Pearl Corn

This is how Pearl Corn looks like..... hmm..... very nice indeed. Cultivated in Cameron Highlands and cost about RM2 - RM2.50 per stalk, place them in the fridge for an hour and best eaten raw... when you bite on it you can feel and taste the sweet juice melting in your mouth...

Emily at work

I was alone with Emily the other day, while I attended to housework, little artist at work, Emily brought out handover oil pastel from jeh jeh and start coloring.... At one time she acted teacher and started to play with her invisible friends... she normally preoccupy herself and leave me alone when I'm busy with housework. When I'm done and wanted to have time of my own like reading the papers, she will start bugging me already...... hai....And yeah nowadays Emily tend to over do it in front of the camera, she just can't smile naturally...

Dreams

I tend to dream a lot and yesterday or should I say early in the morning I dreamt of quarelling with my hubby, a big one, I was wailing and crying out loud. Suddenly I woke up and thank God it was just a dream, must be due to my neighbors.... we heard them quarelling the other night, it was real loud that we got woke up..... I know it's not right to blog about my neighbors... hope they have reconciled....

Yesterday one of my ex-colleague told me that she dreamt of me becoming pregnant! Aiyah why so many people dreamt of me becoming pregnant lately.

Yesterday Michelle wet her bed, I guessed she must have dreamt also. She changed her pants but can't change the bed sheet, so she came to me middle of the night saying that the water bottle spilled on her bed and it's all wet, I touched her and realized that her T-shirt was wet too, brought her to her room, changed her, transferred Emily to the small mattress and asked her to sleep on Emily's mattress.... It's not water but urine... never mind, I took off the bedsheet and wrapped everything wet in it and we all went back to sleep again...

This morning, asked MIL to settle everything....

Visiting mom

On Monday, I drove back to Kampar with the girls, first time travelling outstation alone with the girls. Hubby was down with an eye problem and need to be hospitalized at the very last minute. As this is a pre-plan trip, I will have to go without him, poor hubby, MIL helped to take care of hubby while we were away.

The girls well, considered OKlor, we managed to reach my hometown safely. Visited mom's grave yard the next morning with my sister and brother's family. It is nicely done, all went well when suddenly my only nephew broke into tears, there goes all of us.... :(

Mom's picture is beautifully framed up, we miss her so much. We will visit mom more frequent. It's a good time for family bonding and glad that dad is doing fine.

Spent spent spent

After I checked in to my room in Philippines last Tuesday, I took a shower and off I went to the nearby mall to hunt for my dinner and do some shopping, in less than two hours, this is what I bought:

1) 3 pairs of earrings, one for me, one for my sis and one for my sis in-law
2) A Sudoku book to kill time in the hotel… I’m struggling even at the easy stage… Sudoku dummy!
3) 2 boxes of educational toys for the girls.
4) 2CDs, one for hubby, one for the girls.

I’m thinking into venturing into the malls tonight…. The hotel provides free shuttle to the nearby malls within Alabang area and the best part of it is they will fetch you back too… this I called good service. Hubby commented that I spent spent spent nia….

An update of Wino

Wino is doing particularly fine…. He’s feeding well and already weighed 5 kgs, he is approaching his second month and his parents had been extremely thankful for his progress. He is a good fighter and winner indeed :D

Support Group

I lead a mama group in church; we make the effort to meet at least once a month. This month we planned a visitation to our Pastor’s wife, she’s suppose to lead this mama group but due to her son’s complication, she is now tied down at home to care for little angel apart from teaching. She has not been able to attend church for a year plus, so we were thinking of visiting her and little angel to show her that we have her in our hearts, to encourage her in this difficult journey and times she is going through and to pray with her.

So all of us, 7 mothers altogether made a trip to her place last Sunday. We chatted and learned more about angel’s condition, how he is progressing and to also find out how is she coping. I also get to play with little angel, calling out to him hoping to get positive response from him. I observed that he has improved since the last time I saw him, he is growing up fast physically, able to feed on syringes (previously with tubes), he cried last two weeks (he has not been able to for many months), he moved quite a bit (he used to be less mobile).

God is good, it is our prayers that He will continue to speed up little angel’s recovery and restore him to full health. Lastly we prayed together, as we prayed and agreed in unison the prayers of the leader, tears flowing from each of the mothers, tears of concern and worries, tears of hope in the Lord. I believe our Pastor and wife are going through a very difficult time of their life; not many of us (I hope none of us) are being put in the circumstances where we have to deal with our child’s life threatening situation. The only thing that keeps them going is their faith in God. It is written in the book of life that our faith shall be tested, just like gold being tested under the fiery test of fire. Trials in life are place in our lives in order to purify and refine us into the finest. May God bless their journey of faith.

Flying again

I'm flying to Phil again this week.... will try to blog if possible...need to board the plane now.... Michelle reminded me to bring my "pau pau" with me in which I did, LOL... This will help me to sleep better at nights.

More recipe

A simple nutricient recipe that I would like to share:

Steam chicken with red dates and white mushrooms

A)
1) Half of a Kampung chicken, chopped into small sizes
2) Mushrooms (white or black, your choice)
3) 3-4 red dates & some garlic, smashed with the side of the knife, in cantonese we called "pak"
4) Some ginger, sliced

B)
Marinate with:
1) 1 tablespoon of cooking wine
2) 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
3) 1 teaspoon of sugar
4) 1 teaspoon of corn flour
5) Dash of soya sauce
6) 2 teaspoons of dark soya sauce

Marinate (A) with (B) for at least an hour. Steamed under boiling water for 10 minutes, serve hot!

Parenting tips

Hubby and I went for a parenting seminar last Sat. What was supposed to be an 8 hours workshop has been squeezed to a 1 1/2 hour session. The speaker is a full time child care counsellor back in Singapore with many years of hands on experience, she speaks like a bullet train and delivered the seminar interestingly. Below are some of the points the we captured, hope this is of help to other parents as well:

1) Comparing your child - if we have 2 children we tend to compare between them, of course as far as we could, we should not be comparing our children. Below is alternative that we could try:
"Wow, you see jeh jeh can color so well, would like to put in effort to color as well as jeh jeh?" By doing so, the child would not feel that she is not good, instead she can do better and jeh jeh was put as role model/an object of admiration for her to imitate.

2) Allow yourself be in the world of your child, do not take their questions or "stories" as nuisance, they are trying to relate and associate themselves to their surroundings.

3) It's important for daddy to become a role model/idol that the children admired, girls will tend to find husbands that modeled after their father.

4) It's not right that the children should be scared of one of the parent, children should be able to open to both parents, else they will look for that someone externally.

5) Spend quality time with your children, even it's just 5 minutes a day, give them your attention, hug and tell your children that you love them.

6) Girls tend to mature faster, do not use the same method in dealing with different gender, attend to your girls' emotional need.

7) Should you need to discipline them, follow these steps.

We made lots of mistakes along the way........ which parents do not..... we are not alone... happy parenting ya!

Our little artist

I posted about Michelle going for the art class a few weeks back and after about 8 sessions, she came back with a few of her masterpiece. She like the class so much that she chose to attend the class than picking me up from the airport. Little Emily is one artist too, below are their work of art (they definitely don't get this from their parents, no artistic blood run in our family) :)

The left picture is from Michelle, the right one from Emily :D

Dancing girl:
Boys playing a ball

Humble kitchen

Nah, this is a picture of my humble cooking area where all the family’s feast are prepared, though I dream of a bigger kitchen but this one has the basic facilities to prepare almost every type of dishes. I can grill, fry, bake, boil, steam….. Recently we decided to install a sliding door separating the kitchen from the living and dining area so that it’s easier for me to clean if I ever decided to have a grand cooking spectacular event.

I also have here a simple “dump everything in the cooking pot” dish to share with you all.

Wai Wai’s special yam rice:

1) ½ of a medium size yam, diced
2) 1 Chinese sausage (lap cheong), diced
3) Some chicken breast meat, sliced, marinate with ½ teaspoon sugar, soya sauce and pepper
4) 2 tablespoon dried prawns, minced
5) 5/6 of mushroom, soaked and sliced
6) 4 gloves of garlic, chopped





Sauce : 2 tablespoon of oyster sauce, 1 teaspoon of sugar, ¼ cup of water

Garnishing: Sliced red chilies and spring onions

Heat the wok, put in 2 tablespoon of oil, put in chopped garlic, stir fried until fragrant, put in everything else (item 1 to 5), stir fry, put in dark soya sauce, stir fry for 2-3 minutes, put in the sauce and stir for another minute, dish out. It’s half cooked, doesn’t matter as we will pour all this into a pot of half cooked rice and let it be fully cooked together with the rice.

Boil your rice now, add 1 teaspoon of salt and folded pandan leaves (if you have them).

Pour in the dish when your rice is half cooked (where your rice looks a bit watery), close the lid and let everything cooked by itself. When the rice is cooked, wait till at least 10 minutes later before you stir and serve.

Out of control garden

Our garden is slowly getting out of our control.... with me increasing the don't know what species plants and MIL increasing her herbs collection... it has expanded along the walking corridor....




And yeah, something very peculiar happened, I have a pot of cactus related species and it has blooming flowers since last week, I remember hearing from old folks that if that happened, it means prosperous to the family or something good is going to happen wor... he he he let's wait and see..

Kid's room

This is the picture of the kid’s room with everything stuffed inside. Michelle sleeps on the single bed, Emily sleeps on the mattress below. They have their little cabinet for placing their clothes, a multi-purpose 5 tier drawers to put their other stuff, a study table, boxes of toys, a mini CD player and butterflies hanging in front of the entrance……. Mummy very greedy, try to stuff a lot of things inside their 100 plus sq. feet room:D

Our weekends

Hubby loves nature, so when we were courting, after dinner boyfriend(then) will bring me on his Suzuki bike for sight seeing. We will normally end up eating steam corn while enjoying the seaside or mountains view. When it's dark he will send me back and he, back to the hostel, we don't normally lingered when it's dark, mainly because we were scared of being robbed LOL!

So now on weekends, hubby usually proposes that we go out for evening walks, to the nearby park and forces all of us to exercise! He's a health freak guy.... Last Sunday we strolled along the neighborhood.... and walked for an hour plus, we walked down terrains and climbed super narrow roads, the kids enjoyed the walk so much and I was perspiring like a dog (so unfit!).

As we walked we captured some pictures:

Flame of the forest:

Flame of the forest tree leaves (taken by Emily)
The girls:
The residential view....

Missing mom

The thoughts of my mom came randomly especially at quiet nights when I lay down to sleep with my daughters, mostly on our last days together. I missed her but not as bad when she first passed on... I talked about her casually with my children, how poh poh used to teach their mummy certain things, what poh poh would say or do if she's still around. The girls asked a lot of questions about death, why is poh poh's buried under the ground, when is she going to heaven, does poh poh need to eat now.. it's not easy to explain all these to a 6 and 4 year old.

Next week we are going back to visit mom's tomb as by then it should be nicely done, I know I will miss her even more then. I've been wearing mom's white gold necklace (a gift from dad many many years back) and a bracelet given by her since she passed away. I guessed it's a way for me to feel her presence and also to keep a little part of her with me no matter where I go, she's in my heart forever, that's for sure.

Positive Remarks

Whenever I stepped home from work, my girls will be rushing to greet me and tell me what the other party has done, how one misbehaved at school, at home, what hurt they have caused to each other, I would say...hmm all negative remarks. All this while I've been handling them like "Hmm... not right to say this, not right to do this, hmm.... jeh jeh/mei mei misbehaved....".

Hubby once read a book that we should try as much to use positive words and sentence when talking to our children, i.e if we say "Don't run", the child will actually captured the last word which is "run", so don't be surprise when you ask your child to stop running and all he/she did was to run even faster. So one should try words like "Be careful", "Be slower" so that they get the last word instead.

So on last Monday, while I took dinner, as usual the girls came complaining about each other to me, suddenly it strikes me that I should use another method to deal with them. Below is our conversation:

Me: Hello jeh jeh and mei mei, remember Ms. Tang (their teacher) says that we should use our mouth to speak good words? Now think of something good or nice that you can say about each other.

Mei mei & Jeh jeh: Startled...... (I think in their mind they must be thinking - oh oh don't expect mummy to say this, alamak, what to say har??)

Me: Come on, I'm sure there's a lot of nice things you could think of, for example mei mei queues while entering class today, jeh jeh listens to the teacher in class etc...

Mei mei: Hmm...Jeh jeh behave well in school today.

Jeh jeh: Ar...Mei mei queued in class today.

Mei mei: Jeh jeh did not beat me today.

Jeh jeh: Mei mei kept her toys today.

Me: That's very nice... now think of something to say to daddy when he's back

Mei mei: I will say "Welcome home daddy"

Jeh jeh: Thank you daddy for giving us money to buy toys

Mei mei: Mummy, you are so pretty

Mummy: This is a good start, we should do this everyday hor... speak only nice words to each other OK?

Both: Giggling, ok..

So yesterday, we were at the dining table and as usual they "attacked" each otherlar... then I gave them the "say nice things" look, they automatically changed to something positive.... LOL... this is good, parents should try this and I believe all of should think of nice and positive remarks if ever we want to express any.

Overloaded!

Work has been overwhelming lately.... H E L P! My assistant was away on a business trip at Guangzhou (supposed to be my trip, but I transferred to him), thank God he's not affected by the earthquake, else don't know how to replace people's son. Michelle is having her 1st term exam this week, so not much time to blog... Yeah my boss and I finally had a good talk this morning, I'm glad we thrashed things out so that we could move on without grudges.

Blogging has been very theurapetic, I found many mommies blogger friends, even though it's just a small gestures or little comment left at my blog, I felt comforted and glad that I'm not alone, many mothers felt and thread the same path before, so mommies bloggers should continue to encourage one another ya!

Thanks to Celine who introduced me to blogging, I'm hooked already... ha ha ha.

SAHM

After one of my old childhood friend read my "at work" frustation post, she asked me if I'm considering turning into a SAHM (stay at home mom). Hmm.... I know it will be very rewarding as what could be more important than your lovely kids, spending quality time with them is every mother's hope. I believe every SAHM would agree with me. I thought for a while and said that I would love too but scared that conflict will arise between my MIL and I as I have a SAHMIL (full time stay at home mother in-law) :D

I actually expressed this desire to my hubby a few times and test his reaction in our light conversations, knowing my hubby, he is always on the safe side which is - no definite answerlor. I also do not want to put too much pressure on him, we have been so used to live with two incomes, cutting the earning into halve sure will impact the family in one way or another. I believe finance is always the main factor to consider for families when deciding to switch to single income. I really salute families who made that decision, many career minded women have decided to turn into a SAHM, it's not an individual decision more of a family decision.

I believe the kids will be thrilled to hear that if I ever turn into a SAHM. I'm actually trying to secure a half day job i.e lecturing or tutoring which allows me to work and contribute to the society and at the same time more time to be with my children, guiding their studies and planning for their meals. Cater food is so boring.......

I welcome those who have gone through this phase and would like to share with me to either write to me or post in your blog.........people like Ling and Michelle. :D

Little "maid" at work

Don't accuse me of child abuse! Little Emily was changing her clothes almost every other hour last weekend, by first half of the day she was already in her fourth sets of clothes, and each set consists of about 3 pieces. She reasoned that her clothes got wet, dirty..... and I told her that she will be wasting a lot of resources doing so, the water, detergent and work to wash and hang the clothes. In order for her to really understand, I trained her to hand wash all her clothes that morning. Isn't she cute:D I like the video, please listen to our conversation and her respond, check it out, LOL she was such a cutie. I won't exchange that moment with anything else.

What I REALLY Want To Do On Mother's Day

I got this tag from Ling....hmm...let me see...

In the morning - breakfast on bed, prepared by lovely hubby, the kids came kissing, hugging and wishing me a happy "Mother's Day", we chat and snug in bed, no worry about housework and work.

In the afternoon - lunch at a quiet restaurant with hubby, hubby send and pay for for a full spa session, taking my first facial, body massage, aromatherapy session, soak in a just nice temperature jacuzzi and yes pedicure and manicure session too (just like Ling's).

In the evening - nice prepared dinner with the family, the kids behaving themselves and the family chatting away into the night.....

2 new born "babies"

My daughters always demand that I play with them in regards of day and time, they will bug me like a fly and nag and nag until I gave in. We were playing last Sunday until I'm out of idea that I thought of this.... to wrap them with blankets (to keep them still) and pretended that they are new born babies that need to be fed, burp and pat to sleep. This is how they look like:)

Beach outing

Labor day....we labor not, so hubby proposed that we go to the beach side. The nearest beach is about 20 minutes drive, Sg. Batu somewhere further down to Teluk Kumbar. We went for breakfast at Sg. Tiram (famous for its toasted bread, coffee, half-boiled egg, nasi lemak etc...), the food is actually "so so" only but don't know why the place is so crowded, Penangnites must be having too much hot, spicy and tasty food, they now go for plain food for a change. We reached the beach at around 10am... there was one Malay family around, by the time we left, there were about 8-9 groups, all Malay folks, where are the rest of the folks??.... shopping for great bargains at the shopping complexes I guessed. We had fun at zero cost...

Pine trees
Michelle, before the wave washed our toys away
Emily and Ah mah, teasing the wave that eventually wet them
A man-made lake near the beach...
More shots at the lake
Our professional photograhper at work
Emily's footprints
The sea in shade
Cleaning up
Kids on junk food...