Zoo again??

I mentioned previously the kiasu me will make sure that we visit the zoo regularly. Ha..here we comes again! Early in the morning we taught Jared to say "Zoo" when asked where are you going?

But this round was a short trip, main purpose is to tire out Jared so that he could get a good afternoon nap before starting school at Julia Gabriel in the evening.

We saw the zebra, lion and giraffe, also took the tram to the children's playground. There was nobody when we reached there...I tried to put Jared to play at the water pool, but he refused, After a bit of warm up here and there (basically I need to demo walking around in the pool), he then finally dares to step into the pool and walking around. But blur me forgot to bring changing clothes and towels. So Jared go home with only his diapers on..hehe.. We'll definitely be going to the children's pool again..The water are so cold..So fun to walk in it.

p/s Free tram ride is only available to friends of zoo during weekdays..that's another reason we usually tried to squeeze zoo trip on Fri. Can't imagine we need to walk through the zoo..hehe..

What's up??

What's up ah yi?? I'm very busy one..

I'm busy learning and doing self improvement...Just a few weeks you don't see me, I could count 1, 2, 3, 5 6 chibu.. Smart boh?

Thanks for your hard rock t shirt..but don't buy me anymore, it's my 4th piece, after Tokyo, Yokohama, San Francisco and finally Berlin is it?? I'll probaly only be able to wear it when I'm 4 or 5 yr old since I'm always slim..unlike both you and mummy..pui pui..hehe..

-Jared-

Update as of 19mth Day2 (20 Jun 07)

Q: How old are you?
A: 1 year old

So happy..I've been trying to teach Jared this since he turned 1 year old. But he always refused to listen. But then again when question being asked too often eg. What's your name? How does the cow sounds? etc He will refused to ans again..

19 mth old!

Achievements:

-Wean off sarong
Biggest achievement over the month definitely!!...Finally I could keep away with the bulky sarong stand and make way for other stuff..hehe..Kee Ping has been eyeing on a table and stool set from Ikea, so that Jared could do some art & craft there. Also need to move out the ball house he received as 1st year Birthday pressie from my uni pals... (Pai seh, Agnes, will make good use of the pressie soon). Cos everytime we take it out ..the 100 balls ended every where in the house, make me headache leh.

-Learning to count
Can follow the display in the lift and count 1 to 9 pretty well. Coz we stayed on the 9th floor at Whampoa.
But if count items, sure to forget the no. 2.. So he'll sound like this..
1 Tree, 3 Tree
1 cloud, 3 cloud or 1,3,4,5 etc

Recognise numbers up and can say up to 19 when read from flash cards.

-Describe things
Says "Big moon" for full moon
Says "Red car"

-Say out loud words he know without being asked
Since the past mth, when he see something he knew, he will say out loud..we don't need to ask what's this and that anymore. Sometimes you'll find him showing off words he knows around as he loves to be complimented..and even will yell " yehhhhh" and clap hands for himself when others commented he's a smart boy.

-Know a lot more chinese words..
He could say 拉极桶 and link it to "Pong" sound...so if we leave the house with big plastic bag, he will think we want to go to the rubbish shoot and keep saying "拉极桶 Pong"

Nope, we didn't manage to let him say "Daddy/Mummy 抱我"..but he could now say 抱我,抱我,抱我,抱我,抱我,抱我..until you get so irritated and have to carry him..hehe..

-Request "sweet sweet" from neighbours
Jared have the habit to ask for "sweet sweet" from 1 or 2 neighbour..Then the neighbour will give him a rocher in return..So pai seh!

-Look Pui Pui on weekdays and skinny on weekend
Since very very young, ie. 3mth old Jared already has this problem..He'll look pui pui with round tummy and big butt on weekdays..but when we bring him home on our off days, he'll look very skinny the next morning when he wake up..Strange huh? We used to get stressed out..and won't dare to bring him home if that Sat need to bring him for jab as they will measure his weight and height there. Now we heck care liao, sometimes I felt he look better on weekend when he's skinny..heheh..

Playgroup + Father's day celebration

Thanks to Megan who opened up her house to host a playgroup cum Father's day celebration for our MSN kakis..

The program was very well organised, which includes the welcome good morning song, story telling, bubble and art&craft time. Not sure what happen, Jared just couldn't mix in with the rest..and demand us to carry him all the time and keep saying he "怕" (scared)...Probaly cos there were already a lot of ppl there since we were late.

But towards the art & craft session, he suddenly got warmed up..once Sin Mei put down the water colors, he held my hand asked me to bring him over to the colors..Didn't know he like coloring so much..Big thank you to SM who brought the stuff..This session let us realised the other side of Jared .....guess what, after the session, we chiong to buy the coloring materials ! hehe..

Jared's work

Happy Father's Day to all Daddies..

Baking Time...Cheese and Chive Scone

Finally we can bake again, used the shell points to exchange for a cornell mixer since the previous one was down. Hope this mixer could last us a longer time hehe.

This round we decided to bake some scone..since I loves scone...Tasted my first scone when we were in Australia travelling 5 yrs ago..

Cheese and Chive Scone Recipe

(Extracted from Karen Cheng's blog)

225g (8 oz) self raising flour
50g butter
1 cup cheese
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon dried chives
¼ cup of milk to make a soft dough



1. Rub butter into flour.

2. Add salt, cheese, chives and give it a stir.

3. Add milk and mix to make a nice soft dough. If too sticky add more flour.

4. Throw onto floured surface. Knead a bit. Press flat with hands, thickness of 1-2cms. Cut out with a scone cutter. Place on oiled baking try.

5. Bake for 20-25 minutes in 200ºC in microwave oven, or until golden brown.

p/s: Strange, the scones turned out very different as those shown in Karen's webbie. Ours is very "fair"..and I felt that it's a bit too salty too. As we don't have scone cutter, the shape of the scone also turned out odd.

But we loved its taste, out of 12-14 pieces we made...both Kee Ping and me wallop down almost all.. left only 2 for the rest of the family to taste..Wow...Think we only take 2 piece out of 7 we made..for the previous banana walnut muffin..cos more oily and sweet..

Kee Ping felt that a lot of improvement needed, and it's not presentable yet..that's why I wasn't allowed to bake more for the Sat playgroup.. :(

Jared wasn't able to help yet, in fact he hated the mixer sound, and keep saying 怕 and asked me to bring him out of the kitchen..hehe..Probaly we'll get a shape cutter and get him to cut out the shape next round.

New skill- Take pic with a camera!

Some pics taken by Jared on his own!! Pretty artistic huh?

...and finally our talented photographer.. (Taken by me after he finished meddling with the camera)..Judging at the way he is handling the camera..I'm sure new one will be on the way soon..hehe..

Picnic at Upper Pierce Reservoir

Need to make good use of our picnic mat, so an impromptu decision to picnic...Unfortunately the road towards the reservoir were under construction, so didn't get to see monkeys as what we used to see..and of cos didn't have the luck of monkeys joining us for picnic too...hehe..

Weather was breezy as it was about to rain when we reached there. Pretty fun, and Jared loves the green views and also the chwee kuah we ta pau. But he don't like the chai por..would split it out.

We played bubbles too...but soon had to leave as it was raining..

Watering The Plants

How does the animal sound?

Jared was able to make animal sounds after our zoo trips..Probaly cos I sang out loud old MacDonald song when we were there especially in front of the goats, cow and pig..hehehe..

Other than goat, cow, dog, cat that were recorded in the video, he could also do pig, crow, and elephant..But hard to get a chance to properly take video, cos he would snatch my camera instead.

AMK MacDonald and Park

Finally Jared got his 18mth booster jab from the polyclinic, this appointment was changed several time due to him being sick or daddy's work schedule..He is 10.8kg and 80cm and 18.5mth, merely 25percentile...aiyo..

After the jab we went to Ang Mo Kio...There has got a Macdonald with big playground. It's a very nice Mac with it's indoor and outdoor dining area. We went there for breakfast and after that a walk at the nearby park. But the play area doesn't suits kids at Jared's age, cos need to climb up the staircase before can slide down. We do surprise that AMK has got such a big and nice park...except that weather is too hot!!

Playing at the playground with other kid




AMK Park

Evening outing at Vivocity

We went to Vivocity for a evening outing...There Jared had his home cooked dinner and we had ours too, Long John..facing sentosa.

Jared requested this pic cos he like the 10s flashing from the camera's auto taking function. He loves to yell "Yeh" after the 10s. hehe.

Jared had a happy time walking around vivo

We are Friends of Zoo!

Got motivated when I saw Rae's happy video playing at Zoo's children pool...at the same time, also got fed up by the balloting system for zoo pass from my comp...To strike it is probaly as hard as 4D... So finally we stepped into zoo again after 9 mths and got ourselves the Friends of zoo so that we could come anytime we wants and exposed Jared to more outdoor activities.

Frankly speaking, I think we regretted the decision. It was so hot and Jared's response was so-so only probaly due to the hot weather too. Of cos, compared to 9mths ago, it was much a better trip...This round Jared could recognise, Tiger, monkey, elephant, rabbit, snake, cow etc etc...Even demostrated the sound of elephant to us.

But our old bones ache even though we only managed to walk half of the park. Nevertheless the kiasu me, would certainly make the $ spent on Zoo Pass well worth..hehe..See ya soon, my zoo friend!

New look!

Finally the new blog skin is up!

Wanted to change the blog skin very much due to following reason:
1) The old blogskin is based on dull green, I get moody looking at the blog
2) Very narrow width for text entry and images
3) It's the standard template from blogger, everytime I surf to another blog having same skin as I am, I felt awkward..as if we were wearing same clothes..haha.

We also renamed the blog title to "Through the Eyes of Jared", sounds good huh? It was Kee Ping's idea..hehe

Still have some parts need modification, Lack of partition line between post to post, just couldn't figure out how to get it in correctly. But I decided to stop for the time being... cos this is too additive...hehe..Imagine I printed out the template and try to study them while having meeting?? Gosh...hope I could stay put with this skin for quite a while..hehe

Goodbye Old Blogskin!




Special thanks to the layout design by Pannasmontata-Templates.net

Blog - Work In Progress

Started to revamp the blog skin today since 5pm+...Till now, almost everything else is ok liao..except the Blog Title, no matter what, just could not get anything uploaded there...Sigh!

Also missed out the lilypie banner..

Will update again soon!

Tagged: Meaning of Jared's Name

I've been tagged!! Tagged by Tricia's mummy for the meaning for Jared's name.

This is the story..

After 12wk scan, Dr. Ang(my gynae) says probaly we'll have a boy....I went thru all kind of baby naming website to study the names..Short listed a few..but can't remember most of them now. Deepest impression should be Ezekiel..But daddy didn't like it as it sound so much like EZlink our daily bus card. hehe.

One night while we were watching tv together, one of the participant's name caught daddy's attention. Jialat forgot the show name..Confirmed with daddy it was his favourite tv program, American Idol...No, that Jared didn't win the contest....He loved the name as it's not common in Sg, also look and sound nice...

But still I couldn't agree with daddy..hoping 1 day I could change his mind..to the EZ name hehe.

So we were addressing the little baby as ah b all the way till he's borned. When Baby was borned...We have no chance and time to do the re-thinking as we were too busy coping with the newborn. After 1 week (time to submit name for birth cert), we just name him...Jared hehe.

A search on the webbies, showed that the name Jared originated from Hebrew and it means "One who rules"

We've feedback that Jared looks / sounds like:

• Past tense of Jar
• Jia Lat (Occasionally, we will call him this when he make us angry)
  

Chinese Name: 祥毅

Jared's chinese name need to be named after 祥 due to 家镨. My MIL came out with so many name, 祥锐, 祥亨...and finally both me and Kee Ping quickly make up our mind to decide that he should be name 毅 before more o-biang names come into their mind. It means determination(毅力)... Judging from the condition he was in, having a space tank on his head, and leg and fingers kena poke till blue black, we need him to have the determination to over come all the pains.

Similarly, we want him to grow up have determination to goes through all kind of challenge in life.

English name: Siong Yee

English name translated to Siong Yee for Fuzhou/Hokkien Dialect. Kee Ping wanted Yi at first, but I preferred 3 character, so chose Yee instead.

Half yearly date with Doctor

I'm pretty sure this is not coincidental anymore...Every half yearly Jared need to fall sick and this is the 3rd time it's happening...

First time visit to doctor happened on the day Jared turned 6mth old. He fall sick for the first time after he was borned for 6 mth, down with runny nose and slight cough..we got panic, took urgent leave to send him to his Pd that afternoon.

2nd time happened just 1 wk after Jared turn 1 yr old..Down with stomach flu. Action: 2 days after sick

3rd time which is right now also happened 1 wk after Jared turn 18mth. Started with runny nose, and finally bad cough with flame..Action: 1 wk after sick..longer time to take action huh? hehe

I sort of forsee that this would come..Hope Jared would recover soon, else no swimming, no outing, worst, no air con at night..

Maybe I should not complain .. I should be thankfully that he is so healthy and only need a visit to Pd once every half yearly...

Hmmm..He missed the 5in1 booster jab, we re-schedule to coming Fri..Judging at the way he is recovering now, probaly need to re-schedule again...Poor boy!

Last Birthday in May!

Finally it's the last birthday in May...Moving forward we will start looking towards Jared and my birthday! hiak hiak!

We celebrated mei mei's birthday at Nihon Mura, Revenue House. Probaly the cheapest sushi on conveyer belt in town 99cents only...nice environment, and special way of ordering food too ..make us felt as if we are having buffet. They doesn't have any menu, we got to take the sushi we wants from conveyer belt ourself (but we not seated beside the belt), for the rest of the items, we got to take something like ice-cream stick with the dish name indicated on it, and place on a cup on the table. The waitress will then help to place the order.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Jared is 18mth!!

We had a small celebration for Jared’s 18mth birthday. Got Jared to choose a cake for himself..and my smart boy chose the most ex, strawberry short cake out of the rest from the cake shop.



Jared’s progress for the past 1 mth:

-More vocally and easier for us to understand his needs

- Say “抱我” (carry me) when need us to carry. Progressed from last month's bao4 only. We are trying to teach him to say, Daddy/Mummy bao4 wo3. Watch out for next mth's update!

- Say “sit” and point to where he wanna sit, it can be stroller, chair, car sit, bicycle

- Say “喝” when he wanna drinks water

- Say “还有” when there’s remaining of milk in his milk bottle

- Say "高" to describe high building, double deck bus anything high

- Sing a long with me for Twinkle, Twinkle Star and Hey, diddle

* Purple: Jared will sing the part of the song, when I paused there..

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
How I wonder what you are
Up above of the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Note: Daddy happened to realised this after he got back from OT in the afternoon of 18May

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle,
the cow jump over the moon
Note: I happened to realised this when I was trying to sing this song on 18May in the car ride after our eveing outing..cycling at East Coast...but forgot the lyrics, Jared happened to respond to the song almost spontataneusly. Till now I could only remember the first 2 lines..Jared also can sing the last word "spoon" at the end of the song.


- Sing e-i-e-i-o

- Immitate us say aiyo

- Say curry, rice...Both of these word only need to taught once, he could follow next..Cos we had home cooked Jap Curry today..

- Loves to say "daddy", occasionally he would take photo frames at home, and point to the pic and says daddy

- Say "Whampoa" and "sambabang"..errr something similar lah, Sembawang is pretty challenging huh?

- Knows opposite
Start vs Stop
Inside vs Outside
Black vs White

Happy 2nd Mother's Day!

Jared presented a carnation to me during an activity in Mygym. I thought it was a pleasant surprise..

He was supposed to stand at a white line and walk across to hit 2 balls hanging around before pick up the carnation and pass it back to me…He didn’t give me the flower…I snatched heheh..

Best pressie Jared gave me this year..probaly is calling me "Mummy" ...He was able to say "Mummy" since last week, but he hardly calls me leh. Also at the same time, he knew how to call KP daddy already! He likes calling daddy, sometime when he wake up in the middle of the night he would say "daddy"..probaly he knows I would definitely ignore him...hehe..

I remembered both KP and me went to Outback Restaurant for a small celebration last year without Jared hehe..but really doesn't look mothers day celebration even though we enjoyed the dinner a lot hehe...

So this year, I insist of bringing Jared along..We celebrated the event at Pasir Ris Park..at a restaurant by the beach. Not many restaurant there, but the children’s playground at the park looks good...The stroll after dinner was a nice one, we made Jared walk quite a long way, and as he walked he blahs at the same time, real cute..probaly was scolding us why we don't want to carry him. hehe.. We really need to exhaust his energy so that he could sleep better in the nite..

Multi purpose dinner

The dinner has many fold of celebration..

1) Popo's 80th birthday (Main) 23 Mar-Lunar Calendar
2) Mother's birthday 9 May
3) Mother's day celebration 2nd Sunday of May
4) KP's birthday 29 Apr
5) Wei Ming's farewell He left for Germany the next day and left poor meimei at home..haha

Hehehe..but the kiam siap me still choose a simple place for dinner..at Jumbo Seafood restaurant..so that I won't get heart attack when bill comes..

Nevertheless we had a good dinner..loved their black pepper chilli crab, probaly the 1st time which I get to try black pepper crab...but KP didn't get to try any crab at all (none of the 3 crab we ordered)..cos he's busy entertaining Jared...

Muffin - Taste like Heaven...

Haha..Definitely exaggerated..but this round, our baking was a success! After 2 failure on ready premix cake mixture..we switch to start from scratch instead..although almost back up a few times when we were shopping for the raw materials..

The banana walnut muffin turned out to be soft, moist and so tasty..Jared also like the muffin a lot..Next we look forward to bake scone, plain cake..and more muffins. But our cheapo mixer spoilt during the last stage of mixing (heng ah)..think have to wait for sometime before we could start the engine again..hehe..Sharing the recipe:

Banana Walnut Muffins (Yield 7 muffins)
To sift together as (A):
1 cup plain flour
1/3 tsp salt
1/3 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/2 cup oil (corn oil will be good)
1/2 cup sugar 1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
3 bananas, roughly mashed
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.
2. Stir oil and sugar together
3. Beat in egg. Mixture will turn gluey.
4. Mix in (A)
5. Stir in vanilla essence, bananas and walnuts
6. Fill muffin cups up to 3/4 full
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 20mins.

p/s: My contribution to the muffin is only mash the banana + chop the walnut..KP did the rest..hehe.

Hay Dairies Farm

We visited Hay Daries Farm on Fri. Thought it might be awkward if there were only 3 of us to watch milking session...didn't expect to bump into so many group of kindergarden kids. Quite fun...free entry and only need to pay $2 for the food to feed the meh meh..Jared refuse to say "goat" ..said meh meh instead..hehe.

We also tried the goat's milk(choc flavour)..but not much taste..pretty plain.