My Space

I never knew how precious this particular commodity is until I became mommyfied.

And I’m feeling so stripped of it now that it is the school holidays!!!

Help! I need space. S-P-A-C-E.

Oh yeah, I get “some”, here and there, but that’s NOT ENOUGH!

My dear speech delayed son has improved enough to want to chat incessantly. Yes I am thankful (thank you Lord) BUT… I need MY SPACE.

To curb cabin fever I’ve to schedule sporadic outings. Traveling and eating out with two young kids can be fun but unavoidably there are “those” times where it’s just nerve wrecking.  

On quieter non-outing days… yes, my two kids can and do play with each other so I don’t have to play with them… but after 15 minutes or so, one of them will come looking (or shouting) for me. They need mommy’s help or something or just my attention.

Little Missy naps for 2-3 hours (God bless her!) BUT almost 5 year old Hubby-jr may or may not. Thankfully I’ve trained him to stay in his room for an hour (if he can’t nap, he can read his books).

BUT people, that’s all I’m getting - ONE hour. Out of 11 hours (yes, hubby’s away daily for that many hours).

Can you now understand my dire need for space? Yes, S-P-A-C-E!!!

Just when will the d*mn holidays be over?!!

“I can do this. I can stay sane. I’ve survived a week already. Late next week we’ll be off to visit my parents in Malaysia. Hang in there mommyfied. It’s only a few days more…deep breaths. Take deep breaths. I can do this… I can…”

Great Sites For Kids

Shannon @ Rocks In My Dryer has compiled a LONG list of great sites for kids. It’s not just a list that goes on and on and on, she has actually categorized them. A great first stop to find wonderful online stuff to entertain our pride and joy(s)! Click on the icon below to get there. I’ll be putting it up on my sidebar too.

So far I’ve checked out KneeBouncers and StoryPlace. KneeBouncers’ great for my two year old girl and both my kids liked StoryPlace.

Coincidentally the list includes Storyline Online which I discovered via Pilgrim Parent and was just getting round to introducing it. It’s a delightfully wonderful site featuring stories read by actors/actresses. My kids may be too young to fully appreciate it but I personally was captivated by some of the stories. A definite MUST see!

Okay, I shall not hold you back any longer. Go knock yourself out and click away! 

My Girl and Shoes

It is apparent that my darling Little Missy has inherited my shoe fetish genes (which I’m sure is not unique to me and plagues most women)!

The telling signs appeared when she just about 18 months, she tried on shoes along with me at the shoe department one day. She jumped out of her stroller (after she saw me trying on my third pair of shoes), took off her shoes and signalled daddy to pick shoes and help her try them on!  (Mommy was obviously too busy…)

Dear Hubby just shook his head and blamed mommy, yeah moi. He thinks she picked up the “bad habit” just from observing how gleeful I looked whilst I was trying out shoe after shoe after shoe. What can I say? Trying out shoes for fun is one of my “hobbies”. Sometimes I end up buying them, often I do not.

Anyhoo, the fetish is here to stay (with Little Missy). But mind you, she has a mind of her own. She determines which shoes she likes and which ones, NOT.

These fake pink crocs used to be her favourite. It was her “default” going out shoes although she had a good number of shoes. Then a few weeks ago I decided to buy her more shoes as her little feet were growing. It was not easy. She rejected MANY shoes and just wanted her fake crocs. “No! Don wan. Wan pink shoos!”

Unfazed, I pressed on (yeah I love shopping for shoes for my girl as much as for myself!) Finally she picks the cute blue flip-flops (with a back band). How did I know she liked them? She refused to take them off after trying them on?! Then she does a gleeful kind of skip out of the shop, squealing now and then! The same happened with the light blue denim and pink shoes (at another shop, another day…)

“Mommy, what are you doing to her?!” exclaims dear Hubby. Oops, he happened to be there when I bought the blue denim shoes and he saw her pure excitement over her new shoes.

Okay, so I like to indulge my little girl now and then (sue me!) The other of her two current favourite pairs of shoes are hand-me-downs (see! we’re not snooty, a shoe is a shoe, even if it’s not new). For the world of me I can’t figure out why she loves the spiderman slippers (see how worn out they’re getting), they are her “default” walk around the neighbourhood footwear.

Woah, this is a pret-ty long post about my two year old’s… shoes! Might seem like nothing but a load of fluff to some of you. Oh well, one man (woman)’s fluff is another’s fetish. Serious fetish!

P/S: She has other shoes I have not featured here.

The Elephant Song

I LOVE this song I found on youtube by Eric Herman. It’s intelligently funny and cute. Pre-school kids will love this. Yah, I’m actually a 5-year old trapped in a mom’s body! Hahaha…

Intelligent but more suitable for pre-schoolers and a grown up like me loves it??! Confused? Check it out and you’ll see what I mean.

It’s Mine!

“It’s mine!”

That’s what I’ve been hearing a lot lately from both my kids. Yup, the usual siblings’ squabble.

It’s amazing isn’t it, how a (once upon a time, not too long ago, sorely neglected) toy’s appeal increases exponentially the very second one child picks it up and decides to play with it. Before you know it, the other child wants to play with it too. Yah, and just as suddenly, the toy that they were playing with earlier is no longer “current”.

The grass is just always greener on the other side.

Anyhoo, the tussle over toys isn’t new at all. It started way back. What’s new though is that now my son (almost 5, speech delay) can declare, “it’s mine!” (It used to be just, “No, Mei-Mei, No!”) And my two year old Little Missy can counter that with, “no, it’s mine!” (Hurray! Her speech development’s “normal”).

Of course the “it’s mine” goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…
Add this, “Mei-mei (sister), you play with this (another toy).”
And this “No!!” Scream!
Then back to, “it’s mine” banter.

It is quite a racket. It can and does drive me nuts. Yet at the same time…
It is so good to hear those two words come out of my son’s mouth (and my daughter’s).
It. Is. Good.

Blog Break

Hellooo… sorry for the silence. I’m taking a little break and will return early next week.

Till then, have a great weekend!

Stay-At-Home Mom’s Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

And that is in US Dollars!

Don’t fret working moms, your motherly duties are worth US$68,405. Yeah, that’s in addition to your actual job income. Cool eh? Now if ONLY it really translated into REAL money…

Read all about it here. (I found the article by way of Rocks In My Dryer)

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

I can never eat…

…papaya EVER AGAIN.

Little Missy loves the fruit and has been chomping up a lot of it the last two days.

Well, what goes in MUST come out.

The smell… (Oh. My. W…! THE smell!) The fragrance-before and the foul-after seems to have some distinguished semblance…

Even the colour of her “you-know-what” was “distinguished”.

…I leave the rest to your imagination.

Now every time I look at the fruit (the REAL fruit)… I can do nothing but ”imagine”.

I CAN NEVER EAT PAPAYA EVER AGAIN.

‘Nuff said.

P/S: You can blame hubby for this unappetizing post. I was sharing my thoughts on this with him when he cut me short with this exclamation… “Too much information!!! If you need to talk about it, don’t tell me, just put it in your blog!” 

WFMW - What Doesn’t Work For Me

I haven’t done Works For Me Wednesdays (WFMW) for awhile now but seeing this week’s theme, I couldn’t resist.

The first thing that popped to my mind was… screaming!!! By that I mean screaming at my kids to stop screaming. Totally DOES NOT work. They always end up screaming even louder than before (and yet I still find myself screaming at them at times!?)

Second thing that did not work for me was the pacifier.

No, I wasn’t dead set against the whole pacifier thing to begin with. Trust me, I was the regular desperate, stressed out new mom who tried everything to stop baby from crying and helped baby fall asleep. (Of course having colicky babies made me all the more desperate!)

So hubby and I tried the pacifier right from day one when baby arrived home. Baby took to it. Suck, suck, suck. No more crying? Woo Hoo! But wait… what’s that I hear a minute later? Waaaaaaaa! What happened? The pacifier dropped out. Okay, calm down. Just pick it up and put it back to baby’s mouth. There you go. Hmmm… sweet silence again… yah, right! Just seconds later, it falls out again and baby wails and we have to plug his/her mouth again. This cycle just went on and on and on… until baby got frustrated (and frankly so were we) and just flat out rejected the pacifier.

This didn’t just happen with baby no.1 but with our baby no.2 too.

In the end, our babies pacified themselves with their own thumbs (which somehow they naturally outgrew on their own). And eventually we got our babies to fall asleep on their own by letting them cry it out. After a few naps and night sleep they got it and just went to sleep on their own without fussing.

Yes, we tried carrying the baby to sleep initially, especially in the evenings (they were colic!). But that didn’t work either. After a while, they’d cry to sleep even when we were carrying them. So I figured, “if you’re gonna cry to sleep even when I’m carrying you (yes, even rocking didn’t help), well baby, I’d just put you down and let you cry yourself to sleep!”

Of course it was terrible to hear the crying but it was well worth the pain. Putting them down for naps or night sleep became a breeze. Just a song or two and down they’d go wide awake and they’d just doze off on their own.

For other stuff that does not work (for them) click over here.

Dadsense?

Almost a year ago I posted the super popular Momsense video clip (if you have not seen it, you HAVE to, especially if you’re a mom).

And just a few seconds ago, I discovered this (below). It was done by the same comedian, Anita Renfroe in response to Momsense. You have to watch it all the way to the end. HILARIOUS!!