Thursday's Things, Friday's Fillings

These 2 days have been easy for us. I have not been feeling well for the past week, been feeling giddy and tired. So, homeschool for these 2 days is light, mainly going through the sound of the week and lots of coloring for the little girl.

I noticed Sarah's coloring skills have improved greatly in these 2 weeks. She used to hate coloring and will refuse to do any coloring where the lesson calls for. I did not force her then as I thought it was partly due to her weak pencil grip. Although her grip is correct, I find that her hold is not strong enough. So I laid off coloring for a while. On Thursday, as part of our lesson on the sound of the week, she had to color a picture of a goldfish. I had wanted to skip that as I doubted she would want to color, but surprisingly, she said she wanted to color. And color she did, choosing lots of different colors for her fish. Her improvement came along at a time when I discovered her pencil grip is better and stronger now, perhaps that's why she don't find coloring that much of a strain on her fingers.

Here's the picture of the fish she colored. Though not a masterpiece, I am very happy with it, cos through the process, she had shown patience and most importantly, she loves doing it.

Seeing her interest is there, I continued with an aquarium craft. Here's her hard at work and the final product.




Today, she had fun time painting with her Grandma.

Outlining the snake and whale painted earlier

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday's Tidbits

Today is a good day for us. Daddy arrived home at 6am from his Shanghai trip. He did not wake us up, and Sarah was happy to see Daddy sleeping beside us when she woke up. Good thing she talked softly, and we let Daddy continue with his sleep while we got on with our morning routine and lesson. The little girl kept asking whether its time to wake Daddy :).

Mommy got a present from Daddy today. Its the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3.



I have been talking about getting a new camera to replace our 5 year old Canon Powershot which has not been taking good pictures, but never got around to buying one. During lunch, I was just showing Daddy some promotions on cameras and he decided to bring us all to Sim Lim Square to get one. I actually wanted to get either the Casio Exilim or Canon IXUS, but we were recommended the Panasonic instead. I like it that it has the Intelligent Auto mode function and the auto macro function which makes photo-taking easy for me.

After bagging my present, we brought little missy to Island Creamery for a treat. Between 3 of us, we shared 4 scoops of ice-cream. Little missy was, of course, thrilled. She has been asking for ice-cream for some time, but was denied due to her cough. Since she has recovered, we decided to indulge her.



I am glad we had a good time together today. Hubby is flying off to Korea on Thursday. We are definitely going to miss him.

Down with flu

I caught the flu bug from little missy. She recovered within 2 days, whereas for me, it almost coming to a week and I am still feeling terrible. I have been sleeping for the past 3 days as the meds make me super drowsy. Hubby is away in Shanghai for work this week, so I have moved to Mom's place so that she can help me with Sarah while I rest. I really appreciate her help, without her, I wouldn't have been able to rest well.

Hope that I will recover soon. Little missy has been idling this week and I can see she is eager for more interesting activities.

A Lovely Gift

I received a surprise package in the mail on Saturday. It was a lovely gift from fellow blogging mommy, Mamabliss. She has made a scrapbook mini album out of brown paper bags for our new baby. Thanks Pauline!

I took some pictures using my phone, but realised they don't do justice to the lovely gift. You can pictures here at Lil Handmades by Mamabliss.

First Attempt at Altered Art - Welcome Plaque

Our Helpmeet contact group organised a scrapbooking session last friday. Our project for that night was to make a "Welcome" plaque. I was told this is a form of altered art. After this session, I must say scrapbooking is fun and interesting. We had fun matching colours and learning about the different techniques. This is my end product.



I will definitely explore the world of scrapbooking - a way of preserving your precious memories in a creative way.

Updates

It has been a long time since I updated about us. So here's some short updates about us.

@ 24 weeks
I am now at 24 weeks. At my checkup last week, the little one is growing well and weighs about 700 grams. This little guy kicks a lot when I am lying down, not so much when I am walking around, but sometimes he likes to give a hard push. Thank God my energy level is back, though I can't stand or walk for too long, otherwise will feel some strain on my tummy. Appetite is normal, I eat normal portions, sometimes even less, not much weight gain this time round. But my sis-in-law says that for boys, the weight gain will come later in the pregnancy.

Sarah
Sarah is growing very fast. I was just looking at her last year's photos and realised that she has grown so much. I find that her facial features has matured, she still looked so babyish last year. Time really flies. So far, she has not shown any signs of jealousy towards her baby brother. She loves to read to him, and says that when didi comes, she will teach him how to play, how to read, etc. Hope that she will keep this up and be a good cheh cheh when the baby arrives.

Homeschooling
Homeschooling stopped for 2 months due to my pregnancy sickness. During these 2 months of inactivity, doubts crept into my mind: whether I am doing Sarah any good by keeping her at home where she does not seem to be doing anything. So in a moment of folly, I signed her up at the PAP nursery near our home. Well, as the saying goes, "Man proposes, God disposes". Though she seemed to do well at the trial class and on the 1st day of school, she protested a bit on the 2nd day. Well, on the 3rd day onwards, she refused to wear her uniform at all. Little missy is firm on what she wants. She told me she only wants homeschool. As for me, from the very moment I sent her up the school bus, my heart has not been at peace. I just don't feel right about the whole thing. So, after attending only 2 days of school, I pulled her out and resumed our homeschooling. I can only thank the Lord that He led me back on the right path. Everything felt right and Sarah enjoys her lessons very much. I enjoyed the time spent with her as well.

When I said earlier that it did not seem that she is learning much in that 2 months, nothing could be further from the truth, now looking back. I find that in that 2 months when I was not able to care for her, she has learnt to be independent. She learnt to play independently, she created imaginary friends. The only area she back slided was her self-feeding (as her 2 grandmothers fed her instead of letting her self-feed), but this has been rectified since.

Its really wonderful to have her at home with me, learning, playing and living life together. I treasure the time I have with her now, as I know that before too long, she won't be able to have all of me to herself.