The artist in me

As part of teacher's day celebrations today, we were all given a small piece of canvas to work on. This was what I came up with.

I call it "Celebration".

This, together with the rest of the works done by the other teachers, will be put up in the school. I look forward to it being displayed.

Happy Teacher's Day!

It's the last day of term today and it ended on a high with our first Teacher's Day celebration at SOTA.

I love Teacher's Day. If there's any day in the year I am reminded why I chose to enter this service, it's Teacher's Day. The best bit about it? The cards and notes my students give me.


And the hugs. It's nice to be appreciated.

Thank you.

Fireworks!

We decided to splurge this weekend on a room with a view at the Ritz Carlton. It was the Fireworks Festival with the French team kicking it off last night, and we thought that Lauren was old enough to enjoy the visual delight of exploding, multicoloured flares, and did she! The show started rather late at about 2130h, and we were beginning to get rather impatient especially because Lauren was beginning to get sleepy and fussy. We tried everything to keep her awake, including putting her into a warm bath, which certainly worked - baby's afraid of the bathtub, so we discovered! Methinks she might not actually enjoy swimming much, but that shall be another experiment for another day. Once the fireworks started, I don't think I saw Lauren blink once for the 30 minutes it lasted. Almost immediately after though, she fell into a deep sleep.

So, will we do this again? Perhaps. The Ritz is a nice place and the view is undeniably pretty. The beds, however, are stone hard. It could well be that I have been spoilt by my tempur bed at home, but then again, I've been to other less glitzy hotels which beds are just like baby bear's - soft, fluffy and absolutely inviting. I spent most of the night trying to fall asleep, while KM got fed up with the flickering lights of the city buildings and wondered why we'd paid so much to get our sleep disrupted. Well. Maybe the Mandarin Oriental next year instead? No lack of hotels with a view of the Marina here.

Baby loves curry!

Thought Lauren was old enough to try some spicy food and gave her a bit of curry from the prata place at Thomson Road. She loved it!

Case of the missing double eyelids - SOLVED!

My mum said that before my double eyelids became permanent, a show of them when I was a baby meant I was coming down with fever. What an indicator! Looks like Lauren's got that from me!

She falls asleep easily

Sometimes, I'm amazed at how easily Lauren falls asleep. This morning, she got up at 6am. I was very reluctant to entertain her and put her in her crib and went back to sleep. She fussed for a bit but I was honestly too tired to pay her any attention. The next I checked, she'd fallen asleep on her own. If only it was ALWAYS this easy.

Red, rashy baby!

Lauren has Roseola. Explains her fever and rash which surfaced after her fever broke. We took her to Children's A&E anyway to be sure, and the doc said she was a classic textbook case with swollen lymph nodes at the back of her neck and a very happy, rashy baby! At least it's not serious. Thank God! And strangely, her double eyelids have disappeared. Weird.

Becoming sentient

Today, Lauren truly understood the term "no" and what it meant to be disciplined.

She tried to bite the table while she was sitting on her high chair during dinner. For the umpteenth time, KM said to her firmly, "No." This time, however, there was a reaction. She looked at KM for a while, then her lips started to curl downwards and suddenly, "Waaaaaaahhh!!" She finally understood that she was getting scolded and it wasn't any fun!

Poor baby. And poor daddy. He felt so bad, but decided he had to be firm and gave her a hug while he said to her, "Daddy's sorry you got scared and upset, but a 'no' is a 'no'. You don't have to be scared when someone says 'no', but if you don't agree then just give your reason. No need to cry." Hurray Daddy!

Red, hot baby

Lauren's been running a fever since early Tuesday morning. The highest it got to was 39ºC yesterday morning. She's been taking her paracetamol every 6 hours, but the fever seems to return before the 6 hours are up. When the fever gets a little too high, she gets a little listless and loses her appetite. Breaks my heart to see her like that. But as the doc said, babies build resistance by fighting viruses, so she'll have to work this one out. Poor little baby. We're just monitoring her temperature every few hours now.

On an aside, she developed double eyelids these past 2 days - first on her left eye yesterday, and this morning, her right!