Little Buddy is off diapers.....Hooray!

Toilet-training is one of those major parenting topics that many parents of young kids like to dwell on. There are severals schools of thoughts on this well-discussed topic, ranging from the hows and whens to the whys and what-not-to-dos.

I am quite laissez-faire about having my kids toilet-trained and I suspect this may be part of the reason why Big Buddy is still in night-time diapers. Anyway, my mother suggested toilet-training Little Buddy sometime back and yesterday, Little Buddy went diaper-less during his wakeful moments.

And I am so proud to announce that he only had a couple of accidents for the past two days! And that was because we forgot to bring him to the toilet. In fact, on the first day itself, he was very receptive to the idea of passing urine into the toilet bowl or potty whenever we brought him to it. Not bad, really not bad at all.

Well done Little Buddy!


Edited on 1 September 2008 to add :
Little Buddy's toilet-training is progressing very well. He has learnt to vocalise when he needs to pass urine. Today, he woke up from his afternoon nap saying that he wants to 'pass urine' and when I checked, he had a dry diaper!


Edited on 2 September 2008 to add :
Upon waking up this morning, the first thing Little Buddy said was 'pass urine'. We brought him to the toilet where he released a full load and we were so pleased to find that his diaper was completely dry.


Edited on 3 September 2008 to add :
Little Buddy woke up dry again this morning and another new achievement for him today.....

We made Little Buddy wear a diaper when we brought him out this morning as I was afraid of not being able to find a toilet in time. To our much surprise, he absolutely refused to pass urine in his diaper and insisted on us bringing him to the toilet. He managed to hold it in till we found one and the moment we pulled down his diapers, his little stream spurted out almost immediately.

I found some great blinkies

For some time, I have been wanting to add some blinkies to my blog to liven up the look. Finally I managed to find some time to surf around and I uncovered some interesting ones at Blinkies By Alexis, Blinkies by Sparky, Desha's Blinkies, Mel's Blinkie Swap and Tami's Blinkies.

These brought back warm memories of some 80's movies I had enjoyed :






I remember watching this with my brother after accompanying him to collect his PSLE results.


My father brought us to watch Empire Strikes Back at the now-defunct Rex Theatre.


And here are some musicals that Hubby and I love.








I remember the front few rows of audience were offered umbrellas to shield themselves from the water during the splashing rain acts.

Here are some other random ones that described my family's taste in life, or just because they are so witty and catty!

My Little Handy Man

Having been a witness to his father taking apart the tower fans for cleaning, Little Buddy got out his little plastic screwdriver to 'fix' the fan.

As an aside, if you have those tower fans at home, chances are, you would probably have been as frustrated as we had been in having them cleaned. There is absolutely no way in which you can take them apart other than applying brute force.

I called the service centre and was told that we can only wipe and vacuum them on the outside. "If you require a thorough cleaning, you will have to bring it down" was their ridiculous reply to my question before adding "...but you will have to pay for it".

I have five such fans at home, can you imagine how much a regular cleaning for all will cost me?! Not to mention the inconvenience caused. This will be the last time we are going to buy tower fans. Nicer to look at but terrible to maintain.

Happy Birthday Big Buddy

This year, we celebrated Big Buddy's 4th birthday with 2 parties - one at home for family and relations and a second one at school with his friends.

The home party was celebrated the weekend before his birthday. My mother and her helper did all the cooking and wow, what a sumptuous spread it was! We had prawn fritters, ngoh hiang, sotong youtiao, char siew, roasted pork, fishballs, mixed vegetables, fried noodles, chicken wings. For dessert, there was fruit salad and tau suan. And of course, we had a Pocoyo birthday cake, a design requested by Big Buddy.

On the day of Big Buddy's birthday, he woke up nice and early. And for once, we did not have to hurry him to finish his breakfast and dress for school. He was all ready to go, dressed in his party clothes.

He had a wonderful time in school that day, sharing his birthday joy with his friends and teachers. Little Buddy came along to the party too and Big Buddy was so well-behaved and considerate towards his brother that it caught us by surprise.

And that night, we had another smaller birthday cake for him, courtesy of someone who blessed him with it. So all in all, he had 3 cakes for his 4th birthday!

Art in the family

Big Buddy loves to exercise his self expression through free-form drawing. We often find him doodling with whatever media he lays his hands - all types of pens, pencils, markers or crayons on his drawing journals or just about any scrap of paper he finds.

We have encouraged him to draw and paint since less than 2 years old by providing various materials for his experimentating. I am blessed with a mother who previously taught art and had produced students with award-winning works. She had been instrumental in fanning Big Buddy's art interest and guiding him.

Over the years, Big Buddy had filled several art journals with his creations and I enjoy flipping through them to witness how his drawings have matured.

Lest anyone says I have been biased towards Big Buddy, here are some of Little Buddy's too. He has great concentration power when it comes to drawing. Similarly, he has been given his own art journals to record his emotions and thoughts. After he outgrew the stage of throwing crayons around, he has shown more interest in producing some quirky work. While Big Buddy draws with broad bold strokes, Little Buddy has been great with fine detail work. Here are his recent renditions of the Chaos Theory.

Jack and Jill

For some unfathomable reason, Little Buddy absolutely adores this nursery rhyme. Somehow the concept of falling down amuses him to no end. He is almost word perfect when he recites the whole rhyme from memory, breaking into peals of giggles along the way.

Finally fixing puzzles

For the longest time, I had been wondering when Big Buddy will stop throwing puzzle pieces around and start using them the way they were meant to.

Towards the end of 2007, he started fixing bordered knob puzzles. Each puzzle piece fitted into a space meant for one puzzle piece. Apparently, he found it too amateurish so I mixed two sets together to provide him with more challenge. It proved to be still too simple and we progressed till he managed to fix all 10 sets of puzzles even though they were all mixed together.

We then gave puzzling a rest till he was given this set of 6-piece transportation puzzles. These were not individual piece puzzles and he was stumped by this new challenge. Then just today, he suddenly fixed them all up on his own!

Online shopping

Today marks my first personal foray into online shopping. I had always refrained from overseas spree-ing on my own, preferring instead to join sprees organised by others. I feared the risk of encountering problems along the way and detested the hassle of liaising with the overseas merchant to sort it all out.

After hearing numerous feedback of the reliablity of this merchant, I decided to give it a try. I am proud to declare that my virgin overseas spree is with Lucky Vitamin. Yes, nothing pandering to my vanity, nothing self-gratifyingly selfish, like clothes or cosmetics. I have been buying non-GNC vitamins and supplements from this site through friends and it is way way cheaper than buying the same product locally.

It was so simple, a breeze so far, now just awaiting delivery of the shipment.

Cool robot cities

I stumbled onto this interesting flash city and spent some time exploring it. Move your cursor around and you will discover that some features can be manipulated. There are two more fun robo-cities to check out, here and here. Have fun!