Morning Repair

Lil Joy received a very pretty present, a book on the nativity scene. I loved the idea of explaining her the story of Jesus with 3D cardboards without DIY.

Last night, before bedtime, she had taken the book out and ripped the angel's wing and the little lamb.

So this morning, before I start my work, I repaired the injured and place them back into the set. Somehow, repairing books has became a routine of mine and I need to do it at the earliest possible date before they starts to pile.

Here's a pic of the healed 'patients' and I shall continue to talk to lil Joy about taking care of books.

BUSY PERIOD

Every year end and the beginning of the year, most people are busy with celebrations and holidays while it is the busiest period for my work.

I will work harder and for longer hours and honestly some time wished that I have done more during the less busy period so I will not feel so pressed for time to meet the deadlines.

Before landing on the status of being a 'Work at Home Mom", i have envisioned quality time with my girl, homecooked meals and flexible timing. 

Reality is, work has commitments, timing may be flexible at the the expense of your regular sleeping hours, they still has to be completed on time. As the timing is flexible, you tend to flex into your personal time. It is 4 more days to the deadline and I am putting up my last fight to complete the tasks on time. Time with lil Joy has been sacrificed. Meal making was a struggle for me which has became simpler and simpler as I got busier. In the end it was gradually turned to delivered meals and takeaways.

Jia You! I tell myself as blog this snippets of my life before I continue to sprint off in my work world.

I look forward to the end of this chaotic period so I am ease back to a more normal life.

Elephant's nose

Maybe it is just a first time mom thing. I get excited easily over small happenings.

This is a normal afternoon and i am working in the room when lil Joy shouted.. "mama see! Elephant nose." I was curious to see where the nose come from n peep out of the door to see this.

She had bit onto a long piece of bread and pretended that it is the elephant's nose.

It was a magical moment to finally get to the point of finding a solution for lil joy to have homemade bread regularly and seeing her imagination grow and starting to link 2 words together to communicate her tots. 

This is one of those days when i pat myself on the back and tell myself tat i have made the right choice to be by the side of my little angel when she is growing up.

Quicky updates

It was a long quiet pause on the blog because life have gone busy because of the many weddings, work deadlines and growing up going around the house.

We attended 3 weddings in the past 2 months. One required lil Joy and me to travel to our neighbouring country.

I met up with my very dear secondary school friends for one dinner and got inspired to potty train lil Joy.

So potty training it is, she is diaper free when she is not sleeping and is not out of the house. I am thankful that it wasn't the nightmare that I imagined it to be.

Work is slow but steady.

Crafting is even slower but I managed to sew a dress for lil Joy for my sister's ROM.

In the meanwhile, I am enjoying my life, waking up to lil Joy calling me 'MaMa' from morning till night for at least 1,000 times. Enjoying her tiny hands grasping my fingers when we hold hands together. Enjoying lil Joy requesting me to hug or carry her. Enjoying the kisses I get and give to her.

And all these, I am thankful to God for his blessings.

Lil Joy and Daddy

She cannot make real conversations with us yet but with the limited vocabulary she has, she makes sure we know what she wants.

All these happens last night when I was still working in the evening, daddy has some time with lil J and he kept coming into the room and report event 1 and 2 at regular intervals.

Event 1

Lil Joy: *pointed at daddy's face*
Dad: huh?
Lil Joy: *went to the table and grab a bunch of tissue and give to dad*
Dad: *puzzled*
Lil Joy: *use the tissue, wipe her face and point at daddy's face again*
Dad: *realised that she wants dad to wipe away the sweat on his face*

My take on this: Aw... so sweet of her.. must have seen me doing that dad before :P


Event 2

Helper came out
Lil Joy: *use both hands to pull daddy's hands up*
Dad: huh?
Lil Joy: UP
Daddy realised she wants her to go because she prefers to play with helper instead of him..

My take on this: Daddy need to spend more playtime with his girl.


Event 3

Before sleep family time, the three of us are lying on the bed doing our quiet things aka parents reading and Lil Joy walking up and down the bed quietly.

Suddenly lil Joy went over to daddy and grab his hands, wanting to bring him somewhere. After several attempts, daddy reluctantly moved and Lil Joy bring him round the bed and make him sit beside me

Lil Joy: Scratch
Me: *bursted out in laughters*

She wants to scratch daddy's back with me.


Realisation: all the little things that we do get registered in her tiny brain. It is really important to do family things together, love one another so she remember and will make loving a daily part of her life. Sweet is the fact that my little girl is growing up, interacting and doing things with us. She was just a crying infant about 2 years ago. Kids grow fast, too fast, in fact.

Heart melting moments

Recently, I am starting to realise that Lil Joy is baby no more. It is sweet when she do certain things.

Incident 1

Grandma came over to our house and Lil Joy started to dig her bag and took out her spectacles. Lil Joy then insists that grandma put on her specs and kept pointing towards a direction. It didn't take us long to realised that Lil Joy is pointing to a stack of newspapers and is indicating to grandma to use her specs for reading. ooohhh...

Incident 2

I have to leave the house every week for my lessons and last month, Lil Joy broke into a cry when I left. This week, when I was leaving, she ran into the house towards the dining table. I was anticipating some tears but Lil Joy seemed to be very serious and is pointing to something on the table. Then I realised, I have forgotten to take the present meant for my teacher. Oh.. that was an intense heart melting moment to know that my little girl is starting to help me out.

All kids seems to melts their parents' hearts when they do simple things. Treasure these moments is my motto at the moment. Hahahaha

Earrings too many?

I was out on errands on that particular day and arranged to meet hub and lil Joy at Orchard. I found myself elated when i reached Orchard Road early and is alone. I nearly did a dance when I got off the bus. So I went for a quick shopping trip and ended up with an umbrella and this set of earrings.

And yes, who ever mentioned that a girl can have too many pairs of earrings?

Crochet hook handle

I have gotten myself the full set of the Clover Amour Crochet hooks and I never look back again. They are comfortable, colorful and useful tools for people who crochet (aka me).

There are times when I have to use hook sizes that do not come in the set, like the 1.0mm hooks for my crochet bead bracelets and they are a pain in the fingers to work with. I have planned to make handles for them for a long time and ideally, I want to use polymer clay. However, the thoughts of digging my clay out and setting up my oven has made me procrastinate this plan for the longest time.

That day, an idea lighted up and it's the perfect opportunity for me to use up those felt fibres that I have gotten to try out felting (which i realised quickly that it's not my cup of craft). So a felted handle was made for my 1.0mm..

Tadah...

I will say that it works to reduce the pain caused by that extremely skinny handle but it takes a lot of time to felt this thing up. I am still using the felting needle to poke it once in a while when i feel like it to make it firmer. I suppose I am the only person who felt by instalments. In conclusion, the amount of time I used to make this felt handle is most likely enough for me to make clay handles for all my steel hooks. Well, i have to find some good use for the felt somehow so it is still a good attempt.

Lantern Festival

My favourite chinese festival which is filled with childhood memories of good fun, great cousins and friends and lots of burnings. 

Last year, we got an inflated lantern for lil Joy who is only interested in chewing on it. This is the first year that I thought she might have more purposeful lantern carrying and so mommy prepares...

I refuse to buy the sticks for the lanterns and so made some from the old magazines. 

And the most important thing for late night walk, mosquitoes patch.

A few cute traditional lanterns.

And LED candles for very young children.

When we reached the playground, the reality is.. the lantern got chucked on the floor.

Lil Joy ran off with glee..

Yes, she spent the next hour running up and down the playground with our neighbour's kid. I suppose she is still not that ready to celebrate the festival with me yet.

Waiting for Meal

One must be patience when we are waiting for our meal to be served. Lil Joy should be famished this day because her parents had left the house too late for dinner. 

A little girl should still have her manners at the table, especially when her mommy is taking pictures of her. Just joking about this part, I just thought these pictures of hers are so cute.

Daddy is checking out his handphone? Wonder what is he looking at?

Hmmm, when is my food coming?

Seriously? They need to take such a long time?

 I must make full use of my time and check out that handsome boy at the other table.

Hey Mom, the food is here!!

Warnings to all DADs: This is how you look when you are busy with your phone and do not realise how many precious moments you could have missed.

Playground at the new Sports Stadium

We went for a short trip to our newly opened Sports stadium, it is big and spacious and seemed to be sufficient to accomodate events with lots of people and there was a football match that evening and I did not even feel swamped by people.

It is a great place for evening walk with a stroller and lots of space for lil Joy to run around and there is our beautiful Kallang River too.

It was a beautiful and quiet evening for our small family and I did not take a lot of pictures except when we are at the playground.

The playground is at the 2nd level. Do refer to the map to look for it because I am quite lost in this place.

We found these slopes of greenery on our way to the playground and lil joy was intrigued by it.

And when we reach the playground and off she dashed. It amused me to the max when I see her ran off.

We found this mini 'wall climbing' and lil Joy is so determined to climb up but she seemed to be slightly too small to make it all the way to the top. Of course, she soon realised that if she cannot make it, just call for help and her mommy has to help her up. I ended up quite busy helping her up this wall so she can get to slide.

There is this turning seat which i recall that it helps young kids with their sense of balance. Apparently, lil Joy does not like it but she enjoys the one with a pole at the playground near our house. I suppose she does fear of falling.

And lastly, my favourite is the see saw which is very rare now. Lil joy even get to play with some other kids at the playground. Before that she has to play with daddy who is so much heavier than her which resulted in this 'unbalanced' scene.

I love the gleeful look when she is on the see saw.

Watercoloring by the Mommy

Recently, I am reminded of the arts and crafts activities that we have been taught in our school days but with a new light.

Honestly, it frustrated me at times when I rediscover an activity that I knew from my school days which has been classified as boring in my memory. An example is watercoloring. 8 years of primary and secondary school education with arts lessons have left me clueless about this art medium. Every year, our school book list will have watercolors paint set in it and every year, at some point in time we might be asked to bring it to school but was never taught any skill, any knowledge or any examples on how we can use that medium. The teachers' idea of art lesson is giving the command 'Draw this'.. and they relax for that lesson. Seriously, tt is such a bad bad thing to do. I grew up with the impression that watercolor is a weak, difficult and cheap art medium and it is used by boring uncle artists to make those light washed sketches.

Can you imagine how much I wanted to bash myself when i realised that those uncle artists are not boring but very talented? How shocked I am to know that watercolor need not be only in light washes but can be used for the most beautiful blending on your painting. It is such a versatile art medium with so much possibilities that I only got to know recently. This was bed by my interest in watercolor pencils and pastels and my wishes to do blending which seemed to be only achieved by the very expensive Copic Markers.

I am not an artist, my job is at the other spectrum of the creative rainbow. I only like to doodle with little crafts and arts things for joy to create happy things and happy thoughts.

After all these ramblings, I started my watercoloring with a new interest and a purpose on what I want to create. I started with cute drawings and inked them in waterproof inks.

Then I use my watercolors and I am really very very surprised by the final products and still cannot digest the thoughts that it is being done by watercolors.

Our First Movie

Lil Joy does not have much interest in television programmes. It could be due to the fact that we seldom use the TV. She spend most of her time messing around in the house. If I have time to sit down with her, we try to do fun play.

She usually watches the TV program for 5 minutes or so and ran off to do other stuff like climbing on her mother.

Last Thursday was a dream moment. The Tigger Movie was showing on Fox Family Channel and me being a Winnie the Pooh fan must watch it. So I called lil Joy to sit on my lap and we started watching mommy's favourite movie together. I supposed it is easy for her to relate the movie to her favourite soft toy and we had a great time watching our first movie together. It has great songs, great animations, great imaginations and good morales stories inside. I am pleasantly surprised that lil Joy sat with me all the way to the end of  movie minus off the 30 mins that we have missed at the beginning.

I think my greatest joy is to find lil Joy adoring the same cartoon character as me. I am like reliving my childhood again..hahaha.. am I weird to find such a simple thing to be such a happy occasion?

Sharing here.. the pooh collections (one baby pooh is missing though) we have in our household at the moment which I expect them to expand their family in the near future.

Water color painting

I try to do water color paintings with lil Joy as often as possible. I have tired it on the easel but soon realised that the area to be covered seemed to be too big and tall for her at the moment so we are back to painting on the table.

So it's a single color painting session while I teach her how to say red. I mix the paint in an old milk bottle cap and lil Joy happily starts to paint.

It is always fun to see her looking so concentrated on whatever she is doing.

It did not take her long to discover that markings can be made using the back of the paintbrush.

Most parents cringed at the thoughts of cleaning up after every painting session. I try to extend the painting activity buy including the cleaning. Thankfully, lil Joy enjoys wiping out the marks on the table.

And it amused me even more when she runs to the play kitchen to wash the wet towel at the sink. It seems like she is starting to do imaginary play.

So while lil joy paints, I thought I might as well give watercoloring a try. This is my first attempt. I wished I could do better but the difficulty of painting has been levelled up when u have a little toddler doing the activity with you.

Here is my little red ridding hood.

Baby's basic puzzle review 童悦坊图形拼图

I wanted to get more puzzles for lil joy and after the experience with My Learning card series, I decided to try out the baby puzzles by the same company which is sold at $12.90. It is mainly in Chinese because this is produced in Taiwan.

Here is the front of the packaging.

The back of the packaging.

And to be honest, I was disappointed that the cardboard were not thicker. They have mentioned that it is for 0 - 3 years old. If the cards had been this thin, they would have been destroyed before the end of the days or maybe this only happens in my home. I feel the manufacturer had attempted to make the false impression to parents that the said 24 cards are thicker than it actually is. Just look at the height of the box, it is almost twice the thickness of all the cards.

I was able to open the box at bookshop and get a glimpse of the first card on the stack which is nicely shrink wrapped to the box. The manufacturer had put cardboard at the bottom of the box to raise the cards to the rim giving you the impression that the whole box is filled up. It is like eating Pringles in the olden days when you reach to the end to realise that they have risen the chips with this plastic packaging, giving you the false impression that you had more.

Other than that, the printing are bright and clear. they look fun and the shapes of the puzzles are varied which makes it an interesting play.

My Thoughts on the baby puzzle

I still find the puzzles relatively interesting for lil Joy. I let her play with 2 puzzles at a time for the moment and has to closely supervise her play with them because they are relatively flimsy for her rough handling. I would not have recommended these puzzles for older kids because they are too simple for kids above 3 years and again I am perplexed on why the manufacturer would think that it is a good idea to print these on such thin cardboards for small children.

A mental note for me to double check the thickness of the puzzles in the future before purchasing them.

Maped Kidi Cut Scissors review update

I have put Maped Kidi Scissors to use and I am glad that lil Joy's first pair of scissors are these.

Maybe I have started the scissors activity too early and the way lil Joy handle the scissors made my heart skipped many beats despite knowing that the scissors are relatively safe.

It took her a while to get the hang of holding the scissors and who knows that seeing your kid using the scissors for the first time can be such a happy occasion?

Here is lil Joy holding the scissors the right way after I have shown her how I use it. She have seen me using my scissors many times and have tried to steal my pair on too many occasions. I can imagine how proud she feel when I handed her own pair of scissors to her.

 One must plan before she cuts.

And make the smallest cut possible...

Using 3 fingers do the job better.

 My thought on Mapped Kidi Cut Scissors

They are not the scissors that you want to use for real crafts but they are the scissors that you want your child to use for practice to hold the scissors. I noticed that it only cuts at a certain angle but for the purpose of lil Joy at this moment, I feel that learning how to hold the scissors safely and confidently is the goal for the moment. I will upgrade her to a real metal scissors after more practices with Mapped Kidi Scissors.

Progess update: Perler beads alphabets

About 2 years ago, I was ordered to rest in bed for a short period of time. I cannot comprehend days of lying in bed and watching my days goes by while my brain is actively thinking of things to do. So I started making perler bead alphabets thinking that they will be useful as educational tools for my future kid. But alas, I stopped at the letter M and never went further than that since.

Recently I have pluck them off from the wall and try to round them up and aim to complete the army of 26. Unfortunately, letter C & D have gone missing but I proceed to make 4 more alphabets and hope letter C & D will turn up before I reach Z..

Here is another view of the alphabets and my messy table..

My First Learning Card Series Review

Not long after lil Joy was born and after I have gotten into the groove of caring for her basic needs, I realised there is not much I can do with a newborn lying on the bed. It was then when I decided to do flashcards with lil Joy.  I started out by making number dots flashcards for her in the earlier days. I did attempt to make word cards but the results are not satisfying and that was the end of my flashcards making days.

Recently I came across My First Learning Card Series at the Popular Bookshop and was happy that for the price of $7.90 I can get 40 picture cards with photographs instead of cartoon drawings. The cards are of good size and have both Chinese and English words on the back of the pictures. I got the vegetables and fruits and animals series first and soon realised that they are such good cards that I went back to get the rest of the series except for the 123 and ABC series.

I have already discarded the boxes of the first 2 series but is sharing with you the front and back packaging of the rest of the series I have just gotten. Ya, it seems long winded but I had wished that I could read these online instead of trying to figure out what is in the box at the bookshop with a young toddler in tow.

Front of the Transport series

Back of transport series which is in Chinese.

Front of Food series



 Back of Food Series

Front of Daily Necessities Series

Back of Daily Necessities series

All the boxes come with a plastic handle which makes it easy for you to carry it around. However this feature was not very useful to me which I will let you know why shortly.

The flashcards are brightly coloured and the words are big and clear on the back. As stated on the box, these flashcards are meant for 3 years old and above so the cards used are of not thick enough to withstand the rough handling of lil Joy who is less than 2 years old.

And so.. I laminated all of them painstakingly. i have laminated two of the series which means 80 cards. There is no laminating pouches that is the size of the cards and so I have used the A4 pouches and cut them out by hand. But it is totally worth all the hard work because the quality flash cards seemed to have levelled up after the lamination and I have no worries about them being chewed, crushed or drawn on when I am using them with lil Joy.

Only thing to take note is, never leave these cards with young children because it will not be long before they get thrown onto the floor which is the perfect formula to slip and fall.

Here is the comparison of a stack of cards before and after lamination. This is the reason why I have discarded the boxes because the laminated cards does not fit anymore.

My thought on My First Learning Card Series

The fact that I have gone back to get the rest of the series shows how much I liked them. The colours of the photographs are vibrant and clear. If I do not have a laminating machine, I will just deem them as cheap and flimsy cards. Considering that I have having the plan (without action) to print pictures and laminate them as flashcards on my own, these cards have been a shortcut for me. In a nutshell, the cost for each of the card cost about 35 cents plus the time I spend on laminating them.

Now I just have to go back to laminate the rest of the 120 cards that I have just bought.