I'm a full-time mummy

I first heard about cleft lip and cleft palate when I was pregnant with Ben in my 2nd trimester. Our gynae mentioned that in one of our monthly check-ups, he will do an ultrasound scan to check whether our baby is normal, in terms of whether he/she has Down syndrome and has cleft lip/palate condition. I was like 'Huh? What?' and read more when I got back home. It is heartbreaking for any parents to see their children having this condition. I came across this website and would like to share with you about "Operation Smile".

Some info about "Operation Smile":

"Operation Smile is a charity organization healing children's smiles, making the world a better place. Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life. 

Since 1982, Operation Smile — through the help of dedicated medical volunteers — has provided more than 2 million patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults born with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities. Thanks to the generosity and spirit of volunteerism shown by our supporters, we heal thousands of children per year. With your help, how many lives can we change tomorrow?"

If you have any relatives or friends who are in college, then this is one of the many ways you can help in supporting this great cause! All you need to do is to rent text books! Yes, you read it correctly!

Some info about CampusBookRentals.com:

"CampusBookRentals.com began renting textbooks in August of 2007. They served thousands and thousands of customers on more than 5,000 different college campuses in the fabulous USA. You can be confident in their customer service and reliability and they work like maniacs to get books to their customers on time, make things right when something goes wrong, and provide fast and responsive customer service.

Every rental comes with a worry free guarantee within the first 30 days of your order if you drop your class or change your mind, you keep more cash in your pocket up front, you can order from the comfort of your home or office, it doesn’t cost a penny to return your rented textbooks when you're done with them (they even provide the package), and you don’t have to worry about disappointing buyback prices at the end of the semester."

The awesome thing about this company is they have officially teamed up with Operation Smile for their 2011 Making a Difference Program. So for EVERY book rented starting now, they will donate a portion of those proceeds to Operation Smile.

Awesome right? So, do go ahead and spread out this news!

It's been a while since I last posted on something related to food, anyway, this post is not even about food but heck, too cumbersome to create a new category and don't feel like it belongs to other parenting categories in my blog, anyway, just read on and enjoy the pictures...

A friend of ours gave us a set of ice cream/popsicle mould few weeks back and hubby tried it by pouring Ribena into it and freezing it for a day before letting Ben tried it. He loves it but it gets really messy and we had to tie a nappy cloth around Ben's neck before he eats the popsicle.

Then I saw this cute ice cream mould on one of the online store which I always frequented and ordered this set of ice cream mould which arrived 2 days later. Then I got down to doing what hubby did and freeze the Ribena for a day before letting Ben tries it.

Tada!!! Cute eh?

Passed it to Ben and he was wondering what was it...

Then he took out the holder and got busy investigating it...

His first taste...

What do you think? He loves it of course!

Btw, there are many more options to play around with popsicle... Milo, chocolate, milk, etc etc...

What other flavors have you tried or came across?

It's now day 25 of me being a mummy to 2 kids.

2 kids!!!!

I still can't believe it.... I have 2 kids now!!

I am still adjusting to the daily activities with 2 kids now...

Ben is into watching Fireman Sam, Bob the Builder, Bert & Ernie's Great Adventure which hubby dutifully downloaded from the Internet and I'm grateful for these shows as Ben learned a lot (in terms of speech, logic, reasoning, ideas) and he could just sit still in front of the TV and watched these shows over and over again.

As for Alyson, she is such a good baby to care for. Only fusses when she wants to nurse or after she poops. Easy peasy baby. She wasn't at all disturbed by the noise her big brother makes most of the time and even tried to check out the source of the noise midway nursing...

And I've started to slowly get back into starting Ben's daily routines (which we always do before Alyson arrives) and one of them is his water pool activities... it needs a bit of an adjustment, especially when Alyson wanted to nurse when Ben is playing in the pool at our balcony.

I tried starting Ben back into his potty training exercise but it's still tedious for me at this moment - for example, I can't drop everything at an instant and run to the bathroom with Ben when he wants to pee. So this activity needs to be slowly introduced over time.

As for Ben's other activities such as reading, sticker book activities and using the iPad (whether for book reading or app games playing), we do that whenever we can.

Other than that, there are the occasional events which is pretty tension and frustrating when both Ben and Alyson wants my attention at the same time and I've only got myself to attend to them. It doesn't happen often (thank God!) but when they happened, it's frustrating! So if my hubby is around, at least I get a bit of a helping hand! Phewww...

Well, that's all the updates for now. Life with 2 kids is a new experience for me and I hope to get the hang of it soon!