Baby, aged 18 months

It's been a while since I've put up any of my baby's photos. Here are some taken from my handphone. Gosh, the resolution's pretty good, eh? I was thinking of buying a small camera to carry with me, but maybe this handphone also can do. The only problem is the lag time is very slow. What to do?

Baby is learning to twirl his pen. Can probably do better than me.


At my hair-spa salon. Not that he has got any *hair* to speak of.


I love him so. :)


He is a big boy now.

Life is tough

There, I've finally done it. Fell asleep at the wheel and kissed someone's butt. There was just a slight scratch on my number plate, but boy oh boy, the lady's fender was totally bumped. Plus she bumped into the car in front as well. Hmmm. *sigh* I guess I'm just too tired and stressed nowadays.

Baby is really very very tiring. I need to stop pandering to his whims. Really stop. Harden my heart and let him cry. I need my life back. I need to have time for myself and stop running around like a headless chicken. I need to stop. Period.

*****
Bad stuffs aside. On my last day of my holidays, before all the horrid meetings (which took up two days of my holidays), I invited PM over my place to do some baking. She was supposed to come at 10am in the morning for my pancakes breakfast, but I'm sure you can guess what time she arrived (finally). Almost 1pm. Oh well.

Anyway, breakfast was pancakes which I made for dear hubby.

Hmm, does it look good? I didn't quite drown it in the maple syrup because hubby didn't like it too sweet. But it tasted pretty good. I cooked more for my neighbours and for PM when she arrived. Baby took a couple of bites from hubby before refusing. He always refuse food from me out of some principle only he knows.

Lunch was more japanese udon with PM, after which we baked apple crumble again. PM made my crumble too hard and we ran out of flour, but I substituted with a little self-raising flour and crossed our fingers hoping it'll work. It turned out pretty good I must say, except the crumble wasn't as crumbly as I had hoped. My boss liked my crumble too. I hope he'll give me a raise next year. But then if he does, it'll be hard for me to leave. *sigh*

Do I really want to stop work? Baby dearest is the one who'll suffer. Poor baby.

Part Two

Okay, so the clothes are up. I've got a sneaky bad feeling about tomorrow, but let's not think about it right now. There's nothing I can do about it now anyway.

Min's vouchers bought me two more cookbooks. Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries, and Donna Hay's Classics 2. I'm always a sucker for Donna Hay's books. Her pictures are beautiful, although the instructions aren't always a hundred percent clear. But then again, I never follow instructions to the dot. Furthermore, if I were to compare with Nigel Slater's book, gosh, some of his instructions are even worse! Like how long am I supposed to leave it in the oven for? What in the world is *blank*? Hey, where's the recipe for this one side dish etc. Still, it was pretty fun to read. It's a different style of a cookbook all together. Very refreshing!

My birthday book present from Wen: Shunju New Japanese Cuisine, is a bit more complicated. It has those kind of very beautiful pictures, really mouth-watering stuffs, which looks really difficult to make. They're those kind of stuffs which you'd really like someone else to cook for you. But it's really nice to look at the pictures and drool drool drool drool. :) Well, maybe I might try the oxtail hotpot. I feel like making oxtail one of these days!

All together I have now ... wow. More than 20 cookbooks! Including bake books. Waah. :) My collection is coming along nicely. I wonder how many books does Wen have? :P

*****
Am going to try making pancakes. Bought some ingredients and some utensils. Heh, it's always nice to buy new toys. :) Am looking out for a simple hand-held mixer. I remembered mixing some dough manually and being extremely tired after that.

Holidays are coming to an end, it's kinda depressing to think about it. I haven't really got a chance to cook something really different and special and nice or bake something yet. *sigh* It's quite difficult when my boy is into this super clinging stage. Plus he's only eighteen months and yet undergoing the terrible twos stage already. I can write a whole chapter about his naughiness. But, mothers are always terribly proud of their babies, and we are terribly proud of him because he's starting to speak in sentences. :)

Like: Ah gong sweeps floor. Lenny wears hat. Papa drives car.

And he can use many different words to express the same meaning. His favourite meaning now being:
No. No no no no. No need. Mai. Bu Yao. Dun want. Plus vigourous shaking of his head, and sometimes hands as well.

To chocolates, it's always a nod of his head.

Did I mention that he can say 'McDonald'? Especially whenever we pass by the McDonald's place (and I think whenever he sees that clown, whatisname). Can we send him to earn some money for us as their poster boy?

:)

My yellow lamborghini, revenge of the cow and all things domestic

Over the last week, a stamp of approval was given to get a new expensive vacuum cleaner. Ohh, just because it was the colour of one of his favourite cars. The infamous yellow. Yep, even my little boy likes it too, and quickly sat on it while I was playing with the controls. My boy didn't quite go vrooom, but he helped me with the vacuum for a while until his arms got tired. Metal tubes this time, not plastic. And it's so quiet.

Five minutes in all to vacuum the carpet. The old one kept dying on me which I think because the bagless bag needs emptying. So it got overheated. Heh. That was supposed to be the hubby's job. Anyway, my part-time maid was on leave, and a couple of times of using the old vacuum cleaner drove me nuts. I'm a happy vacuumer now. :)

Will continue to vacuum the floor during weekdays. Hey, it suddenly became fun!

*****
I've also got my lovely table-top electric grill plus hot pot. Can only do one thing at one time though, but who cares eh? So I went and buy the corn-fed beef especially for grilling. And we had grilled beef plus pork (because I didn't realised the packet contained pork as well, kinda felt cheated really!) for dinner tonight. Plus special lemon dipping sauce, from my Japanese recipe book. Oh ... the beef was mouth-watering. Even writing it here now makes my mouth water.

After dinner, I realised the drawback of grilling in the dining room. The whole house is oily. Arrgh.

So it took half an hour to mop the floor, wash the dishes and mop the floor again.

Arrgh, I just remembered I haven't hang up the clothes! Arrgh.

Much ado about nothing

I haven't been able to log in to blogger recently, I think there's a problem with netscape. Now with IE, everything seems to be smooth going. But somehow something is irritating me. Using this verison of IE. Maybe I should upgrade to the latest version. Hmm. The alternative is to login via someone else's page. Hmm ... anyway, no worries, here I am.

If I could have written something a couple of days back, the title of my post would be 'The things that made me angry'. Oh, I had a whole list of things that made me angry. So angry in fact, that it's not going to be good for my health. Venting it out might be good, but writing it down may not always be a good idea, since it serves as a reminder how angry one can get. So perhaps it was a good thing I did not write them down after all.

Then again, I'm still angry because I couldn't quite vent them all out. The next best thing is to indulge in guilt-laden shopping spree. Yep, Tods sale is around the corner. I shall have my shopping therapy. Paid up my credit card bills in anticipation of spending big money. hahha. There's a feeling of recklessness. One bag and at least two pairs of shoes. How's that to soothe my anger?

Of course all the money I spend will be from my own account. Here's to pay-raise and some bonus. I think there is some bonus, isn't there?

*****
Anyway, I just came back from visiting my Granny in Malaysia. It was a short trip of two days and nights. In future, I must remember that my aunt has very low taste. Of course she meant well, but her idea of an excellent hotel and an excellent breakfast fell short of our expectations. One look at the place instantly placed it to at most two stars. I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breath to hubby who rolled his eyes at me. Hey, and it wasn't cheap for a two star hotel too. Grrr. I mean, I don't mind if I've to stay in a two star hotel, but I don't expect to pay so much for that sort of place! I'd rather spend slightly more and have at least a four star resort. Grr. Next time I shall book online myself. The other place wasn't too bad. It was new if nothing else. New places are always nice. Until it gets old.

Grandma is stil very strong, if not a little forgetful and blur. Baby allowed himself to be held for a short while. On the second visit, he pointedly decided that pretty girls are much preferred over old ladies. He played with his little aunties so delightfully, and had so much fun being the center of attraction with my cousins aged twelve and below. He obviously didn't care who were the ones giving him angpows. Nope, not interested right now, except for pretty girls who swoon and held his hands. Lady killer, him. No, make that pretty ladies only. heh.

My poor dear came back with a fever, a bad cough and runny nose. It's been almost a week, and he's still coughing away, with lots of phelgm too. It breaks one heart to hear him cough like that, plus wheezing away when the phelgm blocks his airways and he coughs till he throws up. It is the nights that are bad. Moreover, giving him his medicine is also a nightmare. One look at the bottle and he starts crying. The teaspoon comes out and he starts struggling. And flailing his little fists. We had no choice but to syringe it, hold him down, and force feed him. And he's smart, he wouldn't swallow and goes phuuuutt and onto our face and hair and clothes. Or he'll just use his fingers and dig all out. So we have to grip him tightly, and pour it down his throat. It just make it worse, for he cried and cried and cried and eventually he threw up everything. Last night he seemed to be better. Last night I tried giving him his medicine with a bit of a bribe. One hand holding chocolates, he nodded his head decisively. The other hand with the medicine bottle, he shook his head and cried. Oh he knew what he wanted definitely. So I tried a sleight of hand, but it could only work once. I finally resorted to putting the chocolate (a smear of it) at the tip of the spoon and poured the medicine into the rest of the spoon. He saw, he knew and he grumbled. And still grumbling, he conceded. I guess he agreed to compromise.

So today for the whole day he seemed to be much better and I missed his medicine all together. It's stressful for both him and myself when giving him medicine. Sometimes I really feel like a single mother. Alas, he seemed to be worse tonight, and a few mintues ago, we fed him his cough syrup and phelgm medicine again. I hope he'll be okay for the rest of the night.

*****
The other thing which irritates me is some inane remark made by someone at work. A couple of weeks back. One's special profession doesn't make one a god. Ask me if you want to know what inane remark that person make. I'm just grouchy, because baby is still sick, and I missed yoga on Monday.

My cleaning lady will not be around for the whole month. I just scrubbed my yard three days ago, and it's cleaner than ever she could clean. This morning I tidied up my little terrace garden. The plants are growing nicely. Hubby sees me watering the plants and commented that the poor plants undergo draughts and floods. I think I shall pour some bleach on the floor on Friday. My vacuum cleaner works for about ten minutes before it dies everytime. I think the bagless idiot needs to be cleaned. But I'm allergic to dust, so I shall get a new vacuum cleaner instead. It's someone else's job to clear out the dust in the vacuum cleaner, but that is never going to happen. I shall get a better cleaner. Besides the dust and hair always get stuck in the duster (or whatever you call that thingy). Yep, certainly due for a new vacuum cleaner. :)

Other wants: a hotplate grill and steamboat. I've spied a tiger. I thought of getting one of those electronic rice cooker, but the sales lady said it takes like 45 minutes to cook rice. Hello?! Forty-five? You gotta be joking. I'll save my money then. Must get a new hood. Actually I'd like to change my whole kitchen. But that's another story for another time. Have been slowly putting things away too. The house looks just slightly neater now. Just ever so slightly. It's still too messy really. I'd like to visit Ikea too before the holidays end, but the next week seems to be looming up fast, and next week equals no more holidays.

*****
One last thing. The use of the miso paste I bought in the last post was a failure. Must. read. recipe. again. and. carefully. too.