires must be feeling pretty down too. 

* Botak = literally means bald in Malay

Baby-Proofing

I cannot believe how mobile Spud has become these days. While she can’t do a proper crawl just yet, she is able to inch her way around; taking a mere 2 minutes from the other end of the mat to creep herself up to me when I’m about 3 meters away and sitting on the other side of the mat.

While putting “obstacles” in her way (i.e. stuff toys, pillows and more pillows amongst other things), might just slow her down a little, she is still determined to get to “the other side”. In fact, she had seemed more fuelled up with an even bigger determination when she saw those obstacles in her way, and showing no signs of slowing down whatsoever!

So quick she has become when it comes to inching towards me that it is now almost an impossible task for me to pump and mind her at the same time. Unlike before where she was still pretty much stuck to one spot, now the little imp will not only be impelled to inch herself to me, but at the same time will keep grabbing my pump unit or tug the tubing of the pump quite strongly that it just comes off in her hand!

She also hardly ever stays in the same spot in one minute, making me super convinced that she should and could never be left alone on the floor without any supervision. She basically is reaching out for anything and everything now. Just look at her painstakingly going on all fours, trying to get herself to places or trying to chase the cats. (check out her massive eye-bags here too!)

We have recently lowered her bed, get the apartment to replace our nice black glass table, remove the candle-holders and what nots off the table, as well as doing a little bit of baby proofing -- starting with boxing up the electrical sockets!

Judging from the child-proofing list I was reading about, and at the risk of me sounding like paranoid nutter, I guess we better start getting on it real soon. We actually still have a long way to go, and this is only the introductory stage of baby-proofing our home! Gasp!!!

Starting on solids

Starting Spud on solids felt like one of the more exciting moments to break the mundane routine of just feeding her breast milk and more breast milk. (which, for me means pump, pump and more pumping!).

As soon as she hit 5 months old, I just could not wait to get that first spoonful of solid into her tiny little mouth, hoping that she too, will be a foodie like her parents.

Given my penchant for cooking, I was more than happy to prepare home-made food with organic ingredients as recommended by various sources. For weeks now, I have enjoyed boiling, steaming, mashing, pureeing and then put them in the ice-cube trays to be frozen. It does make me wonder though how long the novelty of preparing food for Spud will last!

So far, Spud has been fed with carrots, taters, sweet potatoes, brown rice, broccoli, mangoes, papayas and apples. All are pureed. Applying the 4 day rule as recommended, we only gave her new food after every four days. By now, we are able to mix and match them as her stomach has not shown any signs of distress.

With the exception of papaya, potatoes and sometimes broccoli, it seems like she can get use to solids. She especially loves mangoes, carrots and apples and will usually open up her mouth willingly. Even when she was done being fed, she would continue to open her mouth wide as if to ask for more!

It is exciting to watch her taking in the solids. In the meantime, I’m very much looking forward to expose her palate to more food variety. And, until I get uber-lazy, I’ll continue with home-prepared baby foods just because I enjoy doing it.

Apparently we can start introducing chicken when she hits 7 months…and that is just a few weeks from now. Exciting, right!

Baby-food recipes…here I come!


* Image from Google Images

Quote of the day

"Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak."

Source: A friend's status update on Facebook

Laughing Spud

This is one of those videos where only the parents (or god parents or really, really close friends who like babies), or grandparents or the great-great grandparents or other fellow human beings who REALLY like babies would find this funny, cute and endearing...

Me? I found her laughter in the first 30 seconds rather heart-warming; but not nearly enough to make me ovulate to want to have another baby right away! This video really is for the benefit of her grandparents and god-parents who are currently too far away to be able to canoodle her...

Enjoy!

Out & About

Images from in and around Bangkok, which incidentally are so typically Thailand!

Name of a cafe in CDC (Crystal Design Cetre)



  Not sure if it means a place for Jew plus more!



An advanced apology for late coffee...

No more greens!

This was the view I came home to yesterday evening which left me feeling none too pleased...

I am still in shocked and I feel so sad for those trees which had all been selfishly massacred. There goes all the trees! No more peaceful scenery to look out to, and soon this soi will host a construction site full-on! :(

I am so not looking forward to what they are going to build there! Don't we have enough condos around here already? Morons.

V-Day

I thought the date 14.2.11 looked familiar when I started writing down to record the date on my breast milk storage bag this morning. I could not think of anything significant, and so shrugged it off, as the thought of it being familiar, immediately left my mind.

I only realised what the significance was when our nanny came in, and greeted us with a cheerful “Happy Valentine’s Day” as she walked in the door. That was when we both went” Oh yeah…it is Valentine’s Day is it?” This was immediately followed by an “Oh no!! We are going to be bombarded with lovey-dovey couples and red heart-shaped-balloons-and-pillows-on-the-streets-day!”

I think we forgot that it was V-Day as soon as we were reminded. I know I certainly did, but was reminded yet again when I went to my regular coffee-place only to be greeted by yet another meaningless greeting of Happy Valentine’s Day!!! with super cheery faces before I ordered and after I got my coffee. To make it sweeter for me, (or so they seemed to think!), I was presented with a small, but nicely presentable package of chocolate along with my purchase.

Man! They don’t ever let you forget how significant today was, do they!

I know this might sound strange to some, but we never are big on celebrating our own birthdays or anniversaries. Most often than not, we prefer them low-key – mostly a casual dinner and gifts are optional. Come to think of it, we actually did not give each other anything for the last round of both our birthdays. In fact, it is also not unheard of that we both had even forgotten our own wedding anniversary!

Actually, I don’t even think it is necessary to have a one-year old birthday party for when Spud turns one! [OK. Silver Bullet disagreed with me on this one and he had to straighten me up on this. I still don’t buy it, though! --- That’s another thought for another post]

That being said, despite all the niceties about today, I don’t really give two craps about V-Day. No. Seriously. I don’t. (Although, I will, ever-willingly accept the chocolates)

I am a staunch advocate of showing our love not just today, but whenever and wherever we can, as sometimes, I don’t think we tell the people we love how much we love them often enough. And I know that I can be guilty of that sometimes, but that for me, is no excuse to revere yet another day marketed by Hallmark. (Sorry! Have baby now, need to save money)

I reckon it has been more than a decade since I boycotted against V-Day. I just don't see the need to  waste tons of money on the day where gifts are over-rated and dining venues are over-priced. To me, V-Day is just another ordinary day and one can make any other day as special as one wants to make it out to be.

I am, but a staunch advocate of against V-Day celebration and am darn proud of it!

Sunday sadness

I was in the kitchen yesterday afternoon, when I heard a distressed, agonising shriek from Silver Bullet who was in the living room. His voice almost scared the daylight out of me as my first thought immediately raced to Spud, thinking if something had happened to her. As my heart started to palpitate,  I  quickly rushed out of the kitchen asking "what!what! what!" and only to find Silver Bullet pointing out to our balcony...

I can understand why he gave such a distressful shriek because, the moment I saw the scene  from our living room and onto the balcony, my heart broke into a million pieces.

There, in a rather massive plot of land next to our apartment building, lay a darn crane taking out the foliage of trees which had been our view in the last few years to make way for yet another redundant condominium.

It was also quite nerve-wrecking to watch as they were doing it rather dangerously, basically just hammering away at the branches of the tree with the crane, and having these massive trees falling off on the power lines in broad daylight where people were still walking around and cars zooming pass by! They stopped at the 3rd picture below as it was almost 6 pm. Not the most professional job of cutting trees here for sure, and if they are not careful in the next few days, it will certainly be "goodbye electricity" too!

We spent a good hour on our Sunday looking out of our balcony watching the scene unfolded and going  "Oh no! Oh no!" over and over again as they took out the trees, one by one, by one...

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I am hopeful that they will not be able to take out that other huge tree on the right hand side.  Given Thais are the superstitious lot and afraid of ghosts, perhaps, we should start spread some rumour about a haunted tree spirit lurking by so they will immediately stop the work

Sigh! We had such a nice view these few years and it is a shame that they are cutting down tress for another concrete jungle.

Leave those greens alone. I want my trees back!!!

Spud, Swim lesson and Me

We have apparently hit the mid-term break for Spud’s swimming lesson (aka playing water) after 4 lessons. As it turned out, along with Silver Bullet, I am now an active parent-participant in the baby pool since lesson #2 and so, am no longer watching the Father-Daughter bonding from the sidelines. I now actually get to be a part of it!

The irony of it all I tell you!

It started when during lesson #2, Spud decided to play her super cranky card because she had mightily refused (as always!) to take her morning nap. She had nicely woken up before 6 am that day and knowing how she’d react later in the morning, we both had painstakingly tried to get her to nap, but to no avail. And so, by the time we got to the Infant Swimming Centre, she was of course, extremely spent, fussy and cranky. Her mood worsened as her crankiness cranked up ten-folds the moment Silver Bullet got in the pool with her. Within 10 minutes into the lesson, she was crying bloody murder and was inconsolable. Hence, after riding it out for 15 minutes, Silver Bullet gave up, decided not to push it and left the pool.

I was watching from the sidelines throughout the entire time, and I thought: there goes one nice only 30 minutes lesson down the drain just because the little imp refused her nap! I actually felt quite bummed by it all not only because she was cranky, but I also thought there’s nothing we can do about the loss of one lesson. Hence, we were really pleasantly surprised when the instructor, whom I believe, by the virtue of his job, has seen enough of such situation in his lifetime, told us that we could come back and try again later at the next baby class on the same day.

I guess all was not lost, and while we both were rather apprehensive about coming back because of her mood, it was really nice to know that they cater “make-up” class for such things!. We left the place feeling frustratingly exhausted but hopeful for what might turn out later. And guess what! As soon as we left the venue, Spud almost immediately went down for a half-hour nap! (Figures, right!)

True to being Spud, that was the only nap she was to have till after we got back to the venue for another baby session that was to commence at 3.30pm. And true to being Spud-Spud, she decided to honour us with her much awaited nap fifteen minutes before the lesson was about to start! We can’t help but roll our eyeballs as we tried to gently wake her up. She continued to be cranky when Silver Bullet brought her into the pool. But this time, since I wore my swimming costume in anticipation of her crankiness, I decided I might as well join in to entertain her and see if my presence would actually calm her down. This time, she lasted the entire half hour session!

I was actually expecting the instructor to be scornful of both parents being in the pool (mind you, it will get too crowded if they allow both parents to go in, and I can understand that  it is not something they'd encourage!), but he was all welcoming, and not at all unfriendly about it. (or if he was, then he did a good job pretending!). In fact, he was rather supportive about it, saying that sometimes, a child might just prefer that mommy is around. (Unfortunately, this mommy is just nervous about having the baby in the water with her and so, not the first choice candidate here to teach her child how to confidently swim!)

I, on the other hand, felt relieved that, despite all the stupid faces I had to pull to get her to calm down, it all went well at the end of the day. We were completely worn-out, but happy nonetheless that they were able to make it work for us.

And that my friends, was the story of how my daughter had, in her own way, conned me to join her in the pool so I can pull silly faces for the whole world to see just so she could be kept entertained!

There really is no dignity left when you become a mother, I swear.

Sleep-debt

Sleep is just never enough even when Spud has started sleeping through the night since she was slightly less than 4 months old. While it is great that we can now get about a maximum of 7 and a half hours sleep with hardly any interruptions on most nights, the sleep we get is just not enough.

We still wake up in the morning feeling extremely exhausted, eyes heavy, and body limp. It takes a lot of effort just to reel ourselves reluctantly out of bed to retrieve the little imp from her room who is wide awake at 6 am in the morning and all ready to play.

Sometimes, I think I feel more tired now than I was when we had to wake up several times a night to feed Spud. I put the blame on severe sleep debt – a classic case of new parents who, over time just could not get sufficient sleep. Judging by how it goes so far, I reckon it will take more than just a few days of good night’s sleep to pay back the sleep-debt I incur after months of sleep deprivation.

Ahhhhh! How I miss those times when I can just sleep till after mid-day and do absolutely nothing while lying in bed even when I’m awake, and only to fall back to sleep again. I miss those early mornings when after opening my eyes, I realised that it is not even 8 am yet, and I can just turn over, pull up the blanket, throw a pillow over my head, turned off the alarm and snuggled in next to Silver Bullet and snoozed away for a few more hours in bliss over the weekends.

These days, I can only dream of being able to sleep in. If I dream at all, that is; since most nights, I am almost completely dead to the world if the baby monitor does not show any signs of beeping.

Love in the digital world

An interesting piece of research comparing love in the internet age in Asia.

Looks like we Singaporeans are quite the advocate of "can do (things) but just don't get caught!" mentality given that,  at 4%, respondents in Singapore were one of the least often caught when it comes to sending sexy emails at work.

Sneaky, sneaky bunch, eh!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

Picture from Google Image

Make no mistake - this is no children's book despite its kiddy sounding title and illustrations.

Where do I begin?

Apart from the fact that this book is essentially a collection of short stories, it is also a type of book I cannot even begin to describe to anyone. The bestiary characters in this book are so humanised such that it feels as if you are reading an  R-rated fable-like tales of animals sporting atypical human trait. It is extremely quirky, yet entertaining and hilarious at the same time. You have no idea how many times I burst out laughing out loud while reading it just before bedtime, startling Silver Bullet, making him wonder what has gotten into me(And I cannot quite explain to him why!)

Every story has a depiction of different animals.  It was written in such a way that it has an underlying undertone which we humans can so easily identify with...except that it was all captured in a context of animals in and of the wilderness. [Imagine a sycophantic Baboon hairdresser gossiping to a very disengaged cat (his client ) about a dog (his client and friend) so as to make conversation, and at the same time spread some gossips.]

It is a great book and wickedly funny. You just got to have to read it to "get it". It's a riot!

Deep, Dark, Moist Fudge-like Brownie

Baking brownies has been one of my favourite things to do, not only for us to eat at home as desserts, but as a give-away as a small birthday gift or as a token we bring along when visiting friends.

I first started baking it impromptu sometime last year, and I have not looked back since. This is a recipe I found off the Internet awhile back (of which I modified a little),  but for the life of me, I cannot remember where I found the original recipe or why I have not put up the recipe then.

If you like non-cakey brownie, this one is for you. It is definitely far from cakey, it is super moist, almost fudgey-like, and not at all too sweet.  Goes down really well with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp. good quality cocoa powder (the darker the better and I use Van Houten)
• 1/4 tspn  salt
• 1 stick of unsalted butter, plus more for pan
• 4 ounces (113 grams) of unsweetened baking chocolate 
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 packet (340 grams) of semisweet chocolate chips
• A handful of macadamia nuts, almonds and hazelnuts - roughly chopped and lightly roasted

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Butter up a pan of your choice and line with wax paper. Butter up the wax paper.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, and salt; set aside.
3. In a large saucepan, heat butter on low to melt. Add the cooking chocolate, and stir constantly until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and stir in both sugars until combined. Let cool slightly.
4. When cooled, whisk  in the eggs and vanilla into the saucepan of butter and chocolate mix. Keep moving the batter around until combined and no longer grainy-looking. Add flour mixture to batter and stir just until combined.
5. Stir in chocolate chips and the nuts
6. Pour batter into prepared pan; smooth top with a greased spatula. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a just a few moist crumbs attached (28 to 30 minutes).

A good tip and learning I got is not to over bake more than 30 minutes. Make sure you let it cool completely first. Cut into pieces and serve or store in the fridge.

Try it! Try it!

6 months

Spud's officially half a year old!

That means, we now have been parents for a pathetic 6 months, and still on a steep learning curve as Spud develops along. It has to be said though that despite the struggle, the last 2 months or so have been somewhat better as compared to the first two months of her life. We now cope better as we get more attuned to her idiosyncrasies, and getting better at figuring her out in terms of what may or may not work for her and us. It also helps that she is slightly less cranky.

Besides starting on a little bit of solid, Spud also has had her first rite of passage just a few weeks ago when she fell off the bed. (oops!) While I reckon it was just something that has to happen to a baby one of these days, thank goodness the fall was not a very major one. It was still a good half a meter drop off the bed, but we were ever glad it was nothing too serious. It however, reminded us on how much more mobile she is going to get very soon!

These days Spud's inching her way around quite fast. She is not properly crawling yet, but she does creep on her stomach like a worm, using her legs to steer to the left, right or around and even chasing after the cats whenever she sees them near her. She clamours and start grabbing anything and everything  that comes in her way.

She is a bundle of energy. She cannot keep still --  always moving around and looking out for things to see, touch, grab. At the same time, she is also getting very vocal, babbling away all the time. Her squeals have turned into EAR PIERCING SCREAMS even, and I am not exaggerating when I say that her screams have actually started to hurt my ear drums pretty bad!

We are currently finding it hard to keep up with her recently. She uses up all our reserved energy in the daytime and it becomes especially hard for us to stay awake when she refuses to go down for a nap!

I wonder if this is what they call a "bundle of joy".

High Chair in Review

We have been putting off buying the high chair for Spud for a long time simply because we did not know what to get. The different types and designs we have seen in the departmental stores had been a little overwhelming as well since we have no idea what we should be looking out for. To top it all, we had, several times, encountered less than knowledgeable staff working in the department stores who do not seem to very knowledgeable about what they are selling when we started asking questions about those high-chairs. A shame.

Then we were told about Tripp Trapp® by Stokke – apparently marketed as the “only child’s chair that can take you from baby to adult” and (quote-unquote) a very sturdy chair that is designed with safety in mind. In our minds, that kind of sounded awesome already, since the ones which we have seen looked rather flimsy.

 We have not seen the brand in any of the major departmental stores while we were scouring for a high-chair then, and thought that we may never be able to find it here. However, we found out later that the chair is actually sold in a specialty store right here in Bangkok, called Naturally Bebe. (The staff there was helpful and quite knowledgeable)

While we bought into the concept of Tripp Trapp®, we did think that the price was a little bit on the exorbitant side. We then decided with a slightly cheaper alternative that they have in stock - Highchair Advance by Cotinfant. Everything is packaged up with the cushion, straps as well as table-top and it was nice that these things were NOT being sold separately.

Verdict: Not only it is super sturdy, it is also a very well thought design, with an eye for detail. The assembly was relatively simple to begin with. Some other features which we thought makes the design smarter are small details like:

• Having a little metal guard at the back of the chair where you can put your foot to adjust the height,
• Soft covers underneath the legs to prevent scratching of the floor (it just glides across the floor when you move it from one place to another)
• Strap covers (No extra charge for that too!!)
• Easy to remove table top

All in all, (we think) it is a good buy for Spud to enjoy her meal-times on this high-chair while getting used to a little bit of table manners as she is currently being slowly introduced to solids.

Image from Google Images

Power Naps

My child doesn’t do naps very well ever since she was a few days old. To date, she still does not take to her day-time naps well. When she does, it is usually not without a battle. (And she does a mean battle when she tries to fight off sleep which happens every single time when we try to get her to nap)

Spud is just a horrid, horrid day-time napper. So horrid that we could easily spend the entire day trying to get her to nap, only to have her power nap for a grand total of 10 friggin’ minutes! Sometimes, it is the only nap she’ll have in. the. entire. day.

Ten minutes. That's a whole mega 10 minutes is all it takes for this little imp to keep going for another 3 hours before another "get-Spud-to-sleep battle" starts again.

It is tiring to try to get her to sleep. I mean, just imagine this: we spend hours trying every single trick in the book to just get her to nap, and when she finally did get some shut-eye, we barely had our asses on the couch to finish our much needed glass of water! I don’t know how many times we ran out of steam from sheer exhaustion just trying to put her down, and I swear we are the ones ready to conk out anytime while trying to get her to nap in the day.

It is hard having a child that does not take to naps when she really needs to. She gets moody, cranky and fusses a lot, and trust me, it’s not like we want it to be that way as it takes a toll on us, too. That being said, I can’t help but get super annoyed when random strangers who start cooing at Spud started commenting that she should be sleeping as she looks so tired. They would then continue to point it out to me and/or Silver Bullet in a teasing manner, but talking to Spud in a baby-talk way that her parents should let her sleep. I swear I want to slap these people purple sometimes. I mean, we know she is tired, we can see that she is spent, and we know she needs to sleep and god knows we try to get her to sleep! We cannot agree more that Spud needs to sleep but on most days, Spud just doesn’t want to no matter how hard we try. Hence, we can only try, and try and try till she gives up fighting. So seriously, back off and give us a break on this.

I have been googling and wondering for a long time now on not only how we can get Spud to shut those eye-lids without having to move heaven and earth, but also how to make her sleep longer. We have been trying for close to six months now, but almost every attempt had seemed futile…It is so bad that she has eye-bags!

For now, we have resigned our fate to the fact that our child just doesn’t nap as much other babies or as much as a baby should. There have been days where she did nap for up to an hour, but those days (from our record) were really random, and far and between. For some reason, Spud seems to have something against day-time nap – it is as if she is so afraid she’ll be missing out on things if she takes a little nap.

These days, we’d be lucky if she does a 15-minuter at a stretch!

Feng Curry

I'm always  looking for inspiration to try out a new dish to add to my repertoire of food-to-cook-for-dinner. I decided to give this dish a go when I saw the interesting use of spices as I  started flipping through one of my cookbooks.

Verdict: Certainly worth a repeat.

It appears that Feng Curry is a special dish, usually eaten at Christmas by the Portuguese Eurasians. The authentic version uses offal or pork, cut into small cubes. I substituted the meat with chicken and also modified the recipe a little bit as my way of experimenting. I hope the Eurasians don't take offence to me bastardising their dish!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients A:

• some oil
• 3 cm fresh ginger root, peeled and shredded
• 1 kg chicken cut into cubes
• 1 half chicken stock cube (non-msg)
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 3 tbsp dried italian basil*
• 1 tspn sage*
• half a lime*
• 2 tbsp peppercorns*
• Salt to taste

Ingredients B (for paste):

• 2 tbsp coriander seed powder
• 2-3 tspn cumin seed
• 2-3 tspn fennel seed or anise
• 2 tspn ground white pepper
• 1 tspn ground tumeric/tumeric powder
• 3 cloves garlic
• 7 shallots
• 2-3 stalks of chilli padi*

*Denote where I have modified the recipe by adding some other ingredients to enhance the tatse

Method:

1. Blend all the ingredients B to make a paste.
2. Heat oil in wok and fry the ginger until light brown. Remove and set aside.
3. Add the blended spice paste and fry till fragrant and slightly dry.
4. Add the meat and mix well.
5. Add the stock cubes and simmer over low fire until meat is tender and gravy is thick.
6. Add in the fried ginger, vinegar and salt
7. Lastly, sprinkle over the italian basil, sage, peppercorns and squeeze some lime. Continue to simmer over low heat.
8. Serve with white rice (apparently good to eat with bread too!)

Bon Appetite!

Cats & Spud

Spud has taken quite an interest with the cats these days, literally yapping and babbling to them in excitement whenever she sees them at eye level. Spud gets so animatedly exhilarated that she sometimes screams our ears off, eyes wide and brightly lit, while kicking her legs as fast as she can whenever she spots any of the cats coming near her.

These days, whenever she sees any of the furries sitting close to her, she will creep closer to them, inching away like an inchworm and try to touch them. Of course she does not know any better, but when she gets her hands on them (usually Fudge), she will grab her really tight and then squeeze and twist whatever she manages to grab of Fudge until Fudge meowed back angrily in discomfort or pain. It is quite a feat to get her to let go of (any) of the poor cats when that happens.

There have been times when I’m worried that Fudge will respond by biting Spud whenever Spud started on her “grab-twist-pull” spree even when we are there to keep a look-out. Andy and Donut still keep a fair distance from her, and they literally get out of her way. Fudge however, still pushes her luck and would come say hi and sit pretty closely to her.

So these days, instead of keeping the cats away from Spud, we have to be watchful and try to keep Spud's roving hands away from the cats!

How ironic.

I'm certain it will just be a matter of time before she starts terrorising the cats!

A Quickie

My so very healthy lunch today....

And oh, did I tell you how addictive those darn Cadbury Twirls are? So delish that I'm eating them almost everyday and I managed to polish off 2 packs within half an hour!

The health conscious police will probably balk and look at me in disgust...

Sigh! Talk about getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight...