Meet Little Henry...

..Tobey's miniature (of "Henry") Vacuum Cleaner

Price: £12
Batteries: £9 for 12, (needs 4 "C-type" batteries, didn't know they exist)
Usage: Every chance he gets. Every . waking . moment .

I can even hear the humm of the vacuum in my sleep. He turns it on even when he's watching TV or having his meals and hisses at me if I even attempt to turn it off.

BUT

the silver lining is that it actually vacuums up small particles along the way. SO move aside the all singing and dancing Fisher-prices and ELCs, make way for the only USEFUL (for me) toy in the house.

Here's a video of him in action....

26th September 08 : Recorded

I was reading Karen Cheng's latest blog entry where she recorded what happens in one of her weekday. I thought it would be nice for me to record down in detail what happened today in my life as a SAHM.

8 a.m: The boy was all awake and ready to go. I made breakfast for him . Banana and oats. Fed him breakfast and went on to cook his meals whilst he watched some children tele on CBeebies. Took the box of paper out so that the recycling truck can pick it up.

9 a.m: Showered and dressed Tobey. Gave him my bag to rummage through in my room whilst I showered.

9:30a.m: Brought Tobey to music class which lasted an hour.

10:45 a.m :Vacuumed the floors. Upstairs and downstairs. Tobey helped. Fed Tobey his multi-vits.

11: 15 a.m: I ate brunch. Maggi Assam Laksa. Yummm.

11:30 a.m: Spent time with Tobey. Drawing, reading, playing chasing, hide-and-seek, etc.

12 noon: Fed Tobey his lunch.

12:30 p.m: Cleaned up after him. Food on the floor, on his clothes, hands, face, etc.

12:45 p.m: Tobey played on his own, whilst I tried to read. Played with him when he wanted to engage with me (or when he pulled the book out of my grip).

1:20 p.m: Tobey started his afternoon nap.

1:25 p.m: I made some pasta for my late lunch. Folded clean laundry. Sun was shining, so washed a load and hung them. Ironed SK's work shirts. Arranged for a plumber to service our boiler. Surf net a little.

3:20 p.m: Tobey woke up. Gave him his afternoon milk.

3.45p.m: Drove out to post a letter (and bought a euromillion ticket which I didn't win...again)and got some groceries.

4:30 p.m: Brought Tobey to a playground. He made several new friends.

5:30 p.m: Made dinner. Steamed pork with preserved vege, broccoli and tried a new dish with salted vege "ham choi" and tofu. Turned on TV for Tobey, but he rather hang around the kitchen willing me to carry him so that he could 'help' me cook as well.

6:30 p:m: Fed Tobey dinner. Sk came home from work (phew!).

7-8 p.m: Showered Tobey, then Sk and I took turns to shower. Dinner for the adults. Tobey ate all our broccoli.

8-9:20 p.m: Play time with daddy! (That boy has so much of energy!!!) whilst I tried to read and watch some tele.

9:30 p.m: Tobey took his night milk and finally sleeps. SK spent the next 10 minutes packing toys back into toy boxes whilst watching X-Men 2.

...and now I am typing this. Will sleep soon. SO tired!

Concentration

Tranferring...

...and drawing...

Funny to watch when he concentrates hard and spend ages doing his "activities" again and again. Occasionally, he would look up and smile proudly at us. Another favourite is reading (believe it or not)...fingers crossed...hopefully this will continue.

Almost a Break-In

At 2 am this morning, I heard a strange noise. Bionic ears SK was snoring away (I am the Magnificent nose ML by the way as I can smell betterl). It sounded like someone was shaking the handle of the french door at the back of our house vigorously. I woke SK up. He looked out the front window which faces the front of our house and I looked at the back, which faces the back garden. I saw no one, it was too dark. SK saw a youngster in front of our house, staring at it.

SK : "Oi!!! What are you doing here!"
Guy: "It's a...errr...I am knocking for Adrian" (in a low voice as if making it up as he went along)
SK: "Huh??"
Guy: " I am knocking for Adrian!" (in a louder voice)
SK : "No such person here!"
Guy: "Alright then" and walked away

SK then went downstairs to check. When he shined the torch into the garden, I was also looking out from the upstairs window. When he shined into the middle section, I saw a pair of legs moving away, running to the left. I immediately checked on Tobey. He was snoring away and there weren't any thieves in his room. Phew! We carried on looking and checking but no one was around by then.

Here's what we gathered. Two hoodie thieves came on a mission to steal my laptop (which is located in the dining table. One went over the garden fence and another one kept watch at the front of the house. When SK was conversing with the "guard" thief, his partner (s) in crime must have hidden himself.

I was bemused. My laptop is not visible from the kitchen window (the only window passer-bys can peep in). So how in the world did those scumbags know that the back door is the nearest to the lappy? Then again, they could be just trying to get in just to do a general robbery, not targeting anything specific.

Earlier in the day, the estate agent brought along a couple in their 50s to view our house (as we are currently trying to sell). This couple looked scruffy (think gypsies who lives in caravans) and basically "just not the type that would make us an offer". They were really friendly. But at a point during the viewing, I noticed from a distance that the husband was looking at my back doors really closely, as if examining it. I thought maybe because we are one of the few the street who still having our original wooden windows and doors and not the UPVC double glazed ones (UPVCs keep more warm in during the winter months, hence making the house more desirable).

Now that I think of it, that couple probably told their son and his mate(s) about the inside of our house and they decided to rob us. What they didn't know is that we have a million other latches on each door which we diligently make use of each night! So Stoooopid.

I am actually very angry that they got away with it. I was thinking whether we could have handled things differently. For instance,

1) If SK were to answer : "Oh yes, you wait, I'll get Adrian for you" Then quickly run to catch hold of that "guard" thief while I call the police. Would it be better? He would probably be bashed up and then get robbed. As there were more than one of them in the operation.

2) If SK just kept quiet and secretly alert the police. They might have managed to break-in somehow and again we would get bashed up and robbed.

The ideal is for us to own a gun. No need a real gun, a bb gun or an air gun would do. We would just need to shoot them unconscious and then get the police on them. Since we don't own a gun of any sort, I think I will keep a few rocks in my room tonight.

Siew Pau

I tried a recipe on Sukye's blog today

Oil Dough

• 340g plain flour
• 220g shortening / lard - used butter

Water Doug

• 550g plain flour
• 150g caster sugar
  
• 160ml vegetable oil
• 240ml iced water
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp golden syrup - Substituted with vanilla extract as well
  

Glaze

• 2 egg yolks

Method:

1. Process the oil dough ingredients in a food processor. Scale it into 20 gm balls.
2. Process the water dough ingredients in food processor. Scale it into 40 gm balls.
3. Wrap oil dough inside water dough.
4. Roll it flat. Then roll it up like swiss roll. Repeat this 3 times.
5. Repeat step 4 with all the pieces of dough.
6. Cut each piece of dough into 2.
7. Roll out each pieces and put in filling.
8. Preheat oven to 190 C and bake 10 mins
9. Remove from oven, glaze with egg yolk and bake another 20 mins.

For the filling:

• 300 gm Char Siew, finely diced - I used cubed pork shoulder and added 1 tbsp of Lee Kum Kee's Spare Rib sauce.
• 3 tbsp sugar
  
• 1 tbsp flour
• 3/4 cup water - 1 cup = 240ml, so do your own calculation
• 1 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce - omitted this one, didn't have any
• 4 chopped shallots
• 1/2 cup green peas - I substituted with potatoes instead as I didn't have any peas in my freezer
  
• 2 tbsp oil

The Steps:

1. Saute shallot in oil.
2. Add flour, cook until browned.
3. Add Char Siew.
4. Add water, all sauces and sugar.
5. Cook until gluey.
6. Add green peas.
7. Cool it before wrapping the Pau.

I halved the recipe above hoping to get 28 paus but I ended up with only 12! And the dough was too thick. Why? Because I forgotten to cut each piece of dough into 2!!!!!! (I think it's my cold that has been causing my blurriness *excuses* *excuses*)

The end result was tasty, but the filling was abit too watery. Most probably because I omitted the peas. So during baking, some of them managed to ooze out of the dough causing them to look messy.

SK came back and ate one and said "Hmmm nice BISCUIT dear".

15 months old

My little boy has got 4 teeth now. The 5th one is currently breaking through. He can eat most of our food but his tolerance to spicy food is still very low. I still cook especially for him each day. Just to make sure he has the essentials before dabbing into the adult food (which can sometimes be really unhealty..hehe).

He loves going out. He will spend ages trying to open the front door with my set of house keys. Patiently, he will try a key at a time. When one actually fits, he would quickly stand back as if waiting for the door to open itself. Also, sitting still for longer than 2 minutes is a hard task for him now. So it has been nightmare in the new term of music class. Instead of walking in a line with other kids, he would break free and stare at the line from afar and smirk.

I am abit worried about his speech development. He understands most of what we say to him and what we are talking about. But he just simply refuses to copy us! The usuals so far are just "there", "mum-mum", "da-di", "mama", "nen-nen", "na-na" and the most complicated one "tiger". No improvement from a couple of months back. Grunting and pointing are his preferred way of communicating. I am not rushing him, but just wondering whether if there's something I am not doing enough to motivate him. Oh well, hopefully one day he'll change his mind and decides to pick up talking more seriously.

He's into imaginative play now which can be quite funny to watch. For example, when I give him a small stainless steel pot and a ladle, he would spend ages "cooking" all his small toys in it, transferring them into another container and back into the pot and vice versa (When I am cooking he would also "help" by passing me endless supply of potatoes, garlic and ginger).

Now that he rather play on his own for quite a long period of time, I found myself having more spare time on my hand. It's so weird, I just do not know what I should do with it!!! It's been a long while since I don't feel like collapsing into a pile and rest whenever I have any spare time! So I've more or less decided to go back to work to feel more useful and send Tobey to a nursery once we settle in our new place. It would definitely crush me to be away from my son, but I genuinely believe that the time has come for him to learn to socialise, be independent, and learn the ropes of surviving amongst other little people and adults. It's very true that his standard of care will drop. No one will be there to instantly squash a spider that tries to get within 3 metres of him or frequently sniff his nappy to see whether he has done a poo. But, knowing his personality, I believe that he will have so much fun, learn faster and thrive amongst a fixed set of peers.

No doubt I will get peanuts back after paying for his nursery, but as long as he benefits from it, everyone wins.

The Smoked House

Today we went house-hunting again. One of the houses we viewed looked really promising from the advert. When we drove up to it, it looked really charming from the outside. It faces a huge park and is located in quite a posh location, which is within the catchment area of a primary school with fantastic Ofted reports (Grade 1s). However, the price was slightly lower than what is expected out of this area. We just thought that since the housing market is so bad now, this probably belongs to another desperate seller.

Once we stepped into the house. We knew the real reason.

It hit us like a slap in the face. The smell of stale cigarette smoke just enveloped us. At that point the estate agent rep said " I am not going to lie to you, this house does need a lot of renovation" He must have been kidding. It needed a complete rip-out-refit transformation!

The whole house has a tinge of yellow to it. I could see that the walls were not painted yellow, but of various other colours, but somehow it had a yellow coating to it. The ceiling, the 1960's carpet, the blinds, the window panes, even the air was yellow! It spelled years of enclosed smoking by someone that loved inhaling his own smoke back into his system. I nearly puked.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against smokers. Some of the closest person to me smokes. But at least he or she has the sense to make sure the house is well ventilated, the windows are opened before smoking or smoke outside of the house.

Me: What happened here???!!!
Estate agent rep (EAR): The previous owner smoked alot.
Me: Where is he now?
EAR: I am afraid he past away.
Me: What? Did he passed away in this house????!
EAR: No , he didn't

YEAH RIGHT!

Alarm bell started ringing in my head. "I got to get my boy out of here!"
So after just glancing at the ground floor, I excused myself and Tobey, saying that I just couldn't stand the smell. SK on the other hand, dared to venture upstairs as he could see the investment potential of this house. Let's just say, he could see beyond the yellow tinge. Also because his nose only works part-time.

So what if we managed to revamp the house with a completely new interior. Every time I smell (or think I smell) any ciggie smoke, I would definitely think that the previous owner is paying us a visit.

No thanks.

Lamb Stew

Lamb shoulders were on price reduction in my local Tesco. So I've decided to try this recipe.

Recipe:
Half a lamb shoulder
one leek
3 carrots
3 tomatoes
3 stalks of celery
5 medium red onions
half a bulb of garlic (skin on cut across in half )
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
2 stock cubes
1 teaspoon of black pepper corn
2 teaspoon of salt
3 dried bay leaves

Add lamb, roughly chopped vege, and spices into pot. Cover with hot water. Bring to boil and simmer on low fire for 3 hours until meat is falling off the bone. Nice eaten with rice or on it's own.

End product

Gymboree Free Play

Through our first visit to a Gymboree class , we discovered that there's actually a free play session for £3 an hour on Sundays. We've been (actually SK is the more dedicated one here) bringing Tobey there for the past month. He's now so used to the equipments and structures that he would just charge as soon as his socks are off. SK would set an obstacle course for Tobey each time, based on the equipment arrangement on that day. Tobey would then climb, slide, jump, run, go through tunnels, and lie down whenever he needs a rest, take a sip of water and go through his obstacle course all over again.

Every Sunday, he can do it faster than the last.

I can now see the advantages Gymboree. It's like a padded playground and it's specially designed structures really works to encourage the physical development of toddlers in a fun and safe way. I am glad we gave it a second chance.

The Biker