New Kid On The Blog

23-AUG-2010:

By popular request, here are photos of the rest of the house.

The bathroom: We have 4 bathrooms but currently use only one (i.e. the master bathroom). We installed centralized solar heater and the hot water supply goes to 3 of the bathrooms on the 1st and 2nd floor but not the ground floor. Here, I only have photos of our master bathroom but the others are almost the same except for different color scheme.

Right outside the bathroom is our walk-in closet. I personally find this very convenient.

This is a view of the closet from the bed.

Our bedroom is simple. Just a king size bed with two side tables.

Outside the bedroom is our little "quiet" area which is currently under utilized. It is meant for relaxing and reading. We have a couch here, book case, study table and a small TV. The However, the couch only fits one person (usually it is Saimun spread across the whole length) and it's not very comfortable until we put in some cushions. We hardly watch the TV, except for Dom watching his cartoons during the weekends. The study table is totally unused (haha). On the book shelves are books that we're not reading at the moment; books that we are reading are lying around by the bedside and in the living room downstairs. I just realized the TV wasn't there yet when I took the photos. :p All the furnitures here are from Ikea, including the clock on the wall (the large black one, not the small one on top of the bookcase - that one is from Switzerland). The stool under the table is from London.

Across from our bedroom are the kids' bedrooms. The blue one for Dom and the pink one for Em. Both rooms are kinda empty at the moment and reflect echoes when we talk.

The top room is totally empty, therefore I did not take any photos there. It is currently used by Dom to build his train tracks.

As you come down the stairs to the ground floor, you'll see the dining hall first. To be honest, I don't like the dining table that we bought. We wanted a round one and this one looked perfect when we bought it because (1) it is round, (2) you can expand it to fit more people. However, once we started using it, we found that it is too small in its unexpanded state, and when it is expanded, it becomes oval, i.e. more like a rectangle table which I hate. Fortunately, it is only a cheap one from Ikea, so it will probably be disposed after a few years. The dining chairs belonged to us before we moved to UK, was stored at in-law's place to gather dust and eaten by dust mites.

The door behind the dining table leads to the "Toy Room". Basically it is a "messy room" where all the toys are stored and we play in there (yes, including myself) every evening before bed. To the right of that door would be the kitchen, which is not visible in this photo.

The living room is also very bare but that is intentional as we want a large hall. Our white couch is more for decoration and scarcely used but Saimun's mum likes to lie on it whenever she comes over. The red bean bag is my favourite. The 3 of us (Dom, Saimun and I) take turns to have our afternoon naps on it. :-D It was retailed at RM800 and was selling at RM480 (40% off) at the time we bought it, but we only paid RM39.90 because we bought the couch.

One of my favourite features of the house is the back yard. The back door leads from the kitchen into the washing area where the washing machine is, and from there leads to the back yard. We installed a clear transparent awning over the back yard so that sunshine can come through but at the same time keep rain away. It makes the kitchen and the 'toy room' brighter. We dry our clothes in the back yard and it is very convenient as the washing machine is just next to the drying area. I would set the washing machine on timer at night and the washing will be done by the time I wake up in the morning. I then put the clothes out to dry before I leave the house, and no matter rain or shine or even thunderstorm, I will still come home to find dry laundry.

# posted by Skye @ 3:21 am 0 comments

19-Aug-2010:

Well, I think I was "off the Internet" (sort of) for a couple of weeks now and here's the story. On Sunday morning (2 weeks ago), as I was getting Dom ready for church I noticed that his feet was covered in spots/blisters. He said it was neither itchy nor painful so we left it at that. After church, we saw that the spots had spread to his hands and arms as well, so we decided to take him to the doctor. The doctor confirmed that it was Hand, Foot & Mouth disease (HFM). Our initial plan of going to the swimming pool was cancelled because of that. Because the disease is very contagious we were told to keep him away from other kids for at least 5 days (which means he shouldn't go to school too). At the doctor's office, my mind was quickly transported to KS's blog many months ago which she retold her experience of having HFM herself and having to attend to her 3 kids who also had HFM at the same time. I kept remembering her saying how painful it was to even drink some water (mouth covered with blisters) and how painful it was to walk on 2 feet. Fortunately, Dom didn't suffer at all. Basically, he had mild fever for about a day and complained that his mouth hurt (but still ate his normal portion of stuffs). He was playing and talking a lot as usual even though he claimed that his mouth hurt.

The following day, I myself developed a very bad sore throat and fever, so I took a couple of days off from work (somebody needed to stay home with Dom anyway since we were trying to keep him away from Emily). I have to say, despite being ill, those 2 days were fantastic! Totally loved the time spent with my son. In the morning, I got Emily ready, fed her breakfast and milk and then Saimun took her to MIL's place. Dom and I spent our day like two very lucky mother and son. :-) We had breakfast, went to the playground, went shopping (groceries only), came back, cooked lunch, ate lunch, played with toys in the empty room on 2nd floor, then the highlight of the day was when Saimun came back during lunch time to check on us. After that we took a nap, went to the playground again and went to pick Emily up as well as have dinner at MIL's place (and I cooked something to bring along there). For the rest of the week, Saimun took over and "worked from home".

The following week (i.e. this week), I developed blisters on my hands and feet. Only a few of them - say about 4-5 on each hand or foot. They hurt, especially the ones on the palms of the feet, but other than that there was no other symptom. I still went to work and so far none of my colleagues have been infected. :p Work has been hectic this week. I was at other campuses conducting interviews and information gathering and didn't bring my laptop with me - until today I discovered that I could borrow a laptop from IT - so here I am at high class Sri Hartamas campus of Taylor's college, cathching up with my blog while waiting for my next interviewee.

Finally, a little update on the kids. Emily is 10 months old now and she has grown so much. As of a month ago, she could already pick things up the size of green peas using the pincer grip. She can stand unsupported for short periods of time (say about 30-60 secs) (I managed to capture a photo on that and will post it up later). She doesn't like strangers and is afraid of them. She understands simple instructions such as "Don't put that in your mouth" and "Don't touch that" and "Open your mouth"; and complies to those instructions. She's very playful and doesn't stop for a minute. She's always either crawling around, climbing on something, putting things in her mouth or touching things that she shouldn't touch. MIL said that looking after her is like "looking after a herd of cows". She's still crying at bed time but there's been some changes to her routine. At one time, Saimun started to come home early from work before she fell asleep and he would take her out of bed (because he doesn't like her crying), play with her and then go to bed with her. So I think because of the inconsistencies, she now expects Saimun to sleep with her every night (which he does). Ahh ... never mind, as long as I'm not the one having to do extra work. :p Oh yes, so far she hasn't been infected with HFM. By the way, she's in high risk since 2 of my BIL's kids have been infected.

As for Dominic, he's doing quite well in school. He had his mid term exams sometime in June and got 100% for all subjects. One important thing that I've noticed is that during his week off from school (while infected with HFM), his cousin Wing Sern brought back his "absent homework" from school and Dom did all of them on his own without being told to do it and he did not need any coaching at all. On Sunday night when I checked his homework, all of them were completed. I asked Saimun if he supervised him but he wasn't even aware that Dom had done his homework.

# posted by Skye @ 11:55 pm 0 comments