Successful?

I am on no pay leave and the very reason I'm taking this leave is because I want to be at home bonding with my little girl. And I guess, it's been very... successful.

For days, I've been with baby 24/7, except for the random few hours occasionally when I'm out for the own gatherings without her.

I've mentioned my buddy at work, Tian. She's moving overseas for a period of time and we had a steamboat gathering on Friday before she flew off this morning. Baby was at home with her daddy and grandparents. I met Tian to get some steamboat ingredients and went to her place for the steamboat dinner with my lady friends. We enjoyed ourselves over food and catching up. I'll be sharing the photos of the steamboat dinner another time as they're still in the long-neglected-and-finally-utilized-again Canon S95.

I'm usually the one carrying baby at night, latching her and coaxing her to sleep at night. In fact I'm always with her when at home as she doesn't like to be left alone. Furthermore she hardly naps in the day and even if she does, she will wake up crying. Fortunately, she can usually sleep well throughout the night. Mum-in-law told me that on Friday, they coaxed baby to sleep and put her into her cot. However, later when hubby went into the room, he found her awake but not crying out loud. Instead, she was pouting and sobbing quietly, with large pearls of tears rolling from her eyes. When I heard about it I was heart broken. I wonder if she's thinking, "Where is mummy? Why she doesn't want me anymore?" :(

My baby can sleep through the night and usually wakes up once at 5+ when I'll latch her and then she'll sleep again between us on our bed after she's fed. Then she'll wake up again at 8+ for another feed and her bathe. This morning, she woke up at 5+ and as usual, I fed her. Then, I woke up at 6am as I'm meeting the ladies to send Tian off at Changi Airport. Before I left I sat by the side of the bed and she was kicking me, as usual. She likes to kick me to wake me up after she has woken up at 8+, and when I wake up and look at her, she'll smile at me. She doesn't cry when she wakes up in the morning. :) But I had to leave this morning so I left my pillow in my place to prevent her from rolling off the bed (although she doesn't roll yet) and she started making noise. I guess she knows that if I leave the pillow there, it means I'm going to leave her on the bed without me. Hubby had to wake up to try to coax her back to sleep. I had to leave so I kissed them both and left.

It was 8+ when I was on my way home, missing Tian already and wondering if baby has already woken up. When I was back,  baby was wide awake. Hubby told me that I wasn't around for her to kick, so she actually turned 180 degree and kicked him instead. And she didn't get back to sleep. She seems to be waiting for me to return home. I quickly changed and washed my hands before I carry her. When I went to my hubby who's carrying her, she turned to me and stretched her arms towards me, wanting me to carry her. I quickly carry her and she was grinning away, obviously very happy.

For the rest of the day, she persistently wanted my attention and didn't want to nap. I was very tired as I slept really late last night and woke up pretty early today, so I was hoping to coax her to sleep and we could nap together. On the 2 or 3 occasions when I thought she has fallen asleep and put her on the bed, she very quickly opened her eyes and look at me. It's like she's checking me out, making sure that I was still there by her side. Even just now, at 9pm to 10pm, we had to coax her to sleep 3 times as she woke up twice around 15 minutes after we put her into her cot.

I must say, I am indeed very successful in bonding with my baby girl. In fact maybe too successful. Most of the time, she doesn't even allow me to get out of her sight. I'm beginning to worry about how it'll be like when eventually it's time for me to go back to work... :( But I absolutely LOVE this bond I have with my girl. It's PRICELESS.

Anyway, here's my breakfast with the ladies today, at Changi Airport Terminal 3.

After I returned home, we went out to the nearby supermarket in the morning to do some grocery shopping and bought a few cartons of drinks for CNY. Hubby's relatives will all come to our place on the first day and we need lots of drinks for them.

Four adults, 2 trolleys and a baby in her Ergo baby carrier went out together and we bought all these!

Alright, time for super tired me to go to bed. Good night everyone!

Experimental cooking

I don't usually cook as I live with my in-laws and most of the time my mum-in-law will be the one getting busy in the kitchen. I'm very particular when I cook and I don't like to share the kitchen (haha this is one area I'm very selfish in!) so I always regard myself as a pathetic woman with no kitchen because I don't want to "stick one leg" into my mum-in-law's kitchen. However, I still wish to cook sometimes and occasionally when my in-laws are not in, I may cook. This is also the reason why, although I would love to try to make bentos, I haven't been making much.

I was surfing around on bento ideas and saw this blog on 30 blogs with bento box lunch ideas, so just to share! :D And do you know of the obento app? It's a very cute app! Although it does nothing besides showing cute illustrations of bento boxes, it still fascinates me lots!

In my previous bento entry, the egg was too small for the heart-shaped egg mold. Ming, author of bentomonsters, suggested checking the blog bentowithlove for tutorials on making bread balls with the mold, and so I did and I tried =)

I've always been wanting to make tamagoyaki on my own, so I checked out various recipes online and also viewed videos on Youtube too. Here is one video on making tamagoyaki for bento box. The three girls in this video are really cute!

And yes, I attempted to make tamagoyaki on my own. This was my first attempt with two eggs.

I tried to make this in the afternoon when baby was asleep and I could spare some time. I wasn't hungry so I left the tamagoyaki for later. The egg was not fully cooked and it's a bit runny inside, so I cooked them a bit more when I was hungry and served the hot cooked egg (no longer tamagoyaki XD) on toasted bread with cheese, cucumber and cherry tomatoes. =)

And this was my second attempt. I used one egg here.

This time round, I tried to make the layers thinner by cooking a bit at a time, but I guess the pan was too hot and the thin layer of egg get cooked very easily, so it was rather dry. Oh, I didn't use oil at all for both instances.

Earlier today, I made dinner for myself. If you've been following my previous entries, you'd realized that I've used beancurd, mushrooms, lettuce, cucumber, eggs and cherry tomatoes as these were the ingredients that I've bought last week when my in-laws were not home for a few days. I've finished the slices of cucumber and today I thought maybe I should use up the beancurd too. I was thinking to make beancurd steak for dinner and googled "tofu steak recipe".

Found these two interesting food and recipe blogs, which I promptly added to my blogroll. =)

Baked tofu steak recipe on veggie belly | tofu steak recipe on la fuji mama

I used the idea of mushroom gravy in veggie belly's recipe, and fry my beancurd in sesame oil until golden brown like la fuji mama's recipe. But I did not fry with flour as I don't know where mum-in-law keeps her flour, or whether there's any flour at all.

And turn over the other side...

Nicely done! Yum yum~

While doing the mushroom gravy, baby woke up and started crying, so I had to stop and pacify baby. In the end I changed baby's nappy, carried baby around the house, latched her and then she went to rest again. And I went back to cooking my scrambled egg.

Yes, I made use of whatever ingredients I have. The sliced mushrooms were sautéed in mushroom concentrate, ginger wine (gift from my sis-in-law when I delivered baby) and added some water with cornstarch to make the simple gravy. Then an egg scrambled with 3 cherry tomatoes, sliced. And of course lots of fresh lettuce to balance the protein.

And this was my dinner ^^

I sprinkled some chilli flakes on the beancurd steaks, and italian herbs mix on the scrambled egg. Here's a close up view of the tomato scrambled egg.

It was surprisingly a very good dinner for me. *satisfied*

5 months old

Today I went out and bought lunch from the Koufu foodcourt with yummy vegetarian food.

This is the first time I had lor-mee from this vegetarian stall and I totally enjoyed it! It's really good, with chinese herbs, beancurd skin roll, beancurd and egg.

My little darling is 5 months old today! How time flies... It was only like yesterday when she's kicking me from inside, and now she kicks me outta bed every morning!

I was trying so hard to capture a nice pic of her with the milestone card but she's just too fast for me! Each time I pulled out the card from her mouth and made her pose nicely, she'd stuff the card back into her mouth before the camera could focus!

And the card was utterly destroyed by my baby who - like all babies - love exploring with her mouth, anything and everything she gets her hands on...

Yes, and I tried again, and failed again. She had fun tasting her milestone card.

Mother-in-law was out and came back with a big golden piggy bank for my little precious!

She also came back with dinner with me... fried dry hor-fun from the same stall from which I bought lunch! We both enjoy the good food from that vegetarian stall. =)

She bought the curry vegetables too...

And in the end my dry hor-fun became curry hor-fun... hahaha~

Yummy! :D

Many photos over the weekend

Saturday morning was a nice rainy morning to stay in bed and sleep until late. I was however woken up by these strong legs kicking tiny feet in my face. My little darling just loves to turn around in her sleep and it's always in this direction, with her feet and bum in my face!

That's my pillow on the lower left while hubby safely shielded himself with his bolster. Fortuately I don't sleep with bolster, otherwise there will be no space for the little one!

I woke up aching all over, and it has nothing to do with baby's kicking. I'm hurting so bad that I couldn't lift up my right arm without feeling a sharp pain, and my right arm also has no strength to carry things. I had to carry baby's weight mainly on my left arm if I were carrying her. My neck, shoulders and back were all aching like mad. I was guessing maybe it's because of Friday. I'm not use to doing all the chores anyway, so it was silly of me to go out with baby's weight on my shoulders for close to 8 hours, then go home and do all those chores without taking a break at all. Hubby bought Salonpas plasters for me in the afternoon for some temporary relief.

We had some problem with our little girl's Combi stroller, and so we went down to the Combi retailer to get a check, and learnt that nothing's wrong. Apparently many users thought they encountered the same problem too, but it was just one of the features. Haha~

There's many toys and stuff for babies available at the store and we shopped around and bought a set of numbers rubber mats for my parents' place. Currently my parents may just put her on the sofa and play with her, but soon she'll be flipping and it won't be a good idea to put her on the sofa anymore, so it'll be great to place the mat on the floor for her to roll around on.

We had lunch at Din Tai Fung before going back to my parents' place. In fact, this was our first meal... I was starving!! Finally the dishes were served...

Bento, shopping and more

Cheese and cucumber wholemeal sandwiches, mock sausage tulips, cherry tomatoes and a hard boiled egg. Nice? ^^V

The last time I tried to use the egg mold, the egg was too big and was squashed, broken and 'overflow' from the sides of the egg mold. This time round, the egg was too small and couldn't get shaped by the star-shaped egg mold.

I've previously blogged about the CuteZcute giveaway on Ming's blog, bentomonsters.com. I didn't win it but well, why would I expect to win when there's just one set of cutters to be given away? Well, here's another chance!! Check out Ming's 400th post giveaway! She's giving away not just one item this time, so the chances are higher! Although sharing with you may reduce my chances... oh well, good things are meant to be shared!! :D

While baby was still sleeping in the morning, I trimmed her nails. She's been digging her nails into me so hard that I have to shout at her "Ouch! Stop!! Painful! Mummy very painful! Ouch~~!!"

Remember I blogged about the Takashimaya temptations? Well... guess what's the tempting item I'm eyeing? You won't believe it...

I was crazy over a pair of self-standing kitchen scissors. Yes, 1-2-3, all together, point at me and scream, "YOU ARE MAD!"

Happy mummy and happy baby

Another day alone at home with baby. I really enjoy being alone with baby. Sometimes I wish I'm a stay-at-home mum and living on my own. A dream which may sound humble but in reality is fat hope in our local context, considering our incomes. A dream which will not come true. Anyway since MIL is not in, I get to use the kitchen again and baby fell asleep shortly after I bathed her, so I managed to make myself a big hearty breakfast! :D

Made sandwich with cheese, mock ham and cucumber. With a side of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and scrambled egg. And cappucino. Mmmm~ Yum!

The rest of the morning was spent playing with my little darling. My hand has become her new toy and she always love 'handling' my hand. Hahaha~

Wanted to take pictures of her playing with my hand but she noticed the camera very soon and started focusing on the camera instead of my hand. She really loves the camera!!

Cooked lunch again. A very quick lunch as all I did was to grill the firm beancurd on the nonstick skillet. And then made a full lunch with cucumber, a dash of ketchup (run out of chilli sauce, time to do the groceries!), wrapped in lettuce and topped with cherry tomatoes. Used the picks of dragon, snake and horse... Just like how the years will fly pass us. Dragon year is almost over and horse year will be coming shortly after snake year. That's how time flies!!

After lunch it's baby time again! This was an epic moment of the day. Baby was sitting on my tummy and then leaned forward. She didn't seem uncomfy so I left her in this position and took the picture below. Then I put her back up to sitting position and heard a splatter and saw poo flowing out of her nappy cover down her thigh! I was horrified but she was so happy that she started to kick and I had to stop her so that she won't get poo all over, quickly get up from lying position, grab the changing mat, put her down, wipe her thigh and get nappy, nappy liner and a fresh nappy cover and changed her nappy. Phew!

Anyway my little baby's 21 weeks old today! :D Brought baby to the supermarket with me to buy some stuff. I love Ang Mo supermarket because it carries lots of vegetarian ingredients! I went to look around the vegetarian fridge and saw this... XD

I shall wait for the usual price then =P

Bought mock sausage, dumplings, tomato paste and Italian herbs. I've mushrooms and fusilli at home, so I made pasta again.

And this is what I cooked! Taadaa~ Topped with some chopped cherry tomatoes. ^^

Remember I scraped my hand yesterday? The wound doesn't get to rest with all the cooking, washing of dishes, scrubbing of nappies, doing the laundry etc. Boohoo~

But I did manage to clear up some stuff on the cluttered coffee table in the living room, a leftover task on yesterday's to-do list. =)

Wonder what to cook tomorrow? Hmmm~ For the time being, It's a problem I'm happy to have!

Picture documentary of today

My parents-in-law will not be around until end of the week as they've gone over to my sis-in-law's place to help take care of her kids as she's overseas for vacation. So when I woke up, I thought it'd be a good day for me to get some chores done and cook my own meals... and I wrote this to-do list while still in bed:

And baby woke up too! I turned over to sayang her and she started playing with my hand...

So my list started with bathing baby. Usually I'll boil water to add to the tap water in her bathtub, and also use some of the hot water to make a morning beverage for myself. Today I made instant cappuccino and left my bread and cheese on top of the mug to 'toast' them above the piping hot cappuccino, which will no longer be hot after I'm done bathing baby.

When I was preparing baby for her bathe, she was having her toes in her mouth and I took a shot. And she peed all over the changing mat as I took the shot >< but still cute, because she's my precious daughter! 

After her bathe she napped for a short while and I found her sucking her fingers like a rocker. Haha!

Third on the to-do list - clean the two big drawers. But I ended up sorting out the cabinet where MIL kept lots of plastic containers, water bottles, thermal flasks, disposable plates etc. MIL knows how to make use of space very well and the cabinet is packed to the brim. I was digging through the cluttered cabinet for my bento tools because I want to keep them together in my 'cookie box'.

And so I finally digged everything out and I was so glad that I could fit all my bento tools into the box! Although as you can see, I actually have very little bento making tools... keke~

Ouch! I don't know when I got scraped on my hand... must be when digging through the cluttered cabinet. Ouch! It hurts especially when I'm washing the dishes.

I managed to move the Osim uRobic out from its hiding place in the space room, which is now a study cum store. We have plans to convert it into our baby's room and we're clearing out the stuff stored in the room. Hubby was saying I've neglected the uRobic, so I thought it's time I give it some TLC by making full use of it!

Oh, and I didn't forget to give the new drawers a good wipe before using them in our wardrobe.

I wanted to make bento for lunch but baby has been very sticky and wants my attention a lot. In the end, I opt for a quick lunch and ate this. Tian gave me this instant ramen from Korea and I was inspired by the packaging to make scrambled egg to top the ramen.

It was sooooo good I had to finish every strand of noodle and every bit of the soup! And then it's time to wash the dishes... *ouch*

When I was done with the dishes, my baby has fallen asleep inside the 'tunnel' of her play gym.

She slept very briefly and then she woke up again so I spent more time with her. Eventually she fell asleep again and I quickly get to work while she's napping. Her laundry hanging in the living room has dried so it's time to keep them and get ready for the next batch of clothes.

Also packed her little wardrobe... also on my to-do list. Finally cleared out the space to hang her dresses :) And shifted some stuff into the drawers.

While baby's still napping, I quickly cut the cucumber that I bought the other day, so that I can make sandwich for breakfast tomorrow :) Learnt from my mum that cutting the top portion of the cucumber and rubbing the two cut surfaces together will remove the bitterness. Usually I'll rub until no more foam appearing, then ditch the top end.

I am very particular about eating cucumber. I only eat it raw, and I hate eating cooked cucumber. As I was slicing the cucumber, I was already happily munching away. And here's the rest of them to be kept in the fridge.

I bought fusilli and wanted to make pasta for hubby and I, but hubby had to work late so I cooked dinner for myself. My original plan was to buy cream pasta sauce and cook with mushrooms to top my fusilli, but I didn't buy the sauce and since I'm eating alone and not fussy, so I just cook whatever I've bought and stored in the fridge.

While boiling the fusilli, I threw in tofu with mushrooms sauteed in butter and mushroom stock... in the end also added spicy bean paste and seaweed. Was remembering my mum's dish of tofu scrambled in spicy bean paste and shredded seaweed, usually eaten with rice. This is the first time I used this dish to top fusilli and surprisingly it tasted good ^^ but forgotten to top it off with the cherry tomatoes in the fridge.

I made almond jelly in the afternoon and it was ready to be served in the evening.

So happy to be home alone and making so much stuff! ^^ Yummy~ Hubby enjoyed the dessert when he got home.

Managed to get the laundry done while updating this entry but alas, it's already midnight and I haven't tidy up the untidy coffee table ><

So that's one thing I gotta do tomorrow. Hmmm... shall create another to-do list tomorrow morning! :D