I mentioned in one of my previous posts that Tracy had brought Jerlene down to the park last week and they were having lots of fun. I missed that moment because I was working then. Today I cannot miss the chance anymore and brought Jerlene down to the park again. Jerlene was enjoying so much that she simply cannot stop, especially on the slide. It was pretty hot so after playing for about 45mins, we decided to go back home. Of course Jerlene was very unwilling and I had to coax her. I actually told a white lie saying that I'll bring her for a swim later. I thought she would have forgotten by the time we reached home. However, I was wrong and the moment we stepped into our house, she immediately took out the float and passed it to me. I cannot bring her for a swim as she was still coughing. As such, I had to think of other things to distract her, like playing Wii! From now onwards, I cannot tell white lies to Jerlene anymore......she WILL remember!!!!
After the tiring fun time at the park, Jerlene felt asleep very soon.
After our shopping trip, we went straight to our appointment with gynae. The ultrasound scan showed that the baby was ok. His weight (abt 660g) and everything else is normal. However, one thing that continues to worry us is the low placenta. The gynae said that the placenta is still low and has high chance that baby cannot be delivered normally. In other words, may have to undergo C-Sect operation. Anyway, he also said that we have to wait till month 8 to confirm whether that would be the case. So I guess we just have to continue to monitor but we must prepare for it mentally.
Guess what woke me up today? It's Jerlene's singing. Yes, early in the morning when both Tracy and myself were still sleeping, I suddenly heard someone singing by my ear. When I opened my eyes, I saw Jerlene standing beside me singing. I was so happy to see that as it shows that Jerlene is feeling much better now. And she just go on and on, probably because she was not able to sing properly for the past few days.
Her running nose seems to have stopped though she still got a little bit of cough. Since she seems ok, we decided to go for the robinson sale. There was a bad traffic jam at cairnhill exit from CTE and we took almost 2 hours to reach Centerpoint. The sale started yesterday and most of the popular items have already been sold. We then walked over to OG which was also having a 20% storewide discount. Jerlene is definitely feeling alright now because when it comes to shopping, she's the queen! I had a hard time catching up with her in the toys department. She found a mini stroller from a corner and that became her shopping basket. I'm so happy that Jerlene is active again!!! :-)
Today is Christmas Day. But we are not able to enjoy because Jerlene is really not feeling very well. Her fever has gone down but her running nose and cough were getting worse. She has been crying almost the whole day and I tried all sorts of way to calm her down. I singed, I danced, I acted like a clown to calm her down. Sometimes it worked.......but not for too long. So I had to keep changing "patterns".
We are supposed to go for a Xmas party this evening but with Jerlene's current condition, we had to give that a miss.
Today is a half day workday. So after work, we immediately rushed back to pick up Jerlene from my MIL place. She was coughing very badly and her running nose is really bad. The mucus flowing out from her nose is like running water from the tap. I can sense that Jerlene is trying very hard to breathe. And when she sleeps, at times, she will suddenly wake up to catch her breath.
Really poor thing....... This is only Jerlene's second time falling sick. Hopefully she'll get well soon.
This morning when I woke up, Jerlene was lying beside me and I can feel the heat coming from her body. I immediately decided to take urgent leave and bring her to our PD. We thought the clinic would not be very crowded since it's a working day but we are very wrong. In fact, it was even more crowded than Sat when we usually go. We went to register for Jerlene and the receptionist told us that we may have to wait for 2 hrs or so.
Not choice, we waited. Although Jerlene is a bit "heated", she was still quite active. After waited for about an hour, we brought Jerlene out of the clinic to get a drink and change her diaper. When we went back to the clinic and asked how long more do we have to wait, guess what, they told us we have to wait another 2 hrs. My god, so total we waited for 4 hrs.
We were at the clinic at about 10:15am and by the turn we see the PD, it was about 2pm. The PD checked Jerlene and hear her lungs. Fortunately, her lung was cleared. It seems like she had an infection in her throat. The PD prescribed some medicine for Jerlene and asked us to monitor her over the holidays.
When we reached home, I quickly let Jerlene drink the medicine for fever, phlegm and open airways. Luckily, Jerlene loves medicine very much. Whenever I said "eat medicine", she becomes very excited and pulls me to where I put the medicine. At night, she started to have running nose but her fever seems to have gone down.
Btw, we have just signed up with cordlife to collect and store the cord blood for the baby for 21 years.
Jerlene is still not feeling too good this morning. I had to go to work because I have a meeting to attend. Tracy stayed at home to take care of Jerlene. Anyway, she is entitled to 5 days paid child sick leave but my company does not have such benefit. Although I was physically in office, my heart is at home. No matter how, I had no mood to work. My colleague even heard me singing nursery rhythm to Jerlene over the phone.
I left early today to "fly" home to see Jerlene. The moment I stepped home, I saw Jerlene eating Macaroni. I was more relieved after seeing Jerlene finally taking some food. When I felt her forehead, I still felt that it was quite warm. Maybe she needs more rest.
This morning, Jerlene was not as active as usual and had refused to drink milk. When we felt her, we became very worried because she was feeling very very warm. It's obvious that she was having fever. So we quickly changed up and brought her to the clinic. When the doctor took her temperature, it was 39.2 degree celcius. We were so so worried. The doctor prescribed some medicine to bring down her temperature and for her flu and phlegm as well. We quickly went for our breakfast and then went home so that Jerlene can rest.
In the morning, she was really like a "fireball". After taking the medicine, her temperature dropped but when I felt her, she's still a bit warm. Since her fever did not go down completely, Tracy tried to put some cool pack on her forehead. She has two cool packs but Jerlene only wants the Hello Kitty one.
At times, she was still quite active but after a while, she will lie down to rest. I can sense that she was still quite weak. I'm still very worried because she did not eat much. Hopefully she will get better tomorrow when she wakes up.
Jerlene is coming to 2 years old and with the little prince coming on the way, we are thinking of putting Jerlene to a Childcare Centre. We have been doing a lot research of childcare centre and today, we have visited a few of them which are near my office.
One of them is Learning Vision at Changi Business Park. It's new and will be opened in Jan 09. They had an open house today. The whole environment is quite impressive and looks very professional. The place is huge and their curriculum is quite comprehensive. The only thing is it is pretty expensive.
The next one that we went to is The Orange Tree Preschool at Simei Eastpoint. The place is not as big as Learning Vision @ CBP but the fees is much more affordable. The curriculum is not too bad and it is sort of like a joint venture by Morris Allen Study Centres & Tien Hsia Language School, which are the two best-known professional language schools for children aged 3~16.
So far Jerlene has been drinking water from her water bottle with an attached straw. I decided to let her try drinking directly from a cup. Surprising, she did well for a start. She is able to hold the cup properly and slowly lift the cup towards her mouth. However after a while, she started to get a bit impatient and lifted the cup up too fast. Water flowed out from the cup and her shirt was all wet. I did not give up and let her try again after changing her shirt. With the earlier experience, this time she did much better........
Tracy was on leave today but I had to work. In the afternoon, she took Jerlene down to the nearby park to have some fun. Jerlene enjoyed the time there very much. Too bad I was not there to feel her joy. She can now go on the slide on her own. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't too good and they had to end the fun time earlier.
This morning, we went to Bottle Tree Park (the original one) for a walk. The surrounding air is good and refreshing. Jerlene started running around but I had to stop her because the ground was quite wet. As I've forgotten to bring my camera, I had to use my phone camera to capture Jerlene's morning smile. Best thing is, she will pose in front of camera without fail now. The moment she sees a camera pointing at her, she will stand very still and give her "best" smile. Quite comical......haha.......
Though Jerlene still cannot speak in sentences, her vocabulary seems to have improved quite tremendously over the past few weeks. She started to say words with two syllabus now. For example: Kitty, bubble, baby, giraffe, flower etc. I did not teach her most of those words, so very likely she has picked them up while watching those children videos. Every now and then, she will just blurt out some words that surprises me.
I believe very soon, she should be able to engage in some simple "kids" talk.
Last Sat, we went to AzTech building at Ubi to check out the DVD warehouse sale. There were lots of DVD selling from $8 each and VCD selling from $3 each. We knew of this sale from a magazine and our intention is to grab some DVDs distributed by InnoKidz as advertised. It includes titles such as Hi-5, Hello Kitty and Wheels on the Bus etc. We bought the different titles because we are not sure which one Jerlene is interested in.
When we played them at home, which one do you think Jerlene like most? You must be thinking it should be Hi-5 since I've been posting her Hi-5 moves. We are all wrong.......her favourite now is The Wheels on the Bus. She can watch it over and over again for hours. When I tried to switch it to other video, she will "scream" at me. By now, she had already "memorised" some of the lyrics. Since Jerlene likes it so much and the Sale is still on (today is the last day), we went back to buy a few more. Below are what I've bought from the sale. You think I've bought a lot? Wait till you see those people there. The amount that they spent was in the hundreds.
Today is my first try in a paintball session. I have always wanted to try but never had a chance. So when my colleagues approached me, I decided to give it a try while I'm still able to. You know what, I am the "senior citizen" among the group. I think I'm more than 10 years older than all of them.
The session was held at Red Dynasty Paintball Park, which is located within Bottle Tree Park at Yishun. According to the website (http://www.weplaypaintball.com), this is the largest Paintball Arena in Singapore. We got 11 players and formed two teams. Our team lost the warm-up match but we won the next two objective matches. Anyway results aside, it was quite fun, especially when you managed to hit your opponents.
After the paintball session, I went home to wash up since the Park is quite near my place. At around 3:30pm, I brought Jerlene down to the pool for a swim as usual. We enjoyed a lot and we spent about 1 hour in the pool today. Luckily we went down earlier today, otherwise we will have to give it a miss because it started raining after we went home.
Not sure whether it was the paintball or the swim, I'm now having muscle ache at a few parts of my body. I tend to believe it was the former since the latter is a regular activity. This shows that I'm really lack in exercising and age is really catching up.
I accompanied Tracy to Thomson Medical Centre for a detailed scan which is usually done during week 20 of pregnancy. This scan is carried out in order to look for any abnormalities in the baby’s structural development and growth, and to check the position of the placenta.
Our appointment is at 3pm but we waited till about 4pm before we went into the ultrasound scan room. The sonographer who attended to us looks very familiar and she seems to be the same sonographer who scan Jerlene previously. Anyway, as she scan through the different organs, she explained to us. The baby was facing down and she tried various ways to "turn" the baby over but failed. So she asked Tracy to go for a walk and she'll call us in about 20mins time to finish up the scan. After the entire scan was completed, we were given the report and we went to our gynae for explanation of the report. Here are some photos scanned during the session.
The report shows that everything is within the normal range which is great. But there is one statement in the report that poses a concern to us. It reads the placenta is low. Our gynae said that at this stage, it is still quite difficult to determine whether it will cause any problem in future because as baby grows, the expanding uterus naturally pulls the placenta away from the cervix. However, if the placenta is still low nearing the EDD, the baby cannot be born vaginally, ie need to undergo caesarean section.
Anyway, Tracy is advised to rest more, avoid walking too much, squatting and carry heavy things. Let's hope the placenta will "move" up in a few months time.
Btw, the gender of the baby is BOY if you want to know..... :-)
My smiley princess was getting ready for a brand new day. We are going to Sungei Buloh for a morning nature walk.
The Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve (双溪布洛湿地保护区) is a nature reserve located in the Northwest area of Singapore. It is the first wetlands reserve to be gazetted in Singapore in the year 2002, and its global importance as a stop-over point for migratory birds was also recognised by the Wetlands International's inclusion of the reserve into the East Asian Australasian Shorebird Site Network. It has an area of 1.30 square kilometres.
The admission fee is $1 during weekends and children less than 3 years old are free. After we went through the entrance, we came to a Nature Gallery. The gallery displays panels and exhibits on wetlands and a variety of related themes. There is a cave like structure and Jerlene kept running in and out of it.
After spending sometimes in the gallery, we walked to the outdoor and decided to go for the mangrove boardwalk, which is the shortest route in the reserve.
The mangrove boardwalk allows one to experience through the mangrove without getting the feet wet and muddy. We can listen to the calls of the cicadas and watch mudskippers manoeuvre across the mudflats. At high tide, observe crabs and shellfish on tree trunks. At low tide, look out for water snakes and horseshoe crabs in shallow streams The boardwalk of 500 meters has 4 shelters and takes about 30 minutes to walk. When we were there, it was high tide so we saw lots of crabs climbing up the trees.
Jerlene enjoyed the boardwalk very much and she was holding the park map, as if she knows how to read.
After walking for quite a while, we took a rest at one of the shelters along the boardwalk.
According to the website, Commonwealth Secondary School has officially adopted the mangrove boardwalk in 10 November 2001. One of the programme involved students of the school to paint up the ceiling of the shelters with Mural Paintings.
Before we proceed for the rest of the boardwalk, Jerlene decided to do some planning of the route.
Anyway, there is only one route along the boardwalk..... :-) Jerlene seems to be a volunteer of the park and one of the duties is to keep the park clean. So on the way out, Jerlene kept clearing the leaves on the boardwalk by kicking them into the water. She will clap whenever she successfully clear the leave from the boardwalk.
After we completed the boardwalk, we went to the theatrette where there is a 10-minute audio-visual show that gives you an overview of the reserve.
I actually did not expect we will spend more than an hour in the reserve but we did. In fact, we spent close to two hours and it was really fun. I would recommend this place to whoever is interested in nature. For those who are adventurous enough, you can go on the other routes, which are much longer (some may take 4-5 hrs to complete). You can probably see more on those routes, especially those migratory birds during the season. Anyway, below are some photos of fauna and flora of the reserve.
Just saw a news with the following subject, "FDA finds traces of melamine in US infant formula". I quickly read the details of this news article and realized melamine has been found in several baby formula milk powder, namely Mead Johnson's Infant Formula Powder and Enfamil LIPIL with Iron, in the US. In another inhouse test by Abbotts labs, traces of melamine was also found in Similac Infant Formula. Although the level of melamine found is not "threatening" to babies, it still poses a concern for most parents.
Such news in the past few months are really disturbing. What has this world become now? Are human beings really heading towards self destruction? Anyway, no one knows what will happen the next day. We should spend everyday as though it is going to be the last day........ Am I too pessimistic? You tell me........ :-(
After the failed attempt few weeks back to visit Marina Barrage, we decided to try again today. We left home very early to have our breakfast at the Prata Shop along Upper Thomson Road. By the time we reached Marina Barrage, it was before 10am. The security guard refused to let cars go into the Marina Barrage carpark so I had to park at the one outside the Barrage. Jerlene fell asleep just when we were about to reach there. As I decided not to bring along the stroller, we found a place to sit down and wait for Jerlene to wake up. Following is just a brief introduction of Marina Barrage: Built across the mouth of the Marina Channel, the Marina Barrage creates Singapore’s 15th reservoir, and the first in the heart of the city. With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, or one-sixth the size of Singapore, the Marina catchment is the island’s largest and most urbanised catchment. Marina Barrage serves three main purposes namely, water supply, flood control and lifestyle attraction. Jerlene finally woke up after close to an hour sleep. Usually her mood won't be too good when she just wakes up but today, she woke up with a big smile. And next moment, she started running about. At the Marina Barrage, there is an indoor exhibition called Sustainable Singapore Gallery (SSG). It is an information and sensory extravaganza showcasing Singapore’s efforts towards environmental sustainability. Explore six galleries, each sharing a unique aspect of Singapore’s sustainable story. Uncover, through fun interactive and innovative multimedia, how a small country with limited resources meets the needs of a fast developing community in an environmentally-friendly manner. There are many interesting exhibits in SSG and Jerlene really enjoyed very much. There is one area whereby the floor is all made of see-through glass. There are models and exhibits underneath the glass and we are all walking on it. Before we came to this area, Jerlene has been running about non-stop but the moment we stepped onto the glass, she immediately stopped running. In fact, she stayed very still and dared not to move. She must be afraid that the glass will break if she moves too much.....haha.... Her reactions towards the glass flooring is really funny.......
After an hour of fun time in the gallery, we decided to proceed outdoor to have a view of Singapore city skyline. The view is great and that's why we saw many couples taking their wedding photos there. Jerlene again cannot resist the big open space and she was on her own running everywhere. At one corner of the barage, there is a place where many kids gathered to play with the splashing water. As Jerlene was not in the proper attire, she did not join the other kids in the shallow pool. Will definitely bring Jerlene back to this place one of these days. It was a great morning spent in the Marina Barrage.
