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Hamster food can be tasty too! [In support of Rise & Shine]

January 21, 2013

The Rise & Shine Breakfast Team recently gave me an almost impossible task. They delivered a pack of granola to my home, as part of the Rise & Shine Breakfast Campaign, which is a community effort that aims to promote healthy breakfast eating on a daily basis among children aged 4 to 12.

I say it’s impossible because granola is something my kids think hamsters eat.

Rise & Shine Breakfast Pack

My kids, Ben, Becks and Nat, eat their breakfast every day. If they are in daycare (which will continue for only two more months), the school serves a variety of breakfast food ranging from oatmeal to egg sandwiches. Baby Nat gets brown rice cereal every day too. On weekends, we look forward to getting our local fare fix. I take them to the wet market and hawker centres and they get their tastebuds localised to the deliciousness in kway chap, wanton mee, fried carrot cake and kaya toast. They meet Milo Dinosaur and Rose Bandung, and on rare occasions, Ronald MacDonald’s. On rainy days, we stay home and I make them pancakes or mushi-pan.

I assure you they still eat healthy – I trim the fats in their kway chap, add water to the bandung and remove the generous slabs of butter in their kaya toast.

But the Rise & Shine Breakfast Team clearly had a MUCH healthier alternative in mind when they sent me a pack of granola.

In the spirit of eating healthier for breakfast, I got the kids to try some granola last Saturday. It was a rainy morning, so we stayed home and had some hot pancakes topped with yogurt ice cream with granola sprinkles.

Star pancakes with yogurt ice cream and granola toppings

The kids were very excited to be having ice cream on a cold day and took their first few bites with much enthusiasm.

Ben & his granola breakfast

The verdict? Fatherkao and Ben went yums and loved the crunch of the granola with its rolled oats, dried fruits and nuts. As for Becks, she announced after three mouthfuls, “I don’t like the beans. Gimme the ice cream.” By beans, she meant the rolled oats. I had myself a hearty and healthy breakfast too, cleaning up her “beans” and eating the leftover pancakes!

More information:
  • The Rise & Shine Breakfast Campaign is a community effort by a group of final year students from NTU Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information that hopes to raise awareness of healthy breakfast eating among children. Their efforts include ambient installations at libraries, malls and primary schools, storytelling sessions, educational theatre performances and cooking demos. Find out more at breakfast.riseandshine-expo.com. The site also features healthy breakfast recipes you can create for your kids.

 

  • Rise & Shine is a nationwide campaign supported by government agencies and prominent partners aimed at helping parents raise healthier and happier kids.

 

  • The Rise & Shine Carnival is happening on 3rd March 2013 at The Lawn @ Marina Bay. There are grand plans to set the record for the Largest Breakfast Picnic Event in Singapore! Check out carnival.riseandshine-expo.com for more details.

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Ben Kao The darndest kid quotes and antics

WTBW: Giving up fun

January 16, 2013

Ben: (after school one evening) I don’t want to play with my toys today.

Fatherkao: Why?

Ben: Because I don’t want to keep them. Every day ah, I play then I need to keep. Today I don’t want to keep.

Me: (to myself) Right, let’s see how long you can hold out.

Mess

~~~

 * WTBW: Welcome to Ben’s World

 

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Becks Kao Ben Kao Going Out! Happy days The darndest kid quotes and antics

The supermarket adventures of the conehead duo

January 10, 2013

One of the things I find extremely therapeutic is to push a trolley down supermarket aisles. Before I had kids, I looked forward to that quite a bit every week.

Now with three kids in tow, grocery shopping is a whole new experience altogether. When we do lug the kids along, there’s just so much to do. I can no longer zone out and just look at things. I gotta strategise and plan my shopping route. Get the items on the checklist. Check out the weekly offers to stock up. Dettol, detergent, toilet paper, tissue boxes, frozen food, wet wipes, fresh milk, tofu and Sakura chicken – grab these standard items every trip and stock ’em all up if they are cheap. I gotta make sure all bladders (mine included) are emptied before the kids are chucked in the trolley. I gotta make sure they keep their fingers to themselves and have enough entertainment to last about an hour while I push around at breakneck speed.

Sometimes, I break up fights and end up pushing two trolleys, a mean feat if I’m alone; a meaner one if I’m alone and wearing the baby. Some days I abandon all groceries and flail my arms like an insane woman if one of them has to poo or pee. But now with experience and tricks to avert disaster under my sleeves, I’d get them some ice-cream or finger food to eat so they’d sit quietly in the trolley for a good 15 minutes.

Going to the supermarket is spelled F-U-N for Ben and Becks. They’ve had much fun sampling all sorts of finger food, melting aunties’ hearts by cheekily waving and saying hi to random strangers, pinched and stabbed their fingers into tomatoes, carrots, apples and mushrooms, squealed at live crabs, butchered frog legs and fishes awaiting their deaths in the tanks, and playing with plastic bags, using them as gloves, socks and helmets. Yes, apologies to my tree hugging friends, but I’ve resorted to giving them plastic bags to play with to keep them out of mischief.

Yesterday, everyone who saw them in the trolley did a little giggle and gave me a sympathetic nod.

Bored kids Ben & Becks

These two alien coneheads made their day, I’m sure. They made mine too. I wouldn’t say it’s therapeutic now but I’m certainly laughing a lot more bringing them out grocery shopping.

P/S: We know the risk of giving a plastic bag to a child and have explained to the kids about the danger of suffocation. Which is why they did a “Look Ma, it’s on our heads and not over our faces – duh!”.

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Becks Kao Ben Kao Bento Attempts The real supermom

More bento meals

January 3, 2013

I still try to make the kids bento as often as I can. They are still not eating much and remain as picky as ever. But I am a persistent mother who would very much like to win this long drawn battle of wills at mealtimes.

These were prepped during Christmas. I taught them the song “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” one day and made them a little Rudolph with a cherry tomato nose. I used fried wantons (meat and shrimp dumplings) as his antlers.

Rudolph bento

I made these when my goddaughter came over for dinner some evenings ago. I used a little ketchup to make the rice a little orangey in colour and cut nori (seaweed) to make the tiger cubs’ stripes and ears. I used a craft punch for the mouth. The cubs sit on some baked chicken wings, tomato-scrambled eggs and broccoli.

Tiger cubs bento

And this was how I shaped rice just to get them to eat when we had some roast duck. The brownish black bit is the roast duck sauce.

Bird rice

The kids always prefer pasta to rice. For pasta meals, I would usually cookie-cut some cheddar cheese slices to add to their pasta. I tried to make the shape of a bone using flying fish roe some time ago but it was an epic failure.

Dog&bone pasta

Kids: Wow, look! Dogs! Mama, erm, but what’s that thing? (referring to the roe)

Me: It’s roe. The stuff you love in your sushi.

Kids: Oh yay! Pok pok pok! We like! (they refer to roe as that cos’ of the fun they have trying to bite into each one)

Didn’t connect to any “bone”.

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Ben Kao Getting all sentimental now Love language Milestones and growing up

“Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you”

December 21, 2012

Maybe because he’s been to a couple of weddings and is beginning to understand the concept of a family. He’s seen and heard a few of our close friends exchange vows and knows a wedding takes place with someone you love and want to be with forever.

At bedtime tonight…

Ben: Mama, next time I’m going to marry you.

Me: You can’t, my dear. I’m married.

Ben: (tears welling up his eyes) But I want to be with you. I want to marry you.

Me: I’m married to Dada. That’s how you, Becks and Nat came about! So I’m so sorry, son, I can’t marry you.

Ben: (starting to cry) *sob*

Me: Someday, you’ll find someone whom you love, and who loves God and loves you. And you will marry her.

Ben: Then I’m not getting married.

He said that with such a tone of finality. Well, if he ever remembers this conversation thirty years later.

Today, I saw a little more through the eyes of my firstborn, the one who came and changed my world forever. He’s thinking ahead of himself, and wondering if we can still be as close and as tight as he grows older. And he’s made me the centre of his universe.

Ben at two years old

Ben at two years old

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Becks Kao Ben Kao Bento Attempts Food, glorious food! Parenting 101 Re: learning and child training The Kao Kids

Mealtime woes: an update

December 19, 2012

Bentos for December

So far, I’ve made some crabs, two snowmen and even a frazzled mother (that is me, yelling “PLEASE EAT!”). I’ve even attempted to make a stegosaurus with macaroni to join my son in his dino craze this month.

Have we made any progress? Ben is appreciative and eating better, and I’m really happy my efforts paid off. As for Becks, she’s still picking the bits she likes and refusing to eat most of the mains in her bento.

My conclusion? My kids don’t like chinese food; or rather, they’d much prefer soba, seaweed, pasta, cheese and ham anytime. Rice is always the tricky one to get them to eat. And oh yes, they absolutely dislike bread. The good thing is, they love fruits of every sorts and cherry tomatoes, and these will have to be the mainstay of all their bento meals for a long while.

 

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Ben Kao Food, glorious food! The darndest kid quotes and antics

Things you didn’t know about a dragon fruit

December 16, 2012

Ben: Mama, how do we get dragon fruit?

Me: Erm, I think I bought it from the supermarket?

Ben: No, how does it grow and grow?

Me: From a tree?

Ben: No, I tell you, they kill those dragonflies and make them into dragon fruit!

~~~

A while later…

Ben: Mama, I finished my breakfast and all the dragon fruit, bread and cheese.

Me: That’s good.

Ben: But I didn’t eat those black black things.

Me: You mean the dragon fruit seeds?

Ben: Yes. I’m scared that if I bite them, they will burst out baby dragonflies.

~~~

 

What the kids had for breakfast today!

What the kids had for breakfast today!

 

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Becks Kao Ben Kao Bento Attempts Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids The real supermom

Mealtime woes

December 7, 2012

I’ve been busy making picture bentos for the kids for almost every meal they have at home, but it’s been quite futile.

They.are.still.not.eating. They just go “yay”, pick the bits they like and very much leave a large portion of the box untouched.

So every day I try, and hope that more gets finished today than yesterday. Very humbling for the mommy ego indeed.

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Becks Kao Ben Kao Bento Attempts Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids

Mealtime wins

November 27, 2012

We’ve been fighting mealtime battles a lot lately.

What went wrong? Strict dinner rules have been laid. No tv. No running around. Eat what’s on your plate. Treats only after you’ve finished. My kids don’t snack. They don’t eat candies either. They should be hungry by dinner time because I never give them anything three hours before dinner, except water.

And yet, I had to send the kids straight to bed without a full dinner a few evenings ago. For a few consecutive days prior to that evening, they’ve been balking and gagging at what they were supposed to eat, taking forever to chew and swallow, and doing nonsensical things with each other, like kicking each other’s legs, laughing for no reason and blowing bubbles in their soup. After a few days of that, enough was enough. I gave my last warning to chew the food that was in the mouth (which wasn’t heeded anyway), marched right into the kitchen, grabbed the trashbin, emptied their plates right before their eyes and sent them straight to bed.

Never imagined needing to do that.

I know reality discipline advocates that. For a while, I’ve always tried not to resort to this. I’ll nag, threaten, cajole, play close-your-eyes-don’t-see-what-you’re-eating game and, of course, when all else fails, spoonfeed.

That night, I stayed up to rethink my strategy. I want them to eat – without me having to feed. I want them to love food. I don’t want to send them to bed with the reality of an empty stomach. I don’t want hunger to teach them anything – for now. I want them to have fond memories of the times we spend at the dinner table.

My new plan is to make food appealing to them and hope it whets their appetite.

I’m getting so inspired by these bento creations and the “bento-mums” I know!

Someday I’ll make all these (and more)!

These days I’ve been cracking my head to see how I can make the food more “picture bento”-like just so they can get excited about eating their dinner. It’s like a project everyday: give instructions to the helper to cook the dishes for dinner, but at the back of my mind, think about how to morph what the adults are gonna eat into fun things on the plate. These were my very humble first attempts.

I’m glad to report that the children look forward to dinner a little more now than they used to, and Ben has been finishing his portions since I tried this out two days ago. He has even made requests to see leopards, pandas and lions in his bento. I’ve much to learn, but am loving every minute of this; and I really hope to announce my decisive win in the Battle of Wills at the Dinner-table soon!

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