I'm a full-time mummy

Fearless four? Yes, he tells me often 'Mummy, I'm not scared! God protect me!'

Funny four? Yes, he tells me jokes and laughed at his own jokes too.

Fickle four? Oh yes, one second he tells me 'No!' and then he said 'I want, I want!'

Furious four? When he is in his tantrum phase, oh boy... he gets angry and stomps his feet huffing and puffing and sometimes jut out his tongue and tried to spit...

Whatever it is, my baby boy is FOUR YEARS OLD today!!!

Time flies so so so freakingly fast now that I see him turning 4 years old. No longer the sweet chubby cuddly baby that I remembered him as.

So many beautiful journey I have with my boy, breastfeeding him since day 1 until he weaned himself at 45 months old.

Co-sleeping with him still (for now) and watching him progress slowly and successfully potty trained him before he turned 4 years old.

Yes, my baby boy is potty trained now! Pee, poo, whatever it is... he is off diapers the whole day in the house and out in public and he slept through without any accidents. (OK, we do sometimes woke him up around 3am to get him to pee mid sleep if we know he had some water before he sleeps)

He is pretty much independent nowadays, choosing to bath himself, even wiping himself dry with his towel, wearing his own clothes and pants.

I am so freakingly proud of my baby boy.

Happy birthday sweety!

Mummy, daddy & Alyson love you awfully so so so much!

Read: Psalm 112:1-2 (NIV), Psalm 127:3 (NIV), Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)

My almost 4 years old boy is very into soldier toys lately. You know those bucket soldier toys like those you see in Toy Story? Anyway, Ben had quite a lot of these toys as he get tons of hand-me-down soldier toys from our SIL last year. I'm not sure what sparked his craze lately but it is magnificent to see his arrangements of the soldier toys lately. Here, have a look and see what I meant...

I'm just amazed at the way he arranged each and every soldier, the way they stand and facing which directions...

The way he made the ladder bridge from his train tracks and how he balanced the bridge with some Uno Stacko bricks...

The way he made bridge from train tracks and played everywhere he pleases...

Underneath my working table and even kitchen...

Awesome right? So is your child like this too?

Now that I've learned to make a few soup from the recipes shared by my hubby, I love it! I love that I'm finally cooking something for the family (instead of just for my kiddos) and I love seeing my children slurping the soup.

One obvious reason I'm very determined to make soup is my 17 months old girl loves to eat rice. And when I said rice, I meant, plain rice. No matter how you add in chunks or pieces of meat or tofu or eggs or veggies, she will just pushed those aside and eat... RICE. When I first highlighted this to hubby, he said 'All the more you need to make soup so you can pour the soup over her rice and she still gets the goodness of the soup!'

I don't believe it at first. I've always believe that soup is just water boiled for hours with meats and veggies inside. Just water. Then hubby told me that when you boil meat bones (such as pork or chicken) with vegetables, the marrows from the bones will retain in the soup and we get the nutrients from the soup after that. You can read more on the benefits on bone broth/soup here.

I was convinced then and so far, I've made soup 4 times and everytime, my kids finished their meals. And the following morning, I use the leftover soup as the base when I cooked noodles as breakfast for my kiddos. Which they happily eat finish and even slurped all the soup away. Beats making anchovy soup to be honest! And my almost 4 years old boy telling me 'Mmmm... mummy the soup is nice! I love it!' is just wonderful!

I was so determined to make soups more often for the family (at least 3 times a week is my target) that one day, I woke up early and told hubby to watch after the kiddos (still asleep) while I hurried off to the nearest wet market and bought about 2 weeks supply of pork bones to make soup. I was so desperate to get the pork bones that I even parallel parked my car successfully (after 2 rounds around the market area and couldn't find a nice parking spot and yes, I really failed at parallel parking) because time is running out (scared kiddos awake, scared no more pork bones left).

Anyway, I got what I wanted and am very happy that I'm finally learning to cook for the family (soups for now), slow start but better than nothing right?