Little Drummer Girl

About 3 months back, we took Eryn out to the Meadjohnson Smart Camp at Midvalley. We had the special privilege to enter the place at 9:30am before the opening launch to the public. There were activities organised for kids in the area of music, education and creative play.

There was a self-made set of drums, made of pails, plastic covers and with a wooden 'spade' as the drumsticks. Eryn was enjoying herself and playing the drum when a camera was set on her. She looked so cute on the drum set and later that night, Eryn was seen featured on the national news playing the drums.

At home, she takes out whatever she can get from the kithen and create her own musical world, hitting on a pot, clashing some plastic bowls, hitting on the colanders, spoons, etc.

Here goes the little drummer girl...

Boyz II Men

Quite recently, I had the opportunity to meet Boyz II Men up close and personal. I loved their older albums and their songs are part of my favourite collection - A Song for Mama, End of the Road, I'll Make Love to You, On Bended Knee, One Sweet Day....

I don't have any specific favourite singer or groups and mostly go for songs that I like. I've met a few artistes and singers but meeting Boyz II Men is like a dream come true.

Babysmooches in Her World

I've just received a surprise email on BABYSMOOCHES blog being featured in the May 2006 issue of Her World's magazine. Oh, how honoured I feel.... Thanks for the highlight, Her World...

Times Square display

I too joined the gang in posting some shots to TIME Magazine's Person of the Year for display in Times Square, New York. Didn't expect the reply to come back on the day itself.

Here's two of the shots :

Brendan on Times Square, 14th December 2005

Eryn on Times Square, 14th December 2005

Prizes in parenting mags.

After reading Loc Kee's blog about his SweetSweet winning some interesting prizes, it brought back memories of how I used to get lots of freebies for Brendan.

Well, I subscribed to a local parenting mag just before the birth of Brendan at a cheap-cheap rate of only RM3.++ per issue for one year (a special rate given to me by someone I know). So, I took the opportunity to send in some photos in some of the various contest form available. The various magazine features has so far entitled me to prizes ranging from baby toiletries from Johnson & Johnson (got that twice in 2 separate occasions), Crabtree & Evelyn and Do Re Mi products, Anmum milk, Fernleaf milk - kids and adults (got that twice - gave two tins away and haven't even finish the ones I have at home yet), Heinz baby jar food, Scotts Emulsion and Sweet Cherry products.

one thing I noticed about these magazines is that there's always a "pull" effect. When my subscription ended, I stopped buying the magazine until a friend said that Brendan's feature was in one of the mag. So, I went out to buy the mag. And since I bought the mag, I sent in some left-over photos (one of it more than a year old) to just simply "try my luck". Mana tau, the photos were published again, AND again, AND again.. It's like a never-ending cycle. Good ways to get people to buy your mags isn't it? To be fair to baby Eryn, I should also be sending in photos of her. Hmm....

Here's one of Brendan's "priceless moments" :




Mother & Baby Magazine
June 2004 issue
say hello to... contest
photo of Brendan taken at 2 months old

and another one :

Parenthood Magazine
April 2005 issue
Wild Wild Wet! contest
photo of Brendan taken at 11 months old

Childhood Games

Once, I was sitting down watching Brendan playing with some older kids (well, he was trying to mix in with the older boys but I don't think they even know he exists. Brendan always prefer older children) when I heard laughters and screams from another group of children, playing catching. This brought me back to my childhood memories.

The game of catch or Police & Thief as what my cousins and I called it (in mandarin) used to be one of our main games whenever we were at my grandparent's house. My grandparents used to stay in a huge wooden kampung house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ample space and lots of trees. My cousins and I had a fun time running around the whole house playing that. This used to be one crazy game coz the 'police' will try to catch all the 'thieves' to be brought back to the jailhouse, which is drawn as a circle on the sand. The 'thieves' can only be released when they are tagged by another thief.

One of my all-time favourite is Belon-Acah (also known as galah panjang) which I used to play with my cousins on weekends and in school on weekdays. Everyday before school starts, my schoolmates and I will divide outselves into two groups to play this game. As a school sprint runner, I always managed to sprint my way through the square boxes. We'll play till we're all sweaty and when the school bell rings, everyone will line-up to enter our own respective classes with sweaty and flushed faces and wet uniforms.

For a not so hyper-game, we will choose to play guli (marbles), kite or the chicken feather game. On rainy weekends, we opted for Batu Seremban or bottle caps.

We normally play guli by digging holes in the sand (my grandparent's house are full of sandy area) with the intention of hitting our gulis with other gulis and subsequently into a hole.

For the kite and chicken feather game, we'll find old newspaper, kayu lidis, strings, chicken feathers, rubber pieces (to stuck the chicken feathers) and make our own kites and chicken feather item. It's kind of a surprise that our kites can sometimes fly up so high in the sky. The chicken feather game (don't know what it's really called) requires us to use the side of our feet to hit the item straight up in the air as many times as possible and not letting it drop down to the ground. The person who can do it the most times win the game.

Batu Seremban and the bottle caps are my favourites as well. I normally play these games with my female cousins. We will hand-sew pieces clothes and fill it with some red seeds (it comes from one type of tree) collected at my grandparent's house. Alternatively, we filled it with sand. This is one game which I'll definitely play with my gal when she's bigger. {Ivy, we should keep this game going.. :)}

Come CNY, we always keep those undented bottle caps to play. Each game requires 5 caps to play.

Some other games we played are congkak, rubber band throwing (using rubberband to "top" on another rubberband to gain more rubber bands), "bao-fu" (spiders which we catch from pandan leaves), one-legged catch, hide-and-seek and other stuffs like climbing rambutan and playing house on the mango tree. There's also another game which I can't remember the name where we draw boxes on the sand, and we throw a stone to one of the boxes and we jump on one leg into each individual boxes.

Speaking of rubber bands, I love the game of Zero Thousand (or Zero Point) where we'll use rubber bands and tie them up into a long rubber rope. We are to cross and jump over the rubber band rope which is held by two persons. The initial stage of the game starts from the ground and then the rope will be raised to the ankle, knee, buttocks, waist, chest, shoulder, ear and finally the head.

Most of these games are divided into teams and the selection of team members are via lat-talilat, tali-tamplong! (palms up or palms down), or one-two-zom! (stone/fist "kills" bird, bird "kills" paper/palms open, paper "kills" stone).

Those were the days.........

Babies and sixth sense

Published in THE STAR ( StarTwo, Page 17 )
Thursday March 24, 2005
by Sharon Boo

What is it with babies and their sixth sense? I’ve always been amazed at how babies and toddlers just seem to know what’s going on around them even from the time they are newborns.

They know when mummy is not in the room, or when you are about to sit down after cradling them to sleep while walking up and down the room. And then they kick up a fuss.
Last night, about half an hour before my hubby and I left for Kuala Lumpur, our 16-month-old son, Brendan, suddenly tried to draw our attention by telling us to play the piano for him, showing us how he drives a car using an empty tin cover as a steering wheel, asking daddy to carry him, tugging at my dress and patting my seven months pregnant tummy.

And then he suddenly sat beside me and kept very quiet and stared blankly at the television. I turned to look at him and saw tears welling up in his eyes. Clearly, something was disturbing him. He knew that daddy and mummy were leaving for KL, despite us not telling him beforehand.

After two days of crazy laughter and fun with daddy and mummy (Brendan is in Johor under the good care of my parents), sleeping at 1am because he wants to play with daddy and mummy, he suddenly felt lonely again (well, at least for a while because when I called the following day, he was back to his normal self, carrying on with his everyday life of playing and doing everything a toddler does).

We finally left my parent’s place at 8.30 that night and Brendan just stared at us. He didn’t cry, didn’t make a fuss and didn’t smile. He gave us never-ending flying kisses with that "staring into space" look in his eyes. That broke my heart.

Until now, I am still trying to hold back my tears in public, thinking of that one moment when I turned to see tears in Brendan’s eyes. He was trying hard not to cry and behaving like an older kid instead of a 16-month-old toddler!

What is it with a baby and his sixth sense?

Anyway, on a lighter note, daddy and mummy were sitting side by side earlier in the day with tummies exposed.

Brendan was patting mummy’s tummy and as usual, giving hugs and planting wet kisses on mummy’s big tummy when daddy said: "Brendan, come kiss baby in daddy’s tummy too!"
He just looked at daddy’s tummy and pushed it away. He poked at daddy’s navel, touched daddy’s tummy and hit it and started smiling, as though trying to tell us that there’s no baby in daddy’s tummy.

He turned to mummy’s tummy and give it another peck and a big koala hug. Again, it made me wonder. How does he know?

Call it extra sensory perception, or telepathy or whatever. I’d certainly like to comprehend this special gift in babies and toddlers.