New Kid On The Blog

27-MAY-2010:

A couple of friend bought Em these hair clips when she was 1 month old and all these while I've been using them (once in a while). Until one day, I tried them on her. Em has a full head of hair ever since she was born, but the reason I didn't use the hair clips on her (and still don't) is because she could have grabbed them in her hands and swallowed them. My friends who bought the hair clips don't have kids, so I'm sure they didn't think of this. :-)

These photos were taken when she was around 6 1/2 months old. She is 7 1/2 months old now and had a hair cut (by her daddy) since then. She has grown up a lot since then too. Now, she is able to:

1. From a lying position, get to a crawling position, and to a sitting position, and then back to lying or crawling.

2. Push her self up to a standing position by holding on to furnitures, her cot or me, and back to a kneeling position and then subsequently to a sitting position.

3. Crawl properly (not caterpillar style anymore).

4. Remember incidents - for example, when I was washing the dishes while she sat on the highchair next to me, she kept blinking a eyes and shifted uncomfortably because previously water had splashed on her face. She's also afraid of the baloon and would blink and jerk when her brother hit the baloon with his hands. Had she seen a baloon bursting before? Not that I can remember but she must have experienced it somewhere. She would make noise if the baloon got hear her.

5. Distinguish people, for example, she would cry out if she saw her grandfather or myself walk past but would not cry out for anybody else.

6. Has started to develop separation anxiety and her grandmother is complaining that she can't leave her alone to do run her chores.

7. Still has 2 teeth since she was 4 months++. When are the others going to come out?

8. No problems with feeding and she is taking varieties of vegetables, fruits and fish. Her milk intake hasn't reduced but I've substituted 2 feeds a day with formula.

9. Still wakes up at around 4am to feed (or cry, whichever but I feed her anyway to shut her up). She has her dinner at around 7pm, then takes a nap at 8pm, wakes up for her last feed at 9:30pm before going for the long sleep.

10. Loves swimming now and has learned to kick and splash the water with her hands.

11. Likes to taste magazine pages, brochures, toys, clothes hangers, tissue paper, playing cards, spoons, tupperwares, plastic cups, iPhones, my shirt, envelopes and whatever she can get her hands on. Cries when we take the object away from her and will not let us substitute it with another object.

12. Likes to scream loudly when left alone or does not get her own way. Laughs (or rather a triumphant chuckle) when being picked up.

13. Cannot fall asleep at night without mummy. Mummy is going to Kuching for a holiday in July and she will have to get used to daddy during that period.

14. Generally a happy, smiley baby with very bad temper!

15. Is approximately 6.5kg and 65cm tall.

# posted by Skye @ 1:44 am 0 comments

25-MAY-2010:

This post is very overdue. Grandma's birthday bash was on May 1, 2010 and we all went back to Ipoh to celebrate it with her. As per tradition, we had dinner at the same Tai Thong restaurant, which has recently moved to a new location this year. I think I overheard my uncle saying that the cost of the dinner that night was RM300 per person. We had our own room with an en-suite wash room and karaoke system.

First dish was shark's fin soup. Please, don't talk to me about the cruelty of killing sharks and cutting off their fins and whether they will extinct very soon. But one question though - does the high mercury content of shark meat apply to the fin as well? Anyway, what we had that night was no ordinary shark's fin soup. There were two parts of it, (1) the fin and the gravy, (2) The soup. Basically the fin and gravy was tasteless, but the soup was tasty. I'm not sure we were meant to eat it. Were we supposed to mix the soup and fin? Or eat the fin and drink the soup separately? In the following photo, you can see that the fin is in one piece, not miserably thin strands.

Next on the menu was the standard suckling pig dish. Again, I know it's cruel to kill and eat baby piglets but it wasn't me who ordered the food. By the way, I don't eat this dish at all (don't like the pork smell) and I don't eat roast pork (siu yuk) unless it's been stir fried with vegetables and soya sauce. However, this time, everyone was saying how delicious this suckling pig was, and I took a bite and it was true, it didn't have that awful piggy smell.

What came next was this 'peach bun'? Basically, it was a huge bun made into the shape of a peach. I understand that this is a traditional birthday dish. No one was allowed to dig in until grandma had officiated the 'opening ceremony'.

After the 'opening ceremony', I saw that inside the huge peach was actually many small little peach buns. This represents the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. :-)

After that, we had all the usual stuffs - fish, mushrooms broccoli, prawns, etc, which were all divided into individual portions, which means that you get only one prawn, one mushroom, etc. No fun at all. :p

I had caviar for the first time - those black stuffs by the side of the prawn dish. Not sure what is so nice about it - do not know how to appreciate. :p

The 'long life noodle' is also a standard birthday dish.

For dessert, we had this - something (snow jelly or something) cooked in coconut. This was good but too much of it. It was the thing that finally filled up my stomach.

Of course, we also ate the birthday cake.

When the dinner was almost over, the chef came out to wish my grandma a happy birthday. The chef was quite an old man himself. Does anyone know why chefs wear tall hats?

# posted by Skye @ 2:47 am 13 comments

13 May 2010:

I have a backlog of things to blog about. First, there was the H1N1 case at Dom's school. Before I launch into the details, let me explain that Dom's school is in fact a private school that consists of the primary/secondary school and the kindergarten (they have their own entrances). A few weeks ago, we received a circular informing us that the primary school was closed for 1 week due to several confirmed cases of H1N1. The parents of kindergarten children are informed because first of all, it is good to know and secondly, some kindy kids whose elder brothers or sisters are with the primary school will be sent over to join their elder siblings after school dismisses so that their parents can pick them up together. That night, as we were lying in bed having our nightly chat, Dom said, "There are 'bye-bers' in my school". "Bibles?", I said. "But you have a bible at home too.". He looked surprised and asked me where? In the cupboard, I said. He was even more confused then. After a while, I realized that he wasn't talking about the bible at all and I asked, what 'bye-bers' are you talking about? And he said "The 'bye-bers' at the big children school that makes them sick!". Haha. "Virus! 'Vai-russs'", I said.

The following week, the H1N1 'bibles' have cascaded down to one of the kindy children and the kindy was closed for 2 days.

We received the news on a Saturday when we were on our way to Ipoh to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. I was looking forward to that for a long time, but rather sad that one of my cousins (and family) couldn't join us because her grandfather just passed away. There are many things to be said during the 2 days I spent in Ipoh. Firstly, about my grandmother who is 80-over years old now. She remembered my name, remembered Saimun's name, remembered that my son's name is Dominic, remembered that I have a daughter but didn't know she was called Emily, but I don't blame her because my aunt who was only 50-over years old asked me TWICE what my son's name was! Can you guess which aunt this is? :-D I think my grandma is in good shape but can't help noticing how she seems to stoop and bend a little and gets a bit shorter every time I see her. I think she was the happiest person in the whole world that day. What can be happier than having all your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren with you, celebrating your birthday?

Can anyone count the number of candles? I missed the cake-cutting ceremony because Emily chose that time to do a poo!

Next, I'd like to introduce my family. See the photo below - they are my grandma in the middle and her two daughters on each side plus the husband (one of them is not married). My grandma has 3 daughters but one of them was not there because her FIL passed away. Then you can see her 3 sons and their wives. My grandma has 4 sons but my dad wasn't there. The rest are the grandchildren and the 3 youngest ones at the back are her great grandchildren. There are of course more grandchildren but not all of them were there. Five of them are in Australia, three in Singapore/JB, and I think the rest are all in the photo. On the far right is the maid (but she's my grandma's God-daughter, someone said).

I was told the food we ate that night was expensive but actually I didn't think they tasted that great. I'll blog more about the food with more photos in another post.

It was late by the time we finally got home and close to 1am when my head hit the pillow. It seemed like only 5 minutes ago that I fell asleep when Emily started wailing because she had done another poo. The next morning (or should I say later that morning), I had to get up at 7:30am to go to church with my aunt (which is Cattypants' mum). This brings me to the 3rd thing that I want to say about this trip. I am never good with expressing myself, especially when it comes to showing my emotions and being touchy feely. As I sat next to my aunt in church, I wanted to let her know that I remember her hospitality when I lived with her for 3 months, but I didn't, therefore I hope she's reading this now, so that I can tell her how grateful I am. It was in those 3 months that I saved enough money to put down a down payment for our first apartment (which we are renting out now). She gave me a place to live - practically my own room (as I helped myself to Cattypants' wardrobe) with my own attached bathroom. Every morning, she bought me breakfast, even on weekends so that I never had to spend a single cent on breakfast. Her maid made me a sandwich for lunch everyday, so that I never had to spend a single cent on lunch either (although I got pretty sick of eating sandwiches everyday). I also had dinner at home so that's another meal covered. Her driver would come round every morning and drive the cars out to fuel up, and if I leave my car keys with the rest of the keys, he would fill up my car too. Basically, I put all of my salary in the bank except for parking charges. Every Saturday, we would have dinner outside. On the Saturday before I was finally due to go back to KL, the least I could do was to buy them dinner, but she wouldn't even let me do that and I had to fight my way to pay the bill. That was 10 years ago. I came back to KL and bought our first house and that was the beginning of my little family now.

Back to the birthday celebration, when everyone had sobered up and had enough sleep the next day, people started to feel hungry. Although I wasn't involved in all the planning and organizing (for it took a lot of consideration with such a big group), I felt a headache just listening to the arguments. All I wanted was a quiet, spacious, crowd-less place to eat. Doesn't even matter if the food was good. As it turned out, it wasn't that bad this year. At least we didn't have to fight for parking and tables. :-)

# posted by Skye @ 4:22 am 0 comments

This video was taken on Sunday, April 24 2010. Dominic was playing 'treasure hunt', i.e. throwing the goggles into the pool and then retrieving them. He had so much fun even playing alone. What a pity his cousins don't like to swim.

As for Emily, she has started to enjoy the water and knows that she is supposed to kick her legs. She doesn't like water on her head and face but we will try to train her. :-)

# posted by Skye @ 4:29 am 0 comments