Diaper-free afternoon naps

All of a sudden, Big Buddy said he did not want to wear his pull-ups for his afternoon nap 2 days ago. I was more than happy to oblige as I was desperately wanting to wean him off pull-ups for naps and bedtime at night too. I told him that he cannot wet the bed and will have to go to the toilet should he need to pass urine. He nodded his head with a serious look and said 'OK!'. When he woke up 2.5 hours later, I was so pleased to see that his briefs and bed were dry. I praised him, telling him he was behaving like a big boy.

That was 2 days ago and since then, he has been incident-free for his pull-ups-free afternoon naps!

I am so proud of him and of how quickly he managed to arrive at this achievement, considering that he had always woken up with wetted pull-ups despite bringing him to the toilet before his naps. Perhaps this had been in part due to our rule that he can no longer wear pull-ups when he goes out with us during the weekends. In a way, I was glad too that this whole business of toilet-training for naps was child-led. One mommy encouraged me to adopt this method and true-enough, there were no tears nor fights to it.

Previous attempts to toilet-train him for night-time were disasterous as he absolutely refused to be woken up to use the toilet and ended up wailing loudly, waking up the household. Mommy friends had shared with me how they managed to totally toilet-train their children and I tried out their methods to no avail. I was left wondering when it would be Big Buddy's turn.....

Till now!.....It gives me hope that the goal of Big Buddy being night-time toilet trained comes within sight and I look forward to the day when I can stop buying pull-ups for him. Yipee!

Celebrating Parents' Day

Our church has the annual tradition of concurrently celebrating both Father's Day and Mother's Day in June each year, dubbing it Parents' Day. I personally find it meaningful as parenting is a partnered responsibility and celebrating both occasions on the same day confers due recognition to both parties at the same time.

This year, Hubby was asked to pray for the parents of our church and on behalf of the parents, to pray for the youth of our church too. I was listening to his prayer and I was overwhelmed that God considered Hubby and I qualified to be the earthly guardians of our two sons. Yes, parenting is indeed a privilege and an awesome lifelong responsibility. We not only look after our children's physical needs but also their emotional, social, psychological welfare and as Christian parents, their spiritual growth too. It really seems daunting now that I have typed it out, somehow it sounds less intimidating when I say it in my nightly prayers :)

However, apart from the demands of parenting, we have also experienced immense joy, amusement, pride and satisfaction as we witness their growth, antics and achievements. There were the tears, fears, stress and I-am-so-mad-till-I-want-to-pull-out-my-hair moments but definitely nothing else comes close to what our children have given us.

On this Parents' Day, I want to say Thank You to God for adding both our sons to our family. Thank you too, to Big Buddy and Little Buddy, for being such joys in our lives. Our hearts are full.....

Movies and more movies!

Hubby and I are movie buffs and we get our fix from Hollywood Clicks. It is an online DVD rental with a doorstep delivery service.

We love it for the convenience and the huge library of movies, documentaries and TV series available. For a reasonable subscription fee, we are no longer passive audiences watching whatever Starhub pushes out on their various cable channels. I am reveling in the low-cost opportunity of finally being able to check out some indie/cult movies that I might otherwise not be able to have access to.

We have been so satisfied with this option that recently, we upgraded ourselves from a 2-disk plan to the 3-disk plan and are now looking forward to more home entertainment.

Cool music site

I stumbled upon this cool website Project Playlist while browsing through the applications on Facebook. I don't know about you folks but I find those invitations to Mob Wars, Vampires, Zombies, Slayers and whatever-else-biting/slaying/warring type of useless applications super irritating.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find Project Playlist. It allows you to create and share playlists by consolidating songs which are already residing on the internet. Although I could not find all of my favourite songs, it was however compehensive enough to allow me to create some decent playlists that accompanied me while I tap away at my workstation. The cool standalone player is pretty nifty too.

Go check it out!

Toys for Boys

Last Friday, Hubby bought this for the boys.

But if you ask me, I think it is just an excuse to buy it for himself :)

I love the sleek new look and pristine white casing. Even the various controllers and gadgets come in matching whites. The set came with bundled with Wii Sports - bowling, tennis, boxing and golf. It has been a great tool for family bonding thus far. It is actually quite amusing, watching how the kids anticipate the moves and respond accordingly.

Over the weekend, we browsed the shops for Wii games and we are drooling over the following :

We discovered that prices for the games vary quite significantly from shop to shop, even for the same game titles. Overall, it may be more cost effective to purchase them oveseas if we are buying more titles.

As with all computer and interactive games, Wii can be addictive. So we laid down rules regarding time and duration of play and play etiquette that must be adhered to. At the same time, it also presented us with opportunities to teach the kids about sharing and taking turns and reinforcing while playing the games. There are also platforms to talk about winning and losing and the more constructive way to react to that.

The Lows

I have been a little depressed lately and have been neglecting to blog. Inundated with the various issues, I just did not have the mood to come in here to write. However, today I felt that precisely that, perhaps I should, all the more, journal it all down to flush it out of my system. Sigh.....

It was 20 months ago when Little Buddy first displayed a dislike for milk. I thought then that perhaps it was just an infant thing to be difficult and would probably be just a passing phrase. However, it proved to be a prolonged passing phrase. Each milk feed turned into a huge struggle as he just would not take the teat, practically yelling and crying through each session. Then started a quest to unearth the reasons for his rejection.

Instead of direct latch-on, I tried expressing out my milk and feeding via a bottle, trying all the available types of bottle teats, varying feeding positions, etc. Till finally I gave up and spoon-fed him. It was a little better as it shortened each milk feed to a mere 20 minutes, compared to a 2-hour marathon which would still leave me with an unfinished bottle of milk.

Little Buddy was not gaining weight too well, so I decided to start him early on cereal at 5 months. He took to it rather well and I was relieved. But I was not to know that it was only a temporal respite. He reverted to rejecting his meals and I was again at a loss at what to do.

Since then, I have cooked all the different types of food - vegetables, meat, soup and fruits, in every possible way that a young child of that age can possibly try. Yes, I have even tried starving him, hoping that he would eat when hungry. Most people would give me an incredulous look and be at a loss for words when I share how I tried everything that had been suggested but have yet to see any improvement in Little Buddy's feeding habits. I have brought him to different paedatricians, sought opinions of other mothers, searched for information on the web but I still could not find anything that helped. The paeds told me there is nothing physically wrong with Little Buddy, it is just a passing phase. Other mothers tell me to vary the food and preparation methods and that it is a just a passing phase.

I have been told 'it is just a passing phase' so many times that sometimes I really want to strangle the next person who says that. Oops! Yes, that is how terrible I feel right now. I mean this passing phase is already a 22-month phase! And I am exhausted having already struggled 22 months x 30 days x 5 solid/milk feeds per day = 3,300 times! Honestly, the whole issue is really getting into me and making me worried and depressed, wondering how long more this is going to last. I now dread every feeding session.

I have been praying and praying and praying daily, asking for a breakthrough. Please God, please let the day come when Little Buddy begins to enjoy his meals.....

Attacked by malware!

MSN Live Messenger was installed on my laptop eons ago but only recently, I started actively using it as a tool for communication. It was useful for keeping in touch with friends through real-time chats and also an excellent channel for nightly catch-ups with Hubby when he is away on business trips. I particularly found it fun punctuating sentences with the custom emoticons. And so I enjoyed the various chat sessions.....

Till I was hit with a malicious spyware last Tuesday! It came as an innocent message from a friend, whom I have chatted sporadically with. There was a hyperlink in that message and out of curiosity, I clicked on that link and the moment I did that, my laptop hung and my heart sank. Soon after that various incidents started happening to confirm my suspicion of a malware attack - my laptop prompted me to set the system date and time, my wireless printer refused to print, error messages about missing startup files started popping up upon bootup and my internet browser started leading me to dubious websites whenever I go onto the net.

I am usually very careful about cyber security, only visting trusted internet sites, opening email attachments that I have been expecting and generally preferring to err on the side of caution rather than subjecting my laptop to possible virus infections and such. Thus the Tuesday episode left me completely frustrated and helpless as I sought to remove the malware. After several futile days of seeking assistance from Hubby and reputed online spyware forums, I decided to take the most drastic action of reformatting my harddisk.

Now that I am back online, I have increased my cyber paranoid and upped my security settings. Yes, I know, I know. I should have known better, what with my computer science degree and all. Well, all I can say is that I should have heeded my instinct instead of ignoring the antenna that had gone up. I will be more careful.....

But then again, those authors of malicious spyware, malware, virus, etc, are certainly getting craftier. I dread and indeed, may God forbid the day should any such script get past my firewall again. Sigh.....