October 2009 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Tiny But Mighty

My cheeky Baby has been giving me the peeves for the past 1 week. There’s not a moment where she will obediently remain in the playpen, not even when her Alycia jie jie climbs inside to play with her. The second she’s placed inside her cage, this fiesty fler will pretend to bawl with flailing hands, then attempt to climb out like a tiger cub. And she would succeed in just a matter of seconds. So can you imagine the heart-stopping moments I’ve been getting lately? Put her on the ground, she will climb onto anything and everything, dive from one couch to another, ‘ball-roll’ (forward rolls like a gymnast) from the bed onto the mattress on the floor – landing head down, rummages our drawers, goes through the VCD drawer and removes the VCDs from the box, yanks off those VCD boxes, brings food that she rummages from the kitchen drawers to the living room, vandalizes her jie jie’s stickers and toys and much more heart-stirring stunts.

Not only does she gives me hair-raising moments, she has also been waking up very early each morning. The moment I leave the bed, she could sense it in her deep sleep and wake up too. So she’s been tagging along with me in her stroller when I went jogging in the morning. And when I thought she would be drop dead exhausted by 11am, I was wrong. She wouldn’t want to take her mid-morning nap too. She could go climbing and gallivanting right up to 4pm. But I was still wrong. She wouldn’t sleep tightly though her batteries are dead flat. The moment I leave the bed (I lie down next to her to nurse her), she would wake up again and bawl! This time round, I would normally bring her to my PC and let her suck my tits while I type with one finger on the keyboard. See, she’s sticking on to me like a leech and I am GASPING!

All these being said, my heart would still melt with all her antics, like these:

And something else that I see each day never fails to shake me away from my anger and frustration and reminds me to be thankful to God for this tiny but mighty cheeky baby. This I will write in my following post.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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Buckwheat Pancake

Sometime early this year, my sil from New Zealand gave me a box of gluten-free buckwheat pancake flour. Last week, I finally made the pancakes for my girls.

I used 1/2 the packet of pancake flour. I added 3 eggs, 2 tablespoon of Aly and Sher’s Dutch Lady 456 milk powder and a pinch of salt into the flour and poured water to form a batter. Then heat up my non-stick pan, put in some President butter and poured the mixture into the pan.

When the pancakes were ready, I used my My Melody cookie/bread cutter and cut them into these:

The My Melody shaped buckwheat pancakes were for Sherilyn. She gets turned on by bread / pancakes / fried eggs / fruits cut into cute shapes, but not Alycia. Alycia only gets turned on by tasty food… appearance doesn’t really appeal to her.

And that’s how Sher ate the pancakes – by slathering kaya and putting cheese on top.

I made extra portions, put them in glider food storage bags and stored them in the freezer for future quickie lunches. When I am in lazy mood to cook, I just need to thaw the pancakes, put them into the toaster oven and lunch is served!

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This Is What Happens If She Skips Her Afternoon Nap…

Pix taken on 2 different days.

She would sit at the dining table daydreaming, with a deadpan face… even when I threaten her with the cane, she will have no reaction or feelings….

… coz she is already half way slipping into slumberland…

… and minutes later, she dozed off with food in her mouth!

2 days ago, she really made me burst out in a loud guffaw again. When she strongly protested taking her nap in the afternoon saying that she wasn’t tired or sleepy at all, I warned her that she was so going to get whacked by me if she dozed off at the dining table during dinner. She promised me that she would be good and finish all her food. As expected during dinner, the same thing happened again. In her half-way snooze mode, she tried really hard to open her eyes and smile. And she kept saying this over and over again with her mouth full of food, as if in a trance : “who closed my eyes, I want to open my eyes, somebody closed my eyes, I want the fan turned higher, I am so hot, my hands are so itchy (all these were excuses to buy time to avoid eating), my head is so itchy (and scratches her head with both her oily hands as if there were lice on her head LOL!)”…. and finally her battery went dead flat. My maid was seated next to her trying to keep her awake but it was useless coz her battery konked off and she was just going deeper and deeper into la la land. Finally, I told my maid to throw the food away, quickly shower Sher and send her off to bed!

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Our Sunday

On Sunday, we attended my friend’s daughter’s 6th birthday party at Mc Donald’s. Yi Yi is my childhood friend since we were in nursery back in Ipoh and I’ve known her for over 3 decades! Her daughter is 1.5 months older than Alycia. Yi Yi is also the sil of Paik Ling. She told Paik Ling about my blog 2 years ago and since then, Paik Ling and I have been good friends as well. What a small world eh?

It was the first time Baby attended a kids’ birthday party and she grew wild when she saw the indoor play area. She didn’t want to eat her food that I’d brought for her. She kept clapping her hands and rocked her body to the blasting music that was being played. She went down the slide countless times and didn’t want to go home!

Recognize this handsome boy? He’s Paik Ling’s Bryan.

My lil’ missy really looked like a little aunty here, with the McD party bag over her left hand and with the same hand clutching on to some french fries! See, forbidden food always taste so darn good. She was so busy sipping her chilled Ribena and munching on her french fries that she didn’t play much.

The sweet little girl behind Sherilyn is Leanne, the birthday girl. And oh yes, the dress that Sherilyn is wearing here is actually Alycia’s. My sil bought it for Alycia from Pumpkin Patch but my tomboy Alycia prefers to wear jeans *slaps forehead*. Sherilyn was grinning from ear to ear hearing that her jie jie didn’t want the dress! When it comes to girlish dress and Princess stuff, I can pass them all to Sher and she’ll receive them with her hands wide opened.

We had to leave the party early when I received a call from Barb. She was on her way back from Ipoh and she wanted to pass something to me. This pretty mum from Ipoh had baked some cookies for me. Though we had just known each other through blogging and Facebook, she had baked me this box of very scrumptious chocolate chip cookies with almond bits and cornflakes cookies.

My girls and I were so hooked on the cookies and we finished the last piece yesterday! There goes my diet again, off the track again! Thanks Agnes once again for the delicious cookies. That was so very thoughtful of you. I really think you’ll make it if you venture into a cookies-and-cakes-baking homebased business coz your cookies taste soooo good!

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A Hotel Super Sale Not To Be Missed!

It’s the time of the year again where everyone is starting to plan their vacations during the long school holidays. I have friends asking me over the past few days about good and cheap hotels in Penang. I myself have just done some planning and bookings for our vacation but our vacation is only confined locally, no budget for an overseas vacation just yet. But after learning about the Accor Hotels 3-Day Super Sale Asia Pacific just a moment ago, I am now thinking about a holiday to nearby countries like Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong!

The list of countries covered under the Accor Hotel 3-Day Super Sale include Thailand, Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Fiji, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, Bali.

You have to book online between Tuesday, 27 October and Thursday, 29 October 2009 to take advantage of these super deals. Your hotel stay must be between December 2009 to April 2010. Over one million room nights will be on sale, with rates starting as low as US$30 per night. Rooms go as cheap as USD$30 a night!

Quick grab hold of this golden opportunity to visit a country of your choice in the list above and plan a holiday right now. Remember, booking must be done online and will end tomorrow, 29 October 2009. So hurry and don’t miss this great opportunity!

P.S. – I just found out that there is a surprise extension of the Accor Hotels Super Sale for 24 hours on 30 October 2009! So for those of you who thought you have missed the great opportunity can still make your reservations now. So quick hurry and log on to the Accor Hotels website at the link above!

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Spaghetti Never Too Much

My 3 girls have spaghetti or pasta (ala Bolognaise) at least twice a week. On other days, they have pasta cooked with cheese-milk-butter or cooked with Campbell’s mushroom soup. When there’s pasta or spaghetti on the dining table, everyone is happy – no fretting, no whining and no bribing.

Cooking pasta/spaghetti bolognaise is also one sure way of getting rascal #2 eat her meat. I mix the minced meat really well with the pasta/spaghetti and she would slurp everything into her mouth – no spitting, no coercion, no yelling.

And while my 3 kids slurp their noodles away, I put the bolognaise meat sauce on top of my toasted wholemeal walnut bread, like a canape, which tastes very much like pizza. Yums…. iLike!

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Baby C’s Potty And Bathroom Stories

Whenever Baby refuses to stay in her playpen when I need to take my shower in the morning, she follows me into the bathroom. We’ll both do our business together – she on her potty and me on the throne. Baby used to have the patience to sit quietly on her potty while I take my bath. She would watch me bathe inside the shower stall and sometimes wash the bathroom with awe as she sat in her potty. But lately, she wouldn’t sit still. That novelty has worn off and she has found it boring to see the same old thing over and over again everyday on end. Now, we bathe together on some days but it ain’t easy as she loves moving about and had slipped and fell on a few occasions. I guess I should let her wear a pair of anti-slip slippers when we bathe together next.

To keep her occupied on the potty while I go about with my business, I used to give her books and toys. But that has to end now coz this little rascal found it fun to throw her toys into her potty, eeeeks!

I gave her some magnetic ABCs and 123s but she kept putting them into her potty, one by one! I guess she found it amusing to hear the sound of falling magnets in her potty 😀 Thank goodness she hadn’t pooed (or those magnets would have ended in the bin)… but had peed :S

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Croissants For Dinner

Hubs went to the bakery and bought a bag full of croissants, 2 loafs of multi-grain-seed bread and a loaf of walnut wholemeal bread and some buns! He always doesn’t know how to buy things. When he buys, he buys too much, everything! So I told our maid not to cook rice and we all had bread for dinner – croissants for the girls and multi-grain-seed bread for me.

Sherilyn was grinning from ear to ear coz she doesn’t have to eat rice. Eating rice with dishes is like putting her in a torture chamber! Check out her left eye lid – it was swollen. I think some insects bit her.

I also fried some eggs and stir-fried a plate of brocolli with fresh shitake mushrooms and homemade fish paste, so that everyone gets some protein, fibre and disease-fighting nutrients from the mushrooms.

Have a great Sunday everyone? What’s your plan today? We’re off to church soon then off to my classmate’s friend’s daughter’s birthday party at McDonald’s.

No. of times viewed = 350

Have Money Invest In Gold

If you have some money and are thinking of how to multiply it, gold investment might just be the answer for you. You don’t need hundreds of thousands or millions to invest in gold. Even several thousands of bucks will give you fairly good returns if you invest in gold. I know it because I have some gold jewelries which I have kept for aeons and now they are worth almost double the value of their original amount. So I ain’t going to sell my old-fashioned, thick dog chain like, ‘aunty like’ gold jewelries just yet for I am very certain the price of gold will climb up even further.

No. of times viewed = 131

Baby C Wears Swimming Cap During Meal Times!

Meal times are now mess times for Baby. She wants to eat on her own and you know how a 1.5 year old feeds herself right? Food will be flung everywhere and stuck everywhere – her hair, her scalp (which is the hardest to clean, unless you wash her hair), her clothes, her highchair, the table, the floor and everywhere that’s within a few metres away from her highchair! Wiping her highchair and floor are still manageable but washing her hair again after her lunch is so ma fan. Baby C is one baby who hates to bathe, especially when her hair is washed. So I had a bright idea the other day and fished out Aly’s swimming cap and put it on Baby!

Baby now dons on this cute Minnie Mouse swimming cap when she eats her lunch… and boy does she look cute in the cap. With this cap, she can touch her head all she wants with her oily hands as I only need to wash the cap, which gets dried pretty quickly.

See how much she loved the fried mee hoon. I took her bowl away from her and she began to waaaaaaaaah……. *evil mummy*

In the bowl is fried mee hoon with tomato sauce, pork, eggs and veggie, all cut up into tiny bits. She loved them to bits!

BTW, Baby is now ambidextrous. She holds the spoon, pencil, toys, etc with both her hands equally well. I’m curious to know if she’s a leftie or a rightie.

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A Gem Overlooked

Though we subscribe to Astro, my hubs who is a movie buff spends quite a bit on VCDs and DVDs. Most of the movies shown on Astro are repeats and we seldom get the latest movies, unless we order them from Astro On Demand. In our case, we have never subscribed to movies from Astro On Demand. Many times, I have thought of canceling our subscription to Astro as I personally feel that it is a tad too expensive and not value for our money. But if Astro On Demand becomes FREE like Charter’s On Demand, then it’s another story altogether.

You may not know it, but if you have Charter digital, you have On Demand free of charge! There are over 6,000 movies and shows to watch anytime you want. No waiting, no schedules. If you missed one of your favorite shows like Heroes, 30 Rock and The Office, you can watch them the day after they are aired on TV for free. If you are living your life on a tight schedule and hardly have the time to go to the movies or wait for the DVD in the mail, having Charter’s On Demand at your fingertips makes life so much easier. Your kids will also benefit from this service as they can have their Dora or Spongebob anytime they want.

So wait no further. Hurry up and click here to learn more at charter.net/ondemand and you can even get updates and fun extras on Charter’s Facebook page!

Ondemand

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Sherilyn Oh Sherilyn….

We received a call from the girls’ koo por (grand aunt) last Saturday afternoon. She had invited us for dinner. Upon hearing that, Sherilyn was all excited. She quickly took her shower while singing on top of her voice (she always sings and dances in the bathroom… and jiggles her butt really cute too!) and then later, all was silent. Silence is often an indication that TROUBLE is brewing, 9 out of 10 times… in Sher’s case! I quietly went to her bedroom and saw her on her bed, with her wet hair uncombed. She was arranging the outing clothes for the night’s dinner – which she had chosen for herself as well as her jie jie.

I wanted to burst out in a loud guffaw – first at what I saw on the bed – her choice of clothes for herself and for her jie jie, which was their ‘twin sisters’ t-shirt from HK Disneyland. She had even chosen the panty to wear for the night, both for herself and for Alycia LOL! And to tickle my funny bone further, she had even taken out her lilac color Paris Hilton sunnies and my her diamond-studded headband to place on the bed!

All set out nicely and raring to go out to ‘wet’ muahahahaha….

Seeing what Sher had worn tickled me deeper. This brat is so into wearing a mini skirt on top of a pair of 3/4 pants lately. She seems to know that this is the in-thing to wear! Sherilyn oh Sherilyn, you are really, really vain and funny! Check out the out-of-sync colors – pink, blue and yellow, how gordy and eye-catching, muahahahahah!

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London Blanket’s Falling Down

Nothing makes Baby happier than playing with her 2 jie jies and their favorite is playing ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’ with their blankies.

In the past, I never allowed my 2 older girls to play or jump on their beds but when you have 3 kids, controlling them would be really out of hand. Kids, the moment they are out of your radar, they will instantly transform into little wayward monsters! Cane them each time they jump on the bed? That will be like canning them 10 times a day, not good right? Sigh…. so I just let them be, close both my eyes and let them jump all they want. But if their feet are black or have food in their hands, I’ll go berserk and charge them right away!

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Baby C And Her Eating Habits

Pretty unpleasant eating habits she has, which is pretty normal for toddlers I guess. She now spits out bland food and turns her head side ways to avoid the spoon. Still dislikes Pediasure but would drink if it is slightly diluted coz she dislikes sweet beverages (which is good). Maybe sweet and thick beverages reminds her of the antibiotics which she had taken everyday for 14 months of her life.

When it comes to Pediasure spoon-feeding time, she must be put in front of the telly or the computer – watching her 2 jie jies play educational games or read from the computer. Else, she would shriek, arch her back, push the spoonfuls of milk away (and cause messes!) climb out from her highchair, pull her hair and make me want to pull my own hair and tear out my skin!

Give her mashed up eggs, she would spit and turn her head away again. Show her a whole egg and say “see egg, big big egg” and she would reach out for the egg. So presentation does matter for her.

When we eat out, it would be really difficult to get her to eat her own food. Her eyes would be fixated on our food and she wants to “walk walk” or “see fish fish” in the aquarium. So on Sundays, I don’t cook porridge or prepare any meals for her anymore. I just heat up some soup that I’d boiled the day before (she still loves soup very much, thank God!), put it into a Thermos flask and buy her some buns. That will be her lunch while we eat in the restaurant after church. Of my 3 kids, Baby is the most difficult baby to handle.

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New Halter Neck Top

My visiting sil from Saipan bought Alycia a Pumpkin Patch multi-tiered skirt when she was in KL last month. Alycia did not have any matching tops to go with the skirt. So I ordered a custom-made halter neck top from this mummy who sews beautiful clothes for girls at very, very affordable prices. I took a picture of Alycia’s new skirt and e-mailed the picture to Jesshy as I wanted a pastel green halter neck top. The top only costs RM28! Cheap eh? When Alycia has outgrown this top, Sherilyn can wear it. Sherilyn has been eyeing this top. When I received this top by Pos Laju last week, that little vain pot of mine was the one who was more eager than Alycia to put it on!

Pretty or not you say? She can be a model eh?

My precious baby looks so grown up in this outfit. Before I realize it, I will be posting pix of a pre teen, then teenager in my blogs!

No. of times viewed = 609

Our Monday

Today is a holiday for Aly and Sher’s pre-school. The hubs had to leave for work very early in the morning. So this meant no jogging or gym for me. Instead, I brought my 3 girls for a walk from our condo to the nearby stalls to get some soy bean milk – a bottle each for the girls. Lately, Baby seems to hate her Pediasure milk. Well, she has never liked it but the past few days, she would puke the moment I’d finished feeding her. She would also turn her head away from the spoon. 2 days ago, when I gave her some soy bean milk, she liked it. What a relief! Lately, she seems to have zilch appetite for food or milk, EXCEPT for tasty, salty food and of course mummy’s boobies, sigh! Yesterday I added 1 scoop of Pediasure Vanilla into 3 ounces of soy bean milk and she drank it without much fuss, thank God!

After getting the soy bean milk, the girls played for a short while at the playground. We would have loved to stay longer but the mozzies were feasting on us though we had sprayed mozzie repellent everywhere. Back home, it was business as usual for me – yelling at the kids, nagging them and chasing Baby who was climbing everywhere. No luck putting her into her cage coz she could climb out in a jiffy *wipes sweat from forehead*

We ate buckwheat pancakes for lunch (frozen and reheated in the toaster) which I had made the other day. Tonight I’m cooking chives with minced pork again, cooked ala Taiwanese style. I’m hooked on chives ever since I tasted this chives dish at Fong Lye Taiwanese Restaurant several weeks ago.

Being a SAHM is one of the toughest jobs God had ever created. My days are spent feeding, washing, cooking, yelling, coaching, etc. to no end. There’s no MC, no paid leave, no bonus, no fringe benefits. I want to go back to work!! But when I think carefully and weigh the pros and cons, I think this is just not feasible or possible…. for at least another 3 years. And I know I’ll most likely miss my girls like crazy again, like I used to, if I ever have to leave them at the sitter’s or at the daycare center.Here are some pix of my 3 brats at the playground. It was Baby’s second visit to the playground.

No. of times viewed = 195