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One of my favorite playtimes with Ethan Koko is when we play “Ring Around the Rosy”. Sometimes Mommy would join us and we would all join our hands and make a little circle and sing and dance around together. Sometimes it will just be Ethan Koko and me, and Mommy will sing the song.
But there are times when Ethan Koko is busy with his other activities. During those times, I customize my “Ring Around the Rosy” playtime and have a lot of fun by myself too!
Who says we can’t have fun on our own? 😛
Two weeks ago, we took a short and much-needed vacation and headed up to Genting Highlands. It was our very first trip up there in a really long while, the last time we’d been up there being in late 2005, a few months before Ethan was born. The kids were both totally psyched up about the whole idea of the holiday, so much so that they didn’t even sleep at all the entire journey! Normally Hannah would fall asleep midway, but this time, she was very much awake, and Ethan was asking, “Why is it taking so long to get to Genting Highlands?” all the way there…
We took a little bit longer than usual to reach our destination because we had to make more stops than usual: Ethan had to go for very frequent toilet breaks.
And despite the fact that the kids had no sleep at all the entire journey, they were as excited as ever when we arrived!
Besides being a chance for the kids to have fun, we also met up with Ah Ma and Ah Kong from Ipoh in Genting Highlands, and the kids were pleased as pie to see both their grandparents.
Although the 3D2N stay in Genting Highlands left us all tired out, we all had a lot of fun… 🙂
I’ll let the pictures do the talking…
Got the All Park day pass for us so that we could enjoy the rides in both the outdoor and indoor theme parks. Hannah could still enter the parks for free for now, but there were some rides she was not allowed to ride on.
“Daddy Daddy, can I please go ride on the airplane like Ethan Koko and Mommy?”
Sorry baby, no can do…but we did take a family ride in the revolving teacups…and boy did that leave us incredibly dizzy!
Hannah showing her “dizzy and confused” look.
Feeding the koi in the koi pond.
Making sure the fish are well fed.
All the fishes sure had a healthy appetite!
Ethan..in deep thought…perhaps thinking about which ride to go on next!
“What??!!! You mean we need to go for lunch now??!! So soon?!!!”
…not before Ethan takes us for a drive in the antique car! 🙂
Happy and contented passengers in the antique car ride.
Lunch at Ming Ren “Lamb Specialty” Restaurant: Braised Lamb with Lotus Root (Yummy!)
“No more pictures, please, Mommy! I wanna go back to the Theme Park now!
In Beryl’s Chocolate Wonderland. Hannah is errr…making a getaway!
In a land far far away…
Spectacular view of Genting Highlands
“Daddy, are you sure there are no dinosaurs around here?”
Entrance to Dinosaurland
Little Miss Pouty Lips
What goes BUMP in the night? Ethan having a go at the Junior Bumper Cars.
All smiles as he got on the Ride de Paris in the Indoor Theme Park.
And here’s one for the road! Don’t we all look utterly satisfied with our buffet lunch at Coffee Terrace? 🙂
Ethan has totally perfected his swan pose…look how flexible he is:
And if we have any visitors, Ethan would very willingly demonstrate this pose to them.
To refresh your memory, he was actually doing the downdog pose when he was much younger. He learnt the swan pose from his music and movement class in school. And guess what? Hannah is actually doing the downdog pose now! 🙂
Scrap Credits
Hot Pants for Wenches from Kim B’s Designs
Boys & Girls Corner Alphas from Nathan Design
It’s Only Natural Alphas from Scrappy Bug
Elegant word art (girl magic) from Bethany
Weight
More than 11.2 kilos, and when she struggles while we are carrying her, it feels MUCH heavier!
Height/Length
81cm, roughly a head shorter than Ethan.
Teeth
8 incisors (4 top and 4 bottom), with 2 pramolars appearing on the right side (top and bottom), also 2 canines starting to appear at the top jaw.
Now Hannah wants to hold the toothbrush and brush her teeth herself. Yeah, she’s in that phase now where she wants to do everything herself. So I normally will put some toothpaste on my index finger and brush her teeth for her first before she brushes with her toothbrush. Thankfully, she still allows me to do that 🙂
Motor Skills
Communication and Social Skills
Food and Feeding
Hannah can eat most of our regular food, and she is very willing to try new things. She’s still being breastfed, and sometimes she will also drink the boxed chocolate milk, fresh milk and Yakult. She can eat both rice and porridge, and even the pieces of chicken in her food. I’ve also tried giving her the porridge with some peanuts in it (which we thought caused her to break out in a rash last month) but this time round, she was all right.
I have not been writing a whole lot about my breastfeeding journey with Hannah, at least not as much as I did when I was breastfeeding Ethan. The thing is, breastfeeding does get easier with the second kid onwards.
Hannah was and still is breastfed from birth till now (she’s 19 months now), and she’s showing no signs of stopping yet. Several people have asked me when I would be weaning Hannah off the breast, but with all the perks and fringe benefits that come with breastfeeding, it’s difficult to make a conscious effort…especially since we recently discovered another PLUS point of breastfeeding.
When Hannah was down with herpangina, the only source of food she would take as she was recovering was breast milk. I have no doubt in my mind that Mommy’s milk helped her tremendously as she was battling the virus. Since herpangina was a highly contagious disease, the doc told us to try our best to ensure Ethan does not come near Hannah.
But we all know that is close to impossible.
Ethan visited Hannah once in the hospital, and a few hours after he went home with Daddy, my heart sank when Pete told me that Ethan was registering a high fever. The next morning, his fever was still prevalent, and when I told the doctor, she advised me that I should give Ethan my freshly expressed breast milk, since I would possibly have developed the antibodies for the disease.
So when we got home from hospital, I expressed a little bit of breast milk for Ethan. It wasn’t even an ounce, I think, for I had just fed Hannah. When I told Ethan I was going to give him breast milk, he said, “I don’t want it, Mommy. Breast milk is for babies!”
I told him I knew that, but since he was not feeling well, the doctor asked me to give him some of Mommy’s milk to help him recover. I mixed the breast milk with his chocolate milk in a cup and he drank it all up. I did this about 3 times that day, and once the following day. By the end of the first day, his fever had totally gone, and he was back to his normal self. And when I was preparing the drink for him the following day, he said, “I don’t need breast milk anymore Mommy, I’m all better now!”
Well, I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but I do think Mommy’s milk had something to do with healing him. Now wouldn’t you agree that Mommy’s milk the most wonderful thing in the world?
Strangely enough, Ethan has developed a huge liking for Sushi King. It must have started from the time his school was discussing “Restaurants” as the theme and the name Sushi King must have come up. Suffice to say, Ethan will request to have lunch or dinner at Sushi King sometimes, and he enjoys himself on every occasion. Although we don’t really like the food there, the look of joy on Ethan’s face is enough to make us feel satisfied. 🙂
Today, I decided to let Ethan skip lunch in school and opted to take him to Sushi King for lunch (it’s Japanese fast food, but it’s healthier than the *other* kind of fast food). Whenever I take him for lunch, he would tell all his teachers and friends where he would be going, and today was no exception.
Sushi King was having a “RM2 per plate of rice-based sushi” promotion and today was the last day. Thankfully we managed to get a good spot by the kaiten belt, and Ethan had fun helping me get the plates of sushi from the kaiten belt. Our boy finished his entire bowl of rice in his kiddie’s meal and also a bowl of chawan mushi.
Well…what can I say? It was definitely a great lunch and an equally awesome mother-and-son bonding experience 🙂 We’ll be back!
Last Sunday morning, we made it to Youth Park for some fun impromptu “soccer training”. It was also the first time we used the 1 on 1 soccer set we bought for Ethan. The kids had a lot of fun, as did the adults… I’ll let the photos speak for themselves 🙂
Ethan doing some warm-up exercises before *training*.
Hannah doing some light stretching too…
Run Ethan, run!!!
Ethan doing a mental calculation of the angle he should curve the ball before taking a free kick…
Hannah, preparing to shoot for the goal!
…and Ethan scores…from an EXTREMELY close range! (he could even do the celebratory hugs and whatnot!)
Ethan and Daddy, perfecting a *pass and score* sequence.
“It’s mine!!!”
…and…err…honing his goalkeeping skills.
Last Wednesday, we celebrated Daddy’s birthday. Pete took a day off from work, and we both went out for a nice lunch, just the two of us 🙂
Then we fetched Ethan from school and caught a movie in Queensbay Mall. We saw Alpha & Omega, simply because it was the only *kid* show at that moment. Ethan was so hyped up and excited about the whole thing. He was bouncing around and couldn’t wait to get into the cinema. We got some popcorn too, of course!
We picked up a nice football cake for Daddy before we left the mall, and I had a birthday voucher which entitled me to a discount on the cake PLUS a free ice cream. So Ethan got to eat some yummy chocolate ice cream too. Actually some time back, Ethan had wanted to get the football cake for Daddy and had told me that. In addition, he had also spilled the beans and told his Daddy what cake we were getting…so no surprise there. Bah.
But he did have fun eating his ice cream …
Sure sounds a lot like Ethan’s birthday instead of Daddy’s huh?
We picked Hannah up and headed for home where we had a simple dinner and the cake-cutting (before the ice cream cake melted!)
Ethan, proving that he has inherited the ART of rolling the tongue from Daddy and Mommy 🙂
One of the hardest things to do in the mornings, when we are ready to leave the house for school, is to get both kids ready, wearing their sandals/shoes and out the door pronto. I had been battling with this for a few weeks, with one kid or the other dilly-dallying, and short of tearing out my hair, I honestly didn’t know what to do.
Until I stumbled on the perfect solution!
I decided to make wearing sandals a competition. Knowing my kids and their competitive streaks, I would ask, “Hmmm…let’s see who’s gonna win and finish wearing their sandals first today!”
Ethan will jump up and head straight for the door, and Hannah will scream, “Me!” and run out too, getting her sandals ready.
Ethan will then say, “Ready?….. Set?….” and Hannah will say, “GO!!!”
Ethan will wear his sandals and I will put on Hannah’s sandals. Ethan wins most of the time, and will proclaim loudly, “I’m the winner!”
This *system* was foolproof…or so I thought.
Lately, Hannah has other ideas… When she says, “Go!”, she refuses to let me wear her sandals for her. She would kick and scream and just sit there holding her sandals. Took me a while to figure it out, but I soon found out that she wanted her BROTHER to wear them for her instead!
