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Moms are basically ninjas with 8 hands who can also teleport. It’s like we always have to do a thousand things and be everywhere at the same time.

Sometimes, I feel like my body is trying to tell me stuff like “take it easy”, “can’t keep up!” or “NEED. MORE. SLEEP!!!” but I just don’t have the time to stop and listen because I’ve got 4 little humans talking to me all day and night. On top of that, I’ve also got a job, a small but very fun label business, plus this little blog where I pen down my thoughts about being a wife and a mother. And right now, a ridiculously cute tiny baby who is also a tyrant. So um, what? My body needs me to slow down and recharge? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

And you know the crazy thing with moms is that we think placing ourselves at the bottom of a very long list makes us extra awesome. We wear it like a badge of honor, to see how much of a beating our bodies can take before we collapse. It’s insane. Then we sit down and ask ourselves: “Why did we do that?”

Like “Hey, I slept a total of 30 hours this week. Take that, all you weaklings who operate on 56 hours of sleep. Sleep is for the weak!” as if it will somehow makes us a better mom if we wear our bodies down and sacrifice more for the kids.

People say that age is only a number but lately, I’ve realized that age is actually catching up with me and the best thing I could do for my kids is to listen and take good care of my body. A fitter, stronger, sharper me will be able to do a better mommy job than a battered, exhausted, drained version of me. The kids don’t need a mom who’s barely able to keep it together – fatigued, aching everywhere, distracted, absent-minded, and dealing with a pounding headache. That mom is just sad.

What I need to do is start paying attention to the signals that my body is sending. That’s where BRAND’S^® comes in, to remind me that help is only a bottle away. With BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken, it provides regular restoration to help keep me sharp, focused and alert all day, so I’m able to be on top of my game. It’s pretty much that extra boost I need to restore my mental and physical focus, and a bottle a day is all it takes help me be at my best.

BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken is now also available in convenient, easy-to-swallow tablets, which contain Vitamin B Complex, Iron and Vitamin E that provides a dual-action formula to boost mental alertness and protect against free radical damage.

It’s an easier and more convenient way to obtain the benefits of essence of chicken. Vitamin B Complex promotes energy production to support brain function and a healthy nervous system, Vitamin E helps to protect brain cells against free radical damage produced during heavy mental workload, while Iron assists in the formation of haemoglobin in red blood cells which transports oxygen to organs. The convenient pill form (60 tablets/bottle) is perfect for our busy mummy schedules.

All you need is two tablets a day, which contain the following:

• Essence of chicken powder – 800 mg
• Sodium ferrous citrate (10 mg iron) – 100 mg
• Vitamin B2 – 1.3 mg
• Vitamin B6 – 1.6 mg
• Vitamin B12 – 2 mcg
• Folic acid – 0.2 mg

I’m still in the process of learning to listen to my body more and ideally, I’d also like to take a break and go hibernate for a week straight but with the kids all growing up so quickly, I guess that will have to wait. Although the truth is that parenting doesn’t get any easier as the kids get older and it’s important to remember that we need to make time to take care of ourselves along the way. Being a good parent becomes easier once we start looking after our own physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.

It’s a good thing I have BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken for my daily boost to ensure that I am always bringing my A-game.

Stand a chance to win over $15,000 worth of Banyan Tree Resort & Spa packages and BRAND’S^® hampers with a minimum of $25 worth of BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken products purchased.

SMS your entry to 90102322 in the following format: BRANDS <space>Name<space> NRIC<space>Receipt No<space>Gender E.g. BRANDS Ben Huang S1231234A 345678 M

//Ok, more great news – The team over at BRAND’S® has been really nice to come in with gifts for you guys! (:

Giveaway Time!

3 lucky winners will stand a chance to win a set of BRAND’S^® products containing: 1 Pack of 6 BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken and 1 Bottle of BRAND’S^® Essence of Chicken with Vitamin B complex+ Iron (60 Tablets) (worth $48.45). There are a total of 3 sets to be given away!

To Participate:

1. Be a fan of both my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/motherinc.org) and BRAND’S^® SG Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/BrandsSG)
2. Like and share this blog post on your Facebook wall with the comment: “BRAND’S^® #Listentomybody Giveaway!” and remember to tag my Facebook page so that I can track the participation.

Contest will end 25^th October, Saturday 6pm.

Conditions:

1. All criteria must be fulfilled to be eligible for the giveaway.
2. Organizer reserves the right to decide the winner.
3. Prizes cannot be redeemable for cash or exchangeable for other products.
4. Prizes must be self-collected from Organizer’s office.

As a parent in Singapore, the 3 letters I like most are C, D and A. Well, at this point, I also like S, L, E, E, P very much, but I think if I really had to choose, I’d go with CDA for sure.

What’s this CDA I speak of? I’m glad you asked.

If you are a parent who hasn’t heard about the CDA account, it’s time to pay attention, you’re going to want to sign up for it like right now. Because did anyone say free money? Yes, that’s exactly what the CDA gives you.

The CDA, or Child Development Account, is a special awesomesauce savings account for your child. It’s awesomeness lies in the co-matching savings that will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Government up to the cap of $6,000 each for the first and second child, $12,000 each for the third and fourth child and $18,000 each for the fifth and subsequent child.

So with my 4 kids, I’m eligible for up to $30G’s in Government contribution – that’s a pretty sweet deal. (It’s $30,000 instead of $36,000 because Truett wasn’t eligible for the CDA account when he was born).

With all this money in the CDA account, what can it be used for?

The short answer is pretty much all their medical and educational expenses, which can add up to be pretty astronomical.

For a more detailed answer, the savings in the CDA may be used to pay approved expenses for all your children at Approved Institutions registered with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) under the Baby Bonus Scheme. These include child care centres licensed by MSF, kindergartens and special education schools registered with the Ministry of Education (MOE), and healthcare institutions licensed under the Private Hospitals and Medical Clinics (PHMC) Act. It can even be used to purchase MediShield or Medisave-approved private integrated plans for all your children.

Trust me, you NEED this.

For our family, it’s been a massive financial boost to help with the costs of raising kids in Singapore. We use it to pay for the their school fees and medical bills like vaccinations and doctor’s visits. Sometimes, looking at the cost of sending 4 kids to preschool makes me panic a little (or A LOT!) but with the co-matching savings from the CDA account, we’re effectively paying for only half the costs, which is like just sending 2 kids to preschool. Okay, still panic territory but much more manageable.

We were previously with OCBC’s CDA account but I recently heard some fab news: POSB has just been appointed as a Baby Bonus Bank and is launching an attractive offer of a 6-month Early Bird Bonus Interest of 1% p.a. on top of the POSB CDA Interest Rate.

I immediately registered for a switch over to POSB’s CDA account for all my kids because extra money on top of my free money? Why, yes please! That’s a no brainer. Besides, there’s also the convenience of banking with POSB. I used to have to hike to the nearest OCBC ATM machine 15 minutes away if I needed to make any transactions but with POSB, it’ll be so much easier to check balances and make deposits from my personal POSB savings account online.

If you’re an existing CDA Holder with other banks, switching to POSB can be easily done by registering here.

*Finally, from now till 31 October, you can also stand to win S$5,000, credited into your child’s CDA account simply by submitting a cute photo of your child with an interesting caption and #POSBBabyBonus on POSB’s Facebook page.

Register now at www.posb.com.sg/cda and submit your photos to www.facebook.com/posb.

In this house, we drink lots of milk. My kids are like super duper milk-drinking machines; and you know what milk they really like? MARIGOLD UHT Chocolate Milk.

These guys can power through a litre a day, which is pretty impressive, if you ask me. They start off their mornings with a glass of… that’s right, MARIGOLD UHT Chocolate Milk

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day so I make it a point to prepare a healthy, nutritious breakfast for the kids every morning. Only thing is that my kids aren’t very adventurous when it comes to food. I tried experimenting with fun recipes like breakfast pizzas, omelettes, rolled oats, blueberry pancakes and granola parfaits but all my attempts were met with diplomatic comments like “uhh, it’s quite special but I think I don’t like that…just give me a sandwich.”

These days, we’ve settled on a breakfast routine of cheese toast, tuna sandwiches, ham sandwiches, or butter and jam sandwiches (on wholemeal bread YAY!) and always with a glass of chocolate milk.

So even if they make vomit faces at organic rolled oats with flax seeds and agave, I feel better that they’re drinking lots of milk. Milk provides them with calcium, vitamin D and energy to help them remain focused, alert, energetic and healthy throughout the day. It’s brain food for their growing little brains. Plus, MARIGOLD UHT Milk is enriched with a unique BonePlus^TM formulation that helps to increase calcium absorption and build strong teeth and bones.

In the evenings, they wrap up the day with another glass of MARIGOLD UHT Chocolate Milk. Ever since they’ve been weaned off formula milk, they’ve been drinking a glass of milk before bed at night. It’s part of our bedtime routine to help them to wind down and prepare for a good night’s rest.

Milk time + Reading time + Bed time = Awesome sleep

Ready!

Cheers!

Drink!

Since we’re such big fans of MARIGOLD UHT Milk around here, we were really thrilled to learn that MARIGOLD would be celebrating World School Milk Day with a fun and creative contest in the preschools, closing with a finale at eXplorerkid last Friday. A special day to celebrate drinking delicious milk with super fun activities? COUNT US IN!

World School Milk Day falls on the last Wednesday in September to celebrate the health benefits of school milk programmes. It’s a wonderful initiative that engages schools to promote the importance of drinking milk in a fun, memorable and educational way.

About 200 students from 4 preschools were invited for a morning of fun together with the enthusiastically cute mascot – Happy Cow from MARIGOLD. The schools were selected based on the amazing art pieces they created with MARIGOLD UHT Milk packs.

Check out this really impressive cow structure.

The kids enjoyed 4 different stations of interactive play, like this massive play area…

this ball machine area…

this rock climbing area…

and a storytelling session with The Happy Cow.

There were also MARIGOLD UHT Milk goodie bags for the kids. Kirsten was obviously thrilled with her chocolate milk. She was all “WHATTT?? I get to drink extra chocolate milk?? Today is the best day ever!”

Aaaand I’m just gonna let the pictures do the talking.

We had lots of fun celebrating World School Milk Day with MARIGOLD and learning about the benefits of MARIGOLD UHT Milk. Looking at all the smiles, all the kids from the childcare centres had a fabulous time too!

MARIGOLD UHT Milk – Drink one for a good day, another for a good night!

*MARIGOLD UHT MILK is available at all leading supermarkets, hypermarts, convenience stores, petrol marts, minimarts and provision stores. MARIGOLD UHT Milk is sold at a recommended retail price of $2.30 for 1-litre packs and $4.40 for a 6’s pack, and MARIGOLD UHT Fresh Milk at $2.50 a pack.