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