Not that I've ever lost it, but rather I lost the meaning of it. This used to be a space for me to record the events of my life & my thoughts. For a couple of years, it became an information platform filled with food reviews, travel guides, makeup swatches, parenting advices... I don't regret any of those articles – they were after all still events that occurred in my life.
What I am thinking of right now is to update this space more often with candid photos that are not edited to perfection, real-life 'boring' chronicles of my life and deep thoughts that pop up in my mind at 3am in the night. So without any further ado, let's begin with the happenings of last week.
Still suffering from a burnt out from the previous week and also affected by the haze, I decided to take my week chill. I spent most of my days at home with Ethan, fetching him back from school, catching up on my sleep and... FINALLY I booked the plane tickets for our anniversary trip!
Victor and I (or rather just me because I puppy-faced him to bring me on a vacation ðŸ¤) have been thinking on going for a just-us vacation for awhile now. We've never gone abroad without Ethan because my son glues himself to me at night and the stickiness level is like elephant glue. It was only until 2 weeks back when Ethan had a sudden change of heart and decided to go sleep with his grandparents for the night.
Oh, how the husband and I rejoiced! No kid sneaking into our bed in the middle of the night, turning 90-degrees to sleep horizontally while the rest of us slept vertically, kicking the living hell out of our backs and head-butting our abdomen... srsly not a joke to co-sleep with this toddler.
Anyway back to my story on our anniversary trip, this is the most impromptu trip that we've ever been on. Other than deciding that we will be travelling in the week of 10th October (because that's the date he asked me to be his girlfriend ☺️ and also he baked me my fav blueberry muffins for the first & last time... 😑), we had no idea what are our exact travelling dates nor where to.
I went onto skyscanner, saw that Phuket was the cheapest city in Thailand to travel to during that week and tadah! That's how we settled on our destination.
Due to the rising prices of budget airlines, I've always had this suspicion that normal airlines might be cheaper on some flights. 'Lo & behold, for our upcoming trip to Phuket, prices for a normal airline were indeed cheaper!! Significantly cheaper.
I had already pulled out my credit card and was about to make payment on Scoot ($450++ not inclusive of credit card fees & taxes) for 2 return tickets to Phuket, when I thought to myself... 'Why not check the prices on SQ or Thai Airways?' And luckily I did!!!! I checked multiple times on Skyscanner, Google Flights – all the flight comparison websites said that budget airlines were the cheapest.
I went onto SQ's website and not only were the prices cheaper at $370, the flight timings were also better! Obviously I went with SQ. Hot meals and 60kgs of luggage included... can also accumulate Krisflyer miles, I didn't think twice.
So yes, I'll be heading to Phuket from 9-12 October!
I also met up with Lauren from The Fragrance Group for a quick catch-up. She brought me a new perfume each from Banana Republic & Christian Siriano.
I'll be bringing these 2 new perfumes to Phuket to shoot, and hopefully I can transcend these scents into my visuals!
On the same day, I also met up with the lovely folks from L'Occitane together with the other girls (and boy) from our Beauty school! We got a sneak peek of their upcoming Christmas 2019 collection!
There was Chloe's wedding on Saturday night!
Hands down, the BEST wedding that I've ever attended! It was even better than my wedding. There was so much effort poured into their wedding, the amount of details, activities, the menu... I love every bit of their wedding! So fun & so memorable.
We did a one-take wedding dance video and it was surprisingly exhausting dancing to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" for so long (sorry la, I old liao 🤣). In all of our heads, we were thinking... "How come the song is still going on ah? Not ending yet ah?" And because it was for our dearest Chloe, we hung in there and shook our booties off!
And if only... the week ended on such a high note. Later that night when I returned home, Ethan was sleeping with my parents in law for the night. At around 2.30am, my MIL rapped on my bedroom door and thankfully I wasn't asleep yet. She said that Ethan seemed to be having a fever & told me to go check. I carried my lil fatty back into our bedroom to continue his care for the rest of the night, tending to his fever and needs... and from then on, it translated to a couple more sleepless nights...
We woke up on Sunday morning with Ethan's fever reaching 39°C, and that was with paracetamol and ibuprofen in his system. Ethan refused to drink any water and rejected his breakfast as well – the latter being the rarest occurrence because no matter how sick he was in the past, he would NEVER reject his meals.
The husband decided that this wouldn't do, and so we rushed the kiddo off to KK's Children Emergency room. His fever came down while we were in the Emergency room but the doctor insisted that we collect a urine sample so that they could rule out UTI as the cause of his fever.
Collecting a urine sample from a baby is a nightmare. What they do is to stick a urine bag on the kid, in hopes that when the kid does pee, the bag would help to collect sufficient urine to do a test. Now this collection method is often a hit-or-miss thing, because the kid is constantly moving about and the pee might spill out. If not, the urine bag might fail to collect any pee at all and the urine gets absorbed all into the diaper.
We waited for hours to collect the urine sample, going into the toilet multiple times to check if he had peed already or not. It was to the extent that Ethan started screaming his head off when we took down his pants and made hand motions that he wants us to remove the darn urine bag – trust me baby, WE WANT TO but only if you would just pee! We suspected that Ethan held onto his pee due to the presence of the urine bag, which was foreign and uncomfortable and so Ethan tensed up and refused to
We fed him with all sorts of liquid (water, electrolyte solution, fruit juice) anything that would increase his fluid intake, fill up his bladder and get him to pee sooner. Finally just as we were about to give up and requested for the doctor to remove his urine bag, the kiddo peed!!!!! All credits for the kid's pee goes to Victor, who at the last minute, did everything that he could to make our son laugh. He believed that 1) laughing would relax the kid, 2) laughing would cause the diaphragm to contract thus pushing downwards on the bladder and cause him to pee.
I don't know if the laughing really caused Ethan to pee, but the main point was... HE FINALLY PEED!!! The nurses tested and he was ruled out from having UTI and we could make our way back home. Things did not end there though. As the day progressed on, Ethan's fever came back and damn was it stubborn. It spiked to 40.3°C.
His fever refused to subside and we were giving him the exact same medication as what was fed to him at KK's Emergency Room... with the exception of oral rehydration salt solution.
Fortunately the doctor gave us some to bring home and I told Victor to quickly prepare it and have the liquid fed to Ethan. And it worked!!! I don't know how, but the combination of the medicine and these oral rehydration salts brought his fever down. That night Ethan's fever broke but a new symptom came up.
Ethan woke up for his usual midnight milk feed, but this time he had difficulty drinking. After the first two sucks, he would wince as though in pain, throw the milk bottle away in anger and cry very loudly. This went on for another 2 more times throughout the night.
When he woke up the next morning, again he refused to drink water and take his breakfast. Everytime he took a sip of water, he winced in pain and cried. We thought... "Perhaps he might be teething? Maybe it is his molar teeth?" We noticed that he was drooling a lot and it's been almost a year since he drooled! But Ethan refused all of his chilled teethers and had a preference to drink cold water that was fed from a spoon.
We made a quick decision and brought Ethan to see a pediatrician who was located near our house. A quick check from the doctor and he was diagnosed with Herpangina, a virus similar to Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease ('HFMD' for short). Ethan's doctor showed us all of the tiny ulcers that had formed at the back of his mouth... ouch! It looked painful. No wonder my baby boy wouldn't drink nor eat anything at all 😔
It's been 3 days since the diagnosis and Ethan is definitely much better. He was initially listless, always wanted to be carried, stuck to me like a magnet... but today he is back to his happy self and up to mischief!
More updates next week. By then I should be in Phuket! Wheeeee ~
No comments