Bob Dog Turns 5!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the coming of age of the Little Bob Dog. He has, after much fevered anticipation and at least 1 handwritten notification to me, finally turned 5.

Now, according to him, he can do "HAF" of what he wants to do. Because he's almost a big boy.

In keeping with tradition, I took a day off (well, after one meeting and a quick trip to the office to check on work, half a day off) to spend it with the Bob Dog. We took a trip to Vivo City, watched "How To Train a Dragon" in 3D and had a long leisurely lunch at Shin Kushiya where I watched with triumph and great satisfaction as my son guzzled an entirely serving of chawanmushi and asked for more. We have been trying to get him to eat eggs now for ... almost 5 years and, up till now, he has rejected egg in all its forms and incarnations. To be specific, we have tried:

(a) boiled quail's eggs (previously thought to be unrejectable because of their amazing sweetness);
(b) half cooked chicken egg;
(c) chicken egg cooked in Maggi noodles (we were looking to the MSG to drown out any egg flavour)
(d) egg boiled into his rice porridge;
(e) scrambled eggs with ham
(f) egg whites only, boiled into his rice porridge;
(g) steamed egg custard with minced pork and vermicelli
(h) egg mixed into fried rice
(i) just the egg whites off a fried egg, chopped finely and hand-fed with some really good chicken satay.

Anyway, later in the evening, we also gave him a plain chocolate birthday cake and 2 bags of M&Ms and an Archaeopterix (pre-bird/ flying dinosaur) to decorate it with. He enjoyed many, many presents from Daddy and a couple of presents from me, so I think a good time was had by all.

I couldn't help remembering, at various times of the day, exactly what I had been doing at that same time on the day my boy was born. I even remember some of the songs I heard on the radio on the day he was born. Maybe I will do that for every one of his birthdays. Somehow, as I get older and motherer, I remember my children's birthdays so clearly and start to forget my own.

Diaper Company Tells Local Woman To Stop Using Diapers

You know it's a sign when even the diaper company gives you a signal that The Son needs to stop using diapers. While stuffing The Son into the first of his twice-nightly diapers at 2am today, it suddenly struck me that neither Drypers nor any other diaper company makes diapers larger than XXXL, which is exactly what The Son is now wearing, with some difficulty as he is getting a little too big for that size.

There is NO XXXXL or anything thereafter. What does it mean when the diaper companies don't make anything larger than XXXL? Does it mean I need to continue stuffing The Son into XXXL, or is it now time for him to transition from diaper-wearer to bed-wetter?

From here, the only larger-sized diapers available in the market are the adult diapers which, I notice, do not have any super fun happy cartoon pictures printed all over them, unlike the baby diapers. I need to table this for a family discussion. Maybe they will have big kid diapers available for sale in the United States, which we could arrange to bring into Singapore. Hmm...

In other news, The Daughter is standing up and cruising (walking while holding on to furniture) about 2 months early. Everyone is pleased except me because I realise the basis of all this early development is the fact that I ate a tonne of fish oil while I was expecting her, which I did not do for The Son. Which means that I will eternally blame myself should The Daughter turn out more intelligent than her big brother.

Just as a time reference to self, her bottom lower teeth are starting to peek out, she hasn't started speaking yet, but uses a variety of sounds to make known her intentions, feelings and desires. Mmmmmm for when the food tastes good, whiney noises for when she doesn't like the food and screaming and crying for when she falls over. She is using the pincer grip to pick up small objects so we can tick that off already. She has not yet discovered her hands, although I caught her looking at her left hand, front and back, yesterday evening. Finally, a bunch of hair has fallen off the back of her head, so there's a lot of hair in front, but very little at the back. We are doing combovers until it grows back.

She favours Western food (organic store-bought baby pureed foods) over Chinese food (home cooked rice porridge) at the moment.