shop shop shop

I love Christmas. Besides the religious reason, X’mas to me, is where I can feel that people are nicer and kinder and generally, happier.

Additionally, it is also the season of giving.

Here’s some of my blogshops to share:

Books:
http://www.singaporemotherhood.com/forumboard/messages/581296/3269429.html?1259376012
(I like their peekabook series and the baby touch and feel series. seller is a very nice lady as well, obliging)

http://www.mylittle-bookshop.blogspot.com/
(mama21 sells them cheap! From Usborne to Eric Carle, your choices are far and wide! she does free delivery for above $100 on the weekends)

http://www.eucalbooks.com/
(I got the large board books from here which are mainly for new bubs - picture with single words showing animals, fruits, colours, etc. The seller is also v nice and fast)

Hairclips:
Hand made hair clips is the in thing now and these are some places which you can visit:
http://www.enenslilpalace.multiply.com/

http://sweetlittlebowtique-kat.blogspot.com/

http://www.littletoez.com/
(I have bought from them twice, they bring in these branded Amelie B hairclips from AU which it seems some of the other sellers are now sort of inspired by.)



Clothes:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lloripop
bought several times from them, prompt and items are good.

http://babylandshop.blogspot.com/

http://babystash.multiply.com/

craft time!

I am a huge fan of craft work as my girl seems to enjoy it and I like working with my hands. Most of the time, when I share with friends that my girl and I do craft work together, a lot would go HUH? HOW MUCH CAN SHE DO SINCE SHE IS ONLY 1? And then, typically I will get the "ai yah, too much work and too lazy lah" answers from the parents. Ke ke ke ke

Truth be told, there are TONS of craft we can do with our bubs. My baby and I started going to a play learn language class when she was about 10+ months old. I was already spending about 45 - 60mins a night play learning with her on weekdays and I wanted her to be exposed to more things. For me, I wanted to see how the teachers teach and the various activities they do so that I can learn too and hopefully be able to engage my bub better.

I was actually very impressed with the craft work on my trial lesson. Before the craft segment, our kids were given an egg rattler to play with which encourages their motor skills development as they learnt to shake the rattlers. Then, for craft time, a piece of paper was placed in a transparent square box and marbles dipped into primary coloured paints (done by parents of course due to choking hazard) were then placed into the box, on the paper. When the lid was closed, our kids were encouraged to shake the box and hence, creating their masterpiece as the marbles rolled around and the colours streaked across the paper. The kids loved the sound and of course, being able to see the creation of the colour streaks. And the masterpiece can be used as a placement on our kid's high chair tray.

Encouraged by the fun time we had, I started to research and prepare for our own craft time which I'd incorporate into my evening time with my girl twice to thrice a week. I usually try to work with and around a theme for a week. For this week, the object / word is 'Bird'. Hence, I wanted for the craft item to tie back to the focus of the week so that she gets to learn about the item through various senses - visual (through books), audio (when I read out to her), kinesthetic (encouraging her to sign as well as to spread her arms out and fly like a bird) and tactile (from the craft work!) I found that there are actually many useful websites for craft which offers free colouring sheets, craft ideas and even show samples of work which helpful mummies send in. The Crayola website has really good and very simple ideas which can be easily implemented / improvised to our baby's ability. My other favourite site is this as the amount of ideas and resources is tremendous and you can even select the category you like. This is especially useful for me due to my weekly themed sessions. And before you say how hard it is, here's two pieces of work to share (peacock was done at home while the penguin was done in class):























Of course, all these craft need parental guidance. I would for e.g. print and cut out the template in advance for the peacock. But the colour selection, finger printing, painting and the final pasting was done my my girl. A tip to share when we are doing the craft work is that we should talk to our babies and name the parts, colours, etc.

A personal experience is that the tummy on the penguin is made of cotton wool and from the tactile play and the repetition of the word "tummy" when I press my girl's hands to rub on it, she now remembers the word. To end off this post, I found a good blogsite that sells some crayola items at a good price - the finger gel paints are only at $9.90 where I got it about 20+% more at a shop in Raffles Place. I have also compared the pricing for the large crayons and the glitter glue and both were much cheaper on this site too. ENJOY!

decals

I recently shifted my girl's bed back into my room and suddenly wanted to re-decorate the room a bit so that it is looks more vibrant and exciting for her. Repainting was definitely out since the fumes would be quite unbearable and unhealthy for a baby. Renovation - well, moolah would be a BIG issue.

Hence, I decided on wall decals. Cheap, fun and easy to do! But when I started searching around, I was stumped at how limited my choices were! Seems like very few companies in SG are actually selling them - or at least not what I was looking for. I wanted something with animals/nature and that it is colourful and appealing to a baby in addition to being affordable!

After days of research, I came across these sites which I thought were offering pretty good designs and seems quite affordable:

http://winkplay.com/
Below are some pictures to share from wall ink to share (images below are from wall ink and you can view them on the website as mentioned above):

Another webstore: http://www.decorettestore.com/

In the Singaporemotherhood Forum, there are also Bulk Purchase (BPs) threads who are also selling some wall decals. Click here for the BP.

I bought mine from a small shop at Raffles Place Exchange called The little Polka Dots and they are from Wee Gallery . The change after the decal is up is simply amazing. Most of these decals are meant to be durable (can peel off and stick to another wall) as well as leaves no mark on the wall. But still, do check it out before purchasing. =D

Little Ms and Mr Men!

Not sure about you guys but I was a HUGE HUGE fan of this series when I was young. To be honest, I seriously cannot recall exactly what the stories are but I remembered very colourful illustration and funny stories; there was even a Mr. Men that has very loooooong arms too...


Since I am a FTWM, the only stretch of time that I have with my girl is from 7+/8pm to about 9 for an hour before she gets wiped down and then milk and then bedtime. During this one hour, we would play together and I will read to her and expose her to colours, shapes, animals, etc.

When I saw seller who is doing a bulk purchase for the box sets and she is selling for $140/set (it was $130 earlier but I missed the deadline and the prices seem to have increased lately to $160 due to currency exchange; she brings them in from an AU supplier...) I immediately ordered it. I think Popular bookshop is selling them individually at $7 odd. Little Ms has 33 books while Mr. Men has 46 so if you were to do the math here, the savings is really quite great lor. Her bulk purchase thread is here if you are keen to see.

In the same forum, there is also seller who is selling her own personal set for only $100 but she only has Little Miss and she requested for self collection at either Tampines / Punggol so for mummies who are staying there - good deal! Click here if you like to link to her thread. Great as party favours where you can split them and give away the books individually too. :)

7 Nov: Latest edit: another BP organiser is selling the same sets at $245 for both sets and includes delivery. Great value!!!

PS: I am not advertising for these sellers in anyway but rather, just to share whatever lobangs I stumble across which is the entire basis for this blog anyway...

Baby signing

I think those who are close to me will not be surprised that this should be my very first few post. =)

I started signing to my daughter when she was a bit older than 6 months as I have read so much about this and I thought to myself "why not"? Of course, there were some skepticism when I first started as Baby Signing is still not very widely known or used in Asia. I chanced upon this reading an UK parenting magazine some time ago when I first found out I was pregnant and was just intrigued with the idea that I can "communicate" with my baby through signing.

I first learnt about signing from a book by Monta Briant and later realised that there was another version available which was a kit that consisted of a book (which covers how to sign, how to tell if baby is signing, the actual signs, etc.), an audio CD of some baby songs and a instructional book that goes along with it that teaches one how to sign to the songs and some ASL flashcards. I got the kit at a huge discount at 40% off from borders (will save that tip for another post).

I started to sign, like most typical parent, the basic stuff first such as "Milk", "Food", "More", etc. And I slowly introduced the "fun" stuff like fish (which my baby loves!), dog, duck, trees, stars, etc.

It took about slightly over a month before she started signing back and her first sign was milk (no surprise there since I am such a glutton and she must have gotten my genes!). Subsequently, she started signing more things - fish (we have a fish tank at home and whenever she wants to be carried out onto the balcony to see the tank, she signs it), dog (we have 2 at home), etc.

2 common questions I get asked about signing is if it hinders her speech development and if it is hard.

My baby has not turned 1 yet so I cannot say for sure about her speech development but so far, she knows and can speak the words "bag", "bear", "duck" in addition to "Mom" and "Papa". So, for the moment, I feel that signing has actually aided her in understanding words and items better. Additionally, when we sign, we sign AND say the word at the same time hence, she is exposed to the sound of the word. One other positive point about signing so far is that she is able to communicate with us better and it seems to reduce her frustration as I am now able to understand if she is hungry (wants "milk") or wants to head out and see the "fish" tank or she is still not full from the porridge and wants "more". If she has not been able to sign these words, I think we would have caught on much later. But of course, there are different school of thoughts out there and different research materials. Some research claims that it actually aids the child in speech development while others think otherwise.

As for the second question if it is hard, well, I read somewhere in a baby magazine that a baby needs to hear the same word about 500 times before he speaks it. So, in the same way, signing requires a lot of repetition. Do not be discouraged if your baby does not signing back at first because it can take many weeks especially since they are still developing their motor skills. So sign sign sign and she will sign back in time.

For those who are keen, this is how the kit looks like.

This is the link should you want to find out more 'product information': http://www.hayhouse.com/details.php?id=2953

Additionally, for parents who do not mind their babies watching DVDs, I would recommend this series called Baby Signing Time. I have not tried out other series as my daughter seems to enjoy this alot. I personally find the songs in the series catchy and there are animation which captures her attention and the word to the sign is always flashed on the screen which I think is useful for her.

This is the link to the website http://www.babysigningtime.com/ and you can even see the videos of other babies signing to some words. I found this useful because a lot of times as the babies are still developing their motor skills, they are unable to achieve the 'perfect' sign as they may sign in close proximity to what the actual sign is or they may use one finger instead of all, etc. So, this gives me a rough idea of what the variances are.

Try it out and let me know how your signing went. =)