Collector's Art Piece

I couldn't help guffawing at what Rynae had drawn. Can you see features like the eyes, the spikes on the back, the tail and the legs? Wanna make a guess what it is? *drum roll* It's a dinosaur! Well, it does look a little like polar bear but that's pretty awesome for a 3.5 years old. Good effort there!

Today I turn 3 1/2 years old!

It's another milestone! My little girl turns exactly 3.5 years old today! Once the size of a pinhead in my womb, this tyke has grown into somebody who is able to correct, rebuke and bicker at me! Rynae has grown much over the 3.5 years that portability is an issue now. It seems that clothes that fitted her one day could hardly cover her belly the next. Formerly a tiny thing that can hardly fill her cot, she now has outgrown it and snuggles on a big-sized mattress every night. Looking back, I couldn't help missing the times when she was a baby. Rynae will be turning 4 in half a year's time and in no time to come, I'll be loosing her to another man. Like all parents, all I wish for is for her to grow up healthily, happily, showered with lots of luck and always in favour of people.

A Mother's Prayer
Help me dear Lord, as a mother, I pray
And bless these hands folded in prayer today;
May they be ever strong as they guide, as they teach,
Beings never too far for a child to reach.
May they never, with selfishness, try to dissuade,
Nor too quickly punish, nor too slowly aid.
May they point out the pleasures in laughter and song,
And may they show, wisely, the right from the wrong,
So that one day I'll know that I've helped all I can
To make her a woman, to make him a man.
- Mary A. Loberg

Bird Park Trippin'

A philanthropic neighhour passed Mummy a NDP discount coupon booklet and was I grateful to her for that because I found some practical discounts and offers in it. Amongst them, I was attracted to a 30% discount off admission rate for Jurong Bird Park. Daddy has ever casually mentioned about visiting JBP as he has not been there ever before. This discount spurs us. We decided to jio San Yi too as the discount coupon allows purchase of a max of 5 tickets.

After a heartily scrumptious meal at bongo burgers, we proceeded to the pools amphitheatre, which was just a stone's throw away from the entrance, for the must-watch Birds 'n Buddies Show. The weather took a turn and started to drizzle at noon, but that did not dampen our mood. We carried out with our excursion under protection of caps and umbrellas. Rynae exhibited small pinch of valiance when she courageously fed free-flying hungry lorys in the lory loft and came up close with the emus. We made a last stop at Fuji Hawk Walk to catch the Birds of Prey Show before bidding farewell to the park. All of us, especially Rynae were dog-tired at the end of the trip. Our little tourist had missed her nap and she went into slumberland soon after reaching home. Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!

Funny Jelly

Does it look like some yucky specimen? Any idea what it is? It's Rynae's jelly! Her teacher had a home economics lesson with the students today and they were taught how to make jellies. Our dear friend was so proud of her jelly that she insisted carrying it all the way home herself. The best thing is, she did not walk. She ran. There goes her jelly. By the time we reached home, it has changed into foamy water and mummy has to sorrowfully wash it away. Truely an effort down the drain...

Racial Harmony Day

Today is Racial Harmony Day and Rynae has to dress up in an ethnic costume for school. She was in disbelieve when I tried changing her into a dress, instead of her uniform this morning. She refused to cooperate and I had to coax and hoax her into getting into it by explaining to her the meaning of racial harmony day. Not at all easy trying to simplify it for a 3 year old. Puff.

Polliwalks

OMG! Not again! Another crocs inspired clogs! I scrunch up with disgust when I saw polliwalks on sales in Kiddy Palace. They look as if they can bite! Project Runway's fashion mentor, Tim Gunn had ever commented that crocs is appalling and is a fashion disaster. Now, I wonder what he's gonna say about polliwalks. Given a choice, I'd rather top up the slight monetary difference to get Rynae a pair of perennial crocs than these weird animal-looking footwear.

New Bikini

It has been a while since Rynae went for a dip in a swimming pool. After a passing shower in the early afternoon, we brought our little tyke to Woodlands swimming complex today. Rynae tried on her new bikini and it fitted her perfectly! Auntie Vivian from Hong Kong bought it long ago when my girl was just a month old! Gosh! Aren't she a sexy kitten?

NLB Book Sale

Books galore! NLB is organising its yearly books sale at Expo and I went down today in hope of picking up some good books at unbelievable discounted price of $2 each. I expected a queue outside hall 4A but surprisingly there wasn't. Crowd size was comfortable enough to allow each visitor to dig for desired books in the wagons.

You have to really count on your lucky stars because it is by pure luck that you manage to scoop up a good book as they were only segregated according to languages for adult and young; not categories like travelling, cookery, business etc. Not used to buying second hand books, I was gobsmacked by the state of the books. Most were smeared with scribblings, dog-eared and have torn and even missing pages! Shame on the vandalisers. I managed to grab 10 relatively good books in acceptable conditions for Rynae. Well, after they go under the knife for some nip and tucks, they'll look as good as new! Ok, almost lah!

DIY Tambourine

I was particularly interested in a tambourine craft in Nick Jr's website and decided to give it a try in making one. The materials aren't complicated and I do have them readily. Though Rynae's contribution wasn't much, I do have to give her credit mention, for she did help to put the pasta onto the paper plate, thread the bells and cut (weird) shapes as decoration! Done! She's ready to create a ruckus and bring the house down!

Perceptive Play Review

I had been wanting to take a peek at Perceptive Play! since its launch last year but patiently, I waited for almost a year before bringing a borrowed copy home. Kudos to NLB for requisiting for it.

Perceptive Play!, a light-hearted book that provides 52 activities of fun for children and parents, is penned by Wong Li Lin, an all-rounder but first time author.

Reading the book was a breeze as description of each activity is short and paragraphs are generously laid out. Each activity is accompanied by a photo illustration thus by looking at the image alone, one can already know what ideas she has up her sleeves. Most of the activities needed no elaborated materials and can be done anytime, anywhere. It's not necessary to go the whole nine yards in coming up with one. In fact, the environment is and can be the classroom!

After reading her book, I thought both Li Lin and I share similar views on parenting: to let children learn through play. Her tenet is to let children be children, let them play, have fun and let them have an unhurried childhood instead of hothousing and drilling them for academic exellence. Since children loves playing, having fun will make them more interested hence they will be more driven to learn and become more thirsty learners. Parents should help them by playing perceptively, with discernment and insight.

I read that she'll be coming up with a second book but it all very much depends on the sale of her maiden product! For all I know, NLB alone has bought close to 50 books from her! Of course this is not much of a boost but it is also sold at USD$16.50 over in Amazon and SGD$26.75 in Kinokuniya, which means her books cross national boundaries! I couldn't help being curious how the sales figure went so far. Ya lor.. I'm plain KPO!

Pick Me Up

Rynae has been emulating our chopsticks holding skills whenever we dine out hence in a bid to help her brush up her motor skills, Mummy came up with a gratifying home-made kit. Materials are simple. Remember the soft clays that I bought from Daiso? Knead them into several small marsh mallow like cylinders and dump these cylinders into a clean container. After these cylinders harden, I passed tools like tongs, chopsticks and spoons, one at a time to Rynae and encouraged her to try picking up the cylinders and transfering them out. Adroitly, I worked in mathematical concepts by asking her to group the yellow and white cylinders accordingly, count how many white and yellow cylinders there are respectively and how many in total. It's a recycling project we're talking about here too!

Snip Snip

Rynae was passed a real scissors for the first time to practise her cutting skills. Well, she does have a kiddy scissors but that's so blunt that whenever she used it, she was so frustrated. It simply cannot cut anything decently. Under my close supervision, I handed her a pair of scissors and a few pieces of used trace and colour worksheets that I had printed online, for her to snip away. She did a pretty good job but with lots of jagged lines lah! Since then, she's been pestering me to let her 'play cutting'....

Dora the Explorer Dominoes

Alrite. So mum's at it again. However, this time there's no brain juice required. Just some manual work. I surfed Nick Jr's website and found it rather useful, with not only games but lots of craft ideas. There were even food recipes! I shortlisted Dora the Explorer Dominoes eventually as it looks fun and easy to produce. Furthermore, Daddy has played Dominoes with Rynae before hence she knows the rules of the game. Save my breath of explaining too! Haha. She took on my challenge and beat me twice on it! The best I did was a tie! Gosh! What a loose of face for me...

Observation Skills Drilling

Mummy always has something up her sleeves and this time, I invented some card games to drill Rynae on her observation skills. Not having prior similar exercises with her, I have no idea of her comfort level hence I started her off at elementary level. These games require sharp observation skills and focus on helping children develop the skills they need to recognize and understand patterns and shapes. This is how I conceptualised the game (copyright by me one hor):

• Make 2 sets of cards - one set for 'student' and one set for 'teacher'. Make sure you have indication on the back of the cards which is for who.
• Make each card in each set slightly different from one another by having different colours, words, numbers etc.
• Give 1 set to your child and keep the other.
• Take turns and play 'match the card' with your child. The 'winner' may keep the correctly-matched cards.

I tested the elementary cards on Rynae one fine day and was quite surprised that they were child's play to her! She could match the cards almost instantaneously and I had actually underestimated her! I sat down on my computer, cracked my brains hard and came up with 4 new sets of cards the very next day. I printed, cut and laminated 3 of the sets (the last set is in colour and my printer is almost out of ink).

Generally, she doesn't have much problem with this set too, but she has got to stimulate her brains more now, especially the set with the numbers.

Elementary level cards.

Secondary level cards. I try to keep colours minimal.

Indo Wedding Bells

We went back Indo recently again to attend Rynae's cousin's wedding on a Sunday. Because of this happy occasion, Rynae had to pontang school for 2 days. Oops! It was my first 'experience' attending their kampong wedding ceremony and I was full of awe and anticipation for it. Though we're all ethnically Chinese, some traditions are practiced differently between our 2 nations. For example, brides were fetch in the wee hour of 2am instead of early morning and there were no cake cutting ceremony before yam seng, during the wedding banquet. It was a 2-ish p.m. lunch wedding conducted under a marquee, in a non-airconditioned milieu. Thank god we were seated in front of a fan! Unlike formal and solemn Singapore wedding dinner, their wedding feast was kept much livelier and abuzz by queues of friends and relatives making their way one after the other onto the stage - not as stand-up comedians or to present a tearing speech, but as amateur singers in a karaoke! As for the dishes, I got to admit that presentation wasn't fantastic but the food does taste decently home-cooked. Rynae loved the sharks fin soup most. Too bad there wasn't any left, if not she would have asked for a second helping!



Traditional sedans have been modernised to cars and herein.... simplified into motorbikes!


Can't you tell she is enjoying her food?