Father & Daughter

Another great photo taken by Boomer!

My New Blog Header

Due to boredom, I decided to change the header of my blog. Anyway, the old header is about 2 years old. ;p

3 out of 4 photos in the header were taken by Dawn's hubby, Boomer! Recently he is addicted to photography. Well, I find that he had the potential to become a professional photographer!!!




One day, I am going to grab him and ask him to do a portfolio for Shannon. Hope you don't mind, Dawn! :D

Boring Boring Boring

Life for Shannon and myself or rather all the wifey with kids are boring now and we will be bored for another 1 week or more.

Due to the HFMD outbreak recently, we are confined at home to stop the HFMD from spreading. Although our kids had recovered from the HFMD but we are still not allowed to go out. It's getting really boring staying at home 7 days a week.

Due to boredom, Shannon cannot stop EATING!!! She will come to me several times a day and said:-

Shannon: Mummy , I want to eat something
Me: What do you want to eat?
Shannon: You talk tell me o.O
Me: Porridge or Noodles or Honey Pops?
Shannon: No, I want Chocolate!!

I am getting really pissed off about the constant asking of food from her. There are limited tibits/food for her as she was down with slight cough after HFMD recovery. I do not want to worsen her cough as we are going back to Singapore next week.

Sometimes we were wondering can we mixed with those who recovered from HFMD??? At least our kids can play together and wifey can have some chit-chat sessions. ;p

Winning the HFMD Battle

Poor Shannon looking grumpy on Tuesday ...


The ulcers inside her mouth had make her mouth/cheek swollen!!



LUCKILY.... SHE WON THE HFMD BATTLE AND TODAY SHE IS A HAPPY & CHEERY GIRL AGAIN





Thank you for all the well wishes!!!

Shannon is recovering well. ^_^ She is eating well these 2 days and had resumed her milk consumption. Ulcers in her mouth is almost cleared... Those tiny rashes on her hands and foot had also subsided. The "long gao" smell in her mouth has improved too as hardworking Daddy spent about half an hour every morning to coax her to brush her teeth. But I really do not know WHEN is she consider "FULLY RECOVERED" because according some website, the virus will stay in the body up to several weeks. :>O

I am glad that most of Shannon's friends have recovered too. However, there are new cases surfacing at the same time. "Sigh" Poor Kiddies and mummies..I really hope all this HFMD thingy will go away asap.

I had stopped the barley water since yesterday as it could to be too "liang" and cause her to have slight cough. However problem of drinking more water is solved shortly...

Hehehe... She drank about 7-10 teapot of water today!!!!

Finger Pointing

Shannon is "finger pointing" all day long. She refuses to open her mouth to talk due to pain in her mouth. She just goes "errrrr errrr errrr *point point point" and we have to go around guessing what she wants and give it to her. She even tries not to swallow her saliva due to the pain. Her mouth smells like a "long gao" due to the ulcers as she refused to brush neither her teeth nor rinsing her mouth. Everyday, I have to go around to catch her and force the ulcer cream in her mouth to numb the area before feeding her.

Luckily, she is getting better each day. The first day, she survived with few bottles of water/barley water. She ate Alphabet Macaroni for lunch and dinner on the second day. And today, she ate some noodles, macaroni and 100ML of milk. As for the rashes, there are just a few on her foot and hands. Tonight I heard some coughing going on and I hope the cold barley water she drink daily doesn't contribute to another illness. :(

Baby Ethan who caught this HFMD is going thru a bad time too. I heard he is having rashes over the body and ulcers in his mouth. He required mummy Kym to carry him all day long. Poor Boy T.T I believe his parent must be real heart pain over this. I really hope all infected kids will recover as soon as possible and never get it again.

Ignorance & Awareness

Till date, there are 7-8 kids including a few months old baby confirmed to have contracted HFMD over here. Many questions like why and how did the HFMD happened here? It's simply because of the ignorance of the spreading party and GP here.

HFMD is really rare in Europe so most of them don't really know what Hand Food Mouth Diseases is. A few kids who kenna HFMD earlier were diagnosed like gum inflammation, or insect bites on foot/hand instead of HFMD!! And the PD was wondering why we, Singaporeans, were so paranoid about this HFMD thing.

So we told him about HFMD, that the virus remaining in the body would take several weeks to go away but to him, it’s just another contagious childhood virus which we shouldn't be too concerned about it. He was so surprised that someone told him that there are kids who were killed by HFMD. Maybe it’s really the climate difference and the population in Singapore which made the virus so fierce.
As for the spreading party, of course they have no such intention to spread the virus here. I believe they are now going thru "finger pointing" process now.

You can't blame us (the affected party) for doing so. We were really caught off-guard and now our kids suffer and all our plans need to be adjourned.

-3 of the kids' mummy are currently pregnant now and are worrying about the risk of getting it from the infected child.

-1 of the family has to separate the 2 kids as much as possible to prevent the elder one spreading to the younger one.

-1 family has 2 infected kids to take care of.

-1 baby who is only few months got it - imagine the pain they will be going thru at such a young age.. You can't possibly force a baby to drink water/milk???

As for me, my plans of going back Singapore this weekend had to be postponed due to this HFMD. Although, the GP here and the family doctor in Singapore did certify us to go back this weekend, I am not giving any chance for my girl to bring back the disease and spread to her niece and others back home.

We had to incur the charges for changing flight and canceling of flight which cost us a few hundred Euros. Even after 3 weeks, I still have to be very careful with my girl mixing around with others kids. All the above really imposed lots of stress and inconveniences to me and other infected families.

For those whose kids are not affected, even they have to be quarantined at home as well. Their daily lives have been affected such as their their school, extra curriculum activities ALL has be halted without any compensation, thus created some grumbling as well.

Comparing with the above, being finger pointed is just a minor issue. You guys just have to bear with it although there is no evidence which showed that you are the one who spread it but just shut your ears right now and let those who are affected have some ways of venting and grumbling. It will be gone with wind in a month or 2 and life will be back to normal.

However, this really taught us an important lesson of HFMD. Those are:

- Even the doctor certified that your kids are well; we still have to be responsible and take some precautions.

- A person with HFMD is most contagious during the first week of illness, but may continue to be contagious for several weeks after their symptoms are gone. HFMD will remain slightly contagious even though the ulcer has gone or the blisters/rashes had subsided. So personal hygiene like washing of hands have to be taken seriously.

- A person with HFMD may have only the rash or the mouth ulcers as there are strain of virus belonging to the enterovirus family.

Now, we pray for the speedy recovery for those who caught the HFMD.


The following websites is for your awareness and my reference on HFMD.

*Information on HFMD, please see the FAQs on MOH website
*Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases in Child Care Centres / Kindergartens / Pre-School Centres
*Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (Children) (KKH website)

A War With HFMD

Yes, Shannon was confirmed a HFMD victim by PD yesterday morning. Her ulcers in her mouth were really bad. She almost refused to eat/drink everything including her milk. She survived on 2 -3 bottles of cold barley water yesterday. We gave her "porridge water", macaroni soup and soft biscuit (baby bites), sweets, chocolate milk (no choice) even her favorite ice-cream but she just took one sip/mouth and complained the pain in her mouth. We even put ice into every drink or literally put her food into the fridge before feeding her but still she refused to eat. Whenever we tried to put some ulcer cream into her mouth, she would scream and cried like hell.

She simply just keep her mouth shut as much as possible and when she talked, she sound like someone who had "big tongue"... for example, I don't want to eat become I ko want oo eee. We knew she was hungry because she always checked out what we were eating but the pain in her mouth had shut her off.

She would wake up from her sleep and cried to say her mouth is painful. Daddy and I were feeling really heart pain and worried. Daddy even took a day off just to be with her. But it become kind of a nuisance to me because he kept telling me that Shannon is hungry, she din drink her milk and tried his means to coax and put food in her mouth which caused alot of whining from her. ;p

Today, she looks better but still refused her milk. I made some Jelly and cooked a new pot of barley water and put it into the fridge. She refused to eat the Steamed Egg I cooked but luckily, she ate 3/4 bowl of the Tiny Alphabet Macaroni I cooked for her this afternoon. She kept choosing which Alphabet to eat and I have to stir and looked for the alphabet she wanted. It’s kind of troublesome but I am willing to do that as long she eats.

The rashes on her hands and legs were still not really prominent but the rashes on her butts were bad. We actually saw her limping when walking which we suspect that the rashes on her foot are getting bad as well.

Last night right after she fell asleep, I did a"5 minutes suggestion" on her which I learnt it few years ago during her Shichida Class. I will faithfully do it these few nights and hopefully she will recover soon.

HFMD STRIKE!!

NO SCHOOL FOR ALL THE SINGAPOREAN KIDS FOR TWO WEEKS!

We are ordered to quarantine ourselves as much as possible for the coming 2 weeks. 4 kids were confirmed to have contacted HFMD. There are a few of them including Shannon were having fever and ulcers in their mouth and thus probably the next victims.


BUT WHERE AND HOW DID THE VIRUS REACHES OUR KIDS????

According to information gathered, all the kids above had either attended the lantern festival celebration or the kids yoga session.



As for Shannon, her fever started last night. Initially, I thought it was because of the weather and the heaty food that she had these few days. Then this morning, we saw some tiny tiny little ulcers in her mouth. AND NOW, I discovered that rashes have started to appear on her foot!!!!!



It seems that Shannon would not be able escape the fate of having HFMD!! I really hope that this entire HFMD will go away asap and all our kids will get well soon.

A Visit To St. Emilion And Dune De Pyla

J's relatives was here last Friday, thus we brought them to St. Emilon for a tour.





St. Emilion is a wine of great tradition, already famous as far back as the Gallon-Roman period. The vines grow all around the town thus we can see vineyards everywhere. We went to a family owned vineyard for a tour. The owner was a very nice person who tells lots of jokes and performs several magic tricks while he was explaining the various stages involved in the vinification process. We got to taste his 1996 wine too.

After visiting St. Emilion, we drove back to our place and brought them to Dune De Pyla for a visit.


First, we have to take the looonnnnggg looooonnngg stairs up to the Sand Dune.

The Great Dune De Pyla is the largest Sand Dune in Europe. The dune is about 60,000,000 m³, measuring around 500m wide (from East to West) by 3km long (from North to South). Its height varies from 100 to 117 metres above sea level.




I have been up there for quite a numbers of times. However, yesterday was the FIRST time that I came down after I reached the top for less than 10 minutes. I haven finish "chuan-ing" panting hahahahaha

Anyway, instead of taking the stairs, we went down like this...



Auntie Beverly and Uncle Geroge left this morning. J brought them for a short walk in Bordeaux before boarding the train to Paris. I hope Auntie Beverly and Uncle had enjoyed their short stay with us. ^_^

My Little Ballerina

Shannon attended the Modern Dancing Class on Friday evening. We got her a set of dancing clothes which cost us about 40 Euros. Well, she simply loves to be dressed like a Ballerina.




She danced better than last week!



Avril & Shannon..