After a week at the hospital, mom-in-law was back home yesterday. Her stay was prolonged by a newly diagnosed illness, diabetes. She's well now but will still be on medications, which include the new ones for diabetes along with her hypertension's and a blood thinning agent to clear her blockage that caused the stroke. We were rather worried about the food that she can and can't eat due to diabetes, so KA did quite a bit of research on the net (and in the process, got his laptop infected by virus. Duh.). Anyone who has any diabetes recipes, please do let me know.

I finished reading the book Finding Ben by Barbara LaSalle and broke 2 of my own records. First, I did it in record time of 3 days! Woohoo! I know, you book addicts out there may be laughing off your heads now, but the last time I read a book in under 3 days was in my pre-kids days, I tell ya. Second, this book made me cry. It's simply too touching. It is a true story of a mother with a boy who suffers from Asperger Syndrome (a form of autism). Reading her heartbreaking journey as she a mother who struggled through a series of misdiagnoses of her highly intelligent but physically incapable son and finally learnt to live with it makes me wonder if I can be like her if I were in her shoes. Lesson learnt : love a child as he is, instead of trying to change him to what you'll love him to be. Trust me, if I read the book for 3 continuous days ("Mommy, why are you still reading Feeding Bean!!!") instead of surfing the net, it has to be good, right? So there.

Jolyne is turning six this Saturday, and her poor mommy has a hard time thinking of how to celebrate it. Frankly, I'm bad at organising any events. And is there an unwritten rule that birthday celebrations are supposed to be organised by mothers? Bleah. I was comtemplating a McDonald's or KFC's party to do away with the details, but KA thought we shouldn't spoil her. So in the end, we decided that she'll have a small celebration at her childcare centre on Friday, and a quiet one with us on Saturday. Mommy felt so bad in telling her that she'll have a McDonald's birthday party one day (which she announced to her class) and withdrawin the promise the next (imagine her disappointment) that she took half day off work to shop for extravagantly lavish party bag goodies, ordered a pretty Barbie doll cake for her and planned to buy bought her a pink party dress to complete the look. Uh-oh, looks like I'm still spoiling her, ain't I?

Jayden is so into Barney now. We are constantly bombarded by the incessant chant of "I love you, you love me" of the evil purple dino at least 5 times a day. Urgh! One day, I may have to hide all the Barney VCDs to save the sanity of the rest of us.

In other news, our dog of 15 years, Shogun, passed away peacefully.