Thursday, October 14, 2010
Kiddos Update
14-Oct-2010:
Dominic: For some reason, he has been sick quite frequently these days. First, he had hand-foot-mouth disease (this was sometime in August), and then just before our trip to Singapore in September he was down with fever, and recently, few days ago, he had fever again that lasted for about 2 days. I don't remember him getting sick so often before.
In about 2 months time, he will be turning 5. As usual, he is looking forward to it. He is already asking me to buy him this and that. When I said, that is too expensive, he would ask how much. When I said, it's fifty ringgit, for example, he would say, it's not that expensive, I can count to 50! He thinks that his coins in the piggy bank are worth a lot. I have lots of money mummy, he would say. He asked why we had to go to work. We told him it's because we have to work to make money. He asked me how his grandparents get their money because they don't work. I told him that his grandma needs to take care of him and his sister and cousins, therefore she can't go to work and we give her money to take care of them. His response was, "How about yeh-yeh?" Obviously, he didn't think that his grandpa did a lot of work. Hehe.
Shortly after we moved to our new place in June, he stopped wetting his bed. He now gets up in the middle of the night to pee by himself and goes back to bed on his own. He's very proud of it and keeps reminding me that he didn't wet his bed.
In school, he is doing fine. He can read very well in Bahasa now but probably doesn't understand the meaning of the words. He likes to read words on billboards and sign boards when we are in the car, but only if he feels like it. He can read English words up to 4-letter words. When he is in a good mood, he would take a book and try very hard to read. "We ... h-a-v ... have? f-u-n ... fun? What's fun?" When he concentrates too much on getting the word right, he doesn't get the meaning of the words and passage at all. When he's not in the mood, he wouldn't read at all. In this case, if he's given a word (say "Glam") written on a birthday wrapping paper, he would say that the word is "happy" or "birthday".
He will have his year-end exams in school soon and he's very excited about it, because he got 100% for all subjects - Malay, English, Maths and Chinese - in his semester 1 exams. He seems to be very confident that he'll get everything right again. I told him that it's alright if he doesn't get 100% for everything and he mustn't be too upset about it, but he said that he won't get a reward from his teacher if he doesn't get everything correct. I'm very much for encouragement and reward for good work, but at the same time it is also a penalty for those who didn't do that well. I hope he doesn't get too competitive and stressed up.
He's a loving brother and will always say that Emily is soooo cute and that he loves her sooo much. He also plays with her often and makes her laugh. But he also makes her cry very often. He's not able to leave her alone.
Emily: She has started walking properly shortly before her 1st birthday. During her birthday party, she was walking all around the place. I will blog about her birthday separately.
I stopped breastfeeding her when she was about 10 months old. It was easily done and she didn't look for the breast at all.
Emily has also been ill recently. She was down with fever during our Singapore trip but recovered in within 3 days. When we got back, she was alright for about 1 week, until the day she had a fairly large amount of red dragon fruit. Why did she have such a large amount? It was because Dom kept asking for it, so I bought it, but then he said that particular one wasn't sweet enough so both Em and myself ate the whole thing. The next day, I noticed that my urine was pink in colour and following that Em had poo that was half black and half normal color. I was very worried about the black stool because it could mean bleeding in the GI tract, but since I could see traces of the dragon fruit seeds in the black stool, I figured (and hoped) that the black color was due to the red dragon fruit. The next day, she started having loose stools (but not watery) for about a week and then full blown watery diarrhoea for 3 days. It was very stressful for me because she was whiny, refused to eat and I've never had this experience with Dom before. Plus, I kept thinking back about the black stool and wondered if this had anything to do with that. Then, when the diarrhoea stopped, she continued to have soft stool for a few days and one day, there was blood (red fresh one) in her stool. I took her to the doctor and told him the whole story including the dragon fruit. He said that it is possible the black stool was caused by the fruit and prescribed only probiotics. She hasn't had any bloody or watery stool again after that but her stool still remains rather soft (not like the normal hard stools that she used to have). Other than that, her appetite is excellent and she's happy, cheerful and active.
Her diet has changed recently too. During her diarrhoea days, she refused to eat and at the same time I noticed that she prefers rice over porridge so I started feeding her rice instead. I have reduced drastically the amount of vegetables I feed her (now 2 florets of broccoli, for example, as opposed to one cup of chopped ones previously). I figured she could have been overdosed with high fibre food since she used to eat lots of fruits as well on top of the vegetables. She now eats rice twice a day with steamed fish/meat/eggs and some vegetables. It's actually more work for me but ... well ... I'd do anything for her. :-)
Her grandma mentioned recently that she's easier to take care of now since she started walking. She would play on her own and does not bother anyone. But she still doesn't nap very well. At night, I find that she has difficulty falling asleep too. One night, she was making noise in bed and I scolded her. After that she just kept quiet and fell asleep.
I think that's all for now and I'll write about her birthday later. I feel so blessed to be the mother of these kids and I can't wait to see them tonight! :-)
Recently, one of my ex-colleagues' wife passed away at the age of early thirties due to cancer and she left behind a 3-year-old daughter. It was very heartbreaking although I didn't know her that well, but I felt really sad for the kid. And then, a few weeks later, I was told that my friend's 3-year-old daughter passed away due to heart failure. I don't know which was sadder but because of that, I've changed my evening routine a bit so that I spend more quality time with the kids. We now spend the evening playing together and I only start doing the housework after they have both gone to bed, which also means that I sleep much later now, sometimes at 11pm. But they are so delightful, I don't mind giving up a little bit of sleep. :-)
