Tantrum-ing

An era of willfulness has begun with our little guy. He has this strange stubbornness about doing things his way. Strange not because he is stubborn but more in terms of the things he is insistent about. Like the other day when he went downstairs with his dad after his nap and I lie down in bed for a while before going down. When he saw me, he insisted that I should go back upstairs and rest in bed. When I refused, that’s when the kicking and whining started.

This evening it was about wanting his dad to carry him up while he tries to crawl into the dryer. And after that wanting to go to ‘sleep’ at 5:30pm. (Fat chance!) and again, when he wanted to toss his ‘nice pillow in kitchen’.

Aww, our little guy is growing up so quickly. He’s also awfully cute and sweet. Now he can sit down and pay with his magnetic trains for half an hour all by himself; brought me his blue bus and said it was ‘meat and rice’ and fed me ‘yummies’; ditto with cupcake and pizza; the sheer delight when I built a “sand” castle of blocks around him the very first time.

2012

And so 2012 begins. I didn’t have any resolutions last year, nor the 10 years before that. I figured it was pretty pointless to have resolutions that I don’t work on fulfilling. Why set myself up for failure? I guess for someone who’s a total planner type, I don’t have life goals that stretch further than a few months. Then again, perhaps it is under the influence of J that I’m more laid back than before.

Thinking back on 2011, many things happened. I went back to work after more than 1 years haitus to be a full time mother. 7 months later, our family moved here to the US and start out little adventure together. I discovered that I’m a better chef than I gave myself credit for; that I’m growing to be like my mother; that I actually enjoy life as a stay at home mom; that I can enjoy running (in small doses).

2012 will be much of the same I think. We’ll watch our little boy grow and marvel at the joy he brings to our lives.

Back on the Run

I’ll start by saying that I used to hate running. All those times we had to attend Physical Ed and run laps were seriously painful. I’ve always thought the last thing i’d ever do is run. So I surprise even myself by taking up running after more than 10 years of avoiding it. Of course the little belly I’m starting to grow is a big motivation to get myself going. Seriously, now that I’m in charge of all the cooking, I can’t help but make food that I like and end up eating a good portion more than I should. All those desserts I’ve been learning to make certainly isn’t helping. Being in the big 3 doesn’t help as well. The cold weather is encouraging my body to send me the ‘eat, eat, eat’ signals as well.

So with the odds against me, I decided that I desperately need to exercise. The first time I ran here, the cold air was a nice fresh change to the heat and dampness i was accustomed to. It was still a tough start but I managed about 10 mins with minimal walking. It seems like I was so bothered by the hot sweaty feeling when I ran in singapore than I feel tired much faster then. And so here I am, on my second week of running around the campus every alternate day. I’m feeling rather proud of myself for keeping up with it. I can feel my stamina building up already. Hopefully, with a more deliberate portion control, I’ll keep the dreaded fatty tissues from accumulating. At any rate, the running will definitely be good for my overall health.

Words to Melt a Mummy’s Heart (2)

I was reading a book while Calvin plays with his papa. Suddenly, Calvin clambers over his papa to reach me, then proceeded to snuggle in my lap and said ‘Love you, mama”. Awwww, I’ll forgive all those late night kicks, accidental punches and that hard slam of the bathroom door on my ear.

The Domestic Life

I baked yet another cake today. This time for Johnny’s birthday. The cake looks much better than the first creation which was undercooked the first round and I had to keep putting it back in the oven, take it out, do a ‘chopstick’ test ( instead of a toothpick test) the cake is supposed to be done when the toothpick/ chopstick comes out clean, with no dough clinging on to it. I repeated it so many times I gave up in the end and went to bed. That cake turned out ok in the end, ugly but delectable. We’ll have to see how this one fares tomorrow. I didn’t bother with the icing or decoration since I personally dislike the creamy stuff on cakes anyway. So it’s a boring brown cake. Given that we normally don’t even celebrate our birthdays proper, this is already a step up.

It feels so strange though to be back in the US, living essentially campus life again but everything is so different now. For starters, I’m not even a student. I’m just another one of those wives who followed their phd- pursuing husbands here and taking care of the little one. I cook almost all the time now vs having takeouts/ boxed dinners last time. Sometimes when I see the young uni students on the bus, I feel so strange that I was once like that – youthful, naive and full of unfocused ideals.

Calvin turned two

We can’t believe how fast 2 years went by. We didn’t really have a big birthday bash. It was just the three of us, a small apple swirl cake made by yours truly and a very happy boy who suddenly received a new box of fire engine toy because it’s his birthday. I highly doubt he knew what was going on at all. His papa’s been busy with a class project the past week ( and is still working hard on it as I type) so he hasn’t had as much time with papa as he would have liked. The weather is mercifully good though so I’ve been able to bring him out for walks.

He’s justsuch a cut little fellow that I find it hard to deny him, though sometimes we must, for his own sake. I would hate it if our indulgences turns him int a spoiled brat. But he’s such a good little trooper most of the time like when we were at a store and he saw an RC car, he started to put it into my cart. Wen I took it out and gently reminded him that mama needs to finish his shopping, I was surprised that he willingly left the items behind.

He is such a ‘TV’ addict though. Everyday, he wil clamor to watch his videos on my iPad. His favorites are Chuggington and word world – not that we have much else for him to watch. Every day after he finishes his allotted half hour to one hour viewing, he never fails to cry/ whine/ tantrum about it. He’s even started singing the chuggington theme song while playing with his trains; pretending that an empty toothpaste box is Actin chugger and making us sing the actin chugger song for him; reenacting his favorite scene where Harrison, a blue train is stuck in the snow and Coco plus a lot of other trains pulls him out.

He still reads a lot everyday. By that I mean he gets read to. ‘more books’, says the little emperor. He loves our visits to the library, though it makes me feel rather guilty when he’s looking for a book we’ve borrowed before and I have to tell him that they are at the library.

He’s also taken to sleeping in either of our arms. It’s rather endearing but it does get tiring when you really want to get something done but he keeps waking up wanting to be held… But I guess even this phase won’t last so might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

Words to melt a Mummy’s heart

Our little guy loves his daddy. So much so that it makes the mummy sometimes feel exasperated and sulky about it, but the other day, he did something just for mum.

We have two child sized wooden chairs, one of which we finally assembled after some long procrastination. So Calvin sat on it to give it a test run. His dad sat on it too. I was sitting on the floor, feigning sadness and said ‘oh, mama has no chair. She’ll just have to sit on the floor in a corner’ and started to give a good sulky performance. Then little Calvin gave his papa a little shove. ‘Pushes,’ he says. When the seat is vacant, he points to it and says ‘Mama sit’. Aww, my dear boy, I’ll forgive all the monkeying you ever did.

A busy busy baker is me!

Since Johnny started putting more hours into his studies (a much needed change), I’ve been busy with taking care of Calvin, cooking and the general upkeep of the household. But that isn’t stopping me from baking 2 to 3 half loafs of the no-knead bread every week. I feel kinda hippy doing all these cooking from scratch stuff since I was getting sick of reading labels off the bread in the supermarket every week to make sure there’s no High Fructose Corn syrup. What’s worst, i end up with yucky bread pretty often coz I’ll pick the lowest price loaf with the decent ingredients. So on to more baking it is. It’s good that I can sneak in things like flaxseed and even oats into the homemade bread as well.

I’m quite surprised at how well my culinary experiments are panning out. The recipe with white flour tastes just like those artisan bread you get from fancy restaurants – crispy crust and chewy crumb. The apple pie experiment last time went well too. The recipe I got online made a really great apple crumble pie, except that the calories in that measly pie kinda freaked me out and I’m sure I really want my waistline to endure all that.

Which reminds me of the Halloween trick or treat a the uni on Monday. We brought Calvin to look around 6pm which was near the end of the session. There were so many kids in hilarious outfits like skunk, beefy super hero, jedi, king kong and of course hanging on to their buckets of candy. We saw quite a few gobbling down candy as they walk and I was wondering how they were going to eat any dinner. Now I’m starting to get worried about Calvin when he is old enough to know what modern day Halloween means. I’m not sure I’m even getting him a costume unless he asks for one? Well, we’ll see how it goes. I was almost tempted to get him a crummy stiff number that was on clearance (it was at least a rocket which fits into his current vehicle craze) but J being the guy who’s not blinded by the 70% off sign just says no which dissuaded me easily.

Running

And our little boy has begun running. The thing is he not only likes to run, he insists on us running with him. “mama run” and then “papa, run” says the little dictator. The same goes for spinning until he is dizzy and dancing (aka disturbing our basement neighbors by stomping all over).

Johnny has been settling into his new routine of being a grad student, putting in more hours on work and shifting away from the more passive laid-back style he’s enjoyed as a research fellow for the last 2 years. That means I’ve also been spending more time taking care of the little tike. Seems like little Calvin is getting more attached to me recently, he’s a little more cling than before — calling for me before sleeping (for his bottle of milk most likely) or looking for me even when spending time with his papa. It’s kinda sweet really.

I’ve also been venturing into cooking different things like roasted chicken (hmm crispy roasted chicken skin is great!), baked European style pancakes, banana cookies, chocolate chip cookies, baked crispy tuna, roasted pumpkin, baked Cajun fries etc. I’ll try some apple pie later this week when I have the time. After reading all the labels and discovering high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil in almost everything, I’ve become more motivated to cook from scratch, not just the main meals but also some snacks and desserts. Of course, the cost savings however minute is a welcomed bonus. I’ve been clipping coupons to try and cut down our food prices but most are indeed for processed food which we don’t eat much of. I did manage to score a lot of cheap toiletries though, like razors and shampoo etc, but even then I can’t stop the niggling feeling that I should be using organic ones instead.

Will post a picture of the cutie running when Johnny comes back with the laptop. Oh, how he has grown. I managed to cut his hair yesterday while he was distracted watching chuggington on my iPad. Even while watching his fav videos, he could not stop wriggling around when I clipped his hair. He is one tough customer indeed. I didn’t do too shabby a job all things considering. Not a very stylish haircut but functional at least.

Tadah

Calvin stands at the bathtub waiting for his bath (or rather bath toys). He was holding a long piece of cardboard from the packaging of the wooden chairs we bought for him. We were preparing his clothes etc in another room. As we walk in, he proclaimed ‘ta dah’ while brandishing his little sword/ club, holding it up high before lowering it again to repeat another ‘tadah’ for us in case we missed the first one. Oh my adorable Calvin. =)

P.s. After 2 months J’s books finally arrive from Singapore. OMG. We are still waiting for one more bag.