Getting your child interested in Reading

Like most Kiasu Parents, I started reading to my boy when he was 4 months old, but as he grow older (now 4 years old), I found it harder and harder to get him to sit still and listen to me.  At a point I just gave up, he has loads and loads of book in the bookshelves but he just doesn't seems interested in it. Eventhough I still make sure I have storybook time with him, but he will just flip through the pages, look at the pictures and be done in 5 minutes. 

Recently, I decided to try a different approach.  I decided to bring him to the library and let him choose his own book.  SMALL FAN loves going to the library, initially, he just runs around the library but nowadays, he will go and pick up books and flip through it, looking at the pictures.  So what I did, was I actually pick out some books about CARS and BUSES (his favourite objects) and let him look at it, then I ask him if we should borrow it home and read it.  He agreed.  This seems to works as the next day, he will excitedly take his library books of cars and asked me to read it to him.

Another thing that I did was, while at the library I also pick up some books on Nursery Rhymes for my baby girl (now 2 years old) as she loves necessary rhymes.  Initially, like all Kiasu parents, I pick up Nursery Rhymes book that contain as many different nursery rhymes as possible, this capture my baby girl's attention. But recently, I started picking out Nursery Rhymes book that just have one rhyme in each book.  And I started reading and singing to both the kids.  To my surprise, my boy got really interested and he was singing the rhymes as he flip through the book himself.  Recently, he even started reading the words in the book.  Nursery Rhymes was really helpful as they tend to be repetative such as Hickory Dickory Dock, also as there is only one NR per book, each page only contain a few words. So my boy started to learn to recognised these words and read it himself. He will ask me what are the words if he is not sure.  Hey...I have unconsciously get my boy to read....not bad right?

Here's 2 nursery rhymes book that I really loves, borrow it and read it to your kids, it's really fun.



For those of you not to sure how to sing the tune for this 2 books, here's the songs from youtube.com

Living the Natural Way

Recently I seemed to be in the mood for natural product as I have such successful story with honey.  I just have to share it here.  I have started giving my SMALL FAN 1 tsp of honey every night before he sleep.  Heard from a honey seller that honey actually helps promote good sleep, but in any case, the purpose of my giving SMALL FAN the honey is for his sinus.  SMALL FAN used to have such bad sinus that he cough every night and day and sometime even vomit due to the mucus that was stuck in his throat.  We have brought him to pediatrician, to chinese sinsei and spend thousand of dollar on his medication but it just doesn't seems to work, he visit the doctor almost every few weeks.  So one day while searching for a cure I stumble upon this miracle honey from the website http://www.earthclinic.com/  and decided to give it at try.  (Crossing my hand) I proud to say that my SMALL FAN has not seen any doctor for almost 3 months now and I never heard a cough from him anymore except for ocassionally when his throat get too dry.  One side effect I found out from this is that beside sinus honey is also very good for fever.  I have tried it on myself and SMALL FAN and on both ocassion our fever breaks after 2 days of consuming honey.  My Baby FAN is now down with high fever so I'm trying to get her to drink honey water to see if it helps.  Introduced to my mum, she always have this persistant dry cough every few weeks, but ever since she started during honey, I hardly hear her cough anymore. Beside honey I also found many natural way of healing from earthclinic, here'a few that I tried and seems to work, so do give it a try better than paying loads of money for chemcially processed medication.

• Fever - mix 1 teaspoon of honey with 1 cup of luke warm or cold water and drink it as regularly as you can until the fever breaks
• Cough and Phelgm or sore throat - mix 2 teaspoons Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) with 1 tsp honey in half 1 cup of warm water and drink it 2 to 3 times a day.  (I love this concoction, always work for me whenever I have a cough or sore throat).  For those of you who can't stand the smell of ACV you can try using lemon juice to replace the ACV it works as well, my mum love this concoction, whenever she feels that she is coming up with a flu or cough she will drink this and so far she has been really healthy and seldom here her reporting sick.
• Sinus - 1 teaspoon of honey in half 1 cup of lukewarm water and drink it before you sleep. My SMALL FAN got his sinus cure this way.  I think the honey drink also keep him from getting sick easily.
• Dandruff - mix 1/2 ACV with  1/2 water in an application bottle or any container you can find,  mix them up well. Then apply this concoction to the scalp of your hair after shampooing. Leave the ACV on the hair for about 5 to 10 minutes than rinse it clean with warm water and dry your hair. I always have dandruff problem so recently decided to try out a more gentler way of getting rid of it instead of the strong dandruff shampoo.  Found this remedy in the earthclinc website and tried it out. After the 1st day, my head don't itch as much anymore, after 3rd day I can visible notice less dandruff.  Beside getting rid of dandruff, I also notice that my hair is softer and shinier, as if I have put conditioner on my hair.  Am going to continue this remedy for a while and see if I can totally get rid of my dandruff. 
• Reduce grey hair -  Mix 1 tablespoon of molasses with 1 cup of warm water and drink it every morning. As the molasses got quite a strong taste, I actually mix it with milk instead, Here's what I did, I mixed 1 tablespoon molasses with some warm water to dissolve it, then top of the cup with cold milk, it actually tasted like latte so it's easier to swollow. I'm currently drinking this every morning, it supposed to help get rid of grey hair which I have lots and lots of.  But I think it will take a while for the effect to be seen.  But here's what other people say that molasses can help, it's a good source of iron so it's very good for lady who is suffering from heavy mensus, it's also said to get rid of fibriod and also help with breast cancer.  But most of all, a lot of people has mentioned that drinking molasses give them increase energy so they dont't feel that tire.  I personally felt that I do feel slightly let tire in the day after drinking this concoction for 3 days.  

Beside such health remedy, I am now also looking out for natural household cleaning product.  My baby girl always dirty her clothes ever since she started eating solid food and want to feed herself. I tried bleaching her clothes but it sometimes distroy the coloured one.  Found this remedy from this website: p://frugalliving.about.com/od/cleaningtipsandrecipes/qt/Natural_Bleach.htm 

• Natural bleach - squeeze some lemon juice on the stain and rubbed some salt on it, then put the clothes under the sun for a few hours, then wash as normal.  Wa lah....nice clean clothes. 

Will be continuing to research on natural living and update my post along the way.  For now, toast to great health for all.

Building Good Characters

Just received an email from my sister recommending me to this website, thought it's quite interesting, may be a good guide for us when we want to teach our kids good values.
goodcharacter.com

Walker or Not?

Baby FAN is now getting really good at moving around in her walker. It starts me thinking about the argument on whether is it good to put your child on a walker. Many parenting books and children guides nowadays advised against putting child on a walker. Reason being that it develops a different set of muscle as that of walking and may slow down the baby's ability to walk. For some books, although they don't encourage a walker but they do give advise that if you were to put a baby in a walker, don't leave him/her in the walker for more then half-an-hour each time.

Personally, I actually loves the walker as it gives me the freedom to do my work while my baby has the freedom of roaming around the house without having to scream for me to carry her. My SMALL FAN grew up on the walker and he was able to walk independently by 13 months. As for my baby girl, she is now learning to stand up. So, personally I don't find that the walker has affected their walking ability.

However, I think I do make the conscious effort to avoid putting her on the walker for more then 1 hour each time and to give her time to crawl on the floor or just being held and cuddle by me.

So what do you think, walker good or not?

Teething Pain

My Baby FAN seems to be teething. Poor girl was feverish and wake up crying, seems to be in pain for the pass few days. My mum say she is teething and she can feel some eruption at her top gum, but I can't see anything yet. A lot of books says that teething and fever is not related, but this is not so for SMALL FAN's case as he almost alway get a fever when he teeth for the first few teeth, so I believe this will be the same for Baby FAN. Bought those baby teething gel to apply on her gum but doesn't seems to help as she is still crying. Guess have to just bare with the cry for the time being until her teeth comes out.

A Gloomy Wednesday

It's a rainy day today and the weather was really cool and nice. But somehow, I just feel really gloomy as Big FAN, Small FAN & Baby FAN all caught the nasty flu bug from SMALL FAN. So, all three of them was coughing away. Small FAN seems to be getting better after taking his 3rd course of antibiotic although he still has a lot of phelgm (but at least he is able to sleep thru the night).

Baby FAN caught the flu really bad, was coughing and sneezing these 2 nights and she is refusing to drink milk as everytime she drink, her nose got block and she started choking and coughing....Poor girl, she is already so small (only 6.5 kg), now with this nasty flu, she is going to be even smaller. Yesterday, after a few attempt to breast feed her at night, I got really desperate, wake up at 5am and started to take out the the pump breast milk from the refrigerator, warm it up and feed her spoon by spoon. I think she managed to take 1 oz and started coughing again and refuse to drink anymore...sigh...Maybe like what my sis always say, I have to start praying for her to recover faster ;(

Brought her to a Doc on Monday and she was given 4 medicines, 1 for running nose & cough, 1 for lung protection, 1 for phelgm and 1 for fever. Poor girl, I need to force her to drink the medicine as she clamp her mouth shut. After the med, she got so tire that she just doze off while sitting on her walker. I wonder if the med is too strong for her...poor thing. 'm suppose to bring her down to the doc today as doc advise that she should be on the nebuliser if she is still coughing today. But I'm a little hesitate to put her thru such suffering, she is only 6 months old. I'm now hoping for the miracle of my breast milk to cure her....

Potty Training - Part II

Recently, SMALL FAN likes to wait until he is really on "high tide" before he dash for the toilet. So he wets his underwear and pants and leave traces of urine on the floor as he run. Has been scolding him and reminding him to go to the toilet but doesn't seems to work. My mum-in-law says that it's a passing phase, a lot of toddler went thru this stage. So, for now, I'm training my patient and waiting for this phase to pass :(

Vaccination - Ouch!

Baby FAN got her last 6-in-1 jab last Friday. Brave girl, she only scream "ah" and that's all. Doc say she is the small and brave one...hi hi... She also took the rotavirus medicine, that's her 3rd dose. Last time, SMALL FAN only needs to take 2 dose. Doc says this is the new vaccination that helps to prevent her from many more strand of the rota virus. Poor kids nowadays like taking more and more medicine.

Now have to decide when to give her the pneumococcal jab....SMALL FAN had his at 10 months and only require a booster at 1.5 years old. Doc says Baby FAN can have a jab anytime now. But I was wonder if I jab her earlier, she will needs to take 3 jab instead of 2.

Teaching a Lefty to write

Well, I'm teaching SMALL FAN phonics and part of the requirement of the teaching is for SMALL FAN to learn to trace the letter using his hand. After observing him for a while and checking with my mums, sis and hubby, we think that SMALL FAN could be a lefty. Well, the dilemma came, should I teach him to trace the letter using his left hand or right hand?

As a modern mum, I would probably say, that I should let SMALL FAN lead and since he prefer his left, then teach him to write using his left hand. But, after ploughing through websites (check on my review section on some interesting websites for lefties) and teaching kids to write, I realised that teaching a lefty to write is different from teaching a right-handed person (like myself) to write, the orientation is all different. As a start, instead of asking him to put his writing book straight and write, for a lefty, he needs to tilt his book 45 degree so that he can see what he is writing. Also, for different letters, the stroke is different, for example, if we write "T", a right-handed person will write a straight horizontal line from left to write, follow by a straight vertical line from top to bottom, but for a lefty, he will feel more comfortable writing a horizontal straight line from right to left, follow by the straight line etc.

I also found out reading articles from the net, the many difficulties lefty face in school... Sigh... Teaching him to write the "right" way means that he will have a smoother journey in school, but it will not be second nature to him...I'm at a lost???? Maybe I should try teaching him to write in both hand and hopefully train both his left and right brain...ha ha..

Boosting your kids immunity - Part II

SMALL FAN has been having running nose and cough, on and off for the past 3 months. Getting really tired of feeding him western drugs, especially antibiotic. So, today, we brought him to see a Chinese Physician at Serangoon Gardens. Doc say his lung is weak and body is more "cold", so need to take herbs to built up his lung and immunity. Do you know how much his herbs and medicine cost? $1300.... Can't believe it right? Let's hope he will get cure after taking these expensive drugs which is suppose to be consume everyday for 3 months....sigh....raising kids is getting so expensive nowadays....

Breasting Woes

'm currently totally breast feeding my little Baby FAN, been trying to get her to drink expressed milk from a bottle but without much success. So, have been reading up forums to find out how other mothers deal with this issue. I'm surprise that a lot of mothers who have followed the lactation consultant's advise to fully breastfeed the baby for the first month faced this issue of having the baby reject the bottle after that. So, my advise for new mom to be, that unless you intend to look after the baby yourself and be stuck with her for who knows how long, introduce your baby to the bottle as soon as you can. Don't worry about nipple confusion, they are smarter then you thing, they know what to choose. The only thing is that you have to dilligently pump your milk every 2 to 3 hours to keep the supply going.

Now with Baby FAN latching on, I can't seems to go anywhere without her for too long. I will need to watch the clock when I go for my grocery shopping, will need to rush back in 3 hours time so that my Baby FAN won't get hungry....sigh....I'm still trying hard to get her use to the bottle as I'm planning to bring SMALL FAN for an oversea trip and don't intend to bring Baby FAN as she is still too small....so please pray for me that Baby FAN learnt how to drink from a bottle soon....sigh.....

By the way, for moms out there like me, here are some suggestions that I gathered from mums from forums on how they get their baby to drink from the bottle:

• Go Cold Turkey - staff the baby for a few hours and then offer her the bottle when she is really hungry
• Mom, Get Out! - Get yourself out of the house and have someone else fed your baby, as they can smell you from miles away, so you need to be out of sight so that the baby knows she got nothing else to drink if she refuse the bottle
• Sleepy time - breastfed the baby, when she is drowsy and sleepy, switch to milk bottle, slowly shorten the breastfeeding time
• Shake Baby Shake - sit on a bouncing ball or shake the baby with your leg when bottle feeding her, I think the shaking is suppose to distract her
• Sit up or Face front - face the baby forward or sit her up so she can't see who is feeding her
• Playtime - let her play with the bottle so as to get her familiar with it
• Others - feed her with a spoon, try introducing her to a drink cup

Potty Training

SMALL FAN has been off diaper and able to urine on his own into the toilet bowl for almost half-a-year now. However, as he is a really active child, he can't sit still to do his "poo poo" in the potty. He has managed to poo in the potty occasionally, but the poo always ended some in the potty some on the floor.

Yesterday while I was having dinner, SMALL FAN wanted to poo poo and asked to put on his diaper. As I was eating my dinner, I told him to wait a while for me to finish up first. Instead of waiting, he walked to the bathroom, took out his small red potty and sit on it. Sitting on the potty was really boring so he started talking to Baby FAN (she was sitting on her walker moving around in it). Then, he did a half squat and give a huge push and there was this big pile of shit. Cool...he did it! I kept praising him, and thought...that it, he is a big boy now. Then while I just finish washing his backside, he starting doing his business in the bathroom floor :( Luckily, it's just a little, so I managed to wash it away and clean his backside the 2nd time. Then before I can wear his pants, he ran to the study room and hide in one corner and said he want to poo poo there. I screamed and asked him to go to the bathroom which he obediently did. So I wash his backside for the 3rd time...:( In any case, I still praise him for being so independent, taking the potty, taking of his pants and pooing on his own.

My SMALL FAN....dunno to laugh or not...what a dramatic poo pooing experience for the mommy...