Counting and Sorting

I didn't really use flash cards with Noel when he was younger. I read in several places that flash cards don't necessarily work. Anyways, now that N is older, flash cards are good. He would sort them and tell me about the card. Here he sorts out the 3 sets of cards he has and he recites the number as he sorts them. After he completed the task, he said to me, "Mommy, say Good Counting, Noel"!!!!

Trip to the library

Brought the boys to the library and above N doing the puzzles. Abel is busy playing with the bead counter thingie. Pic taken when N turned 3 and A would be 9 mths then.

Gone Bananas

The bananas have gone too ripe at home so I decided to make banana smoothie for breakfast. It's very easy to make.
I used a big bottle of muscle milk,(cow's milk) 1 cup per banana and 2 ripe bananas. Doesn't hurt to have an eager preschooler who wanted to help out. I assign Noel the job to cut bananas into pieces. He did a stellar job with the butter knife.

Put the bananas and milk into the blender and blend. Below, N enjoying his banana smoothie with a straw.

p/s: Don't forget to also get the eager beaver to help out using the blender. He was so thrilled when he get to press the button.

HO HO HO!!!

N found a santa hat and has been wearing them all the time.
Below is our conversation.

N: Hello Mom. (In his santa hat)

Me: Hello Noel.

N: I am not Noel. I am SANTA!

Me: <_>

Spiky Ankylosaurus

When I made the plateosaurus with N the other time, I thought that it got its name because we were using paper plate to make it.
I was so wrong. There was really a dinosaur called Plateosaurus. Anyhow, we made this spiky ankylosaurus with cardboard. It was pretty easy. N coloured two cardboard with colour he likes and then I cut them into its body, tail, head and legs and spikes. N had lots of fun gluing the spikes and he also tried to arrange the spiky teeth and eyes.

Playgroup

Here are some pictures I took when I brought the boys to a playgroup at a local church. It's held every Friday on school semester and it's a rather popular one. I usually meet up with a friend who brings her son there too. It starts with freeplay, group singing, morning tea and finished with craftwork. Last semester, they learned about insects. noel has also grown a pot of grass from seeds and made quite a bit of crafts.

Above, Abel was chilling out on the bean bag. He usually plays on the mat with babies his age group while N would be outdoors playing with the motorbikes etc. Below N chose to dress up as a tiger. He plays with the toaster, he chose to play with the cymbal during the group music session. I miss attending playgroups.

A day to remember..

A day to remember for the newlyweds and all the guests. Our friends' eldest daughter R got married sometime in September. Theme was purple and silver. Our pastor was the minister and he has known the groom since he was 3 and the bride when he's in her teenage years. We also dressed the boys up for the ocassion. Cupcakes and the wedding cakes were all baked by friends. It was definitely one of the sweetest wedding I've attended in a long time.

Baking session

Again, this is activities that we did together while I was on my extended leave. I decided to let Noel help me with baking. We decided to do gingerbread man. His involvement was to pour flours. He got very excited and also somehow got his face covered with flour. After cleaning his face, I got him to cut the gingerbread man from the cookie dough and also to decorate the gingerbread man. It's a very fun activity. He describes what he is doing and he also choose how to decorate the gingerbread man ie giving him raisins on their legs, making eyes, giving them a hat, etc etc..how did the gingerbread man taste? It was okay. It wasn't very sweet as I chose a recipe which used the least sugar or sweet syrup. Next time, I won't bake so much because we got sick of it pretty quickly.

something new..

I love browsing the supermarket aisles. My absolute favourite aisles are the baby aisles, the toiletries, and the spreads (jams, the like) and also the cereals and the laundry powder. *Ooops, it's nearly all the aisles. Cadbury in recent years have tried to develop new products, and over the last year they launched many new flavours. They even ventured into the 'dessert' category in their chocolate, ie the banofee and blackforest flavour. I didn't like them all that much. This winter, they released this 'bar of plenty'.
It's definitely a keeper for me. Btw, did you all notice how all the manufacturers have downsized their products ?

n's aquarium

Here's my attempt to make an aquarium for N using cardboard. I referred to madebyjoel on the construction of the aquarium. Of course, the aquarium I constructed only looked somewhat like the one on the website, but N got to choose what animals to be in his aqarium. He wanted a crab, a seal, a tortoise and a fish. He wanted more sea creatures but I told him 4 is the limit.
The amusing part about this whole thing was N asking me where is the water for the aquarium.

I love daddy

Pic taken on Father's Day before going to church service. I got N to draw a pic of daddy and he made a card at kindy for him too. A is 7 months old in the pic. He began to grow his first tooth round that time.

Happy birthday to Noel...

This year has certainly gone too fast for me. I probably say the same statement every year since I turn a quarter century old. Anyhow, for a nearly 3 year old, it seems ages. We decided to hold a small party for him on the saturday before his actual birthday. He wanted an Elmo cake. So he brought in his elmo plush (thanks godma) and showed it to the bakery lady. Ta-da, his cake has taro flavour in between the layers.

Again, this year, we did a bbq.It also coincided with our LG fellowship. So everyone brings a plate too. There were salads, porks and chicken and we made Ant made his decadent chocolate mousse and hazelnut ice-cream.

Satay skewer that jake made for the party using beef, capsicums and mushrooms.

Here, the men prefers to congregate together outdoor and eat. Ant busy carving the leg of lamb.

The boys were playing in the playroom. They were all very well behaved :)

After stuffing ourselves with all the goodies, next come the highlight for the birthday boy. We sang Happy birthday to Noel. Here's our latest family picture.

Then we proceed to open the presents. N is opening up present from Cayden. He's very excited.

Taking more pictures here.

Posing for photograph with Miss A and Aunty C.

Both looks after the boys at church creche. Miss A also teaches N at his BSF preschool program. She calls him "To-To" aka little assistant.

More to come...

Starting solids

I started Abel on solids when he was about 5 months and 3 weeks (roughly there). He was showing great interest on our food.
So this time I did a lot more research and also read so many baby cookbooks. But the best recipes and advice that I got were from Zainelicious and Angelolli They are tried and tested by people I actually know :)

I also got ready the tools that I need. A small pot to steam the food,blender with glass jug and some bpa free baby freezer tray.

Anyways for the first 2-3 weeks I only fed A baby rice cereal. I used the Watties baby rice cereal. I started with one meal a day and slowly went up to 2 meal or 3 meals. He got tired of the bland baby rice very quickly. So the next thing I tried was orange kumara puree (Sweet potato) He took it quite well. In fact he liked it very much. I then proceed to try carrots, Pears, Apples, peas and then started to mix ingredients like carrots and sweet corn and so on. I would make a batch and freeze them and each meal I would resteam them.

Favourite shots

These are one of my favourite photos taken this year. N was 32 months and A was 5 months old. We were going to take family portrait and we took some test shots at home. The actual portrait turned out yuck but I liked the ones we took at home of the boys.

BTW

How time flies. My maternity leave came to an end and I went back to work 2 Mondays ago.
It's a new set of routine altogether.

Now my day starts like this :

Wake up. Feed A. Sterilise the breast pump. Breakfast for me and N. Prep N for kindy on kindy days. Drive to work. Work. Lunch break. Pump milk. Work. Knock Off. Drive home. Feed A. Clean up. Bath the boys. Prep them to sleep.

I am slowly getting used to the new routine. How are the boys taking it? Noel is quite used to me going to work but Mr Clingy aka A was upset on the first day. Fortunately things improved. He greets me with laugh now when I get home instead of cries.

Yummy Berry Froth

These pics were taken during my maternity leave sometime in mid- Sep. Note the weather is still pretty chilly and N is in jumper.
We were making blueberry froth. Ingredients: One cup of frozen blueberries, 1 cup of ice, one cup of cow milk, and got N involved in pouring the blueberries and milk into the blender. The highlight for him was pressing the buttons on the blender. I did add some sugar to sweeten the froth. I guess if you add vanilla ice cream, you won't need to add the sugar. Notice how 'purple' the froth was. With the weather warming up, there should be more froths coming our way.

Pouring activity

N's attempting to make ice cube. He's concentrating real hard on pouring the right amount of water into the ice cube tray. He did a good job as there were no spills. However, there were no ice cube produced because he kept checking the fridge every 5 minutes by taking the tray out and spilling the water as a result.

Plate-o-saurus

Here's a little crafting activity I did with N. I refer to the craft pages in the littlies magazine. He had reminded me quite a bit to go shop for the paper plate to make the dinosaur.I finally found a stray one from my pantry one afternoon and we set off to make them. I of course cut the plate into half and cut the parts for him. N's participation was colouring the dino and also gluing the eye onto the dinosaur.

Angpow shoes

The 3 of us just returned from the Middle Kingdom two days ago. Still a little jetlagged and have lots of unpacking and laundry to do. Tidying up the pics now. Here's one taken before we went on the trip of N using the big angpow packet as his shoes! He ran away when I tried to photograph him.

Spring is here.Check out my plum blossoms

Pic taken on 12 Sep of my plum tree. Hopefully we get bigger fruit this year. Last year, N kept plucking the fruits before they even had a chance to ripen.