Wheels galore...

Josiah loves anything with wheels - cars, trucks, bikes, fire engines... and spends a lot of time playing with his vehicles. I try to use this interest of his to teach him stuff about vehicles. It is amazing that he can now point out wheels, windscreen, radiator, side mirror in any type of vehicle. He can even point out where engines are located (normally up front) and where the boot is (normally at the back).

Funny, how I spent countless hours trying to show him the difference between a cow and sheep yet till this day, he still gets confused. Sigh. A real boy, this one! Now he can even say, "Mini" - his favourite car when he sees one on the road. Since both of us are not car lovers, our knowledge of car types are pretty basic. Thanks to Josiah, I have now have to learn more about cars.

His love for cars can be used to our advantage especially when we are at the restaurant. My bag always has at least 3 different cars to entertain him. On good days, we can actually sit and eat a whole 3 course dinner together. Of course, we have to clear the table for him to push his cars but it is a small price to pay for some peace and quiet. Every time we bring him to a toy store, all he ever look at are cars even though there are tons of other toys around. Now that he is older, he asks me to open the box for him to play with the car and so our stash of cars comes in handy again to divert his attention when we don't want to buy him another toy.

Josiah and his new Hess fire engine - Hess is the company S works for and they hand out cool toys to all their staff for Christmas. Lucky for Josiah then!

Here he is at Yakitoria when Daddy and Mummy were having dinner with Daddy's colleague.

Holland Park - 12th July 2008

Summer sales is here and we have done enough damage to our bank account so we decided to take Josiah to a children's fair in Hammersmith which is free. On the way there, we had to pass by Kensington High St - and we got caught again! Ended up with more toys and books for him. And nothing for us as usual...worse is we did not even make it to Hammersmith with all our side tracking. Instead we pop into Holland Park - said to be the most romantic park in London.

It is beautiful and romantic indeed.

We told Josiah to say,"Hello" to the man and he did!

I tried to do some fancy photography but turned out like crap - but don't the boys look sweet together

Our happy little boy

Science Museum - 5th July 2008

It was a beautiful sunny day - Kensington Garden

It was one of those weekends - we had grand plans on taking Josiah to the zoo or to Richmond where deers roam about. As it turns out, he slept at midnight on Friday as we had some friends over with their 2 year old daughter so only woke up at 9.30am on Saturday. We had the usual Skype call to grandparent's and by the time we were ready it was already near noon. Seeing that we would have to pay nearly 20 pounds per person to the zoo - out of the question with half the day gone. Richmond sounded good until S told me it would take about 2 hours to get there!! Sigh, do wish we have a car at times like this. So as a last minute plan, we decided to go to the Science Museum located just across Kensington Gardens. I decided that we should "tapao" some food from Malaysian Hall as I also had craving for some 'teh tarik'. Mmmmm......the teh tarik was gooood.

Entrance to the science museum is free and it was not too packed despite the weekend. Aaahhh, that's because the Wimbleton is on and the rest of the hip crowd are at the O2 concert in Hyde Park. So we must be to remaining cheapo people hanging out at a free museum.

There was plenty to see but I won't bore you with the details (which I cannot remember anyway!). Josiah was caught up with a touch screen computer and made S carry him to touch the screen for a good 20 minutes! I was so bored and so was S but what to do.....such are parent's sacrifices.... :)

S was unusually hungry so we went to the Basement where seats were available to have our Malaysian curry rice. I had the Lamb rendang and Shaun had the Beef Rendang. Both only so-so and Josiah had some 'happy face' biscuits and a piece of broccoli. Yup, Josiah is on his hunger strike mode again and he is fine not eating anything! But I am not fine...one can only be a parent to understand the feeling when you see you little one refusing to eat or drink milk. Awful. Back to the museum story, we then took Josiah to the kid's corner and he had a blast. Stacking giant blocks, checking out lights and sound, playing with water. Children here are so fortunate to be able to learn science in such a hands-on manner. Josiah enjoyed himself so much and I said to myself I would bring him again when my parent's are here just so I can have a chance to explore the place and not get stuck at the kids corner only!

Here are a few pics of our light and easy Saturday.

Josiah making a happy face whilst eating his 'happy face' biscuits

They have animal hats for you to make stories with your kids - of course, I chose the cow!

He loved the giant kaleidoscope

This cool water contraption shows kids on movement of water and how irrigation works (super fun way to learn)

Josiah konked out after a tiring afternoon

Josiah is 18 months old

Here's a collection of photos to mark his latest achievements.

Also, I am too lazy to blog today.....

Josiah can drool, make a happy face and play with his car at the same time

Josiah can suck his dummy, remove items from cupboard to wagon and push wagon

Josiah can feed himself

Cheeky monkey with his monkey

Run around on his own

He has 4 teeth on top and 2 at the bottom - notice his large front teeth!! I have to start saving money for braces already.

Practise makes perfect.....NOT!

Practise makes perfect.

In most cases, this popular saying is true but does being a mother for 1.5 years make me a better mum? Nope. And here is a whole long list to prove that:

- I have gone out and forgot to pack Josiah's bottle!!!! I panicked but it was too late. Tears flowing, Josiah was getting angry - can you believe I had to borrow a bottle from my friend.
Bad Mummy.

- I still have got days when his pants gets all wet because I did not put the diaper on properly. Sheesh, you'd think that with all that practise day in and day out, leaking nappy should be a thing of the past....

- I have also on different occasions forgotten to pack.....bibs, spoons, baby food, hat, hot water, drinking water, clean clothes, even forgot to put on his shoes....my goodness, you are expecting me to forget to pack Josiah too....huh? Snifff.....

Bad Mummy.

That's not all, on the good days when I actually remember to do all the above for Josiah, I would often forget to bring my own jacket / keys/ handbag / watch / handphone...

- I still sometimes make his milk too hot or too cold

- I once put on his shoes on wrongly and did not even notice it until we came home from running around the park!

- I have accidentally let him run around with his pants on wrongly

- I have fed him expired food because I got my calender dates wrong!!!

- I even forgot to feed him his evening milk a couple of time. He was busy playing and I was busy surfing.... very bad Mummy!

But you know what, despite all my shortcomings in mothering Josiah - he has no other choice cos he ain't got another bad Mummy like me. Hehehe....so to all those thinking hard about trying to be a super perfect Mum and failed, don't worry, your little one loves you just the way you are.

Well, they don't know any better at this point so don't worry too much about all your little (or big) mistakes.

See, Josiah still loves me........and I love him too!!!!

He also loves his cars, monkey, cow, chow-chow(smelly blanky).... HEY, not fair, I clean up all his poop everyday...!!

Verona, Italy April 2008

My favourite Italian moments :

- Josiah saying "Daddeee" in his sweet 'manja' voice. It was his latest word and ohhh....I was so jealous of S. I have spent 100% of my time with him but still "Daddeee" is all he would say in that one week. Hrrrmmph.

- Eating gelato everyday (I did share with S and Josiah...). Must also mention that Josiah refused to try gelato because I ordered it in a cup and not in a cone. To him, ice cream = cone, but when I finally forced him to taste some off my spoon - there was no turning back. Mention ice cream, his mouth opens wide. This is from the boy who guards his mouth like gold!

- Fresh pasta in abundance. They have specialty shops that sells all sorts of fresh pasta. Spinach flavoured, tomato flavoured, black squid ink, ...etc

Amazingly yummy. Don't even need sauce, just pour simple mushroom, olive oil & basil sauce over it. Delicious.

- Josiah walking EVERYWHERE, EVERYDAY - wow, his walking improved so much during this one week. People on the streets cannot believe he had only just started walking.

- Siesta time concept: These Italians really know how to enjoy life to the max. Shops were usually closed from 2-4pm for lunch and naptime! And they partied on till late. Which is bad for us as we often only managed to get out of the apartment at 11am and have to be home at 7pm for Josiah to have dinner and sleep.

- Discovering the adult channel on their TV.....alamak, these Italians are quite "ham sap" - plenty of free channels to choose from after 11pm!! Even UK telly is not as bold as Italy.

- Italian coffee....mmmm......even for a non coffee person, I am in love with their coffee. There are bars, coffee bars everywhere. Men come in, stand at the counter and order a shot of their coffee which is an espresso normally, gulp it and leave! Would definately recommend coffee lovers to retire here, cheap and fantastic coffee.

- Venice is over rated, I mean it is lovely city but sooo commercialised. Instead, I loved Lake Garda, it is scenic, beautiful and not so congested. Check out the pics of Lake Garda at my picasa link.

- I still prefer my "American" type pizza with pineapple and chicken! Italian pizzas are so complex, too high class to me - for eg sword fish, fennel & anchovy pizza....gimme my Hawaiian Pizza from Domino anytime :)

- After 4 days of Italian, I had craving for McDonald! Pathetic but true. McChicken never tasted so good and there was no queue too....Italy is one place McDonalds cannot survive.

- One word: TIRAMISU. Every shop had their own version but all were top class and delicious

- Two words: GETTING FAT. Need I say more.......

Josiah is very possesive of his stroller and makes sure it is by his side when he is walking

Josiah enjoying his gelato

Wanted to upload a video of Josiah entertaining us in the bus to Lake Garda, but the file is too big - so just click on the link below

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mum2josiah

Krakow, Poland, May 2008

Krakow?? Where is that? That's the typical respond when I mentioned that I will be going there for a short 4 day break. Strange place to go for a holiday but this is a subsidised company holiday, which we signed up for months earlier. I was not quite keen to go because the main "attraction" there was the concentration camp called 'Austwitchz' - where millions of Jews were gassed to death. Hmm, definately not a place I want to bring Josiah. Another one of their attraction was the Salt Mines which involves a 2-3 hour walk underground and in part, in darkness!! Also not somewhere to bring my scaredy cat boy! I thought the whole holiday was going to be quite boring but as you can see, Krakow has more to offer than just that. We loved the city center. There was plenty of horse carriages, pigeons, open spaces, parks and cheap food! Our hotel also overlooks one of their national treasure - Wawel Castle which was beautiful. To top it off, there is a cool toy shop here and we used up all our Zloty (Polish currency) as no point in keeping it. So Josiah is one happy boy in this trip.

Weather was good too with temperatures reaching 29C compared to the miserable rainy day in London!

Wawel Castle in the background

Polish people love the Pope and has many Catholic churches

Josiah trying out at being a construction worker in Krakow

Josiah terrorising birds in Krakow

Josiah loves to pose with a post (don't ask me why...)