Autumn in Melbourne. Taken at Skyhigh, Mt Dandenong.
The Giant's Chair at Skyhigh, Mt Dandenong.
Hubby-jr and his cousin (my cousin's son). His father is Danish.
Yup, my kids' Danish uncle.
Look! A maple leaf!
A 3-Aussie-dollar train ride at the Carribean Market that made my kids very happy. Yes, that's me adjusting my spectacles.
Hello, hello… hello! I’m finally back. I returned to Singapore last Wednesday, in body anyway. My spirit however was fighting reality. It took me another 2 days to recover from jetlag and the general lack of sleep I had during our holiday. It’s a sign of the loss of youth many moons ago, I can only sleep well on my own bed. Sigh. After which I had to face… laundry and unpacking! Aaargh. It was not pleasant AT ALL. “Where did I use to put these stuff anyway?! AND where was I going to put all these new ones?!!”
BUT that was WAS. NOW I am almost back to “normal”. Back to my daily life.
Part of me is sad, the other part relieved.
It was great being away, far away in a totally different environment (I highly recommend it). We were in Melbourne, Australia. Besides enjoying family time, catching up with loved ones (we stayed with my cousin), exploring new places, shopping and so on, for me it was also wonderful to be taken away from the daily little worries. I never realised how easy it is to get sucked into our little worlds and be so consumed by them. Being away helped put somethings into perspective and gave me a much needed breather. No must-do lists, and no obligations to fulfill for 16 whole days. It was simply marvellous.
On the flip side,
I missed my space and my bed. Imagine my family of four living with my cousin’s family of three. Even though her house was quite big, I felt my loss of personal space. There was some place I could retreat to at night but it wasn’t the same as home. I also found going out EVERYDAY rather tiring, especially with kids in tow.
SO,
While I definitely absolutely LOVED our holiday, I am glad to be back home. I am. Glad.
I’ll post some photos next time okay? Now it is time for me to sleeeeeep. In my bed. Sweet!
Dear all, I’m taking a two week (plus a few more days) blogging break. We’re off on a family holiday. Woo Hoo!! I should be back with a post before the end of the month.
Now that Hubby-jr talks a whole lot more we’ve had some pretty interesting conversations. Here’s one of them.
“Am I your master?” Hubby-jr asked.
“No! Jesus is my master.” I answered frowning. What gall?! As I wondered how my son came to harbour such notions of grandeur. Huff.
“Jesus is my master too,” said my son and I warmed up with a smile but was still a little puzzled.
He proceeded to ask, “am I Master Tan?” (His surname is Tan)
Aaahhhh… a big grin formed across my face as the light bulb switched on in my head. His current favourite DVD movie then (a few weeks ago) was Kungfu Panda. And in that show there is the character, Master Shifu who is Kungfu Panda’s master.
“Yes, you are Master Tan.” It is the culture here to address little boys, Master and little girls, Miss.
I continued to elaborate, “you are Master Tan just like daddy is Mister Tan but that doesn’t make you my master. That is a different meaning of master…”
But I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew he had stumbled upon the truth, that he and his little sister are my “masters”. The ones I serve and labour for. Everyday.
Life has been a little crazy in my home of late (which accounts for the reticence). The latest being Little Missy down with some viral infection for one whole week… sigh. But that’s parenthood for you. Normal days are a luxury! Oh how I crave for mundane routine days.
Oookay, that’s enough ranting for now. Today I’m going to share with you a recipe. Believe it or not, a reader actually sent me an email telling me how she liked my recipes. Incredible! Who’d knew that one day I would be sharing recipes? Once upon a time I would never have quite imagined myself cooking this much in the first place! Ahhhh well… as I’ve said so before, I am mommyfied.
Anyhoo, her email spurred me on to share this recipe with you. It’s a yummy spaghetti sauce (bolognese style) that looks just like minced meat in tomato sauce but actually has loads of veggies in them. Ah hahaha (evil laugh)… mommy tricked ya my boy!
I used to cook spaghetti sauce my daddy’s style. Minced meat, chopped garlic, chopped onions, 1 can of campbell’s tomato soup, 1 can of tomato paste and some sugar if it is too sour. Yup, quick, easy and instant. This in itself is a yummy sauce. But dear ol Hubby-jr, my six year old, disliked it. Simply because he could see the bits of cooked chopped onions. Didn’t help that one time I added chopped capsicum into the sauce.
But I loved this recipe. For one it is so easy to make (and store in the freezer if there’s extra). Two, all of us (except my son) love it.
So one fine day, I thought to myself, what if I just blend the onions instead. He wouldn’t see it and so he wouldn’t know. AND since I’m going to blend onions why not blend carrots as well and add that in. That would up the nutrition factor and the carrots would totally be hidden in the tomato based sauce.
And that’s what I did. Amazingly, the sauce tasted better! It somehow gave it an added punch. I didn’t even have to add any sugar, the blended carrots’ and onions’ natural sweetness was sufficient. Best of all it was a hit with my kids. They loved it. My son ate his dinner in record time and these days he gets excited whenever he smells that I’m making spaghetti for dinner.
Wait, this is not the end. There’s more. Very recently I decided to up the veggie factor one more notch. I added celery too, blended of course. It still tasted yummy and it was still a hit with my kids. Woo Hoo.
So here’s the recipe for the yummy spaghetti sauce with hidden goodness.
Blend the three vegetables together (add some water, about ¼ cup) as finely as possible. Heat olive oil in pan and add garlic and fry till brown. Then add minced meat and fry till brown. Add blended veggies, tomato soup and tomato paste and stir. When mixture boils, add McCormick spaghetti mix and stir. And that’s it. Cook some pasta or spaghetti and dinner’s ready! If you find the sauce is too thick for your liking just add water.
If you prefer not to use any instant mixes you may want to check out this Martha Stewart Bolognese Sauce Recipe I chanced upon but have yet to try. If you do, let me know how it is.
The tentacles episode was hilarious but it reminded me of another conversation Hubby-jr and I had sometime mid last year.
“How do babies get inside mommies?”
Uh-huh. Yup, the question. The One that we cross our fingers and hold our breath hoping will not come our way until… they reach puberty??!
Do not think it won’t happen till your kids reach primary school (like blur me). Uh-ah, noo…o my son asked me this question when he just turned 5, and he is speech delayed. So..o I imagine my girl popping this question, next week! Okay, okay, probably not, then again…
Anyway people, it is never too early to be prepared.
So what was my reply to my son’s question?
I said, “a seed was planted in my tummy and God made it grow.” Thankfully he just had a plant-some-green-beans project at school so I knew that he’d be able to grasp that explanation well. I avoided telling him how the seed got inside me the first place and held my breath for the next few seconds praying he wouldn’t ask.
Thank heavens he didn’t. Phew!! I managed to dodge that bullet.
That incident stunned me into realising… I had to be prepared yesterday as soon as possible. So I did what I always do, research (i.e. go to the internet)! I hunted for relevant books I could use. After narrowing down to 3 books, I went down to Kinokuniya, found the books and sat myself down and skimmed through them. In the end I settled on this book below, as I felt it was simple and had sufficient information for my kids (for now at least).
Amazing You!: Getting Smart About Your Private Parts by Gail Saltz
The other two books I browsed (which you may want to check out) were…
It’s So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families by Robie Harris
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
There have been numerous occasions where the baby question re-surfaced. To my relief Hubby-jr’s questions always revolved around male and female being able to conceive.
“Did Mei-mei and I come out from your tummy?”
“Did daddy have a baby in his tummy?”
“When I grow up can I have a baby in my tummy?”
I am still nervous thinking about the impending question of how babies are conceived in the first place. I just hope they ask hubby first. Ha ha.
What about you? How did or would you handle such questions?
Here’s a little something to amuse you before I return posting my own stuff. Do the test! Don’t worry, it is nothing embarassing and it is highly entertaining. Enjoy.
Thanks to Rocks In My Dryer, I discovered Jelly Telly. The website offers online 30 minute daily episodes of Jelly Telly - a kids’ show with Christian and educational content. Absolutely free!
We checked out Thursday’s episode and found it highly entertaining and educational. On that episode itself, there was a song that taught us all the main characters in the book of Judges, a “documentary” on acorn woodpeckers and a ten commandments boogie! It’s good quality stuff.
Even though we may not watch every episode there is, I’m pret-ty sure we’d be heading there often enough. There is supposed to be a movie of the week this Saturday, yup tomorrow. I’ll probably check that out, with or without my kids!
“Do I have tentacles?” asked Hubby-jr two days ago while we were reading a book on ocean life together.
“Tentacles? No, you don’t.” I replied.
“Are these tentacles?” he persisted, reaching for his pants near his “you know where”.
“NO! That’s your penis. That’s NOT a tentacle. Jellyfish have tentacles like these (I pointed to the picture in the book), boys or people for the matter do not have tentacles.”
I was really baffled but the next question blew me away.
“Do I have tentacles in my… (he paused to search for the right word) scrotum?” (Thank hubby for the detailed anatomy lessons during night showers.)
Huh? What?!? I honestly had no clue whatsoever (at that time) as to where all his questions were coming from. (Do you get it yet? Or are you just as blur as I was?)
“No, you do not have tentacles in your scrotum!” I replied aghast and steered the conversation away and scooted him off for a short afternoon nap.
That evening just before Hubby-jr’s night shower, as I was relating the story to hubby, it finally struck me. I turned to my son and said…
“You have TES-TI-cles, not TEN-TA-cles.”
One evening about two weeks ago, Hubby-jr’s temperature soared above 39.6°C. It wasn’t the first time but it still freaked me out.
High fevers – another thing I’ll never get “used to” being a mom.
Going into the night, the fever didn’t quite subside even after two rounds of panadol (paracetamol). We couldn’t feed him Nurofen(Ibuprofen), a previously prescribed medication by the doctor for high fever, as Hubby-jr’s allergic to it (it makes his eyes swell). I was getting desperate, no, not getting desperate, I was outright DESPERATE. So I tried something I read on the internet sometime ago.
I tried egg whites. Yes, egg whites. Raw egg whites.
I soaked 2 small handkerchiefs with egg whites, rubbed them generously onto his feet (yes, bare feet) and wrapped the same handkerchiefs (soaked with egg whites) over his feet and put socks over them. Then I wrapped plastic bags over the socks (to prevent them getting his bed dirty).
Four hours later, his temperature dropped below 39°C to the 38°C region. I cleaned his feet and rubbed more egg whites on them. This time I used paper towels to hold the egg whites to his feet and wrapped his feet with small plastic bags before putting on the socks. This turned out to be a better way. We fed him another dosage of panadol too. It was now past 2am.
After that we went to sleep and woke up only when it was morning proper. First thing I did when I got out of bed was to take his temperature. It fell below the 38°C mark and was now 37.8°C. I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I fed him another dose of panadol and by mid morning his fever broke.
Did the egg whites really help? Hubby is a little skeptical because we continued feeding him panadol throughout. We can’t be 100% sure. Regardless though, I’m now a believer.
More than 100 people are convinced over at Earth Clinic where I found this unique remedy. Click here to read more about it.
Over at Earth Clinic some of those who tried this method said that the egg whites “cooked” on the feet. That didn’t happen with Hubby-jr. But his feet did get all wrinkly (like after being too long in water) because I left wrapped till morning. I guess if I washed them off after an hour or so, the wrinkles wouldn’t appear.
So, if your child (or you or anyone) gets freakishly high fever… egg whites! I’m telling ya. Egg. Whites.
There’s no harm trying. Well unless your kid’s skin is allergic to egg whites…
Head here to look for more useful WFMW tips hosted by Rocks In My Dryer.
