2011, Here You Come...

------------HAPPY NEW YEAR to ALL OUR FRIENDS.........

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~~ Hal Borland.

Never Too Young ...

When Jared was younger, he loved to follow the vacuum cleaner whenever we vacuumed our apartment. Lately his interest has taken a turn where he wants to help us to vacuum instead. Here's a clip of him doing a little house chore. Never too young to help out at home, isn't it ? :)

Emily's 7th Birthday

Emily turned 7 today. We had a modest birthday celebration by inviting a friend, SM and her family, whose son's birthday was yesterday. It was kind of a get together thingy for me but Emily was excited about her little party. I decided to bake a Carrot Cake with Cheese frosting as her birthday cake, which I learned through Joyce's blog. Emily was very excited that she got to help me baking her own birthday cake yesterday afternoon and when the cake was ready this morning with the cheese frosting and some tiny decorations (nothing fancy at all), she was really pleased and said to me, "Mummy, thank you for baking a cake for me" :)

Besides the cake, I also prepared my favourite Gula Melaka and Coconut Milk Jelly, Chicken Wings and ordered Domino's Pizza. SM prepared fried Noodles which was simply delicious.
It was a simple celebration but everyone especially Emily enjoyed the occasion. A tiring weekend for me and hubby but definately a worthwhile one.

Happy Birthday, Our SweetHeart Emily, from Daddy, Mummy and Jared .....

Birthday Boy and Girl

Our Baby Mozart

Just like any other kid, Jared loves to imitate what his jie jie does. Whenever Emily plays the piano, he will try to lay his fingers on the piano keys, in other word, "kacau" jie jie during her piano practice sessions :). Managed to capture a short video of what he learned through his observations.

Jared's Playtime

One of Jared's favourite toys is the wooden blocks. He loves to stack them up high. For a child as young as him, it really takes much effort and patience to stack these blocks. So each time he succeeds in his attempt, he will surely give himself a big applause :).

Away From Home...

It is the school holiday season again. Emily went to stay with her cousins and is also her first time to be away from home without mummy and daddy. It has been a practice for hubby and myself to leave simple "love" messages for Emily on our white board when we were away for our business trips. We were so amused to see similar message from her the day before she left for her over-night stay :) Our little girl is really growing up....

Jared's First Water Encounter

Yesterday was the first time Jared went into the pool. He was a little scared when hubby first put him in the water but after awhile, he got really excited and enjoyed floating on the water while hubby pushed him around in the baby pool. He even made little kicks and splashed water.

Some Things She Said to Me

Scenario : At times when I am extremely angry and starting to blow steam, Emily would say to me, "Mummy, don't be angry, be happy.."

Emily : When I grow up, I will buy a big house so that you and daddy can stay with me. I won't send you to Old Folks Home.

Emily : I will bring you and daddy for holidays. But if it is my company dinner, then I can't bring you bcoz now mummy also didn't bring me along.

Emily : When I start working, I will buy Estima so that mummy and daddy can go out together with my kids.

True or not, it is still very heart warming to hear such words from her.

Very Tiring Weeks

Past few weeks were total madness for both hubby and myself. Emily was sick and unfortunately it was on the same week of her school's final exam. We couldn't send her to the daycare so hubby and I have to take turns working from home to look after her, send her to school for her exams and pick her up from school after that. It was quite stressful for herself to be sick and had to sit for exams. Thankfully I have a very understanding boss who allowed me to work from home.

A week later, it was Jared's turn to be sick, with coughs, flu and mild fever. Until yesterday he was still not well, but today he is more energetic and cheerful. Dr Sim diagnosed that he is infected by herpes virus as his gums are red and a little swollen. But I noticed his whole body has tiny red spots which look more like roseola or measles to me. I am also glad that his appetite has also improved today, as last weekend he hardly ate anything. I am glad I didn't give him the antiviral medicine prescribed by his PD.

Praying hard that they will stay healthy after this as I will be away for a week on business trip this coming Monday.

Don't SMS and Drive

I noticed that many Malaysian drivers like to send sms messages or even talking on their handphones without hands-free kit while driving on the road. Don't they realise that they would be causing accidents which could lead to fatality.

Last Wednesday we were unfortunate to meet such a driver who knocked onto the rear of our car while we were waiting for green light at the Pisa Stadium traffic lights. Thankfully the kids were not in the car during that moment. The back side of our car was damaged till the bonnet was unable to close. Suprisingly the LADY driver's car only had a crack on the number plate. She was very panic and wanted to compensate for our car's damages but we adviced her to make a police report as the cost of repair could be huge. She agreed and we went to make a police report together.

The biggest problem is we only have one car, but on the lucky side of us, a good friend our mine, BL, has an extra car which she was willing to loan to us while we sent our car for repair. Really appreciate her generosity.. THANK YOU...

To all you drivers, please do not SMS and Drive .....

Mister Cheeky...

Some of Jared's latest cheeky acts spotted by hubby..

Emily's School Food Fair

This morning was Emily's school food fair. We participated in the food fair by selling my HOMEMADE muffins, butter and choclate cakes. I spent the whole Saturday afternoon baking a total of 24 muffins and 2 trays of cakes. A friend of mine was kind enough to come over to help me with the muffins.

When we reached the school in the morning, there were already so many visitors. Many stalls were setup with so many varieties of food, ranging from Pizzas to herbal eggs, all prepared by parents. We also have many competitors selling cakes and muffins. I quickly arranged our food in a designated corner with the rest of Emily's classmates. In the beginning, our sales were poor, so Emily and I decided to put our cakes and muffins in a tray and try to approach the crowd of people to buy instead of standing at the stall waiting for customers. Our sales got better afterthat, and we finished selling everything after about 2.5 hours. Not an easy tasks though, having to put up big smiles with the hope that the person we approach will buy :). Overall it was a good experience.

1 Day Trip to Taiping

After much procrastination, we finally made a day trip to Taiping on last Saturday. It was definately a worth while drive there as we managed to visit a few interesting places with the help of hubby's colleague whose hometown is in Taiping. We started our journey from Penang before 9am as we wanted to reach Taiping Zoo before 10am to join the animals feeding session. However we only managed to reach 15 mins past 10 oclock due to some traffic congestion. The crowd was quite big that day due to school holidays and also the Raya break. We decided to take the free tram ride around the zoo as Jared has not been on one before. He sat quietly on hubby's lap throughout the journey, looking very curious and also excited to see some of the animals. Emily was really excited too as she has never seen most of the wild animals in real life. After the ride, we decided to walk around to visit some of the interesting animals like the elephants, lions, tigers, tapir, giraffes and many others. We left the zoo after about 2 hours.

Hubby's colleague came to meet us after that, he brought us to a seafood restaurant quite far out of Taiping town which is a fishing village. It was already after 1pm but there was still a big crowd waiting to be seated in the restaurant. We waited for almost half an hour before we got a table and another 1 hour for the dishes to arrive, phew.....

After lunch, we went to visit a charcoal factory, which was a good experience for everyone especially Emily. There was a worker who helped to explain the charcoal making process. Emily definately enjoyed herself here as she got to experience removing tree bark from the tree trunks.

We then headed to the mangrove forest reserve nearby to the charcoal factory. It was a big area where there were wooden platforms extending out to the mangrove swamp area where we could walk. Another good experience for Emily as she has been asking me about how mangrove trees look like.

It was almost evening, so we decided to go to the Taiping Lake for a boat ride before heading home. After the boat ride, I met an ex-USM friend who was there for a holiday too :).

A very tiring day for everyone but we will surely be back to Taiping again :)

Jared At 17 Months

Weight : Did not weigh since 15 months old

Teeth : 8 incissors (4 top and 4 bottom) and a few premolars.

Developments

- Able to say cheese, egg, apal (for apple), book, eye and ear when we show thee items to him.

- Keeps babbling A, B, C, J and some "alien" words when flipping his storybooks.

- Able to point to his toes, nose, face, mouth when we mentioned these words.

- Imitates some of the steps performed by the Riverdance dancers such as tapping his feet, moving his hands and tilting his head up and down just like how the dancers did

- Can now fit the wooden number puzzle for most of the numbers.

- Says "Hi" to anyone who greets him with a "Hi". So cute when he does that.

- Whenever we scold him for not behaving by raising our voice, he will show his sulky face and starts to cry...

- Holds his own bottle while drinking milk.

- Refuse to sit in the stroller most of the time when we bring him out, instead he prefers to walk without wanting to hold our hands. So it can be tiring to bring him out as we need to follow everywhere he walks to.

- Likes to scribble using crayons, so we need to be extra careful so that he doesn't simply scribble on our house furniture.

- Loves to play peekaboo with us.

- No sign of calling mummy yet :(

Food

- 4 feedings of formula milk (gain plus).

- Loves to eat noodles. This evening, he refused to eat his porridge and wanted our fried homemade noodles instead. I had to lure him to eat his porridge using the noodles. Wonder how long I can use this method before he knows that he has been tricked :)

- For breakfast, I feed him either cereal or bread with cheese.

- Can eat spicy food such as tomyam noodle, according to his babysitter... pengsan!!!

Another Funny Scribbles of Hers

I didn't know if I should laugh or what when I found this little note in her school bag. Funny little girl, isn't she ?

Close Encounter

Last Sunday, my family and I went over to mainland to visit an old friend. After lunch we decided to be a little adventurous by going around Juru and Simpang Empat area to explore their housing projects. As we were not familiar with the road directions, we could only depend on our GPS to guide us.

While heading towards Simpang Empat township, we encountered a cross traffic lights junction. There were 2 lanes without any signboards of which lane to use if you want to turn left, go straight or turn right. As we need to go straight, hubby's instinct was to follow the left lane as right lane is usually for those wanting to turn right. But as we got nearer to the traffic lights, hubby realised that left lane is only for turning left. As we did not want to miss the directions given by our GPS, hubby took a quick shift back into the right lane. And guess what, right after the traffic lights we saw a few traffic policemen standing at the road in front waving to some cars to drive to the side of the road. And we were one of them :(.

Hubby winded down his window as a policeman approached our car. He immediately told us that we had voilated the traffic rule by jumping lanes. Hubby was quick to defend himself by saying that he didn't know that the left lane was for turning left only and there were no road signs at all. He also gave reasons that we were from Penang Island who are not familiar at all with the road situation there, but the police officer insisted that we shouldn't have shifted back to the right lane once on the left lane and demanded for hubby's driving's license. However hubby kept defending himself over the same reasons and refused to pass his license to the officer, trust me he was really good at defending with all the reasonable facts, to the extend of telling the officer why would we want to cross to Mainland to voilate traffic rules. :)
While the two of them were still debating, it suddenly occured to me that I should use the gps, which was still in my hand, as evidence. I showed him that we are relying on the GPS to guide us, how on earth would we know which lane to use, and we didn't want to turn left as we were afraid we could get lost. I guess the situation did change a little after that, instead, he asked us where we were heading to, we quickly gave him the name of the place which he doesn't know either. That's when we quickly took the opportunity to ask him to give us a 2nd chance :). He still insisted on getting hubby's license, I guess for validity checking purpose. When hubby passed it to him, he kept reminding the officer not to issue any summon :). Then the officer told us to remain in the car as he couldnt let us go yet since the lorry in front of us had also been summoned for the same voilation. After the lorry left, he came back and let us go.. phew.....
I guess Emily and Jared were also very tensed during that time as I didn;t hear them fussed at all and were totally behaved :).

What would you have done if you were us ? :)

Fun Morning

Yesterday was a public holiday but not all MNCs observe this holiday. Hubby took the day off and we decided to bring the kids for a picnic by the beach with my parents, nieces and nephew. The kids were very excited about this idea and Emily loves playing with her cousins expecially Ricky as she is just 1 year younger than him. We reached there at around 10am, it was a hot morning but fortunately there are many pine trees to give us shade.

The kids had a lot of fun among themselves by building sandcastle, digging sand tunnel, playing ball and collecting seashells. Earlier I was all prepared to chase Jared around the beach, but to my surprise, this little guy refused to step on the sand. He would screamed the moment we tried to lower his feet to touch the sand. I wonder how he has developed phobia for sand. Amost the whole duration, he was sitting on my lap without wanting to move an inch :). However he enjoyed watching the speedboat speeding through waves and parachuting activities.

When it was time to leave, the kids were so reluctant to do so. We went to a hotel beside our picnic spot to wash up before heading for timsum buffet lunch.

It was definately a fun morning for everyone. We will surely do this activity again but also need to figure out how to get Jared to walk on sand :)

The End Of My Lactating Journey

I have totally stopped expressing milk since 3 weeks ago. The whole journey ended after Jared turned 15.5 months. It wasn't difficult for me to wean Jared of breast milk as he was already on formula since birth and didn't latch on to my breast. Even though I will miss this wonderful experience, I now have more time to spend with my family and also for myself.

I have already packed my spectra breast pump and will try to sell it away at a low price :)

Visit to the Dentist

Jared has his first visit to the dentist last weekend. We decided to bring him to the dentist because we suspected some abnormalities in his teeth structure development. His 4 bottom incisors are not white in color, they look grayish as if there is not enough enamel. They are also smaller in size.

We brought him to the Queensbay Dental Surgery as hubby and Emily have gotten good treatment from the dentists in this clinic. When we met the dentist, she first asked to see hubby and my teeth J. As expected, Jared started screaming when she tried to open his mouth to diagnose his teeth. I wonder how much she managed to observe in such a short time but she told us his teeth development is fine even though the size is smaller than normal. There was nothing we should worry about. I did ask her about the grayish color and she said it is normal for young kids. I am still a little concern but there is nothing much that we can do at this stage, except for brushing his teeth.

Now when we ask him, "how does the dentist check your teeth ?", he will open his mouth wide, points his little finger on his teeth and says "Arrrhhhh" very loudly. J

Daycare

No, I am not helping any daycare centres to do promotion. I thought it was nice to see Emily’s picture being used in their advertisement (the owner got my permission before publishing ).

I believe every working parent have challenges when it comes to looking for a good daycare centre for their kids. There are so many centres out there to choose from and many critierias to look into.

It took us awhile before we finally decided to send Emily to this daycare based on some criterias of ours :

• - Food tops our list as we are always very cautious about the food that we serve to her, in terms of quality and hygiene.
• - Environment of the centre, eg. good air ventilation, class room size.
• - Qualifications of teachers, eg. Experience, caring and responsible.
• - School Fees.
• - Extra co-curriculum activities during school holidays.

I am not saying 100% of our critierias are met as nothing is perfect. Most importantly Emily is happy to go to the centre everyday and enjoying the food there.

To quote an example, last weekend I cooked porridge with fried fish and another dish. She kept whining that she didn’t like porridge though she did finished it up. Yesterday, she happily told me that her daycare prepared porridge with 7 types of ingredients in it and she “sapu” 2 bowls during lunch time J

Jared At 15 Months

Weight : 11.5kg

Teeth : 8 incissors (4 top and 4 bottom)

Developments

• Loves to go out of the house for a walk, whenever he saw hubby dressed and standing near the doorway, he will walk to hubby and hold hands asking to be brought out of the house. When we asked him to sit down to wear shoes, he would do. If he didn't get to tag along, he would screamed and sometimes threw tantrums.
• Already calling PaPa since 14 months old, however he has yet to call mommy :(
• He would say "pu yau" or "mai" whenever we gave him something that he didn't want or like.
• Can imitate some of the words that we taught him, such as apaya (papaya), anion (onion).
• Loves to watch Brainy Baby, especially the ones on Animals and Numbers. Will start to dance each time we switched on the RiverDance DVD. He could even tapped his foot when he saw the dancers tapping their feet. Really cute to see his body movements.
• Will now wave bye bye to anyone who says bye bye to him.
• We we surprised to see him taking our handphone the other day for the first time, pressed on one of the buttons, put the phone to his ear and babbled as if he was answering a call :)
• Loves playing with his toy dinosaurs figures and pretends to sound like them.
• Able to sit in his high chair throughout our mealtime at home, the trick is to give him a bowl and spoon with some food which he can learn to feed himself.
• Has started to develop some jealousy with Emily, refusing to let her come near to me or hubby, immediately he will try to push her away and wants to be close to us. Besides, Emily also cannot touch his toys, he will scream or want to snatch back his belongings. To manage the situation, I would bring both of them together and explained to him that he needs to love his jie jie, told him that mummy loves both of them and then all 3 of us will hug each other. Hopefully he will get over his jealousy real soon.
• Says simple words like apaya for papaya, anian for onion, baa baa when we sing the song baa baa black sheep and claps his hands when we finish singing.
• When holding a ball, he will say 'kick', but will throw the ball instead of kicking :)
• Loves climbing up the staircase on his own.
• Tried to slide down on is own when we placed him on the slide.
• Sleeps before 10.30pm after drinking his last bottle of milk. Next feeding will be around 630am.

Food

• 2 feedings of formula milk, Gain Plus and 2 feedings of breastmilk.
• Loves to eat spaghetti and cheese
• Now taking Heinz mixed grain with banana flavour for breakfast.
• At home, his appetite for porridge has dropped, on some days, eating only about half a correlle bowl for each meal. However at babysitter's place, he will be able to finish almost the whole bowl.
• Doesn't like durians.

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

Viral Attack

Jared is now 15 months old. It it a blessing for hubby and I that he has not fallen sick for more than a year already. However last Sunday he was down with mild fever, coughs and flu. Since Sunday morning, he started to have runny nose and mild coughs but no fever. I didn't want to give him any medicine, instead I gave him probiotics, NOCO and ACT. By afternoon, he continued to have runny nose and developed a mild fever, 37.x degC. Not wanting to take any risk, I gave him paracetamol and his temperature did drop after that. During dinner time, I continued to feed him porridge though according to old people, we should not feed porridge during fever, else the fever will reoccur. By night time I noticed that his temperature rose again (not sure if it is due to the porridge) but I can't really tell how high bcoz this boy was so cranky, I can't even insert the thermometer into his ear.

The next day we brought him to his PD, thankfully his PD diagnosed that it was just a viral infection, so no need to take antibiotics. He prescribed cough and runny nose medication, singulair (for his phlegm), some probiotics and folic acid. I continued to give him paracetamol when we came back from the clinic as his temperature is around 38 degC. Besides the probiotics, I kept away the rest of the medications. Continued to feed him with probiotics, NOCO and ACT. I have also given him propolis twice but has stopped as some people cautioned me about the risks of giving propolis to kids <>

Till today, he still has some coughs and very mild runny nose, but he is recovering well. Will continue giving him the 3 supplements. One tip to reduce coughs during sleeping time is to let him wear socks to keep his body warm. Hopefully he will recover soon.

By the way, he is still as active as before... :)

Role Model

Being the youngest in the family, Jared tends to pick up some good or bad habits from us, especially from his jie jie. We noticed that whenever Emily screamed for what so ever reason, he will sure to follow suit. Each time jie jie dances her ballet steps, he will dance too. And when she plays piano, he will try to imitate her fingering movements too. Don't they both look adorable playing the piano together ? :)

Happy Father's Day

This post is to pay tribute to all the wonderful "Daddies" out there, especially to my darling hubby. Appreciate all the sacrifices that you have made to spend time with the kids. Thanks for being the SUPER DADDY to Emily and Jared.

Emily has also secretly made a greeting card for daddy, she is very eager to give daddy the card after finish decorating it but I told her it will have to be a surprise for daddy on the actual day.

Last weekend we already had a Father's Day lunch at Sarkies Corner with my dad and mum. Will probably have a simple meal tomorrow with hubby and kids.

......HAPPY FATHER"S DAY....

Holiday Activity

The two weeks school holidays will be ending real soon. This time around we did not bring her for any outings or holidays due to our busy schedule. sob.. sob...

Instead we took the opportunity to bring her to watch Toy Story 3 yesterday with another friend whose daughter is also her good friend. As we do not watch movie that frequent, she was really excited about it. Hubby and I had to take a day off as it was a working day and we can't watch on a weekend due to Jared is still too young to watch a movie.

It is a good movie, very entertaining and hilarious. All of us enjoyed ourselves very much. After the movie, we headed for dinner before leaving to pick up Jared from his babysitter's place.

Jared At 13 months.

Weight : Did not weigh, but can see that he is growing.

Teeth : 7 incissors ( 4 top and 3 bottom). Did not see any new ones growing.

Developments:

• He can walk really fast now, which means he is on his feet most of the time, I wonder why he never got tired :)
• Loves to climb up our bed and coach and knows how to get down on his own with his buttock going down first.
• Able to stack his mega blocks but still not having enough strength to push 2 blocks together
• Throws tantrums on the floor if he doesn't get what he wants or things that he likes are taken away from him.
• If he sees me or hubby hugs Emily, he will come to us immediately and wants to be hug too.
• Occasionally, he will say "dow" when I say "".
• Throws away his drinking bottle/cup when he doesn't want to drink anymore
• Sometimes when I was busy doing somethings, and I asked him to go read his books, especially his Barney storybooks, he will go to take his book and flip the pages.
• Able to follow my instruction when I asked him to pick up his socks and put them into a bag.
• Yet to call Mummy or Daddy :(
• He is very stingy in waving goodbyes.
• Whenever any of us left the house without him, he will surely cry till so pitiful.

Food

• 2 or 3 feedings of breastmilk and 1 or 2 feedings of formula (enfalac A+, Gain Plus).
• Mix grain cereal for breakfast and 2 portions of the same porridge for lunch and dinner.
• My babysitter introduced mee suah to him but he didn't seem to like it.
• Planning to introduce spaghetti to him this evening.
• Apple or banana puffs for snacks.
• Likes to eat cheese but I have stopped feeding him because I felt that it is too salty. Need to find the brand that has lesser salt.
• Loves to eat grated apples, pureed papayas and bananas. Can't wait to let him try durians.

The story of her Ponytails

Emily's hair texture is similar to hubby's, slightly curly and rough. Due to ballet, she needs to have long hair. Typically for most girls, having hair clips on their head, ribbons around their pony tail or even pleating hair are ways to look pretty. But for Emily, it is the total opposite. She will not allow me to clip any pins on her hair, neither will she want any pleats. Each time before we go out, I will have some battle with her trying to tie her hair. The first thing she said even before I started tying, "Mummy, make sure you tie tightly" and her definition of tight is her hair at the side of the rubberband must not be able to move. I guess nobody can understand what that means :). And the only hairstyle that she wants is 2 side ponytails.

When I went to her daycare last week, the principal wanted to show me something which she said looks like Emily. I didn't know what she meant, so I just followed her to the notice board. When I saw what she showed to me, I almost laughed my teeth out LOL... I will leave that judgement to you :)

Our Ballerina

Emily has started learning ballet for more than 2 years, starting from pre-primary class. Last Thursday, she had her 1^st ballet exam for the primary level. I took half a day off to accompany her. On the way there, she was rather quiet and she told me, “Mummy, I don’t like to go for exam”. I didn't think that she would be so serious with this exam as she seemed to be happy practicing her steps at home unlike having to nag her to practice her piano. To calm her down, I told her it was just another day where she went for her weekly ballet session, so just take it easy. I guess she felt better after I continued to "brainwash" her :). We arrived early, after awhile both her team mates arrived and they got ready for the exam which started at 10am. Her exam took less than 30 minutes and when she came out, the first thing that she told me was her examiner was an old woman, LOL... Hope she had done well.

Some video clips of her rehearsal before exam time. Doesn't she look adorable ? Though some work is required to trim off her excess tummy fat :).

Just the two of us

Every Saturday, hubby will be busy fetching Emily to her classes in the morning. So I will stay at home with Jared and many things happen during that few hours, bathing him, cooking his porridge, preparing lunch for the family and doing some tiny little house chores. As for Jared I would say he is a good boy when only the 2 of us are at home. These are some of the activities he did while I worked on my stuffs in the kitchen

Flipping his board book

Playing with his shape blocks

Moving the beads in his MULA bead roller coaster

Once awhile he will walk into the kitchen asking for attention. I will then stop doing my things to play a little with him and then he will continue with his own activities again.

This was what I managed to prepare for lunch last Saturday, fried home-made noodles with meat, prawns, vegetables and eggs.

iPod for My Man

Last week, hubby's department had a dinner reception at Suffolk House restaurant. As wives and significant others are allowed to join this reception, I went along with hubby leaving the kids with babysitter and a friend. I don't have much to comment on the food, except for the good atmosphere which really made up for everything. At the end of the reception, there were 2 lucky draws for iPod Nano. Guess what, when hubby was announced as one of the winners, my jaw almost dropped, LOL.

And of course he is happy as he now gets to enjoy his music when he goes to the gym....