by Penny on October 7, 2009
Yupe…and it felt odd. I didn’t expect it otherwise. How can banana toothpaste be natural, huh?
But for a baby or toddler, it is as natural as it can be. I finally decided to buy a tube of toothpaste for Ryan because he’s been asking me to squeeze some toothpaste on his toothbrush, just like how I do it for myself. Each time I had to tell him that it’s not suitable for him and that it’s hot (well, minty actually but how to explain that to a 2-year old?).
So finally now Ryan has his very own special toothpaste. I got him the one and only safe toothpaste that I know of, the First Teeth Baby Toothpaste which I wrote about more than a year ago (read the post here). This toothpaste is meant for babies from 3 months old and older, contains no fluoride and is safe for children to swallow. It is made of milk enzyme and flavoured with apple and banana.
It doesn’t foam very much. In fact, when Ryan uses it, there is absolutely no foam at all. The reason is because he sucks on it and then swallows it instead of using it to brush his teeth! And when that pea-sized toothpaste is gone from his toothbrush, he would ask me for more!
I think he likes the taste of it. It tastes predominantly of banana and not so much of the apple. I know because I tried it myself. It sure felt funny. The gel-like paste does not create much foam when brushing. Whilst I have a mental block of how well it cleanses the teeth because it doesn’t feel like the regular toothpaste that can sometimes give you a squeeky clean feel, I have to admit that it’s actually not too bad.
After rinsing off the toothpaste, my teeth did feel quite clean. In fact, it felt smooth. I quite liked that feeling. But what I cannot take is the after taste of the banana flavour. I’m not a banana fan, so you can see why I have a problem there. But I’m sure the kids would love this First Teeth Baby Toothpaste and I know why now!
You can find this toothpaste at most Guardian pharmacies. Not sure about Watson, but I suppose you can too. It’s very expensive though, for a small tube of 40g, it costs RM25.90.
by Penny on October 5, 2009
It was a while back when I first wrote to ask for opinions of other parents regarding potty training their kids. Back then I was quite keen to get started on training Ryan to use the potty. But the suggestion then was to let him take his time and be ready at his own pace.
So it was left at that. But recently we started asking Ryan if he would like to try using a potty since he can already tell us when he needs to pee and poo. He was alright with the idea and sometimes even seemed keen when we talked about buying a potty when we go shopping.
But for a few times when we went to check out potties and tried to get him to test some out just so we know it fits him, he refused and wanted to walk out of the shop. So we couldn’t buy any. The strange thing was that during bed time, he would come and tell me that I forgot to buy him a potty!
Anyway, finally the daddy managed to get him to try out some potties when I wasn’t around and bought him 2 sets, one for home use and the other at the babysitter’s. We have yet to start him on it but looking forward to it tonight.
I just hope that we don’t get overwhelmed by all that smell from the potty…he does eat quite a bit and sometimes even he can’t take the smell of his own poo and showed signs of wanting to vomit! Hahahaha!
Speaking of eating a lot, I’ve pigged out so much during lunch time that I’m feeling sleepy all afternoon. If I keep eating at this pace, soon I’m going to need a good and safe fat burner product! 
So anyone has any tip for this newbie mummy trying to potty train a 2-year old?
by Penny on October 3, 2009
All the time I’ve never thought about having a will written. To me a will is for old people. But now I’ve learned that I’m wrong to think so. I just realised how important will is as a tool to protect and take care of one’s children. You may say that having a term life insurance policy should be sufficient to take care of the children’s needs should anything happen to the parents, but now I think a will is also equally important so that the assets you currently have can be meaningfully passed on.
I have to make a mental note to myself to give this topic more consideration and some time to find out more about it. It does sound scary and somewhat a taboo for me to talk about wills, but I think I should get over this baseless taboo of mine.
Do you have a will written up already?
by Penny on October 3, 2009
It’s way past midnight and I’m still up and pondering. I met a friend recently and had a long chat over lunch about each other’s lives and catching up on what has happened to each of us thus far. We haven’t met for years, so you can imagine how much there was to update each other, what more with kids in our lives now.
As the conversation went on, we soon touched on very sensitive and private sharing and by the time lunch was over, I felt overwhelmed. Sometimes all you see on the surface is really far from what is happening in reality. It saddened me somewhat to hear some of the updates and we both ended our lunch with a promise to meet again to talk more.
The truth is that after that lunch, it has left me to think a lot about how each of us evolve in life. At one point in our lives, we were carefree and had nothing much to worry about other than passing our exams. At the most, the biggest drama we had was probably what to wear for the final year prom and whether we had a date to go with.
But now that we have grown up and entered the new phases of life being a spouse and a parent, we have a lot more on our plate to worry about than those carefree days of being a student. Sometimes I think I have it tough at work but when I hear other people’s stories of dealing with an impossible boss, family problems, health issues that involve looking for treatments for Mesothelioma, dilemmas on difficult choices to make, suddenly I don’t feel like I have it that bad anymore.
Sometimes it takes other people’s misfortunes to make us realise how good we have it. It’s true, isn’t it? Anyway, I shall not think too much and too deeply about problems of the world that do not belong to me. I’m looking forward to going to bed, to lie next to Ryan and be thankful that he is my beautiful son. That’s enough to put a wide smile on my face.
by Penny on September 30, 2009
I’ve never really known how to teach a child about delayed gratification. I guess we have tried to teach Ryan about this in a subconscious manner where we ask of him to save or postpone something for later.
But I do not expect a child of 2 years to naturally save something for the future if they can do or have it now. Children are mostly about instant gratification. Why wait to watch a Barney episode when you can do it now? Why wait to play with a favourite toy when you can play it now, right?
However, it does seem like whatever we’ve imparted to Ryan seems to have worked on him building up a natural delayed gratification habit. On Sunday I gave Ryan his first taste of a Crispy chocolate bar. He loves chocolates and he loved that small bar of Crispy too. I promised that I’ll let him have another bar the next day because I limit his candy intake in a day.
Came Monday this busy mummy had forgotten about the promised Crispy and my guess is that Ryan forgot too. Last night when I was rummaging through my handbag, I found that little Crispy bar and I immediately went to give it to him. He lit up at the sight of it and he was so happy. I tore it open for him to sink his little teeth in and he was happily enjoying it.
Then when he was halfway through the bar, he handed his half eaten chocolate to grandma and said “Keep this, tomorrow bring to Aunty’s house to eat”. Both grandma and I melted at that gesture. He loved that chocolate so much but he was willing to stop eating and keep the other half for the next day, without being asked to!
So when I heard that, I told him to eat it all up to his heart’s content. I promised to buy him some more so that he can eat them again. Only upon hearing this did he take his half eaten candy back from his grandmother and continued to happily chomp it down.
I’m so proud of my little 2-year old. If he understands the concept of delayed gratification now, I think it will be quite a breeze to start him young on financial education. After all, part of being smart in managing one’s finances involves delayed gratification.
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by Penny on September 28, 2009
All kids at one point or another are sure to be somewhat attracted to kiddie rides of all kinds. Ryan loves them too but fortunately for us, he doesn’t enjoy the ride when we insert coins into them. He would instruct us NOT to put in coins, he just wants to sit in it and turn the steering wheels and press on those brightly lit buttons in the kiddie rides.
Whilst that saves us money, we somehow can’t help but think that parents who walk past us and see us not inserting any coins to let Ryan enjoy his ride must think that we are so stingy! I guess we just have to be thick faced and be okay with that perception of us! 
Anyway, I’m writing this post to serve a reminder to parents. Something untoward happened to Ryan while he was on one of these kiddie rides in 1 Utama’s top floor at the new wing last night.
As usual we sat him into his chosen kiddie ride and he was turning the steering wheel and pressing the buttons…it was also our fault for not watching him closely and assumed that everything was alright. There was one particular button on that ride where the cap of the button had come off, so it was exposing the little bulb sitting inside it.
Ryan touched it and he immediately told us that his finger was very painful. He got burned by that heated bulb on the tip of his index finger! The bulb was so hot that his finger immediately developed quite a big blister. And his finger was quite red in colour for a long time. It all happened so quickly, we didn’t even see his little finger touch it. I felt awful as a mum for being so careless and letting him get hurt like that.
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