Watching TV on the bed always make me extra drowsy. This morning, while watching Elmo’s World with the kid, the sleepiness struck me again, so I thought I would catch a quick nap since the kid seem totally absorbed by the show and didn’t really care whether I was paying attention or not.

So quietly, I drifted into my dreamland. She didn’t disturb me at all until the show finished, and she started pounding on me. I was so tired, and subconsciously went over to the DVD player and repeated the show. I told her “Mama is very tired, let me sleep and don’t touch me.” The show satisfied her for a while, until it became choppy, the CD wasn’t in good condition. She started pushing me and jumping on me again. So I told her with a serious tone not to touch me and let me sleep. She seemed to understand and said, “Mama tired, no boom boom (meaning no jumping).” She remained peaceful for a while and then started all her irritating acts again. I was getting annoyed, and started giving her thighs a few smacking and she stopped. This repeated for a couple of times.

I knew those wasn’t any hard spanking, because there was no dramatic reaction coming from those smacking. I finally gave up the idea of napping with a jumping kid on the bed. After regaining my full consciousness, I was rather surprise that I actually smacked her thighs because she was disturbing my sleep. The only time I will smack her legs is when she jumps on sofa, which is extremely dangerous if she falls, otherwise, I am very sure I wouldn’t have done that even if she was screaming, crying, or acting willful and make me lost my temper.

Tiredness must have made me lose my ability to reason and remain compose. Well, tired parents tend to loose their temper more easily. Now, either I sleep earlier at night, or I better not take any nap with the kid around anymore, it is really hard to think properly when my mind is cannot process any information sensibly.

The kid was in a weird mood last night. It started as a happy night, because we brought her to the pasar malam nearby and she enjoyed herself tremendously with the kiddy train rides. But her unusual behaviour set in when we were on our way home. She usually prefers to walk, however, she insisted to be carried most of the time. When she asked to be put down, she would then insisted frantically to be carried again shortly after.

She was alright for a few minutes when we reached home, then she started running towards me and clung on to me again. All the while, I was asking her what she was so terrified of, she just replied ” 蚂蚁，怕怕”. I tried my best to reassure her that there are no ants and ants aren’t terrifying at all, but she wouldn’t buy them.

I needed to use the bathroom, so I thought after hugging her for a while; she should be calm enough to be offloaded. Instead, she turned hysterical when I tried to pry her off my body. At this juncture, she will start crying frantically whenever I move my body slightly and hugged on to me like a super leech, as if afraid that I am going to abandon her. She buried her head tightly onto my chest, insisted that she was afraid of the ants and continued screaming away for another 15min or so. That was rather freaky and I think the bathroom is not a good place to calm her down after all.

I also tried giving her milk, food, toys and switching on her favourite shows, but nothing could distract her from the unknown “ants”. Well, I guess nothing beats the cool air-conditioner and the soft bed, I think they made her more comfortable and less irritable. She slowly calmed down and fell asleep after another 30min or so of crying and leeching on to me.

I still have no idea where the unknown fear came from. I am sure she wasn’t trying to seek attention, because she had all the attention from me then. Maybe it was just some unexplained uncontrollable emotional outbreak. I must admit that I was most irritated and annoyed by her during her screaming moments. I wasn’t loosing my temper, but contemplated the idea of throwing her into a room and let her cry her heart out. I am glad I didn’t do that, I knew I am going to regret if I did. Not too sure if I am too yielding to her weird behaviour, but I guess I pass the test of not loosing my cool. heh.

I bought this little tent like playhouse for Yauyau some months ago. It was left in grandpa’s house until recently, when he ordered to have it removed. He said it was taking too much of his precious floor space. Oh man, his living room is twice as big as mine, where am I going to place that playhouse then!

Anyway, it was brought home. I can’t bear to keep it away because Yauyau enjoys playing in it so much. And that is when the nightmare starts. Actually, it is just a tent like structure with some colourful plastic balls inside. There is nothing much to play, except crawling inside and mess around with the balls. But she enjoys doing that so much, and demands one of us to be inside with her. We have no choice, because she will pull our hands and repeatedly says “进来，进来”. You know, it is evil to turn a genuine innocent pleading girl.

It was cramp, stuffy and boring to be inside the house. I don’t know what else to do with her except throwing balls around, stuff balls inside her blouse or sing with her inside. It is great fun to her and she could go on and on without getting tired, but frankly speaking, I will get really bored after 1 minute. Luckily, there are two of us and we could call for help and take turns to imprison ourselves. All the little nightmares in exchange for the jingles of laughter. Worthwhile?

I just realised Pasir Ris Beach is a nice place to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon at. Most probably it was because of the super windy weather and the lack of the face melting sun.

The wind was very strong while we were looking for a nice shady spot to sit down. We found a nice tree and decided to anchor around it. Well, it seems quite standard that we always like to sit near some trees, not too sure if it was for the additional shade, or for a sense of security. We were shortly joined by another family. They were carefully scrutinising the area before deciding that they would like to be our neighbours. I was curious and realised that they were looking out for coconuts. Ah, I chose to sit under a coconut tree because I thought the probability of a worm dropping onto me would be lower, but the idea of a falling coconut never cross my mind! Anyway, after examining the rest of the coconut trees around, I found out most of the trees were bare of fruits. Hmm…Maybe the National Park Board had them removed to protect our safety?

Anyway, there was no worms or coconuts falling onto our heads. And the kid seems less afraid of the sea now. At least, she was willing to go near the sea and filled up her little bucket. Nice improvement, heh.

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When the child insisted that she wanted to feed herself spaghetti, the only thing parents could do is to strip her and cover the floor with as many pieces of news papers as they could. Then we will have fewer worries about messiness and be in a mood to be entertained by their spillage and funny feeding style.

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