Baby Claire's first swim

We've finally bought our little Claire to swim yesterday morning at Singapore Polytechnic. It is pretty near my house and the good thing is that the pool at SP is chorine free. :)

Some of my friends asked "Why did you take so so long to bring Claire for her first swim"? Well, we felt she is so tiny, afraid wait she will catch a cold and also partly because the fortune teller said that we need to be careful of her and water when she is below 3 years old.

However, I felt that she might be very fearful of water like she is stepping on the sand at the park. Thus, I woke my hubby up and say "Let's bring her for her swim TODAY".

We put on her new pink swimwear and put her on a pink top and ready to go!

Glad that I decided to ask Papa Justin to take out her toy to let her play in hope to calm her down, and she did!

After 5 minutes letting her to play her toy while I move her around the pool, I slowly removed her toy and she seemed fine with it and then the fun began!

We played in the baby pool for around 30 minutes and I guess it was pretty not bad for her first swim. :) Happy that the weather was good with some sun. And you know what?? We were really lucky because after our swim, it began to pour. :)

P.S: Papa Justin did not go into the pool today because his thumb is still covered with stitches. :( 

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

How to prepare to grind brown rice powder for porridge

When Baby Claire was around 7 months old, I decided to let her try real brown rice beside brown rice cereal and mashed potato.

Cracking my head on how I can cook a brown rice porridge at the quickest time (we all know that it takes quite some time to cook a very soft brown rice porridge)  and at the same time to save  electricity. I read several blogs and websites recommending many different ways such as using slow cooker, using rice cooker, and grinding rice into powder before cooking.

Thus, I decided to try out using my rice cooker which has a rice porridge function. Since baby does not eat a lot, we cook around only 1/4 cup or less of rice and some water. Result? It doesn't turn out to be very good. Rice is still lumpy or hard (maybe I put too little water). Taste wise..erm..not very nice too. I felt that it is a waste of electricity too. Besides, I need to wait for some time for the rice cooker to complete the cooking which is sometimes a hindrance especially when we do impromptu outings to the parks, shopping malls, etc.

Then I decided to try grinding these rice. We have a Philips HR2118 Blender which also has a chopper function.

This blender really does it job, it took us like less than a few minutes to grind the rice into the consistency we wanted. I tried to cook the rice by putting around 1.5 to 2 tablespoon of rice and some water, and in less than 15 or 20 minutes, the brown rice porridge with some frozen mashed vegetables and fish is cooked. :)

We also grind spagetti and barley too. Really save our time cooking time. Below contains a picture of the grounded barley.

By the way, I created my very 1ST video on how to prepare stuff. In this video, it shows how to prepare the brown rice for grinding. Hopefully, it may be helpful to those who need this information. :)

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Her current favourite song. Three Blind Mice.

Claire loves Mommie singing nursery rhymes to her. I sang to her everyday, even when I am back from work.


Here are a list of them.

1. Twinkle Little Star
2. itsy bitsy spider
3 Three Blind Mice (Her top favorite now)
4 old macdonald had a farm
5. row row row your boat (but i changed the lyrics to include seeing different animals along the stream, instead of life is but a dream)
6. and other nursery rhymes

All all these songs, Three Blind Mice is the only song which she will AUTOMATICALLY sing together with me. Take a look at this video! Hahahahaha, so cute.




Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie