Month: January 2016

Clearly Straightening The Teeth

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One of the worst things that it seems teenagers can hear is that they have to wear braces. While some teens despise the aligners that will give a beautiful smile, there is an option with Invisalign St. Louis orthodontist offices offer that could be a little more comfortable than the traditional metal brackets.

An advantage for clear braces is that they are hardly noticeable unless you are right in front of someone. Since many teens enjoy talking to friends at school and on the weekend, this is a benefit as others won’t be able to see that there are braces in the mouth. The clear braces are really more of a tray that is placed in the mouth. There are no brackets attached to the teeth, making the experience a little more soothing while the braces are used.

Another benefit of this type of braces is that the tray can easily be removed while playing sports. There isn’t a large risk of damage being done to the teeth, gums and lips from the metal that is seen with traditional braces. If you have teens who like to play every sport that is offered, then this is a blessing as they won’t have to worry about an injury, which can lead to being a little more confident while playing.

Brushing the teeth can sometimes be a hassle for teens, but when they have braces, it can sometimes be even harder for them to do on a regular basis. A good thing about clear braces is that the tray can easily be removed from the mouth so that the teeth can be cleaned like normal. The tray can also be cleaned with warm water. This makes it easy to keep the mouth shiny and bright while getting the straight teeth that many teens desire. Since the tray can be removed, it also helps with eating. With traditional braces, you have to watch what you eat so that the food doesn’t get stuck between the brackets or so that a bracket isn’t broken. With clear braces, the tray can be removed so that any kind of food can be consumed.

 

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My Wednesday – 6 January 2016

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Haih… and so the nasty chi that circulated around me yesterday attacked me right up to the moment I clambered onto bed at the stroke of midnight.  I thought that after calling it off for the day, the bad chi would end but NAY! The moment I plonked onto bed, I felt a crick on my left neck. The crick paralyzed my entire head and I had to lay still and massage my  neck for 15 minutes or so to release the crick.  DANG it! I could not believe my luck!!

I seriously need to know how to manage stress. It’s not doing me any good. When our body goes into stress, millions of stress hormones called Cortisol are released, attacking every cell in our body. Thus, the stress gas stabbing my middle abdomen and the stiffness in my body yesterday.

This morning, I woke up feeling groggy and zombified having had only 5 hours of sleep. After sending our girls off, I went back to sleep. I was contemplating whether to swim or not to. My mind was willing but body was too weak. I made the right decision. After a 1-hour power nap, I felt my batteries recharged to full bar. I quickly hung the laundry, took a quick bite for breakfast and zoomed off to school.

Traffic was pretty bad. I reached school about half an hour later. Then spent over an hour to sort out Cass’ missing books. The issue is still not totally resolved yet. I’ll need to follow up with both her primary 1 and primary 2 teachers.

On the way back from school, I felt a creepy crawlie going up my leg. Dang it, it must be the baby roach that Alycia saw on Sunday. I swept it away with  my hand and I am still not sure what it was.  For a moment, my memory went back to the year 1990. Fresh from my 17th birthday, my mum presented me with driving lessons. On the second lesson, I saw a big roach on the car floor mat. The car was a really beaten up old and dirty junk. I screamed and stopped short the car in the middle of the road at the roundabout and raised both my legs on the seat. The grumpy old man driving instructor yelled at me impatiently. HA HA HA!!

Note to self – must fumigate my car with Sol-U-Guard (Melaleuca) powerful antibacterial spray.

Then I stopped at a cafe to have a nice lunch.  It was just me alone and I was working from my mobile phone at the cafe with no interruption. No yelling at the kids.  Total blissss!!

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I am now hankering for positive vibes. I am trying to stay positive and happy. I hope this stays even after the girls are back home.

 

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Bad Day

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This is one of the rules of a typical Chinese school that I really hate!

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Hair cannot be more than 5cm below the ears. Wait, there’s more. No concave style. No stylo mylo cut. Only plain Bob! If you want to keep bangs, make sure they are clipped up with only BLACK hair pins or clips. Dark brown hair clips/pins are not accepted either.  No fancy schmancy clips too. Long hair must be tied in only ONE style, which is grandma’s style – bun.  That’s why 99% of Chinese-ed female students invariably have the same ‘nerdy’ look. No offense ok. My 3 girls are products from a military-style Chinese school.

Just 2 weeks earlier, I had brought the big girl for a hair cut. Today the prefect gave her an ultimatum to have the hair cut by today itself, failing which the teacher will cut it for her in school as tomorrow is photography day. Duh!!

Today Murphy’s Law ruled my life. I hate today. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I waited for over 1 hour for the hairstylist who promised me that I only needed to wait for 15  minutes. Bull shit! I left his salon and went to another salon.

Prior to this, someone made me fuming mad when she cut my packets of Izumio hydrogen water! Last night I told her to be very very very careful before she opened the box (with retail price of over RM400) with a pair of scissors. This smart alec as usual only listened to 50% of what I said. I think she must have stabbed the box with all her cow strength, knowing her! Consequently, about 5 packets of Izumio were punctured with holes. That cost me over RM50 🙁 🙁  I was shocked when I saw them.  I only noticed the damage in the afternoon today.

Tuition time today was another blood-vomiting time for me. I almost slapped the girl when she talked to her tutor and me with so much disrespect and arrogance when she made a mistake but did not admit it. Her couldn’t care less attitude is seriously taking a toll on my mental and physical health! I seriously think that if this continues, I’ll be sent to the mad house or have some serious health problems.

Next, Cass told me that she was the only one in class without some activity books for all the subjects. I think her former class teacher must have kept the books when she went on a 2-week long MC in November.  I’ll have to make another trip to her school tomorrow to see her teachers to sort out this problem. Hopefully her books are still waiting for her, else, there goes my money again.

Next up – filling up forms brought back from school by the girls and parting with money. Boy do I hate filling up forms. It causes me stress!

All in all, today has been a very bad day for me.  The girls were constantly getting on my raw nerves, especially the 2 younger ones. And the hubby is still in Sabah and not around to share my load of stress! My tummy had accumulated so much painful ‘stress gas’. Surprisingly, gulping down 2 packets of Izumio managed to get rid of the stabbing pain.

It’s way past my regular bed time now. I do not like to go to bed seething in anger. Thus, this blog post to rant and let it go. Cass always tells me to let it go whenever I tell her that I am upset. I am so in deep shit tomorrow morning. I can’t function without a minimum of 6 hours of sleep and I am only going to get 5 hours. Duh!

Nite everyone.

 

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First Day Of School – 4 January 2016

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On the first day of school today, everything went pretty smoothly 🙂 I was a tad insomniac though. I guess I was paranoia that I could not hear my alarm clock and mobile phone alarm ringing at 4:45am. At around 3ish am, I heard the sound of a newborn baby crying its lungs out, all the way from the other block. The cries were so high pitched and I am pretty sure many were woken up by the yowl in the still of the night. For a moment, the baby’s cries brought my memory all the way back to 2003, 2005 and 2008. I cringed reminiscing those cold nights that I had to feed my babies and change their diapers in my groggy and super sleepy state at ungodly hours. Glad those days are now behind me, though I still miss their baby days 🙂

The girls woke up at 5:20 a.m.  As usual, someone had to be hollered at numerous times before she finally moved her butt off her bed as she only slept at 11 p.m. last night. I found out that she was doing some homework (albeit only the buku Nilam thingy but still!) and bag clearing at the eleventh hour last night, despite me telling them yonks ago to not let me find out that homework is not done and bag not checked the day before school is to reopen! Again, she ignored me. I was so irate that I could strangle her!! She is so so grounded for 365 days from today!

Cass is in primary 2 this year.  I am so glad she breezed through primary 1 last year and I need not have to wait in school for 3 days to guide her through things this year. Hopefully the same goes this year, albeit I know that being in the top class is going to be a zillion times tougher than in a regular class.

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I was in school for a brief moment this morning to speak to Cass’ class teacher, to inform her of Cass’ bladder issue. I’m glad that her teacher intends to create a Whatsapp chat group to communicate with parents. Her class teacher appears to be a very stern lady. She told me herself that she has had parents complaining that she’s far too fierce! o_O

Below – Cass tried to avoid me when I snapped her picture. She also appeared a tad embarrassed to see me talking to her teacher. During recess, she didn’t really want me to sit with her. I guess that’s because none of her group of friends had parents visiting and she didn’t want to be seen being mollycoddled by her mummy 🙁

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Alycia will only be back from school at 4pm each day. On days that she has extra curricular activities, she will be home even later. From what I gathered from other parents with kids studying in this high school, there will be very little to no time for tuition on most days. Saturdays are full day at school too. In view of this, Alycia may need  a lot of effort on her own for revisions if she has zero or minimal tuition. Oh well, I will see how it goes.

How was your first Monday of the new year? I hope all has been a stroll in the park for you and your kiddos. 🙂

 

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Our First Sunday in 2016 (3 January 2016)

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Today is the last day of the girls’ 6-week long school holidays. Woohoo, finally we are thrown back into reality and routine. I like routine. I miss my pre-dawn swim in the chilly pool, the walk at the tracks during pre-dawn in sheer peace, silence and darkness and workout in the gym in the early morning.  6 weeks of holiday is more than enough. I have repaid all my sleep debt. I am all set to brave the torturous 4:45am rise each morning again, from Monday through Saturday. I know it won’t be long before I  transform into a walking zombie again, with just 5-6 hours of sleep each day.

After church today, we had Japanese food, sans the hubby. He’s gone to Sabah for  4 days as an official for a basketball tournament.

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Alycia will begin a brand new chapter tomorrow when she begins high school. There will be a new transporter for her too. There will be lots of firsts for her and I hope that she will breeze through them, just like how she did in primary school.

I’ll be in school tomorrow to meet Cass’ teachers to inform them of Cass’ bladder issues so that she’ll be excused to go to the toilet every hour. I’m all fired to brave the usual back-to-school Monday morning horrendous traffic jam and to face a brand new challenge for 2016.  But hopefully, this year will be much smoother for me.

To all you parents with school-going children, here’s wishing you a plain sailing week ahead! 🙂

 

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Last Day of 2015 & First Day of 2016

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Our dinner on the last day of 2015 was at Super Tanker Restaurant with our regular group of friends. The wait for the food to arrive was incredibly long and by the time we finished eating, it was already 10ish pm.  Nonetheless, the food was superb as always. I did not snap pictures of the dishes except for this tiger prawn dish which was pretty fascinating. The  super huge size head of the prawn was pan-fried with Marmite and the prawn body was deliciously cooked in another style. Yums, so delish! I’ll bet this indulgence will move my cholesterol level up a few notches :O

 

After dinner, we adjourned to our friend’s new luxury condo at Five Stones @ SS2, PJ.

From the 29th floor of his unit, we counted down to the new year….

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… and watched fireworks displays released from several locations in the Klang Valley.

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We reached home at close  to 1am and by the time we took our showers, blew dried our hair and replied to our friends’ Whatsapp New Year greetings, we all went to bed at close to 2:30am!

Our initial plan for New Year’s day was to leave our house by 9:30am to drive in comfortably into Mid Valley Megamall to avoid the massive traffic jam but as I had expected, everyone was still sleeping like logs and nothing that I did could wake them up! We’ve all been going to bed way past 1am for the past one week. We changed our plan and went to Pavillion instead.

Pavillion was people congested as well. There were long queues at most of the restaurants. Hubs wanted to eat at Din Tai Fung but we were told to wait for 30 minutes. Fish! No thanks. So we went a few floors higher and found Village Duck Chinese restaurant, a restaurant that’s perpetually swarmed with patrons at the Bangsar Village outlet.  Thankfully, we got a table pretty fast.

Seafood fried rice, jelly fish and duck.

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The porridge was glorious – came with big fresh scallops, big prawns, crab roe, fish, cuttlefish and yau tiu.

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After lunch, we went shopping.  Cass waited patiently for her 2 persnickety sisters to choose their sneakers and read a Geronimo Stilton book to kill time.

So dainty and pretty but she should improve on the way she sits, haha!

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my dear readers a very fruitful and happy 2016. Stay fit and healthy 🙂

 

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HEALTH FREAK MOMMY