I'm a full-time mummy

Ever since I started Ben on solids when he turned 6 months old, I make it a habit to say to him "Let's pray before we eat" which then progressed to "What do we do before we eat?" to which Ben will clasped his hands together with gestures of praying.

Our short and simple meal time prayers for Ben always goes like this:

"Thank you God, bless this food, Amen.".

Check out this video made of Ben showing how he prays when he was 13 months old.

(*Note: You can also click on either pictures below to view the video as well.)

I have had people telling me that we're brainwashing him into Christian beliefs by praying when he doesn't know what and why is it for.

Yes, maybe Ben is still too young to understand the concept and the need to pray and be thankful for things we are blessed with...

But I think exposing him to the idea of praying and giving thanks is a good start.

I find it good to spend a few moments to give thanks to God for the food we have on our table.

For being healthy and happy.

For being blessed with a good life.

What do you think?

Read: Luke 11:1-13 (NIV), Proverbs 15:8 (NIV), Matthew 21:22 (NIV)

P.s: Oh, and did I mentioned that on several occassions when we're in a hurry to eat, Ben actually looks at us and shows us his praying gestures?

That made us stop what we're doing and get down to praying and giving thanks immediately!

I've been listening to this song wayyyyyyyyy too many times lately...

And it is driving me crazy!!!

And its alll thanks to my mischievous little boy...

I don't know what's with him but he is totally ga-ga over Beatle's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" song!

Listening to it for a few times is bearable at first...

And then Ben gets annoying smarter...

He started hinting and signalling to us when he wants us to replay the song.

Right after the song ended (I normally play from Youtube as I've already bookmark the song site on my fave song list), Ben will look at us, left hand clutching his right hand and looked back at our computer. Then he will wait for us to click 'Replay'. If we don't do anything, he will repeat the hand holding gesture, until we replay the song. And this will go on a couple more times until we diverted his attention to something else.

I've uploaded the video of Ben listening to the song into my newly created Youtube account, feel free to go over and check out Ben's hand signals and be amazed!

For those of you who can't view Youtube or are just lazy to go over and check it out, below are some of the snapshots of a video I took of Ben listening to the song and then signalling to me to replay the song when it ended.

This was a few seconds before the song ended...

Saw that hand signal?

Ben shoved his right arm closer to my face when I pretended not to see his hand signals...

Still holding on... and waiting for me to click replay...

This is what I get when he gets frustrated after I ignored him again...

He really shoved his hands closer to my face to prove his point...

I ended up replaying the song cos he started to press and smack my laptop keys...

Garggggghhhhh!!!

I really gotta look for new songs to change Ben's 'addiction' to this Beatle song! Any suggestions?

We went out for a late lunch at a shopping mall near our place to celebrate hubby's 30th birthday. We stopped by at one of those machine rides for Ben to play for a while. He loves Elmo so this is kinda nice!

Ben: "Mummy, how come my hair is not as curly as Big Bird's?"

Hubby choosing his set meal at Kenny Roger restaurant while Ben looked around...

Ben decided to go for something healthier...

Then we went to the supermarket in the shopping mall and let Ben play with those ride on tikes for a while...

He still doesn't know how to cycle the bike yet.

And I finally got hubby's birthday present! Star Craft 2 (aka SC2) was released on 27th July 2010 but hubby wanted to wait a bit to check the reactions from the buyers, in case there are any restrictions to Asean countries when playing this game, etc, etc..

Birthday man posing with his pressie while standing next to the SC2 bunting poster!

Hubby showing the inside look of the game box...

After that we went to the mini playground outside Toys' R Us and Ben checked out one of those game rides... You have to pay a certain amount of money to ride on one of these. We didn't let Ben tried cos he's not comfortable riding on moving machine rides yet (we know cos we tried a day before on one of those machine rides, paid a dollar and Ben jumped out just few seconds after the machine start moving! I think he's not used to it yet...)

Ben seems to like this... Hmm, not bad, good taste actually! Hahahaha...

All in all, it was a relaxing birthday outing for us, with a bit of exception when Ben was playfully testing out his squealing and high pitch sound capability at Kenny Roger's restaurant.

Again, happy birthday to my hubby and I'm positively sure he's totally enjoying his birthday gift now!