Blessings from Above

look what i found in li'l princess cereal this morning... 3 LIVE WORMS!!! she had already eaten more than half the bowl when i saw this... yikes! we're staying off that brand of cereal for now! side note : li'l princess' appetite received a tremendous boost around the same time - now she eats breakfast, tea, lunch, tea, dinner, supper! are the worms in her stomach still, eating up her nutrients?!?!

my baby turned 16mths old roughly two weeks' back and i note that i've not been doing updates on her developmental progress for a while now - largely because i am very busy due to my work commitments. i still spend majority of my time with her and even if i need to work, i make it a point not be to away for more than 4 hours in a day (that gives me time to make a trip to see one client and then return to my parents' place to her). its great (for me) that my parents are no longer helping out my sis in her business and can help to look after li'l princess two/three times per week, thus putting my heart at ease. in addition, i'm glad that my new domestic helper turns out to be a rather good help *as compared to the previous one* so my baby has 4 adults (my parents & 2 domestic helpers) looking after her needs when i am away - and occasionally that number increases to 6 (when my sis returns home after school w/her husband) so it all works out very well for now. w

disclaimer 1st - i am not trying to 'show-off' my child's ability (no doubt i'm proud of her) prior to this month, i have been constantly bugged by my mom and dh to start potty training li'l princess and the truth is, i never really bothered. we bought a potty, yes... and i did some reading, even looked out for story books on that topic but i never really got down to it. one of the main reasons for my 'lack of interest' is that the materials i read all indicate that the 'appropriate' age to start potty training is between 2 to 3 years old (just do a search on google for 'potty training' if you are keen to read more), plus, some kid in the family who is very close to his 3rd birthday is still far from being toilet trained - so obviously to me, there is no rush since she is still far from her 2nd birthday. what i have been doing though is observing claire's bowel movement schedules as well as allowing her to 'watch me in action&#

out of our 'normal' weekend schedule, dh and i spent the afternoon 'away' from C. we originally planned to bring her along but in the end, my parents called up early in the morning and offered to babysit her (i'm glad we didn't bring her along eventually - some of the parents did and their kids were screaming, shouting and crying in the auditorium and thus 'disturbing' the rest of us but i don't blame the kids - they don't know any better). our local tv station put together a short afternoon seminar titled 'perfecting parenthood', which i'd thought would be pretty interesting (and so, dragged dh along) - i mean, parenting is probably one of the biggest responsibilities we will ever have in our entire lives yet it is an area that we don't receive any formal training other than by observing our parents (and maybe other parents) and through our own experiences as a child (i was brought up like that and i like/dislike it so i'm go

our metal halide for the fish tank went down (apparently, the ballast short-circuited) and after searching high and low, we finally found someone who could help us repair it but we had to bring it to his place all the way north. since we were in the vicinity, we took the opportunity to check out the real estate in the area - its one of the areas in our consideration because its 'oh-so-outta-way-away-from-the-crowds' - dh and i actually dislike crowds (and obviously crowded places) so it would be nice to come home to somewhere quiet plus through flipping the papers, it would appear that the landed houses in the area are still rather reasonably priced. unfortunately though, we didn't see anything we liked (that was friendly to our pockets). what we did though, was to explore the park in the area. for such an 'ulu' area, there was really quite a fair bit of activity in the park - lots of happy campers & fisherman-wanna-be. and as always, li'l princess is al