New Kid On The Blog

29-OCT-2010:

Okay, I have finally uploaded all the birthday photos and there's no training today at work, which means I'm free to blog. What a nice Friday! :-) Anyway, I'm not that late. It's only been about 2 weeks since her birthday (12 Oct).

We celebarated Em's birthday on Saturday, 9 Oct since her actual birthday fell on a week day. We contemplated doing a "full blown" party with catering but quickly dismissed the idea because:

(1) We don't really like big crowds and I personally don't like having different groups of friends / relatives who don't know each other coming together. We figured with a huge crowd, we don't actually get to enjoy the party and spend "quality" time with our guests.

(2) It seemed such a hassle. We didn't know any reputable caterers and we had no time for food tasting

(3) We don't fancy a lot of cars coming into our road. Parking is horrible here and we don't want to cause our neighbours any inconveniences

Therefore, we said we'll do several small ones instead. The first one (on 9th Oct) was for Saimun's family and relatives. There were 15 adults and 5 children (including ourselves). Two weeks before the event, MIL had been informed about it and she was excited. However, she was rather worried that I would not be able to handle cooking for 20 people. In her effort to help, she offered to look after Emily that day - asked me to send her over in the morning and pick her up in the evening. But we didn't take up the offer because sending her there and then picking her up would cost me 30-45 minutes and Saimun also refused to do it because he said there was no need, we could handle it.

So on the said day, in the morning, I took Dom grocery shopping as we normally do every Saturday. When we got back, I started working and boy, I can't remember when was the last time I've been so busy! Towards late afternoon, Dom actually said to me, "Mummy, why are you so busy? Are you tired or not?". My boy is so sweet. I really believe he genuinely was concerned for me. :-) Anyway, I made red eggs (Dom painted the eggs), a birthday cake (Dom did the decorations), curry chicken, fish fritters, sausages & cucumbers on skewers (for the kids), and 2 vegetables (one spicy and one normal). And rice. I had planned for enough food for 20 people. However, everyone seems to have this lack of confidence in me, so what happened was at around 5pm, Saimun went to pick up his parents and when he came back, he had bought satay and fried chicken. On top of that, MIL had cooked a pot of pork meat stew and brought it over. The first thing she did when she arrived was to open up my rice cooker and exclaimed, "What a small pot of rice. This is not enough!". So I proceeded to cook another pot. And then, Saimun's aunt arrived and she had with her some jelly that she made and about a dozen buns, which she also made herself. Later, MIL's very close friend (who we consider relatives) arrived and she too had cooked something. Did I ever mention to them that it was a pot luck??? So you know what happened in the end ... we had so much leftover food. The 2nd pot of rice that I cooked was totally untouched as we couldn't even finish the first pot. The following week, I used the leftover curry chicken to make buns and MIL's pork stew for 'pau's. And we ate satay for breakfast. Haha! We also asked the guests to ta pau the food home.

I only remembered to take photos of the food when the party was over, so here are photos of the leftover food. :p

By about 5:30pm, we were all prepared. The food was ready and Saimun together with Dom had rearranged the living room and decorated it with baloons. He also bought a few kiddie tables from Ikea and brought extra chairs from his parents' home. Just in case you're wondering what took me so long to cook to food, my "work" actually also includes tidying, vacuuming and mopping the whole house. And also in case you're wondering what Saimun did, well, like I said, he decorated the room, went out to get party hats, baloons, plastic cutleries, went to Ikea to buy tables and took care of Emily when she wasn't taking a nap. After everything was done, I took a shower with Emily and we both got dressed and went down to wait for our guests.

Emily enjoyed herself very much that night but I have a feeling not as much as Dom. It was clearly Dom's party. Haha! He got a present (from me) because of good behaviour a few days prior and he waited until this day to open the present. It was as if it was his birthday. He played and laughed and at the end of the day, he had lost his voice. Emily was very busy walking around and I was very glad that she didn't seem to realize the house was full of "strangers". She loved her presents (toys) and she roamed around the house just like any of us. She was completely at ease.

The following Saturday, there was another small do with my family (actually just my brother's family). We just had a quiet dinner and the kids played. We had wanted to do one for friends but didn't got round to doing it because it was Dom's school concert and I guess the novelty of Em's first birthday has worn off. Besides, I'm feeling rather tired and lazy. Perhaps I'll get friends to come for Dom's birthday instead. :-) Or maybe a Christmas party. I'll think about it.

The other day, I asked Dom who he would like to invite for his birthday party. He said, "I only want Joe, Wing Sern, Hui Shaynne, mama, yeh-yeh and auntie". "How about your friends?" I asked. He replied, "I only want three friends - Joe, Wing Sern and Hui Shaynne". I asked again if he's sure he doesn't want any other friends, he said no, he only wants 3 friends.

# posted by Skye @ 10:11 pm 0 comments

28-OCT-2010:

Catching up on my blog today since training will only start in the afternoon. It's been very quiet here lately (I mean here in cyber world) and I wonder where everyone is? Anyway, here are more Singapore photos which I promised.

Science Centre:

Science Centre was very boring for Emily and she had fever too.

Singapore Flyer:

The Singapore Zoo:

# posted by Skye @ 10:26 pm 0 comments

14-Oct-2010:

Dominic: For some reason, he has been sick quite frequently these days. First, he had hand-foot-mouth disease (this was sometime in August), and then just before our trip to Singapore in September he was down with fever, and recently, few days ago, he had fever again that lasted for about 2 days. I don't remember him getting sick so often before.

In about 2 months time, he will be turning 5. As usual, he is looking forward to it. He is already asking me to buy him this and that. When I said, that is too expensive, he would ask how much. When I said, it's fifty ringgit, for example, he would say, it's not that expensive, I can count to 50! He thinks that his coins in the piggy bank are worth a lot. I have lots of money mummy, he would say. He asked why we had to go to work. We told him it's because we have to work to make money. He asked me how his grandparents get their money because they don't work. I told him that his grandma needs to take care of him and his sister and cousins, therefore she can't go to work and we give her money to take care of them. His response was, "How about yeh-yeh?" Obviously, he didn't think that his grandpa did a lot of work. Hehe.

Shortly after we moved to our new place in June, he stopped wetting his bed. He now gets up in the middle of the night to pee by himself and goes back to bed on his own. He's very proud of it and keeps reminding me that he didn't wet his bed.

In school, he is doing fine. He can read very well in Bahasa now but probably doesn't understand the meaning of the words. He likes to read words on billboards and sign boards when we are in the car, but only if he feels like it. He can read English words up to 4-letter words. When he is in a good mood, he would take a book and try very hard to read. "We ... h-a-v ... have? f-u-n ... fun? What's fun?" When he concentrates too much on getting the word right, he doesn't get the meaning of the words and passage at all. When he's not in the mood, he wouldn't read at all. In this case, if he's given a word (say "Glam") written on a birthday wrapping paper, he would say that the word is "happy" or "birthday".

He will have his year-end exams in school soon and he's very excited about it, because he got 100% for all subjects - Malay, English, Maths and Chinese - in his semester 1 exams. He seems to be very confident that he'll get everything right again. I told him that it's alright if he doesn't get 100% for everything and he mustn't be too upset about it, but he said that he won't get a reward from his teacher if he doesn't get everything correct. I'm very much for encouragement and reward for good work, but at the same time it is also a penalty for those who didn't do that well. I hope he doesn't get too competitive and stressed up.

He's a loving brother and will always say that Emily is soooo cute and that he loves her sooo much. He also plays with her often and makes her laugh. But he also makes her cry very often. He's not able to leave her alone.

Emily: She has started walking properly shortly before her 1st birthday. During her birthday party, she was walking all around the place. I will blog about her birthday separately.

I stopped breastfeeding her when she was about 10 months old. It was easily done and she didn't look for the breast at all.

Emily has also been ill recently. She was down with fever during our Singapore trip but recovered in within 3 days. When we got back, she was alright for about 1 week, until the day she had a fairly large amount of red dragon fruit. Why did she have such a large amount? It was because Dom kept asking for it, so I bought it, but then he said that particular one wasn't sweet enough so both Em and myself ate the whole thing. The next day, I noticed that my urine was pink in colour and following that Em had poo that was half black and half normal color. I was very worried about the black stool because it could mean bleeding in the GI tract, but since I could see traces of the dragon fruit seeds in the black stool, I figured (and hoped) that the black color was due to the red dragon fruit. The next day, she started having loose stools (but not watery) for about a week and then full blown watery diarrhoea for 3 days. It was very stressful for me because she was whiny, refused to eat and I've never had this experience with Dom before. Plus, I kept thinking back about the black stool and wondered if this had anything to do with that. Then, when the diarrhoea stopped, she continued to have soft stool for a few days and one day, there was blood (red fresh one) in her stool. I took her to the doctor and told him the whole story including the dragon fruit. He said that it is possible the black stool was caused by the fruit and prescribed only probiotics. She hasn't had any bloody or watery stool again after that but her stool still remains rather soft (not like the normal hard stools that she used to have). Other than that, her appetite is excellent and she's happy, cheerful and active.

Her diet has changed recently too. During her diarrhoea days, she refused to eat and at the same time I noticed that she prefers rice over porridge so I started feeding her rice instead. I have reduced drastically the amount of vegetables I feed her (now 2 florets of broccoli, for example, as opposed to one cup of chopped ones previously). I figured she could have been overdosed with high fibre food since she used to eat lots of fruits as well on top of the vegetables. She now eats rice twice a day with steamed fish/meat/eggs and some vegetables. It's actually more work for me but ... well ... I'd do anything for her. :-)

Her grandma mentioned recently that she's easier to take care of now since she started walking. She would play on her own and does not bother anyone. But she still doesn't nap very well. At night, I find that she has difficulty falling asleep too. One night, she was making noise in bed and I scolded her. After that she just kept quiet and fell asleep.

I think that's all for now and I'll write about her birthday later. I feel so blessed to be the mother of these kids and I can't wait to see them tonight! :-)

Recently, one of my ex-colleagues' wife passed away at the age of early thirties due to cancer and she left behind a 3-year-old daughter. It was very heartbreaking although I didn't know her that well, but I felt really sad for the kid. And then, a few weeks later, I was told that my friend's 3-year-old daughter passed away due to heart failure. I don't know which was sadder but because of that, I've changed my evening routine a bit so that I spend more quality time with the kids. We now spend the evening playing together and I only start doing the housework after they have both gone to bed, which also means that I sleep much later now, sometimes at 11pm. But they are so delightful, I don't mind giving up a little bit of sleep. :-)

# posted by Skye @ 4:55 am 0 comments

8-OCT-2010:

For a long time, Dom had been bugging us to take him to Singapore for a holiday. It happened (I think) because his cousins went for a holiday there sometime late last year (when Emily was just born) and I guess his cousins told him a lot of things about Singapore. Despite that, I was sure that he didn't have any idea where Singapore was or what it looked like.

So, the Raya holidays were approaching and I took the initiative of making the arrangements and told Saimun that we were going to Singapore for a short weekend break. All I had to do was make some arrangements for accomodation - which was just a text to my uncle, and we were all welcome to his house. Next, we had to do Emily's passport, as well as Dom's (since it was expiring in less tham 6 months). Doing the passports was an ordeal. It was exactly the same as 5 years ago when we first did Dom's passport. I can't believe that after so many years, nothing has actually improved. Or worse still, I think the level of service has depreciated. We actually made 3 trips to the immigration department before we got the passports done. The first time we went, we arrived at around 9am. Apparently, that was considered very late and they've run out of queue numbers (i.e. they only process a certain number of passports each day). The second time we went, it was closed, while it normally would be open but it was the 3rd weekend leading to Hari Raya, therefore they were closed. It wasn't mentioned anywhere in the website, nor was there any notices put up the week before when we were there, mind you. And so we had to go there a third time. This time we were early. Got there even before it opened and there was already a long queue outside the office. I was baffled. Wasn't there supposed to be a "special queue" for babies and senior citizens? Saimun did some investigation while I waited in line. There was a "special queue" but we had to queue up with the rest before we could be issued the "special number". The old lady in front of me was complaining because her legs ached from standing and it took about 1 hour to get to the front of the queue, where she was finally issued the "special number", but what was the use? She had already stood in the queue for 1 hour.

Next, you know what, there were various newspaper clippings and posters in the immigration office claiming that now they have shorten their passport processing time to 2 hours, meaning from the point you submit your application, you can expect to receive your passport within 2 hours on the same day. It was probably good effort on their part but I found it totally pointless. Who would actually wait there for 2 hours, especially when you have young children in tow? You would still have to leave and come back again in a few hours time. The experience was totally unsatisfactory, but unfortunately no one asked for my feedback.

We had the kids' passports done only 4 days before we were to leave for Singapore. And then Dominic came up with a temperature. It was good timing that he recovered just before Friday (the day we left), but early Friday morning when I put Emily into the car, I discovered that she was running a temperature instead! And so throughout the trip, her appetite was poor but was fine otherwise (except for the temperature). She also had very, very stong stranger anxiety (wouldn't let anyone touch or even look at her at all), but she is normally very afraid of strangers. As for Dom, he had a blast!

We were in Singapore for a total of 3 days and we left on the 4th day. On the first day, we visited the Science Centre after lunch and spent the whole afternoon there till dinner time. Dom was so excited and he had so much fun. I think he was slightly overwhelmed because he kept moving from one exhibit to the next and was too excited to even spend 5 mins with each exhibit. Emily on the other hand, just sat on her buggy looking bored and sucking on her pacifier. She used the pacifier a lot during the trip. I guess it gave her comfort. It wasn't a good trip for her and I've never seen her less cheerful.

Water play area outside the science centre. It was drizzling, that's why it was empty.

[Too many other photos taken inside the science centre. Will upload album later.]

Anyway, after the science centre, we went home for some rest and shower and then headed off to Clarke Quay for some seafood dinner by the river. The crowd was horrible. First there was the traffic jam and then the "human jam". So happened there was a Taiwan street food fair and the crowd was so bad that we could hardly walk, and we needed to get past the street food fair in order to reach our restaurant. After dinner, we walked around the riverside looking at the enormous "lanterns" set up there for the approaching mooncake festival. Coming back from London, I thought I've had a lot of practice walking but I never thought that my aunt and uncle could walk so much and they seemed to be tireless. You know how I normally go to bed at 10pm but not during this holiday. My aunt kept saying "it's alright, it's a holiday and you can sleep late". Haha!

The next day we headed off to the zoo. My aunt's maid was wonderful. She made us a heavy breakfast before we left. We actually left quite late as Dom slept till almost 10am. By the time we reached the zoo, there was a traffic jam going into the car park that started about 1.5km before the zoo entrance. A man directing the traffic there informed us that it could take at least 1 hour to get in. So we parked at the Orchid Farm nearby and walked there instead (think it was about 1km walk). Zoo was fun but the weather was so hot! We kept sweating and we felt so uncomfortable. Plus, don't forget that Em was having a fever. The last time I've been to the zoo was in London and it was no sweat even though it was during the summer. The Singapore zoo was so huge. We were there still 5pm but still didn't manage to see everything. Needless to say we were dead tired. Fortunately, my aunt's maid again prepared dinner and we ate in instead. After dinner, Saimun and Em went to bed, but Dom was still very alert. At about 9:30pm, my aunt said let's go to the Esplanade. In fact, she insisted that we went. Saimun and Emily were too tired, so I went with Dom. Dom was very excited and he insisted on going too.

From the Esplanade, we walked to the Double Helix bridge, crossed it, reached Marina Bay Sands, walked through the shopping mall and got to the 3 buildings with the "ship" on the roof. Let me tell you, it was a long, long walk. We all did it for Dom because he wanted to get on the "ship". Unfortunately, it closed at 11pm and we were there at 11.01pm. My poor boy was devastated. He walked all the way there. On his own. And he didn't complain. Even more unfortunately, we forgot about walking back to the Esplanade, as our car was there. I was dead tired so it was no surprise that soon Dom was complaining that his legs hurt. My uncle had to carry him half of the way. You know, that place around Marina Bay Sands was still under heavy construction. And I don't think they ever stopped working. They were still people working even at midnight. I find that very impressive.

The next morning, we went on the Singapore Flyer. I think it was exactly like the London Eye, although the view from the London Eye was a lot more beautiful. Aboard the Singapore Flyer, you don't really see much except for construction sites here and there and the highway. When I compared, London was really beautiful.

After lunch, we headed off to Sentosa Island. Took the monorail from Vivo City and stopped at Universal Studios. We never intended to visit Universal Studios. We wanted to at first but decided against it since there won't be much for the kids to do. Plus, we didn't have enough time. Anyway, tickets were all sold out when we reached there. We walked around and took a photo with the globe. We spent some time at the beach and then at the Underwater World. Compared to all the other underwater worlds or aquariums that we've been to, the Sentosa Underwater World was lame. It was so small and nothing much to see. Dom was most excited with the "travelator", not the sea creatures. We had dinner at Sentosa and left. On the way back, we stopped by Vivo City and played in the paddle pool. I find it really great that water fountains, play areas and paddle pools are almost everywhere for kids to play in. I think I would love to live in Singapore. KL/PJ is so boring in comparison. We took the MRT home. When the train was about to arrive, there was a cute song that went something like this: "Train is coming, train is coming! Please start queueing, ding dong!" Really refreshing compared to the London Underground: "Train is approaching. Please mind the gap!".

Big fish behind Dom:

The next morning, we left early to beat the ERP. Oh yes, I forgot to mention about the incident at the Singapore checkpoint. We arrived there without the VEP card (the card that you slot into the machine to pay the toll and every car must have one), and we didn't have the white card as well (the form you fill in to enter Singapore if you're not Singaporean). Now, about the white card, unless you drive in to Singapore fairly often and keep a stack with you, there's no way you can get hold of it until you reach the Singapore checkpoint, am I right? So we were there, and since we didn't have the VEP card, we had to go their office to buy one. And the guy at the counter said, since we're going to the office anyway, why don't you fill in the white card there because there are many cars waiting behind. Not knowing better, we said okay. At the "office", we realized that people were sent there for passport clearance because of problematic or unusual cases, such as one girl's passport had expired by one day. So we were kept waiting there just because we didn't fill in the bloody white card. Next time if the same thing happens to you, do insist that you want to fill in the card right there at the checkpoint booth. Plus, you know the people working in the office were all very senior, which translates to S.L.O.W. Anyway, we were there for 1 hour and buying the VEP pass took only about 5 mins.

When we got past the checkpoint, we told Dom that we were in Singapore already. We were on the highway and there were just trees on either side. Dom was very upset because he "couldn't see anything". Why was there nothing in Singapore? It was supposed to be a "fun place". Haha. He asked, "Where is Singapore? Is Singapore a building or not?". We said, no THIS is Singapore and he said, but there is nothing! Hahaha!

# posted by Skye @ 2:46 am 0 comments