I'm a full-time mummy

Yes, ladies and gentlemen... my almost 4 years old boy finally weaned from breastfeeding.

Yes, you read that right. Almost 4 years old. He's 46 months old now in case you are wondering. 2 months shy to being a 4 years old kiddo.

What do I feel? Oh well... it took me sometime to acknowledge this is happening. Correction, that this has happened.

It took me some time to write this down that I have weaned my first child.

I feel sad of course, Benjamin is my first child, the one who started our breastfeeding journey. One of the reasons I quit my IT job is to breastfeed him for at least 6 months and then decided to continue once I became a SAHM.

The ups and downs (well, honestly, mostly ups!), I direct latched him and demand fed him and he nursed through my pregnancy. Yes, nursed THROUGHOUT my 2nd pregnancy.

I cannot forget how disgusted I felt, how I was mad and angry at him for wanting to nurse when we brought Alyson back home from hospital. I don't understand why just months before giving birth to my 2nd child, I was so eager and anticipating a tandem nursing journey and the moment Alyson was born, I never imagined I could feel the complete opposite.

That I hated Benjamin for still wanting to nurse. That he's stealing all of mummy's milk and starving his baby sister.

I don't know why I have all the hatred and disgusted feelings until I researched more and finally acknowledging that I have nursing aversion and that I am struggling and trying to cope with tandem nursing..

And the moment I acknowledged that, I felt a burden lifted off my shoulders and realised all the hatred and disgust were just in my head. My poor boy doesn't know what he did wrong to have mummy being so angry at him everytime he asked for his feed.

I thank God it only took me 1 month to get over my nursing aversion (I read online a lot of tandem nursing mothers takes months, some more than a year to get over the aversion)

So, since then, Benjamin, Alyson and I continued on our tandem nursing journey.

I have always stressed to anyone asking me on weaning my boy that I am practising the 'Don't offer, don't refuse' method.

Meaning, I do not offer my child their feed. But if they ask for it, I will not refuse it either. It has been that way and everything is fine and dandy.

I do not believe in stopping the feeding just because I am pregnant or just because my child gets past 1 year, 2 years, 3 years and so on.

I do not believe that nursing beyond toddlerhood means the child is going to go on forever and ever.

I do not believe in all those crap.

I believe in letting my child decides when to stop.

I believe that when they are older enough, they know when to stop.

And so we come back to my post today...

My boy has finally weaned at 45 months old.

I teared when I think of him no longer needing to suckle from mummy.

I teared when I remember back our breastfeeding journey.

How I could easily comfort his pain, fears, discomforts, fuss, crankiness with my breastmilk...

How my boy falls asleep after nursing from mummy...

All by breastmilk. And no formula at all in the house since we brought him home back from hospital in March 2009.

But I tell myself this also means my boy is growing up and moving on to other exciting milestones! So yes, this full-time mummy has got to learn to let go...

Oh heck... typing this post makes me tear up too...

I just want to write this down so that Benjamin knows mummy truly cherished our breastfeeding journey together and that nothing will change any of this. We still move on with our life and continue enjoying our bonding and mummy hopes that he will understand and appreciate what we have been through.

I just mentioned few days ago that I don't often received pitch email asking me to review iPad apps with the promo code given along as well and that when I do get emails like this, I feel obligated to redeem it and try it out and then share my feedback. And then I got this email asking me to review this app. I checked out the app in details as 'Stone Soup' sounds weird, I mean, stone soup?! Really?! Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: Stone Soup
* Price: $1.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Jan 12, 2013
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 144 MB
* Language: English, Chinese
* Seller: Zhong Ming
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

Description from the product page:

"One night, three rabbits arrived at a small village. They hoped that they could stay in the village for one night, but when they arrived in the village, they found that all of the windows were shut, and all of the lights were turned off. They thought that all of the people in the village were selfish and refused to accept others and could not be happy. Therefore, the three rabbits decided to cook stone soup in order to attract the attention of the villagers, who then joined the cooking voluntarily. With the proceeding of the plot, the readers can join the animal characters in the story and learn to be generous and ready to help others in order to have joy and happiness. The Stone Soup is not only inspiring to children but also worth reading and reflection by every adult. Caring about others can make you happy and your life will be more beautiful if you treat it with sincerity and honesty. "

* The animation on this story app is fantastic and cute!

* I love that we can also touch certain objects on the screen and I spent quite some time playing with this particular page below, was just amazed at the sun rising and setting and the shadows cast on the scenery is just amazing!

* I like the storyline where it tells how 3 rabbits got the villagers who are selfish and not friendly to turn the opposites at the end by cooking up a unique stone soup.

* One thing that got me annoyed in this story app is the loud music background. I think it will be much much better if the background music is lowered down quite a bit as it currently overshadows the narrator's voice.

* I took the opportunity in this app to teach my almost 4 years old boy how important it is to share what we have and to make friends.

You can purchase the "Stone Soup " app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"

I first saw a picture of this cute doggy cookies on my SAHM group network on FB and decided to give this a try after getting the recipe. It was such a coincidence as well because I asked my almost 4 years old boy what animals he like and he said 'Dog!' There's a slight variation to the original recipe as I added blended Cornflakes to my dough to give it a crunchy feel. So here it goes:

PREPARATION TIME: ABOUT AN HOUR

Ingredients / Tool Required:

What to Do?

* Sift flour and sugar. Add Cornflakes and chopped soft butter. Rub in with fingers until they resemble bread crumbs.
* Add 1/2 tablespoon of very cold water and vanilla essence and knead lightly. Let dough rest for 10 minutes.
* Take a tablespoon of the dough, put in about 2-3 pieces of chocolate chips in the dough and wrap them into a ball. Decorate the dough with 2 pieces of Koko Krunch cereal as the doggy's ears and put 1 chocolate chip as the doggy's nose. I also put some chocolate rice as the doggy's eyes.

BAKING PROCESS

So there you go.... my DOGGIES COOKIES recipe!

To view my other recipes, feel free to hop over to my Recipe Library page for more info!

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