Self Hosted!

I finally self hosted my blog again after some years the new address is at http://sooddlydreamlike.com

Wordpress is not as user friendly (to me) as Blogger but with the plugins what I gather is that its like an iPhone, you can customise to what. Lots more work to do to tweak the new place like:

How do I change the slider background to white?
How do I fix all the formatting problems with migrating my blogger posts over?
Do I really have to go through each and every post to set a featured photo so that every post would look good?

And many more.
Steep learning curve.

Visit the new address from now on!

The day that got to me

I think it was the combination of yet another hard day, one of several consecutive ones plus the inability to wind down and fall asleep at night - By 6pm I was spent and sitting forever alone in an eating place trying to fill my tummy with tasteless bibbimbap.

Meeting a little girl called Kayleen and her family

I was randomly reading things on facebook when I chanced upon this post and this video:


Just from watching the video, it is easy to tell that this little girl has such a sweet nature. Her face brightens up every time she smiles and theres something about her that makes me feel very contented. If she were my child, I would feel very contended and wouldn't love her any lesser than how much I love JoyJoy now

This video brought me to tears because it reminded me of the time when we decided we wouldn't go ahead with the pregnancy if the little girl had Down Syndrome (I'm not proud of it but at that time, it felt as if that was the right decision, didn't want to bring a life into the world for her to suffer). If not for that doctor who's comments helped us (or me) realize that every life was precious, even another life was probably destined to undergo suffering or bring you suffering at the end of his or her life. Its not an it-could-have-been-my-girl situation here, it is that I could have lost a child like her or JoyJoy.

Hearing other news

I also read about another mother who had lost her child by miscarrage. Out of everything in the post, what got to me most was this bit:

"My younger son said “two in heaven, three on earth!” Yes, I never thought I would have such a big family, but that would be right. A total of 7 of us."

And the bit about "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with physical pain shooting through my heart."?... I really get it.

The song 

And then I hear this song being played in the eating place:

Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy 

Don't know about you but me, when I'm not feeling too good, I like to drown myself in a sad song. I've been out of touch on songs for a long long while but this song gave me goosebumps. If I ever do the singing thing again, I'd like to do this song.

On a bright note, at least 2 of the side dishes were good.

Free hand cloud nails

And so I tried out one of those nail tutorials. It was surprising simple and very quick (15 mins!) to do, great for me since I have very limited time. Now I just need to go to bed and wake up tomorrow to gently peel off the excess bits by the sides of my nails.

In case you're interested, the I used OPI colors in:


And these are my trusty, not-so-secret weapons for a smooth base & super short drying time:

Nail discovery

Nails on my Pinterest

Chanced upon this awesome nail blog!

My pinterest is filled with images of pretty nails, no reasons not to try out some of her tutorials.. :D

I wish you sleep and me, less work

Last night, I had a night call at 10.30pm, rushed home from work and managed to be done with dinner / shower by 8.30pm (early by my standards) spent a precious 30 minutes with the little girl before nursing her so that she would sleep and I could take the call. She did, at about 9.30pm.

As I typed furiously and took the call, I heard heartbreaking screams. Desperate and furious screams. She cried with all she had. I grit my teeth and tried to focus on the call, so that I can try to speed it up in any way possible.

When the call ended, I went out of the room I was in to see the little girl. Her eyes were swollen, her voice was hoarse and she refused to be handed over to me. She was angry I sensed. Why didn't mummy come for me when I wanted her so badly. It took a long while before she would let me carry her. I hugged her close and told her "I'm sorry, mummy was working. I love you." She look at me for a good while then hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe. That was when I felt her heart beat. So fast. Did she have a nightmare?

To calm her down, I talked to her. Showed her pictures of a puppy (she went "Aw Aw Aw Aw" and "Puppy!"), showed her pictures of her favourite bath-time duckies (she went "Duck Duck... 鸭鸭, 鸭鸭") and I called Daddy (overseas again) so she could see him, offer him a drink with her plastic "cup" and kiss him. When I saw that she had calmed down and was in a overtired daze, I told her "keep your toys baby, let sleep".. she passed me what was in her hands without protest.

Bath-time Duckies

The puppy picture she loves

A picture of Daddy I have on hand to use when we have connectivity issues

But she was overtired by then and even the nursing did not work. She tried to fall asleep in various positions on bed, sitting on my tummy, lying on my chest but ultimately went back to nursing. She would be willing to nurse in even awkward positions just to get a shot at falling asleep. 

No words can describe how I felt when her limp body rested in my arms. Utterly exhausted and just desperate for sleep, begging for sleep. By 1am, way pass her usual late bedtime at 10pm, she lay in bed, motionless. Her eyes were swollen and open. She was whimpering. She was still awake. I band-aid my broken heart together and tried every trick in my book to help her sleep, nothing was beneath me. I was useless as her Mummy. Not willing to let her cry it out but inapt at teaching her to fall asleep.

She fell asleep eventually, 15minutes later. Nursed to sleep.

The sound of her heavy, tired breathing was music to my ears.

I'm exhausted as well but sleep is not coming.

On nights like this, I always wonder what the hell am I doing.

And I'm furious really. Very.