So what have we been busy with for the month or so. It’s strange how the holiday seasons make me want to cook, bake and make nice food. We either eat them ourselves or with some friends. We had a small gathering on christmas eve where some friends came over for some home cooked food. We had chwee kueh, laksa and tao suan. All the local food that we were missing out here. Daddy took up the hefty responsibility of making the laksa…not from scratch…but from the Prima paste we got from the supermarket still it was rather impressive!
Then the other day, we baked some cookies to sell for fund raising. It was tiring but fun and satisfying. This time, I tried some new recipes. We had choco chip walnut cookies and vanilla raisins cookies with thick icing!
All these baking and cooking had kept Malcolm rather busy and it was more fun and merrier to share all these yummies with friends…especially during this holiday seasons. I guess being far away from home make us treasure such moment even more.

So here’s a clip of Mal baking to one of his favourite song…he calls it the Cake Song. Enjoy!

Mal was so spoilt. He was loaded with presents! We spent christmas morning opening up all his presents. Thank you for all your wonderful gifts!!!

Mal was sick just before christmas. He was having a very bad cough with lotsa phlegm and runny nose topping it up with a fever to about 38.6 which was enough to freak me out. We almost missed the christmas party in Daddy’s office and we were stuck at home for the next few days even though Daddy was on long leave for the holiday season. He puked and coughed and was fed all the medicine we thought could make him feel better. Unlike back home, going to the doctor is no longer a good idea cos we have heard too many cases of doctors sending people home and to get medication over the pharmacy counter instead. Luckily his fever went off after a few days and now he is only having cough and runny nose. During the period that he was sick, in order to have him take his medicine, we told him he could choose 1 present under the tree and opened it. He chose the one from Auntie Chweeling…it was a remote control safari jeep which was enough to distract him for a while.

The Christmas tree was finally up. We got it over the weekend. As usual we were quite late in getting the tree and alot were already sold out. This will be our 2nd christmas tree that is REAL! So nice to smell the fresh pine in the living room. Don’t think we will get a real one when we are back home. This year the tree is even taller than last year’s as all the shorter trees at 6 to 7 feet were sold out. We were left to choose from a bunch of not so fresh looking 7 to 8 feet. We chose one that is greenest from the bunch and immediately soaked the end of the trunk in water as soon as we got back hoping that it would help to replenish the water for the tree as much as possible. It was also a way to make the branches opened out nicely. The tree is so tall that it almost reach our ceiling. This year we topped the tree with a star which we got from garage sale. Mal was so happy when we bought the tree. He was so eager to help us decorate the tree. He took turns to decorate the tree with Daddy and Mummy and was so proud when he found out how to make the lights twinkle and flicker before we could figure out how.

This year, Malcolm is fully aware of christmas and he had been asking for alot of things.
1. he had been asking us to put up the christmas tree
2. whenever people ask him what presents he want for christmas…he will say ‘Snowman!’
3. the told me the other day ‘Mummy, I want people to send me present!’ So he is no longer clueless when it comes to present. He knows what it is and even demands for it now!
4. we bought some lightings from garage sales and he had been playing with them…hanging all over the house way before the christmas tree was up! Maybe seeing the neighbourhood so brightly litted made him want to decorate our house too.
5. and he thought that Santa Claus will come and give him present…for a while…proabably due to Elmo’s Night before Christmas that he had been reading since the last christmas. But after seeing me wrapped all the presents, I guess he is a bit confused. Is Mummy the Santa Claus??

So now with the tree up we were all ready and set to celebrate christmas!

There is so much festivities in the air. The radio is playing endless christmas songs and the neighbourhood is brightly litted with christmas lightings and decorations. It is a time for reunion and that obviously makes us miss home even more.

We were at a xmas party in the park last weekend. It sort of marks the beginning of xmas light up in the park and the lightings will be put up all the way till new year. It was a funfilled night and it was so easy for us to forget about everything and joined in the gaiety. It seemed to mark a brand new beginning for us too. There were songs, dance, fireworks, snowflakes and even santa claus! We tried the hay ride for the first time. It was a trailer filled with hay seats, pulled along by a truck. It was cold and chilly out in the open air even when the truck was moving at low speed. The hay ride brought us around the park to catch some real neat christmas lightings put up by some of the big houses. The santa happened to be one of the house owner. He was so eager and it was so kind of him to share and spread the holiday joy with strangers whom he didn’t even know. Some of the lightings and decorations were so good that we wondered whether they were put up by professionals. Back home, we could only see such elaborate decorations in Orchard Road! It was a happy, fun, joyful, new, cold and chilly experience for the 3 of us!

‘I want the baby to be in your tummy! I want the baby to come out and play with me!’
these were Mal’s words when we told him that we lost the baby. We just came out from the doctor’s office and were told that I had a miscarriage. I was supposed to be 8 weeks pregnant. It was a blighted ovum and we found out that a blighted ovum is the cause of about 50% to 60% of first trimester miscarriages and is usually the result of chromosomal problems.
We planned for the visit to the doctor as I had been having brownish and pink discharge for the past days which is a cause for concern. We requested for an ultrasound and we were given an appointment early next morning. At the doc’s office, the doctor did a transvaginal ultrasound and we were told that I had blighted ovum.

We found out from the internet that with a blighted ovum I will get a positive result on a pregnancy test, because the placenta begins to develop anyway and starts to secrete human chorionic gonadtrophin (hCG), the hormone that these tests look for. I may also have some of the symptoms common in a normal pregnancy, such as fatigue, nausea, and sore breasts. Later, when the hormone levels begin to go down, these symptoms will subside and you’re likely to have spotting or bleeding.

We were saddened by the news but also glad that we found out early. We may probably take a longer time to come out of this if not for what happened after this…

On the same night, I had a case of extremely bad constipation. It had never happened to me and I was quick to link it to the ultrasound I had early that morning. I thought maybe they had injured my bowel while giving me the ultrasound as the condition was so bad that I felt that I had lost control of my bowel muscle! It was a long night for me and it even crossed my mind that something really bad is happening to me! I searched through the interent to look for cases of transvaginal ultrasound causing injury to bowel muscle but to no avail. There was no such case reported. At 5am, I thougt I really need to make a trip to the A&E but Daddy calmed me and I finally fell asleep till like 8 plus in the morning. The next morning, I immediately make a call to my gynae and was assured that it was not possible that the ultrasound had injured my bowel and it was just a case of very bad constipation! I was told to get some laxative from the pharmacy which Daddy did almost instantly. Deep inside me, I was still not convinced by the doctor and the laxative was left untouched.

By then I had lost all appetite and had not had a proper meal since the night before. I was too stressed and worried that what goes in might not come out! Finally at about 3 in the afternoon, a trip to the bathroom finally paid off. I was elated. I was SO happy and relieved and had totally forgotten that I just had a miscarriage. I turned to Daddy and said ‘I think someone is giving me a sign. Someone out there is trying to tell me that it is ok that I had a failed pregnancy…cos it will be worse if I can’t SHIT!’ Never had I felt so relieved and happy and at that very moment, I was so glad that I still have Malcolm, Daddy and many many others who were so dear to us back home. We celebrated with yorgurts and fruits!!!

I was glad that Malcolm had been such a good boy, even though the last 30 hour while we were in so much pain, he had been a very good boy. Entertaining himself most of the time partly because Mummy and Daddy were around with him the whole day and I guess he did not really understand that we were both very troubled.

I was glad that I could wake up with him, go to sleep with him, cook for him, play with him, read to him, feed him, hug him, kiss him basically all the things that I would normally take for granted!

I was glad all 3 of us could cuddle in bed and fell asleep peacefully in each other’s arm that night

This incident makes me realised once again how fragile our lives are and how we mustn’t take people dear in our life for granted. We really don’t know when the day will come fpr us to bid goodbyes and I hope that when the day comes, I will not have too many…’I SHOULD HAVEs…’ cos by then, it will be too late.

As for Malcolm, it is tough for him to learn about such lost at such a tender age. Initially we were worried about explaining to him. We finally decided to put it to him in a light hearted manner.

So now if you will to ask him ‘Where is the baby?’ He will tell you ‘There is no more baby. The baby flies away in the sky…’

Daddy had fixed a swing for Mal in our backyard for quite some time now. It was one of the most expensive outdoor toys we got for him. Most of our outdoor toys were used, hunted from garage sales. This one was a brand new one from Walmart and it cost more than 10 bucks which is considered expensive if you compared to the rest of the toys we have in our back yard. Daddy held the swing up using a wooden branch from our shed, tied it to the tree and the fence to our pool. It was a brilliant idea. It was strong enough to hold Mal’s weight and so far, he enjoys this toy more than any of his other outdoor toys. Guess it is $$ well spent afterall!

We got a training bicycle for Mal. It was passed down from Hannah who was going back soon, to be exact, it’s tomorrow, which means, Mal will lose another playmate. Recently he had been seeing alot of people leaving, going back to Spore. But I guess he is still too young to remember. In a way, good for him as he will not be too affected by all these departures. For now, he seem contented to have Daddy and Mummy with him. It will not only be hard for him but for us, when he start missing people other than Daddy and Mummy.
So, this will be Mal’s first training bicycle. Daddy had wanted to get him one but as usual, I thought we should try our luck first at garage sales. So this time, we don’t even need to hunt for one at garage sales. The bike was just nice for Mal. He was able to reach the paddle. He is still not very good at peddling the bike. We need to give him a little push to give the initial momentum. Places with a little bit of down slope are easier for him. So far we had only let him tried cycling on the pavement in front of our garage and to the nearby mail box. To make sure that he moved, we tied a rope to the bike and pulled him along so that he didn’t have to peddle so hard. He is loving it but the weather has gotten cold and we had been hibernating alot indoor. So I guess it will take a while before he can master cycling his training bike.

These were Mal’s words the night before Auntie Monica and Uncle Derek left for Spore and he said that while choking back tears. It actually brought us to tear! This little rascal! They were here for holiday and we met up with them on Thanksgiving at Palm Spring for shopping. Mal couldn’t recall them when we first met but he warmed up pretty fast as both Auntie Monica and Uncle Derek were such great play mates! They were already having fun at the hotel carpark where we met…hammering little pebbles at the sidewalk, oh, I just got him a little hammer, it’s a real hammer used for doing craft, not a poplular toy as most uncles and aunties thought it might not be suitable for a little 2 year old to be carrying a hammer…knocking and hammering around. I realised this when Mal brought his hammer to a farewell dinner at a restaurant the other night and people were a bit shocked and concerned when they realised that Mal was playing with a REAL hammer. I guessed they were afraid that Mal might break something with his hammer. The first thing that crossed my mind when I set eyes on the hammer in a craft store was ‘Whao, isn’t that cool! Mal will love it and with that, he will have a cooler hammer than Daddy!’I think we were just too used to Mal playing with the real stuff at home that we forgot that such toys are really not norm for alot of other kids! I digressed.

So it was hammering fun with Auntie Monica at the carpark we met and that broke the ice between them cos Mal was thrilled to have someone play with him his new toy. We spent 2 nights at Palm spring before proceeding to somewhere more scenic. After a long 6 hours drive. We arrived at Flagstaff on Saturday night and checked in another suite. It was cold at Flagstaff, about 2 degree celsius. There was so much festivity mood in the air. The cold weather, the coziness at the hotel lobby brought by a burning fireplace and constant christmas songs that were played on the radio. It was a perfect setting for holiday and we were glad to spend the time with family and friends. We drove 1.5 hour from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon, had our packed MacDonald lunch right at the canyon, it was a ‘Lunch in a Lifetime’ with such a view, before heading back home. Auntie Mon and Uncle Derek spent the next 3 days at our home before returning back to reality in spore. It was a good thanksgiving getaway for us and we were glad to spend it with friends from so far away

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLnKGW2882g]