Interesting article on TODAY

Defiant or just irresponsible

The author wrote about the difference between the 2. If a child is playful and breaks things along the way, forgot to bring his/her books back or left the bicycle out in the rain, this is known as "childish irresponsibilty" and is inevitably during the early years. As this does not constitute as direct challenges to authority, they should be handled gently.

In comparison, if a child shouts at his/her parents to "shut up" or put up a battle against his/her parents, this is known as "wilful defiance". It shows the child's refusal to accept parental leadership. And when such confrontation occurs, the parent must stand firm as the child is challenging "Who is in charge here?"

Is it therefore important for the parent to show and have the courage to lead.

I think the above article is very meaningful. Many times I hear of friends complaining/lamenting how their child is 'climbing over their head'. Some says their child treat them like maids, demanding them to do this & that. I cannot comprehend why and how such a situation can happen. Now I think I know why, because they relenquish their parental leadership to their child.

I think it's neither right nor wise to do so as the child is young and immature. They need our guidance and our advice. If they do not even respect us from young, how can be possibly teach them the values and virtues that is so needed in the society?

Birthday song

Many new kids in the school.. and this year, Valerie is not the shortest already :D

Happy Birthday to Valerie!

Valerie is 4 today! As we didn't pre-order any cakes for her school we went to purchase 2 1kg cakes for her. We got this from Jack's Place (pretty last minute I must say). The kids were very excited as it's TWO and not ONE cake. I guess the kids only goes by quantum rather than size.

:p

Here are some pictures taken

But poor birthday girl didn't managed to eat her cake :( She kept insisting she wanted the choc cake but as she has phelgm and is allergic to choc, one mouth is all it takes to send her coughing (the choc mousse is quite rich btw). In the end she vomited out that single bite she took and after that she didn't want to eat the cakes anymore. :(

In the evening, we brought her to Swensen's to have her free Birthday Firehouse and she attacked the scoop of choc ice cream immediately! Luckily it didn't cause her to cough much. :p

Happy birthday Valerie! I hope you did enjoy yourself! (I shall leave out the part about you throwing tantrums on you birthday :p)

Hamsters

Maggie & family are going to Korea for 1 week holiday and so we offered to take care of their 2 young hamsters for them. Anyway I thought since Valerie is so excited about the hamsters, we can at least 'satisfy' her for the time being.

But it's not exactly the best move.. for many nights this week, she woke up brawling, probably from some nightmare. It's hard to calm her down and each 'session' lasted for like 1-2 hrs. HB is really tired from this ordeal. We are very perplexed what was giving her all these nightmares as HX is out of town (meaning no one to fight with her).

Finally one of the night, she managed to calm down quite quickly and allowed me to cuddle her.. and I tried to probe to see what's bothering her.. so it went

Mom: Is it the school?
Val: no.. (very softly)
Mom: Is it the teachers?
Val: no..
Mom: Is it Nur (our maid)?
Val: no...
Mom: Is it hamsters?
Val: yes...
Mom: Why? (*shocked*)
Val: always fighting...

I was really taken aback. Ya, the hamsters fight.. the black one is very domineering and always pounce onto the white one when the latter comes out to eat/drink. Alot of times, the black one will even seek out the white one and they'll bite on each other. We've separated both hamsters on many occassions as the white one is getting thinner.

I dunno her peace-loving nature is a good thing or a bad thing. It pains me to see her so affected over 2 hamsters fighting. I hope she can learn to cope with such situations as life is definitely not a bed of roses..

Happy birthday Kaeden & Shanice!

How time flies! It's April 18 again and SC invited us to her kids bday! It's also a time to catch up with some other forum mommies (e.g. Angel, Peggy, Kathy etc). It's been ages since I saw them and their kids. Most of them have grown so much! Of course, Valerie has grown as much too. But seeing her daily, you just don't feel it.

As always, the cakes are fabulous! Especially love Shanice's cake as it's very very beautifully done. Kaeden's cake is nice too, with all the M&M placed in the carts of the Thomas's train.

So enjoy the pictures here!

Oh so constipated..

MIL had been telling us his poop is much harder since he started on cereals, but I thought nothing of it. Today, on our way to work, she called saying baby's poop is so hard he is having a hard time pushing it out. So I headed home immediately.

When I reached home, he managed to poop out some. They are really hard and because of that, he sufferred a bit of renal tear. He was sleeping, totally exhausted. MIL says his digestive system is not cleared yet so I decided to bring him to Dr Low.

While in the clinic waiting, this boy was all cheerful and stuff. But after the supportistory went in, he cried angrily and pitifully. He managed to poop some but not much. But in the afternoon, he managed to clear much of the 'leftovers' after taking medicine.

Poor boi, the renal tear must be quite painful. :(

We'll try to feed you more fruits and maybe introduce you to prune juice. Hopefully that'll help.

Finally...

We have talked about buying a car more than 2 years back I think. But we never did purchase one. Finally on Sunday, we placed order for our 1st car.. a Honda Civic 1.6. I guess the information that I'll be entitled to free parking at my new workplace just makes the decision alot easier.

Comparing the 1.6 & 1.8, I'm so so tempted to get the 1.8 due to the finishings and interior. But HB feels that a 1.6 is enough and it's not worth paying an extra $4.5K for accessories and add-ons which we do not use.

On the same day, we traded in dad's Mazda 3 for a Honda Fit. We both managed to get our COE on Wednesday so probably by the end of the month we'll be having our new shiny zroom zroom!

Will definitely post pictures when we collect our car!

Baby Galore!!

Big big congrats to April & Jee Lien on the arrival for their little bundle of joy! Both of them coincidentally have the same EDD but Jee Lien gave birth to baby Brandon on Sunday and April to Kaeus on Monday.

Rest well buddies!

It's my birthday!.. Not!

My MIL told us to come home for dinner on Friday night.. as it's Valerie's birthday (based on lunar calendar). So after work, HB & I went to get a small cake (hey, what's birthday without cake right?). We got 1 from Breadtalk and it's their cake of the week so there was 20% off and it's not a choc cake, so it fits our requirement.

Naturally Valerie was delighted that it's her birthday today. So we sang birthday song, cut birthday cake etc etc and Valerie was very happy..

Here are some pictures we've taken that day.

Updated: 20/04/09
H/E, after like a week or so.. my mom reminded me.. Valerie's lunar bday is actually on the 14th day of the 3rd Lunar month and not the 8th (we celebrated Valerie's birthday on the 8th).

And I was like :-O

LOL. Anyway, we are a few days early.. it's ok.. so long as Valerie is happy :D