Bandage

Nah, Sofia is not injured. I am just fed up of reminding her numerous times when we go to bed not to suck her thumb. Just before I tuck her into bed, I would always remind her,"Sofia, you promised NOT to suck your thumb, so no sucking ok?". She would nod her head innocently.

Barely five minutes later, I would hear the familiar sound of "muuukkmmmuuuukmmuuuuk", then I would sit up and look over.

"I am NOT sucking my thumb!" AFTER she pulls her thumb out.

It always leads to me getting angry and she getting upset for being caught, thus bedtime is not pleasant at all.

One week ago, I went to the pharmacy and bought a roll of surgical tape. So I have been taping her two thumbs every single night for the past one week. With the tape there, it stops her from sucking and it works! I was afraid she would not let me put on the tape or peel off the tape by herself at night. But she was pretty cooperative and
kind of enjoyed it!

Daddy and I find it kind of funny too, as if her thumbs have been injured severely every night. I do not know how long this will take to break her habit, but my gut feel is probably a month or so?

If it is going to take longer, so be it, it is a pretty cheap solution at RM2.55 per roll!

Tommy

Victim : Sofia

Aggressor : Tommy the persian cat (who looks remotely similar to Tiger)

When : Sunday, 04 July @ 9pm

Where : 表伯的家

How many? : 6 angry scratches

Why?

The picture says it all. Our dear animal lover was all over the cat the moment she saw him. A pat here ... a pat there ... hello Tommy! ... Hello Tommy!! ... HELLO Tommy!!! ... HELLO TOMMY!!!! ...
The cat was overwhelmed by the attention from both Sofia and Jeremiah and started hidding. Jeremiah was very much watched over by Ana while Sofia was just after the cat's tail. The cat was pulled out from under the car and I think it made him snapped.

"Wwwwwuuuhhhhhhaahhhhhhhhh ...... mmmuuuuuaahhhhhhahhhhhhh .... mommaaaaa ....."
Instantly my antennas shot up, something must have happened for Sofia to cry like that. Luckily the scratches are not very deep and she quietened down after washing and application of medicine.

On the way home, she was quiet like a mouse, which was very unlike her.

"Daddy, why did Tommy scratch me?" Sofia asked as we alighted.

So Daddy spend the next half an hour explaining to her cats' temperaments, what she should and should not do next time. We hoped she understand what had happened and would be careful next time. Then we also asked her to forgive Tommy and she agreed. We think she really did because after that, she went straight to the toy room to look for Tiger and insisted on hugging him to bed that night.

Aren't children so forgiving?

5 out of 5

Sofia has always been a very physical and active girl since young. She does not mind getting all dirty, sweaty and hot under the sun. I remembered Sofia joining the school for a field trip to the elephant sanctuary at the age of two, with teachers she barely knew. Yes, I was worried too but I knew she was in safe hands. It was a full day trip and the bus ride was about two hours each way.

Sofia came back from the trip tired but very very happy, they saw lots of animals at the sanctuary other than the elephants. Her principal, Julie, later confessed to me that she was actually rather worried when I signed Sofia up for the field trip. Sofia was the youngest in the group and the teachers are from Subang, so she practically knew no one. But Julie said Sofia was extremely well behaved and cooperative throughout the trip. There were no complains about being sweaty and hot or crying to go home. Julie was very very surprised. I guess so as long as there are animals around, it is more than enough to keep Sofia occupied.

We had just gotten the mid-year report for Sofia before the holidays and she had FULL marks for PE (physical education). Though it wears us down at times, we are thankful to God she is such a "energy" babe, growing up physical strong and healthy.

Family Portrait

Sofia drew this balloney family portrait yesterday and we all find it very amusing and interesting. We had all become balloons!!

From left: Fefe, Po-Po, Gong-Gong, Ana, Jeremiah, Daddy, Sofia and Mummy

Indoor Birdpark

I caught a glimpse of a banner that was prompting some bird exhibition at Ikano the other day. Since it was the school holidays and Sofia had nothing much to do, I brought her there to check the chicks out.

It turned out that the KL Bird Park has brought along some of their birds and exhibited them indoors. I thought it was a great idea, the weather was so hot, there was no way I would bring Sofia to the bird park! She was of course delighted, running from cage to cage, inspecting the birds, trying to talk to the birds.

Then, there was a bird feeding session at 2pm. I knew we had to stay for this, she would LOVE it.

True enough, she was game for it!

So we fed the birds not once, but twice!

At the end, before we left, I asked her jokingly,"Shall we bring one of the birds home?"
Her eyes grew BIG and ROUND and nodded at me profusely. I had to explain to her that the birds are actually living in the bird park and they need a BIG BIG home to fly around. Furthermore, Fefe would bully them if we bring them home. She accepted my explanation and went home with me, she is such a lovely darlin' at times.

Haircut

It is the school holidays and I needed a hair cut badly. So I reluctantly invited Sofia along with me. Afraid that she would be bored, I packed two of her storybooks with me to keep her occupied, in case she started fiddling with the hairdressers' tools of trade.

While I was getting my hair washed, I took the opportunity to asked Sofia if she was interested in getting her hair washed and cut too?

"NO." she replied curtly.

"Why? You can cut your hair short, like Daddy, or even Jeremiah! Want to try?" I pressed.

"NO! NO!!I want Mummy to cut." came the answer.

I have been trimming and cutting Sofia's hair since birth and she is so used to it now. She does not allow anyone else to do this job for her, no matter what I say or do.I am not doing that great a job in this aspect and I hope she would get a proper hair cut by the professional soon.

Bad Habit

How do you help her kick this habit when the thumb is stuck to her all the time? It is unlike a pacifier where you can throw it away, burn it, chop it all up and say "That's it! Grow up kid, no more!". The thumb is part of her hand, her body, what should I do?

I tried to make her wear mittens using her socks but the mittens were off by dawn. I threatened with pepper and chili but it only worked while awake and when caught red-handed. In my absence, she would be happily sucking away. I am adamant that Sofia kick this habit soonest possible as we have noticed her lower two front teeth have protruded even more recently. But HOW? She has come up with some clever ideas like hiding under the blanket, not facing me at night so that she can suck without my knowledge.

My worst plan is to rub chili on her thumb regardless she likes it or not every night until she kicks this habit. I know by doing this, it would be a battle with lots of tears and screams before bedtime and perhaps in the middle of the night as well. It may sound cruel but like I said, it is my last resort.

March Events

It has been such an eventful March for us, many things happened and some have probably already slipped my mind ...


1. Jeremiah has finally started teething with 4 teeth at one go, there were a couple of nights in a row where he woke up every hour. It was the ultimate test of endurance for me. Fortunately my mum came over this month to lend me a hand and I could catch some sleep during the day when Sofia napped.

Despite all the night wakings, the boy was still his usual cheerful and energetic self. Jeremiah was also down with a chesty cough and cold for 2 weeks and after it was all gone and done, the finale came with a fever and skin rash. During this period, he broke his own record with a record 5-hour morning nap. We were so very worried if he was alright cos he has never took a nap this long! After the nap, we were all relieved to see him playing and eating again, phew!


2. Daddy has been travelling a lot again so my "single-mum" days are back again. Sofia misses Daddy a lot when he is away, she will always ask me "Where is Daddy?" and "Let's pick up Daddy from the office?". So when her hero is back she will be all over him, tailing him wherever he goes.

Daddy will try to come back with presents for her and here, she was trying to cover Daddy with her new clothes.


3. Sofia and Jeremiah loves to bang on the piano together. I don't know how my neighbours take it, they are probably very disturbed by the noise pollution we create day and night. Sofia loves to sing and dance too and the best part is Jeremiah loves to join in. He would stand, hold on to something and sway with the music, or sometimes, he would go "WAH BAH BAH BAH BAH! MAH MAH HOO!" , which makes everyone laugh!



4. We celebrated Daddy's birthday as well with Jeremiah in the picture now. When Sofia saw the cake delivered to our house, she was so excited over the birthday celebration that she kept singing the happy birthday song over and over again! Of course she could not wait too, kept asking me to take the cake out and cut it, arrrghhhh!!



5. I also came to know my good friend, R, is going back home for good mid-April. It came very sudden due to family reason and everyone has little time to react. We will spend some time catching up before the whole family moves, hope we will meet again soon.

Big Business Settings

This is a new habit Sofia has recently acquired after catching Daddy reading on the toilet bowl while going about his big business. Not the best habit to acquired as the house will have another member hoarding the toilet bowl!

It happened one fine day when she told me she wanted to poo poo and she perched herself up on the toilet bowl. I sat down nearby waiting for her to finish so that I can wash her. Suddenly she squirmed down from the bowl.

So I yelled at her "HEY! Where do think you are going to POO?!"

"WAIT! Wait Mum! WAIT!" she replied with her hand and palm stretched out at me, like a policeman.

She then ran to the bookshelf, opened it and grabbed a book from Daddy's collection. With the book, she ran back to the toilet and sat on the throne again.

I was lost for words and my mind quickly flipped through the events that had happened yesterday, the day before. OH! Then I remembered her barging into the toilet the day before and caught Daddy reading on the toilet bowl. This is really a classic example of "monkey see, monkey do".

The book that she grabbed was way beyond her current reading ability except for recognizing the big ship on the cover. So she pretended to "read" it and put it to other good use.

Like holding it for comfort while waiting for poo to come ...

I think it is coming?

Oh man, it is getting so hot here, luckily I can use the book to cool myself down ...

I shall not elaborate the details after this photo as she successfully expelled the solid toxics from her body. But what happened today reminded Daddy and I to be very careful from now onwards as she is picking up all our habits, both good and bad. No wonder there is a saying that kids are the best mirror for their parents.

Bored

The work of a very bored yet energetic 3yo girl.

I wish she can vacuum and mop the floor, water the garden, clean the windows, wash the toilets, do the laundry, bath the cat ...

If she can do all this, I am pretty sure it will exhaust ALL her energy!!

New Year, New Friend

Sofia has not met this Gu-Gu of hers since two years ago but they hit it off right away when they met on New Year's eve. We celebrated New Year in KL this year so Gu-Gu came over to join us from Singapore.

The duo were best of friends for the six days they were together, it was like "Where is Gu-Gu?" the moment she wakes up in the morning and happened again when she wakes up from nap.

When Gu-Gu went back to Singapore this morning, Sofia tried to hold her back by pulling her leg. This is the first time I see this girl being so attached to another person again. I am sure Gu-Gu had a good time with her too! Hopefully we will meet soon again in Singapore!

Cheongsam

I decided to dress Sofia up in a new year finery this year - cheongsam. I thought through the idea for weeks and slept over it for many nights before I mustered all the courage to buy it.

WHY?

Simply because she is always running here and there and the last thing I want to hear on New Year's day is "Phhhiiiaaaaaa ....." and the pretty dress is sexier than ever. Because the slits at the side has gone higher than intended.

After I bought the dress, I let her try it on as soon as we got home. True enough, within 10 secs, she discovered her movements were so limited by this dress that she wanted to take it off. I asked her to wear it for a little while more please, she really looked lovely.

Guess what? This clever girl instantly pulled up the dress to her waist and started running again with her undies and bum-bum all exposed! Oh no!! Is she going to do this when we go visiting??

Well, I bought a size 4 dress, hopefully it will still fit next year and she will wear it like a demure young lady.

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Up the "Mountain"

Just when we were finishing off the house a week before we moved in, one of the major decisions we needed to make was to decide what sort of tree or plants we want to have in the garden. There were some trees that we loved to have but due to the potential growth of that specie, the tree may cause damage to the pipes running underground. So Daddy and I went around some of the new properties to see what are the options we have.

Sofia was very bored with our "shopping" though I tried to show her the tadpoles and beautiful flowers, it could only hold her interest for couple of minutes.

Then she found this little slope and she started calling it a "mountain" and the fun started. She started running from one "mountain" top to the other "mountain" top like a little mouse. It was lots of fun for her but I was not ready for her to get sweaty and dirty when we have other things to do later. So I made her stand on the top of the "mountain" and strike some poses.

Does she look like someone whom has just completed an incredible feat?

My Many Faces

Sofia has been playing with different facial expressions of late. She likes to go "Mummy, give me happy face!". Then I will give her a big broad smile. Or she will go "Mummy, give me crying face!" and I will pretend to sob while wiping imaginary tears away from my face.

She enjoys it very much and this is her version of the many expressions ...

Original ...

Sad face ...

ANGRY face ...

Wake up face ...

Last but not least, FUNNY Face!

Almost Diaper Free

For the past one week, I have been working with Sofia on taking naps in the afternoon without wearing diapers. We started off with going to the toilet before settling down for a nap and I give her reminders about not wearing any diapers, which means she has to hold if she needs to pee.

The first day went well, followed by accidents over the next two days. She woke up crying when the accidents happened, guess she just needed getting used to it. After that, we had one or two accidents and from then on, Sofia got the idea and we are now officiallyy diaper free for naps, hurray!!

The next big step will be working on being diaper free for night time as well. I am not ready to work on this yet ... maybe another few months? We shall see.

Complete Set of Teeth

Sofia's last two molars are on the way out.

Now she is ready to tackle ALL sorts of food ... satay, cuttlefish, etc., BRING THEM OVER!

When the sun comes out ...

One of the things that I dread at night is either Sofia having a bad dream and start talking out loud or she waking up in the middle of the night and not wanting to sleep again. Usually the later happens when she is on flu medication, not sure why but the medicine seems to put her in deep sleep for the few 5-6 hours then she will wake up.

Either way, once she is up, it is difficult to ask her not to talk or make noise. Then Jeremiah gets disturbed and gets awakened as well. This sort of situation makes me very irritable and I am like a half-asleep frowning clown juggling them in the middle of the night.

Recently, Sofia has started asking for milk in the middle of the night again. I gave in the night before just to shut her up and fortunately she went back to sleep after finishing her milk. She woke up AGAIN last night at 3 am ...

Sofia : Mummy, may I have some milk pls?
Me : ... wait a while ... (I was hoping she would fall back to sleep)

After 5 mins of thumb sucking ...

Sofia : Mummy, may I have some milk pls? (this time louder)

I was trying to wake my brain cells at this wee hour to find a good excuse, suddenly I blurted out,"Yes, but we must wait for the sun to come out first."

Sofia who was already on my bed, turned to look at the windows and stared hard. It worked?! I could not believe it.

After 10 seconds or so, I whispered to her again,"Yes, girl, we can only drink milk when the sun comes out, ok? Now go back to your bed and sleep." She obediently went down to her bed and fell back to sleep after sucking her thumb. Of course I was so happy to be able to kick this bad habit of hers and went back to to sleep.

I was later awakened at 7am by someone BOOMING at my ears ...

"MUMMY! MUMMY! SUN COME OUT ALREADY!! CAN DRINK MILK ALREADY!!!"

My Favourite Shopping Place

Ikea is now officially Sofia's favourite shopping mall. Why?

Simple, because they have a kid's size trolley and she ENJOYS pushing it, just like an adult.

Ssswwwwwwoooooshhhhhhh .... ssssswwwiiisssssshhhhhhhhh ...

Sometimes, she strays off the course, so I thought I would just give her some assistance using the handle on the top. Immediately I heard,"NO MUM! NNNOOOOooo!!!!!" and she will peel my hand off the handle and look at me, annoyed. Okay, help not needed.

For the rest of the evening, Sofia was happily pushing "her" shopping cart enjoying her shopping at Ikea.

It makes me wish that ALL shopping malls have such trolleys so that I can shop with peace.

Almost Ready

Our new place is ALMOST ready. We have contractors coming in everyday for different things - windows, glass, mirrors. Carpentry work has also started and we can finally see the house falling in place.

I spend most of my mornings on site to monitor work being done. It takes up lots of energy and patience to deal with these MEN. They only have one aim, that is, to come and get their job done, finished! They do not consider how their part should match with the rest of the items. For example, the grille guy actually came with grilles that block the window handle. How am I suppose to open the window then? Arrghhh ... So the grilles got to be sent back and redone. That is the sort of funny happenings in my life nowadays.

I try to avoid bringing Sofia on site cos she will start playing with the bits and pieces lying around. One of my eyes will be on her and the other on the ongoing work, soon, I am going to end up with crossed eyes. Today was an exception, we were there after school to tend to one guy who did not turn up in the morning.

I asked her to give me a "dirty" look since the place was so filthy and we end up with this photo.

Goat's Milk

I introduced a new drink to Sofia couple of days ago - goat's milk. I can pretty much accept goat's milk but it is strictly off Daddy's diet because of the "fragrance". When I went shopping for goat's milk from Cold Storage, I specially let Sofia tag along so that she can participate and perhaps accept the "new" milk without any fuss.

Why goat's milk instead of cow's milk? I had a brief chat with K last week and her son was also having very frequent cough with phlegm. It can get so bad that it causes him to throw up all his food. She tried to seek second opinion from TCM and the doc suggested switching to goat's milk, as the kid might have a mild allergy to cow's milk and that produces phlegm. After talking to her, I decided to give it a try too. I have long heard about goat's milk, it being closer to mother's milk, easier to digest and better absorption of nutrients by human. The only downside is it is much more expensive. For a 1.8kg tin of cow's milk, I can only buy a 900g tin of goat's milk!

I am not sure if this is the solution of Sofia's frequent coughing and cold but I plan to give it a try for a couple of months and see if it makes a difference to her health.