Kiddie Meal Ideas

When moms get together for a chat, we inadvertently start discussing our child's diet, his/ her likes and dislikes, and sometimes share our exasperation to make the little one's meals more interesting, and how to get them to eat. Chubbs is definitely fussy when it comes to food. To name just a few, he hardly tolerates egg yolk, will sniff out a single flake of fish in his rice and abandon the whole bowl of food, green leafy veg are almost always too tough for him to chew and swallow, and he hates formula milk; so I have to feed him using a teaspoon, 480ml of it everyday. Not the most enjoyable thing.

To get fresh ideas for his meals, I often look at blogs and cookbooks for inspiration. A lot of them use fancy presentation, lots of ingredients, and frankly, quite a bit of time. However, if Chubbs is willing to eat the food at the end of it all, I'd happily do as told. But I've come to realise that with him, simple is best. So I'd like to start sharing some of Chubbs' winner dinners with you guys, and hopefully, they'll give mummies out there some new dinner menu ideas. Everything is prepared with minimal ingredients and seasonings, to make cooking really easy and quick. The few guidelines that I have for myself, is that his three main meals of the day have to at least consist of a carbohydrate (wheat preferable only once a day), a protein and a lot of fruit. Veggies are a big bonus.

His daily time-table for food goes something like this.

9am- breakfast: A bowl of wholegrain cereal with fresh milk and fruit.

11am- 240ml milk before school.

He skips lunch in school everyday, preferring to play with toys undisturbed while other kids eat.

3pm- heavy snack: 1 piece of cheese/ boiled egg, 1 slice of wholemeal bread with jam/ honey, fruit and 240ml milk.

6pm- dinner.

7pm- snacks on whatever Fuzzy and I are eating for dinner. Usually some rice, veg and fruit.

So here's what he had for dinner over the past few days.

Wednesday: Oven-baked red-skinned potatoes, with egg omelette and ketchup. A big handful of grapes.

I leave the skins on the potatoes because the skins contain half the fibre in a potato. I cut them to resemble French fries, pat them dry, toss in extra virgin olive oil, and bake them in an 180C oven for 20min. He finished everything except for a few of the chips.

After dinner, he still managed to eat a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, and a small bowl of rice, and Stuffed his face with some freshly cooked potato chips.

Thursday: Steamed corn on the cob, with honey soy grilled chicken wings. A bowl of yellow watermelon.

As corn is a grain, I treat it as the carbo component to the meal. He ate all the meat (sans skin) and fruit, but couldn't finish the corn.

Friday: Chicken stew with potatoes and carrots; accompanied by a bowl of yellow watermelon.

He finished everything, and also had some choy sum when Fuzzy and I had dinner later. He had lots of energy to help Tai-Gong water all the plants in the garden after.

Disney on Ice

We brought Chubbs for his first Disney on Ice experience nearer the end of the school holidays, because he's been interesting in ice-skating for a while, always strapping things on his feet and trying to skate at home. Plus, I saw the trailers on TV, and saw that they were going to feature Cars and Toy Story characters, so I thought Chubbs would really enjoy it, since those were his favourite Disney folk.

Cars was the first act, but it was very short. Nonetheless, it was great because the boy really enjoyed seeing Sally, Mater and Lightning McQueen. I think it made his day :) But after that, it was long-drawn performances of The Little Mermaid, Lion King and a very super stretchy Tinkerbell act. There was not Toy Story, which I've been promising him all week :(

He was very interested in Lion King and he especially loved Timon and Pumba, and he's been getting us to Google meerkats and warthogs since. But the majority of the show was very girl-oriented, which left him and us, quite bored. It was a great time no matter what, for the boy, and the programme book that we bought as memorabilia has been flipped to death.

Waiting for the show to begin.

Applauding after the show.

The Tin Man

Chubbs' school held an environmentally-friendly day, where they asked the parents to create costumes for the kids, using recycled material. And Chubbs went as a very loose interpretation as the Tin Man. I used a paper bag for his hat, and cardboard boxes for his armour over the arms and legs. Unfortunately, the tin foil that I covered the suit with, is not a recycled material :(

He loved his suit so much, that he stayed in character and went around walking robotically all the time in school, and also kept his costume on almost the whole time, until he had to go for his gym session.

The Ugly Duckling

For our family day out, we brought Chubbs to see an SRT production of The Ugly Duckling. We got to Robertson Quay early and Chubbs had a great time running around while waiting for the show to begin.

I must say the story was told very well, and the narrator did a fantastic job; her voice was crystal clear, crisp and really pulled the audience in to the story the whole way. We thoroughly enjoyed the whole show, and Chubbs has been asking me to take him back to see it again. I'll try to get the tickets.

After our favourite soba lunch at Paragon, we had to bring Chubbs for one of our least favourite appointments of the year. It was time for the annual echo to check on the status of the holes in his heart.

He did really well, and followed the instructions to keep still throughout the scan; which we didn't expect, and he even surprised his PD, Dr. Chan. But the unfortunate news is, that the two holes is his heart are still there, and they total about 6mm in size. Anything 1cm and above, is considered very serious. So according to the doctor, he'll probably have the holes for the rest of his life, unless we put him through surgery. Not fun either way. We can only pray they'll close up someday soon.

We're at the Zoo Again

Even though we were tired after the carnival, we thought... the weather's good to hit the zoo. So why not?

No strollers nowadays. He walks the whole park on his own.

Almost as big as an elephant's foot.

Acting like the joey; and they were just about the same size.

Our favourite little fella.

A gorgeous tapir.

Carnival 2011

Chubbs' school holds a carnival every year on the weekend just before the March school holidays, and this year, Chubbs attended it for the first time. He was really psyched about it because the marquees were set up outside his classroom since a week prior, and I was telling him about it quite a lot. He was really excited to see his classmates and teachers, and play carnival games, etc.

I wanna be a St. James bear- Take 1.

Slightly better.

Scooping ping-pong balls and winning a prize.

Enticed by the Uncle manning the hoop-throw stand.

Take and throw! He didn't do too well on this though :/

He thoroughly enjoyed the couple of games that he played, and remembers them fondly. We also headed to the jumble sale, where he enjoyed checking out all the toys and books. We picked up a Bob the Builder magnetic puzzle with all the main and supporting characters, a great German wooden puzzle, and a wooden car, which Fuzzy built for the boy. The boy loves puzzles, what can I say. In all, Chubbs had a great time and I'm glad we braved the crowd for this.

Two and a Half, and the New Arrangement

Chubbs has been sleeping in our bed for about two years. For some reason, we always end up sleeping in a H formation, with Fuzzy and I flanking the sides so he doesn't roll off, and Chubbs representing the horizontal line in the H. I sleep with my arms clipped under my thighs so I don't accidentally smack him in the face at night. As you can imagine, I don't get very much sleep. What makes things worse is that Chubbs has very turbulent sleep. So he'll wake every few hours, sit up and fall in any which direction he wishes. And he also enjoys practising 360 degree kicks numerous times in the night. So his feet or head sometimes lands on my nose, in my eye, on my belly, etc. It's weird being kicked awake at 4am, and the first thing I check is, to see if my nose is bleeding or broken. So far, it has bled, but not broke and my lips have been cut and bleeding :( And he has also cultivated the habit of grabbing on to my arm or hand or lying on my shoulder or sprawled out over my tummy when we are sleeping, for comfort. So I can't even scratch an itch, or turn to the side, for fear of waking him up.

My patience is wearing thin, and I need a sound night's sleep! So this is the new arrangement, now that he's two and a half. He sleeps on a king-sized mattress on the floor, next to our bed. And he was really excited about it the first night, until he realised that I won't be sleeping with him. So I held his hand until he fell asleep. All was well, until he woke up a few hours later, and coughed until he vomited because he hasn't recovered from his blocked nose and phlegmy cough. So Fuzzy ended up sleeping with him most of the night to take his temperature and give Panadol when necessary. But nonetheless, it was still a mini success, and fingers crossed that this will give us a good night's rest from now.

Skipped school yesterday because he was feverish. He only ever naps in the day when he's terribly ill :(

Zoo-ing it in the Rain

We haven't been to the zoo in a long, long time. Partly because during the late afternoon in Singapore, it's either blazing 35 degrees celsius, or thunderstorming. Neither of which are ideal for exploring the zoo. But last weekend, we decided to head out even though the skies were dark grey; and was I glad we did.

Chubbs got a great view of all three white tigers lounging for the first time. We even caught one of the tigers nuzzling another, when he was about to move to the back of the enclosure. It was so sweet!

Our favourite's still the pygmy hippos, but unfortunately, their exhibit was closed. However, we spied around, and found a lone pygmy hippo swimming around in a pool. We were mesmerized, watching the hippo use one foot to scoot around gracefully like a ballerina. Too cute!

Chubbs also loved the African penguins. They were huddled together in a group, and the little one sang, "Hold your partner, two by two..." Something he sings in school everyday.

We saw the flamingoes before we left, and heard them sqwaking for the first time too. And near the entrance of the zoo, there's the otter exhibit, which is usually quiet for lack of otter activity. But the rain brought them out to play, and they were swimming happily around, chasing each other and chattering away happily. Never knew that otters sounded like rats.

Chubbs enjoyed himself because he saw and heard many things for the first time. But he was disappointed we didn't get to see animals such as elephants, tigers, lemurs and lions because the rain didn't allow us to venture too far. We'll have to come back soon!

While Mommy Was Out...

This was what the boys were up to, when I met some girlfriends for a Monday night dinner at Newton Hawker Centre.

He asked me later when I was viewing the photos, "Mommy, do you love my hair?"

Scrubbing his face.

The hubby confessed, "I had so much fun bathing him tonight." Awww...