I'm a full-time mummy

Earlier this month, I received an email from Sean, the the creator of O Story Story which is a series of digital picture books developed for preschool aged children after I saw their pitch on Twitter. After some email exchange between us, I was offered the opportunity to review their app! Anyway, my review as below...

* Title: Wendy's Giant List
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Entertainment
* Updated:  Nov 10, 2011
* Version: 1.0.3
* Size: 62.2 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Endemol USA, Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Description from the product page:

"Wendy’s Giant List is a wonderfully fun interactive picture book for pre-K children. The story contains 26 pages of beautifully hand drawn illustration, nearly a hundred interactive touch points and an embedded match game. Narration is accompanied by highlighted words to reinforce word recognition. Developed to support the young reader. This story is sure to please kids and parents alike! "

During our first try with this app, Ben lost his attention within 5 seconds and goes on to play with his other toys. I continued on with the app myself and realised why Ben reacted that way. He does not get the connection as the main character in this app is a little girl. No, we're not being sexist, just that Ben reacts better if the character is a boy or has boy stuff in it (cars, trains, robots etc)

I tried the app again with him a week later (under the Read to Me mode) and voila, he sat still and listened to the story from the beginning till the end. I kept his attention on the app by asking him to point out objects in the page as story goes along.

Ben even repeated some of the things mentioned in the story like when Wendy's mum asked her whether she's ready for her nap, and Ben said 'Mummy asked nap?'. I was surprised that he listened attentively and tried to repeat what he heard.

Later in the day, we tried the app under 'I Can Read' mode and there are more things to be discovered! Objects with a small heart icon on it can be touched and will display either the sound or actions. Really cute!

What's good?

* It is engaging and interactive and I love that we can also touch the objects in each page on the screen.

* I like the storyline of how many things this little girl by the name of Wendy did before she finally got ready for her nap, kinda like my toddler, so I guess in that way, my toddler can relate himself to Wendy hehehe...

* I totally heart the illustrations, simple hand drawing but has a very whimsical feel.

* I also like the matching game that comes along with this app and Ben is slowly getting the hang of this game.

Room for Improvement?

* I would prefer if the animation moves slower in the 'Read to Me' mode. 

To summarise this review, I'd say this app is going to last for a long time on our iPad as there are so many things to be discovered over and over again everytime you go through the book! I can't wait for their next series to come out and hopefully will be given the opportunity to review them too! *hint*hint*

You can purchase the " Wendy's Giant List " app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor 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"

The moment your child started eating meals like you, desserts become meaningless when you eat out as a family.

You know why???

The moment you ordered something that comes with complimentery desserts, your child will kidnap your desserts and claimed it as theirs.

And despite attempts to get their attention off the desserts, they shot you pitiful looks that you just can't ignore.

Leaving you fuming because you barely get to admire the beauty of the desserts that is supposed to be yours and then they bug you to feed them THEIR desserts.

So, moral of the story is:

Make sure your hubby's meal comes with desserts so that you can kidnap his!

I have waited a while to write this post about Alyson's prolonged jaundice. I write it now as I'm seeing signs of recovery  after 2 months and I've got pictures to show it. Plus I would prefer to let her heal first then tell people about it than having more people to advise and suggesting things for us to do and making me more worried...

Now back to how it all began... We started noticing Alyson still being yellow on day 6. With Ben, we have already admitted him to the neonatal ICU (that's the only place with the bili lights) on day 5 and Ben was much much yellower than Alyson. Plus, Alyson was still alert, active, feeding, pooping and sleeping like normal with no signs of fever or anything.

But still, on day 6 we brought her to see our paed, Dr. Lam. He was a 70+ old man who is a professor in one of the leading university hospital. According to him, since it was already 6, the jaundice would have already peaked and stabilising now. He did mentioned that if we were still worried, we could bring her to the hospital. We didn't but we do continue to monitor her situation daily and even brought her out to sunbath every now and then (I actually woke up few days in a row around 7-8am in the morning and sat her on my lap and basked in the morning light)

At almost 1 month, Alyson is still yellow. To be honest, I was not at all worried but as I posted more and more pictures of her on my Facebook and we started going out as a family of 4 after 1 month, I kept hearing friends and even strangers telling me 'She looks yellow. How many weeks is she now?' and I had to explain everything. Over and over again.

As time goes by, I got worried as I kept getting and hearing and explaining about the prolonged jaundice.

Then I had to go for my 6 weeks postnatal check-up at the hospital where I delivered both Ben and Alyson. My gynae immediately wrote me a referral letter and postphoned my check-up and told me to get my daughter checked instead because he said my daughter looks yellow and for a 1 month old baby it is not normal.

Oh, gee! Thank you for quadrupling my worries and fears! I was herded along to register her and let the staff nurse took her blood and urine sample for testing after consultation with one of the paed there as according to the paed doctor there, jaundice after 1 month is ABNORMAL. The doctor said it could be caused by urinary tract infection, hepatitis B or thyroid. He also mentioned breastmilk jaundice and immature kidneys.

Now, I don't know how the blood and urine sample was taken as I was told to wait outside the procedure room. We have to wait for 1 week to find out the results.

One week after that, I called up the hospital to find out the results. According to the nurse in-charge, Alyson's blood test was OK but there are traces of E.Coli germs in her urine and we were advised to go to hospital to collect this antibiotics for her (to finish in 7 days) after which, another urine test will be repeated to find out whether the germs are still there or not. I tried calling our own paed to seek his opinion for the next few days but nobody pick up the phone (turns out our paed was involved in a minor accident and then we had a public holiday as well which is why there's nobody at the clinic)

We then decided to take the antibiotics and started her on it the next day. For twice a day I had to measure the antibiotics and gave it to her orally via a plastic syringe. I tried some and it was sweet. No problem at all for her taking it though it pains me to see her taking medicine at a young age and we really do not want her to rely on antibiotics if possible.

At 2 months, we brought Alyson to our paed for her monthly vaccination and I told our paed what happened. He advised us to reconsider going for the subsequent test as firstly, we do not know how the urine sample was collected in the first place. Now nobody is saying the hospital lacks of standard or anything, but according to our paed, in order to test the urine properly, the hospital staff need to collect the urine from the purest and cleanest environment, meaning no touching other body regions or even diapers, meaning it should be taken from the urethra itself.

Everybody has germs and if not collected properly, there are bound to be germs in the urine. What if the subsequent test revealed germs again? Higher or stronger antibiotics then? My paed gave his diagnosis as immature liver for our girl because for a 2 month old baby who is eating, sleeping, peeing, pooping and active all the while and even gaining weight about 40g daily, why worry?!

Btw, my paed's grandson had jaundice for 3 months and like Alyson, was otherwise healthy, thriving and normal so they just waited it out.

Sigh... we then decided NOT to go to hospital for the repeated urine test and let it be. And guess what, these few days, I did noticed there are no more yellow tinge in her eyes. Antibiotics working? Liver maturing? Only God knows but I for sure would not want to put my girl under anymore medication or procedures unless it was absolutely necessary.

I mean come to think of it, she is healthy and active and normal. Why oh why do we go for the antibiotics?

So, here is the post to document down what happened. Of course, I don't mean to say that all prolonged jaundice case are normal but for our case, if we only have stronger faith and confidence (we did since we didn't rush her to hospital like Ben's case)

So there you go... my girl is a such a fighter!

Sorry Alyson, mummy put you under unnecessary medications!

Thank God for healing you!