New Kid On The Blog

The Thomas Birthday Party

2011-06-28T21:38:00.000Z

29-June-2011:

This was not my children's birthday. It was a friend's and it happened in January this year. Long time ago, I know. This was one of the biggest kids party that we've been to. It was held in their residence community hall at Lake Edge Puchong and had a Thomas & Friend theme - Dom's favourite. The parents spent about RM5k just for event management alone, not including the food and other miscellaneous things.

First thing we noticed when we arrived, or rather the first thing Dom noticed was the bouncy castle! The kids went wild in there, except Emily who was too young and too nervous to go near it.

The kids sat in here while there were tables for the adults outside the hall.

There were toys - all Thomas related, Thomas cup cakes, Thomas decorations, etc. Each child got a Thomas party pack. The birthday kids' (there were 2 of them) faces were printed on the party bag. In the bag were a Thomas toy, chocolate bars in Thomas themed wrapper with the kids' faces printed on it and some other stuffs.

And of course, the birthday cake was a Thomas one.

Later, there was a clown who came to tell jokes. It was more suitable for the older kids. Em didn't bother at all. Dom enjoyed it for a while but later asked why the clown talked for so long. In the end, he went off to play instead.

Makes me wonder, will I ever host such a huge party for my kids? The answer is most likely no. Firstly, I don't think I'll spend a few grands on a party and secondly there are only so few people in my life that do matter to me. I don't see the point in inviting all of my colleagues to my kids' birthday, for example. It will make sense to invite Dom's or Em's friends however. It's their party and they should have their own friends. But last year when I asked Dom if he would like his friends to come, he said no, he only wanted his cousins. I think he is so like me. I would want only the people who matter to celebrate my birthday with me too. What's your take in this?

Just Photos

2011-06-28T04:47:00.000Z

28-June-2011:

Then, There was CNY

2011-06-28T04:03:00.000Z

28-June-2011:

You know, CNY was half a year ago and I've just uploaded the photos. I don't quite remember what happened anymore. For reunion dinner, I had to spend it with my in laws. It was good, don't get me wrong, but I think my pre-married reunion dinners in Ipoh were better. :-)

This year, we ordered food from Dragon-I (or was it I-Dragon) restaurant. It was a take-away and according to Saimun's dad, business was very good as there were lots of people waiting for their take-aways. I think people hardly cook anymore for reunion dinner, especially in Klang Valley. Most would eat out. Majority of the restaurants would run two sessions during that evening - one at 5pm and the other at 8:30pm - either too early or too late, which is why I always prefer to eat at home.

The next day, we had the usual thing with the in laws and then a friend just flew in from the US, so we spent the afternoon with her instead. On the 2nd day, we went to Ipoh. I'm trying to make this customary and so far so good. A thought came in to mind, however. What if (when) my grandmother passes away? Will people still gather in Ipoh like they do now? It's hard to imagine, really. I remember my cousin posted a photo on Facebook of the food that they ate on their reunion dinner. They were the same dishes that I used to have as a kid, year after year. Nothing has changed for over 30 years. Surely my grandma is the one who's holding the family unit together and also the main reason things have not changed for so many years. I'm not sure if things will still be the same if she's not around anymore.

Anyway, we had good fun. My children had fun. :-) You can see that some people were drunk at the end of the night.

First of all, I think my daughter looked like a princess. :-) This was at my in laws' place.

One of the few family photos (of the 4 of us) that we have.

After that, the children performed lion dance.

These were taken in Ipoh (the shop).

These were taken during dinner.

Art Attempt

2011-06-28T03:39:00.000Z

28-June-2011:

Many months ago, I think it was during Christmas or Dom's birthday that I bought a pottery set for him and a bag of air-drying clay. We've only used it once since, mainly because we haven't gone out to buy more clay although he asked me to several times, and also because I was dreading the mess. The last time we used it, I think I spent more time cleaning up than actually making the pots. Anyway, we made something and Dom gave them to two of his teachers. Here are the photos. They're a bit ugly and irregular, but we were amateurs and Emily was disturbing.

Here are they before they got painted.

And after they've been painted. I have to admit I did all the painting for him. He lost interest after the messy part.

Next, I did some artwork myself too. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to do more because of the lack of time and soon lost the momentum. I'm trying to gather up momentum again but it's not easy. Hehe. So, here are two pieces that I've done back in December last year.

The first is a copy-cat abstract flower - something just to test out what I could or couldn't do:

The 2nd one is an abstract from a photo of Dom and Em. Dom was holding some corn flakes in his hand and Em was taking the food from him. I love this. After this piece I've not had any ideas as good as this. There were a couple of botched jobs after this one which I wanted to redo but haven't done so.

sda

I Think It's Time for an Update!

2011-05-03T04:01:00.000Z

3-May-2011:

Now, let's see what has happened since the last time I wrote. I don't know. Time seems to fly and everything is now a blur. All I know is that both kids are healthy, we are healthy and we are all happy.

Yesterday, Dom did all the dishes for me after dinner. All by himself without any help. I inspected his work after that and there was no difference from daddy's work - satisfactory for his age (but less so for daddy's age ... haha!). He was such a good boy. Only Iast week, he mopped the floor for me (after I've vacuumed it). Recently, I reflected on his younger days. He was so cute and adorable and I was hugging and kissing him constantly. I felt a kind of sadness because these days I'm showering him less affection, probably because he is older now and I have Emily. I cradle and kiss her more often. After all, she is the baby. I've asked myself if I love Em more than Dom. It's very hard to shower the same affection to both of them. I guess I just love them differently. After searching myself several times, I've come to the conclusion that I love them the same. Differently, but with the same magnitude. I went through many scenarios to arrive at this conclusion (and to assure myself of my own feelings). One of them was when a woman was reported drowned after driving into a river/drain during a heavy downpour. I imagined myself driving into the river with my two kids in the car with me. What would I do? It was so scary just to imagine it that I instantly prayed to God.

Both Dom and Em are looking more and more alike. They definitely look like brother and sister. It is sometimes fun and heart warming to see them together but they have started to fight! Dom knows never to hurt Em, but he likes to annoy her, and Em is easily annoyed. She even likes to complain about Dom, i.e. babbles obviously in a displeased way (usually with tears) and inserting the phrase "gor-gor" in between her babbling while pointing at Dom's direction. And Dom does like to annoy her. I think he was just trying to get attention. He's usually very good when Em is not around. I don't know what I should do about this. He just can't leave her alone, i.e. he will snatch her pillow away from her, poke her in the stomach with his finger, squeeze her cheeks ... nothing that hurts her but makes her wail all the same, which annoys me tremendously.

Speech wise, Em has improved a lot over the past few months. She addresses each member of the family (including grandparents and cousins) correctly. When she sees something "interesting", she says "Mummy, see ... ", or "Daddy, see ...", while pointing to the object. Every evening after dinner, she will go to the fridge and say "orange" (but it sounded like "orwen"). When she hears the gate opens, she'll say "Daddy's back". When Dom is not around (possibly doing his big business upstairs), she will ask "Where gor-gor?". When it's raining, she will look up the sky and say "raining" (but it doesn't really sound like "raining" at all, only I can understand her). When she wants milk, she will ask for "nan-nan". When we get in the car, she'll automatically ask for her "chuit-chuit" so that she can go to sleep. When she wants to go out, she says "shoes" (but really, it sounds like "foo" instead). When Dom gets up from his seat during dinner, she orders him to "sit down". She can also communicate when she needs to do her business by making "mm-mmmm" sound and by standing near the toilet. Passing motion is a major business for her. She reminds me of the pushing stage during labour.

Speaking of constipation, I have feeling it has something to do with the food that my MIL feeds her. She didn't have any problems before this when I used to cook her lunch in the morning. But since she got older and was able to share the same food with the other kids, she started eating what MIL cooked and then around the same time (if I'm not mistaken), she started to have constipation. Dom didn't have this problem when we were in London.

Well, basically Em has grown a lot. She can sing, though nobody understand what she's singing. But we definitely know that she's singing because she does it when there's music and she nods her head to the beat. It was so cute! Last weekend, during Joe's birthday, she sang one word of the birthday song, i.e. "birth-dayy" (not exactly the correct pronunciation but intelligible). She imitates stuffs that we do, especially stuffs that Dom does. So when I was teaching her how to gargle and rinse her mouth, I got Dom to demonstrate it - gulp it, then spit it out. But she kept swallowing the water. :p

She is also very mobile, as in she goes up and down stairs on her own without any assistance, but I always try to keep an eye on her in case she accidentally falls. Feeding time, she feeds herself well using the fork and spoon but she doesn't eat a lot (compared to Dom at her age). She especially doesn't like meat. The doctor said it was okay because some kids do hang on to their milk longer than others. But the thing is she doesn't drink a lot of milk compared to Dom either. Most of the time she doesn't even finish the 5 ounces that we give her 5 times a day.

Well, I think that's about enough for Em. As for Dom, there isn't much to update on. He's doing well in school and reads much better now. One thing for sure, he has an interesting mind, always asking interesting questions. Just the other day he asked me what's the difference between concrete and cement and why are there two words to describe the same thing. I've explained the difference to him, and then he asked why is it that when cement dries up it becomes hard but when water dries up it just disappears? There are many, many more questions. Why is the toilet bowl always filled with water even though there's a drain hole? Why did his toy train station float even though it was heavy? How did the guy at the McD drive through know we were there? How did his voice get into the "machine"? How did the automatic door know to open the door when we approached? Where did the air-cond from the car come from? How can the ostrich run faster than the car? (cos he saw in one of the silly cartoons that the ostrich overtook the car). And do you know that Garfield is a human in a cat suit? Haha. Endless questions!

Dom received his progress report from the school yesterday. I think he's not going to be very good academically. Sigh ... never mind, I think Einstein didn't do very well in school either. :p

I just realized I haven't uploaded a lot of the kids' photos yet. No time to do it, gotta do it later. :-)

Japanese Cheesecake Passed MIL Test

2011-03-07T00:55:00.000Z

7-MAR-2011:

A couple of months ago, before the CNY, an ex-colleague brought over a cotton soft cheesecake - sort of like a sponge cake but much softer and a bit moist. I thought it was really nice. I studied the box that it came in but all I got was some Japanese sounding name that I've never heard of or seen before, and there wasn't an address on the box too. For those of you who are doing sales or marketing, how important is information for your potential customers!

Anyway, since there was a Jap-sounding name on the box, I then Googled "Japanese Cheesecake" and there really is such a thing. I found the recipe and attempted it once a few weeks ago but it was a failure. However, the 2nd attempt was a success and this cake has passed my MIL test (you know how difficult that is!).

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
140g/5 oz. fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
50g/2 oz. butter
250g/9 oz. cream cheese
100 ml/3 fluid oz. fresh milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice
60g/2 oz. cake flour /superfine flour
20g/1 oz. cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions:
1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

3. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C (325 degrees F).

Makes 1 (8-inch) cheesecake, 12 servings.

Baking in a water bath means you pour the cake batter into a cake pan and then put the cake pan into another bigger pan filled with hot water. Since I do not have a small enough cake or a big enough "other" pan that can fit the cake pan, I used my Le Creuset and Anolon instead.

Kids!

2011-03-04T01:06:00.000Z

4-MAR-2011:

As of today, Dom is 5 years and 2 months old and Em is 16 months old. And both of them are down with fever, cough and running nose. It's been quite a while since one of them fell sick and I'm sure you've heard a lot of mums muse about their hard times when all their kids fell sick at the same time. For once, I am relieved that both of them are sick instead of just one. I'm not sure if what I feel makes any sense at all but I'll try to explain.

As I become older, I really feel that I get more worried and paranoid about most things. I used to have fevers in the past like everyone does and it was really no big deal at all. A couple of panadols will sort it out. But now when it comes to the kids, there are all sorts of possibilities. Could it be dengue fever? Could it be bacteria infection? What else? I get worried especially when there are no other cough or running nose symptoms. This time round, the fact that it is contagious suggests that it is most likely just a common cold. Although the same aedes mosquito could've bitten them both and that bacteria infection is probably contagious too. Ahh ... like I said, it makes no sense, but the theory is based around the idea that something really serious is less likely to happen to both the children.

Five-year-old Dominic is behaving more and more like a boy. The little boy who used to be so sweet and obedient is now so ... active and "deaf". He jumps around, disturbs his sister, runs around, shouts ... and every instruction has to be repeated a few times and when there is a single minute to spare he would ask "What shall I do now?". When I suggest, taking a rest, relaxing, sleeping or anything similar, he'll say "Resting is not a do!". When asked to tidy up his toys, he pulled his sister along and said, "You ... you mess this up. Help gor-gor to tidy up." When his sister is not bothering him, he'll find ways to get her attention, annoy her and disturb her. When his sister IS bothering him, he'll ask me to take her away. Haha!

On the other hand, I feel that 16-month-old Emily finds her brother very annoying! She'll often make noise and push him away when he's near, but they have their moments of fun and laughter as well. Em is starting to talk more now. She taps on my shoulder, back or arms and calls me "mama". :-) And she calls out to "daddy" when he comes home. She also calls out to "gor-gor" (while crying and pointing at him), to indicate that gor-gor has bullied her. And her two other favourite persons are "mama" (grandma) and yeh-yeh. She says many other single words and generally makes a lot of noise.

Emily still sleeps with us and she cries every night. The crying stopped when Saimun removed her from the cot and now she is sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I think she didn't like to be "trapped" inside the cot. She also doesn't like it when Dom gets all the attention, for example when I'm revising his homework with him or reading to him. She'll normally wail in the background until daddy gets out of the shower. It's a good thing that both Dom and I are able to effectively block her voice out. Haha!

After a few weeks of coaching, I think Dom has improved greatly in reading (in English). I need to buy him more books because I'm not sure anymore if he's actually reading the words or memorizing! To encourage him to read, we have started this game of treasure hunt where I would write clues on yellow sticky notes and then he would hunt for the treasure, looking for the clues. I started the game by drawing pictures - like a picture of the oven to indicate the next clue is in the oven, and when he got hooked with the game, I changed the clues to words. The "treasure" is usually a gift that I bought for him for having collected 10 stars for good behaviour (we're still using the same method we used since few years back).

Every evening, after the 3 of us have showered, we will have a game of hide and seek. Dom is getting better at seeking but not so good at hiding (always hid in the same places). Em is extremely good with hiding. She doesn't make a single sound when we're hiding! As for me, I'm really running out of ideas on where to hide next!

Finally, some photos of the little ones.

New Member

2011-02-22T01:32:00.000Z

22-Feb-2011:

There's a new member in the family (officially) since Nov last year. My little brother finally tied the knot after much pestering from family members last year. It was a small affair. The ROM was done much earlier and we had a small dinner in Ipoh with family members only. We went to the same restaurant that we always go twice a year for grandma's birthday and CNY.

Dom had his school concert just a week ago and for this wedding dinner, I dressed him up in his concert costume. He looked so handsome and adorable! As for Em, she looked just like a little bride with her white dress.

After the event, now that I looked at the photos I realized I haven't got a one taken with the bride and groom! The camera man was so lousy! Admittedly, the camera man was my husband.

Dom's School Concert - 5 Years Old

2011-02-17T02:44:00.000Z

17-FEB-2011:

Dom's first ever school concert was on 23-Oct-2010. It was a long time ago, I know, but I've uploaded the videos a while back. I can still remember. We were told to send our children to school by 9:00am, which was really early considering that it was a Saturday. The note said to do up his hair in a "spiky" style and to put make up on my child's face. I did neither, because the concert was scheduled to start at 10am and I thought I could do his hair after we got there, and I never intended to put make up on his face. He's pretty enough already. :-)

When we got there, I realized all the other kids were in their school uniforms. Dom wasn't because it was not stated that he had to be in his uniform - that was the excuse. The main reason was, he has 4 sets of uniforms (for Monday to Thursday) and on Fridays he wears his sports T-shirt. Therefore, there wasn't an extra set for a Saturday. Although I wash everyday but I don't iron everyday. :p

Anyway, we got there and I was carrying Emily. She was terrified and didn't want to be put down. So I asked Saimun to do Dom's hair instead. I said there was a bottle of hair gel in the bag. Saimun went, "What? Spiky? Not nice. If they want it, they should do it themselves." And that was it.

When we dropped Dom off, his hair was like this. By the way, he wasn't wearing that costume when we dropped him off. He was in t-shirt and shorts (I think).

And then, when it was his turn to go on stage for his dance, it took me a long time to recognize my own son! It was because he had different hair and he looked so different! Like this:

He did two dances, which I've uploaded in the videos section:

http://sukye.multiply.com/video/item/96/Doms_Concert_-_Reflections

http://sukye.multiply.com/video/item/95

I prefer the 2nd one.

He also went on stage to get his "award". A few students were selected for Best Conduct, Best Helper, Best Improvement and Best Reader. And Dom was selected for Best Improvement. He was very proud of it. Admittedly, he did improve a lot since going to school. Before this, in the UK, he had been playing and having fun everyday. After a year, he was able to read, write, speak in Chinese (write in Chinese as well) and understands some Malay words.

Generally, I enjoyed the concert, even though when it wasn't my kid performing. The school got the 6-year-olds to give speeches - one in Chinese, one in English and one in Malay and they were really good! With actions and all. It was much better than a lengthy speech by the principal or whoever, which I dreaded but didn't happen. Unfortunately, I think Saimun didn't get to watch much as Em was fast asleep in his arms most of the time.

After that we went for pizza lunch. :-)

Dom's 5th Birthday

2011-02-14T01:58:00.000Z

14-FEB-2011:

Dom's 5th birthday was in late December, just before Christmas and here is what happened. The menu was set by Saimun. He wanted everyone to have a sit down dinner rather than a party buffet style. He requested for Jamie Oliver roast chicken, mashed potatoes and salad, which I made. This time, he didn't buy something to top up the menu. I made two types of roast. And because I thought maybe some of the guests, especially MIL, may not like the strong rosemary, thyme and basil smell, I threw in asian style chicken wings as well. Plus some french fries and pasta for the kids.

There should've been enough food. There was leftover after all. The problem was, there wasn't enough of the Jamie Oliver roast whereas nobody liked the Asian chicken wings and the pasta. Hmm ... It's hard to please everyone. Sometimes it is better to leave them with no choice. Haha!

This time there was less work. Everything was done by the oven. Problem was I wished I had more than one oven so that I could do them all at the same time rather than one after another. This time, my brother and family came along too and they came again the weekend after (which was Christmas) because they wanted to taste the roast again. :-) The second time was even better. It is now my signature dish, which I served again few weeks later when my ex-colleagues came over.

So the first I did was the standard red eggs.

And thanks to a tip from Yvonne, I made the eggs into a salad (nobody ate the eggs during Em's birthday). This time, all the eggs were gone. :-)

Then, Dom's birthday cake, which he requested for a "chocolate mud cake". When I asked him what he meant by "mud cake", he said it has to be sticky and gluey. Okay, I found this recipe from the Internet and I had no idea how it will turn out to be, except that it was called "chocolate mud cake". I could only wish it would turn out the way he wanted. When I took it out of the oven, it was sticky or gluey at all. So to make it sticky, I made a chocolate ganache and poured it over the cake. I made sure I did not put the cake into the fridge so that the ganache remained melted and gluey. He liked it, but the rest of the people thought it was too sweet.

Rest of the food:

And here are his birthday presents. Since it was 1 week before Christmas, we stashed all the presents under the Christmas tree.

Genting Highlands - School Holidays 2010

2011-02-07T02:59:00.000Z

7-FEB-2011:

Last December, we took off to Genting Highlands during the year-end school holidays. It was Dom's idea. During a car trip back home, he just all out of a sudden asked if the car can bang into another car and what would happen. Ultimately, the conversation included "bumper cars". He hadn't seen a bumper before but he liked what I described, and I told him there were bumper cars up in Genting Highlands. He had been bugging us to take him there ever since.

We went on a week day but it was packed. Think we spent more time queueing up for the rides than enjoying the rides itself. The weather was nice and cool at first but soon became chilly towards the evening. Nevertheless, Dom enjoyed himself. Em was simply tagging along and had no idea what was going on, I think. :p

Port Dickson

2011-02-01T00:59:00.000Z

1-Feb-2011:

Here's my last post before CNY and it's about our trip to Port Dickson during the school holidays in Nov/Dec last year. Actually, there's nothing much to talk about except the kids had fun at the beach and in the pools. On the 2nd day, Emily's stomach wasn't feeling that well and she did a poo (runny one) while we were seated by the pool side (without her nappy on). It was fortunate that we weren't in the pool and she was seated on my lap. It was better that I got shit all over me instead of all over the pool. :-) Actually, I just wanted to show you some of the photos we took there.

Here's a photo of Em walking on the beach. I think it was her first time at a beach (except for the Sunway Lagoon one). She reacted very differently from Dom. You can see in this photo that she totally enjoyed walking bare footed on the sand. As for Dom, he was about 8 months old when we took him to the Brighton Beach in the UK and a few months later to another beach at Portsmouth. Both times, he refused to even sit on the sand/stones (Brighton was full of stones and pebbles, not sand).

Sunway Lagoon

2011-01-31T01:47:00.000Z

31-Jan-2011:

I figured this post is really updated but I should really catch up on all these blog posts since (1) I will forget what's happened, and (2) time flies and now I can hardly recall how Em grew up. And she's growing up fast. The other day a friend asked if she can already talk and what words can she say. It was at that moment that I couldn't recall really what words she has managed to say and it was only during the night that I remembered ... she said thank you (sounds like tank koo) when we gave her something, like a toy or a banana. She called me mummy (sounds like mameh). And she said "daddy" when she hears Saimun opening the door when he comes home. Anyway, she's growing up too fast. She can feed herself efficiently with a spoon already, and can carry the Ikea stool to reach places too high for her, turn on the tap to play with water, get into the car on her own, and many more. I think by not blogging more often, I have now a lot less detail about Em growing up compared to Dom. And they're both very different, really.

So anyway, this post is about our one day break at Sunway Lagoon during the school holidays in Nov/Dec last year. Sunway Lagoon is just about 30 mins drive (or less) from our home and both Saimun and I think that it's the simplest and most relaxing holiday we can have - with no long drive, no flights, and minimal packing. We both took a day off work on a week day to avoid the crowd and it was most enjoyable.

We haven't been to Sunway Lagoon for many years. It still looks the same, although some things have changed. I like the e-wallet system that they have implemented, whereby instead of a paper wristband, they now give you a watch (not a real one) to wear on your wrist. You can load cash into it (digitally) and use that to purchase food and stuffs. That way, you just leave your wallet in the locker and don't have to carry cash around. I think it's a good idea ... except that when all of us were craving for some pop corn, the darn thing refused to work. We had like RM50 in there (I think) and the system told us that we only had 4 cents. Fortunately, we already had lunch before the thing went bonkers.

Outside food and drinks are prohibited, even for mineral water. They searched our bags at the entrance and we were told to remove the 2 litres of mineral water we had. I wrapped one of the bottles in a towel but it was discovered. We argued and I insisted that I needed the water for my baby and we were allowed in with the 2 litres.

All in all, it was a fun day and all of us enjoyed ourselves including Emily. There were pools, a beach (although man made but the kids had fun playing with sand) and rides. Emily was too young to go on any rides so I just went with Dom. He rode on the roller coaster for the first time and it was rather exhilirating for me (think I'm really getting old) but he said it was fun.

School Holiday Summary

2010-12-28T00:33:00.000Z

28-Dec-2010:

Oh boy! It seems like I haven't done this in months, so here's probably my last post for the year. I promise that next year I'll be more "hardworking" :-)

So there's only less than 1 week before school starts again. I think overall it's been a great holiday for Dom as well as for myself. Since the school holiday started, I've been taking half day on every Tuesday and Thursday to do stuffs with him.

Firstly, on Thursdays, I enrolled him into an arts and crafts class at Little Da Vinci at Ikano (next to Ikea). So in the morning, after dropping Em off, we would head over to Ikea. He played for free at the children's section and I drink tea (free one cup of coffee or tea everyday with Ikea Friends card :-). Free refill too!). When it was time, I would send him to his art class and for 2 hours I did various things every week such as shopping, reading in the book shop, banking and buying Christmas toys. I have to say, 2 hours just ain't enough. Haha!

Then, on Tuesdays, we did various activities. We went swimming, did some gardening, went to the park and fixed a fan. I wanted to buy some plants to put around the house but Dom insisted on getting seeds instead because he wanted to see them grow. So we bought some pots, some seeds, gardening earth, some tools and I let Dom do it all by himself. He seemed to know what to do exactly without any guidance. He scooped earth into the pot, scattered the seeds and then cover them with another thin layer of earth, so that birds don't eat the seeds, he said. The he watered the seeds and I had to do the cleaning up. About 1-2 weeks later, they have sprouted greens, except for one which is still bare.

On top of the Tuesdays and Fridays, I also took some extra days off together with Saimun to go somewhere with the kids. We went to Sunway Lagoon for a full day. That was really fund and I'll blog about it in another post. Then we also went to Port Dickson and stayed overnight. That was fun too although the trip there took us about 4 hours (instead of the 1 hour promised by Saimun). Then, we also went up to Genting Highlands for a day. This wasn't so nice because of the crowd. We actually spent most of the time queueing up for the rides!

Now, at the final week of the school holidays, I'm back to work "full time" (hence the reason I have time to blog). Hehehe.

Emily @ 1 Year Old

2010-11-09T22:11:00.000Z

10-Nov-2010:

I think I'll just quickly do an update on the girl before she turns 13 months old. Time really flies and I have difficulty catching up with it. My mother once said that time flies when you're happy. It shows that you're happy and I think she's quite right. :-)

Emily is now a fairly independent baby. She can walk very well, even run. I can see that she's and active and agile baby. She'll probably do well in gym and outdoor activities. She likes to climb and she's very quick too. I just turned my back for a few seconds and she had climbed onto the bed. She can now climb on to our bed, the couch, the stairs and any stools in the house with great ease. She never listens to 'no' and doesn't even acknowledge me saying it. With Dom, he at least would cry when I said 'no' and stopped whatever he was doing. With Em, she ignored me, climbed on to the stool, stood upright and clapped her hands! This morning, I said no don't walk out to the car porch (because she wasn't wearing shoes) and she went round the pillar, poked her head out and said "chak!" (playing peekaboo). Haha!

Her favourite game is peekaboo - her gor-gor hiding behind the curtains and coming out to surprise her, or just hiding behind the door. She likes to put a handkerchief over her head, pull it down and say "chak!". She has other favourite games too. She laughs the most when Dom plays "catch you" with her, i.e. Dom crawling towards her saying "catch you, catch you, catch you" and she would run away from him laughing hysterically. Another of her favourite games is putting the cap or lid on to its container. She can spend 10-15 minutes doing this over and over again. Each time she succeeded, she would clap her hands.

I'm beginning to see the starting signs of tantrums. One classic act is that she lies down on the floor when she's unhappy (while crying, of course). That's about it. No major tantrums just yet.

While Dom was obedient and compliant, Em is another story. At feeding times, she refused to be fed. I used to let her hold on to something that she can nibble while I fed her but even that doesn't work anymore. Now she refused to be fed at all and insisted on feeding herself. She now eats her meals using her fingers, picking up pieces of vegetables, meat and rice. I tried giving her a spoon but she just played with it and flung food all over the place. But she also managed to feed herself with the spoon once or twice. She picked up the food using her fingers, put it on the spoon and then brought the spoon to her mouth. I was very impressed with that, but she didn't manage to do it consistently. At this age, she is already picking her food, i.e. being choosy. I find that she likes vegetables, or maybe she just picks them because they're colourful (green and orange). She doesn't like eggs. I've tried hard boiled, omelette, sunny side up, scrambled and steamed (as in like custard). She only ate the steamed ones.

She likes to imitate stuffs that we do, such as wiping the floor with a piece of cloth, blowing on hot food to cool it down, combing our hair, etc. Just last night, when we were about to take a shower, Dom went to the top of the stairs and yelled, "Daddy! Can you switch on the pump?" (our water pump switch is located downstairs). A few seconds later, I saw Emily walking out to the top of the stairs (naked) and shouted ... I don't know what she shouted but I'm sure she was trying to say whatever Dom just said. Haha!

Emily likes dancing and singing. She's quite good at shaking her bum bum to the music and nodding her head up and down to the beat. She would also try to sing but all she did was just "ehhh ... ohhh .... ahhh ...". She's still not very good with speech. Her only intelligible "words" are "yeh-yeh". Others are bah-bah and occasionally ma-ma. I think I've said some of these in my other post, I can't remember, but never mind, I'll say it again. :-)

On another note, Dom had his first ever school concert and oh, how I loved to see him dance and groove. :-) Will upload the videos as soon as I get them to a reasonable size to be uploaded.

Emily's 1st Birthday!

2010-10-28T22:11:00.000Z

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.

More Singapore Photos

2010-10-27T22:26:00.000Z

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:

Kiddos Update

2010-10-14T04:55:00.000Z

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. :-)

Our Singaporean Holiday

2010-10-08T02:46:00.000Z

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!

Picnic

2010-09-29T02:04:00.000Z

29-Sep-2010:

Many weeks ago (longer than I can remember), we had a picnic breakfast at the playground near our house with a couple of friends and their kids. I put Emily on the swing and she enjoyed herself soooo much!

After that, when I told Saimun that it was her first time on the swing and she already enjoyed it so much, he said, no, it wasn't her first time. He had taken her on the swing many times before this. Huh??? Why didn't I know about it.

Apparently, the first time Emily went on the swing, she was sitting on Saimun's lap. As such, Saimun was unable to see her expression as he swung happily away, but Dominic, who was facing the both of them said, "Daddy, I think Emily is scared!". Haha!

Anyway, I think it's time for some updates about my little girl again.

Sigh, first of all, I think at her age, I find her very small and lightweight. Plus, we went to Singapore for a holiday and she didn't eat much during the trip and became even skinnier. Then, a few weeks after that, she had diarrhoea and it seems like she lost more weight there. In terms of food intake, I find that she's beginning to dislike porridge and prefers rice instead, therefore I've stopped cooking porridge for a while and feeding her rice instead. I think it's more work for me since I need to think about what to go with the rice as well, instead of dumping in whatever I have for porridge.

Physically, she is very mobile now. She is able to walk about 4-5 steps at a time, unaided, and she can normally walk further if she's holding something in her hands. She can also climb up and down the stairs. At her grandparents' house, she can climb up the couch, which is about the height of an Ikea kiddie chair.

Intellectually, I find that she is "smarter" than Dom used to be at this age. She seems more aware of her surroundings, and able to communicate better, in her own ways. For example, she is able to tell me she wants a drink by putting her water bottle in my hand and opening her mouth. She can tell from my tone of voice that I'm not happy with her and she would lean her head against my tummy, lap or shoulder, as if to say "I'm sorry". During meals, she is also trying to feed herself using a spoon, although not very successful. She also has quite a good memory. She recognizes the vaccum cleaner and knows that it makes a loud sound (will quickly crawl away when the thing comes). Plus, one day she was playing with her grandma's radio and turned the volume so loud that it scared her. From then on, she has never touched the radio again.

In terms of speech, she makes a lot of noise, as usual, mostly "AAAA" or "Ehhhh". But every morning, when Dom gets into the car to go to school, she would wave her hand and say "Bah bah bah bah", which means "bye bye". In fact, she would do that even when we're still in the house and I say, "Let's go out and say bye-bye to gor-gor", which shows that she already understands a lot that I say.

To the grandparents, she is really the most difficult baby they have ever taken care of. She refused to be left alone, even for a few seconds, which means that her grandpa has to be with her all the time. She needs to hold her grandpa's hand tightly during afternoon naps and will wake up shortly, find that her grandpa is no longer around and scream at the top of her lungs. The only way to make her sleep is that he sleeps together with her. Basically, it is impossible for him to get anything done. During weekends, when she is with us, she plays around the house by herself as long as we're within her sight. She takes very short naps during the day and doesn't really sleep much.

Emily has never used a potty since birth. Ever since we moved into our current house, she did her poo directly into the toilet, using Dom's trainer toilet seat, whenever I manage to catch her before she poo-ed into her nappy. Recently, I had finally understood her language and know that she wants to poo (most of the time). She would crawl to me with an "eh-eh-eh" and will keep trying to stand on my lap. Nobody understands what she wants except me.

Emily has also stopped using a bath tub ever since she could sit unsupported. Instead we shower her while she sits on a stool. Nowadays, she can also stand while we shower her. During her early baby days, she would cry everytime we shower over her head. But now, she makes a face but doesn't cry anymore. She loves to play with water and she loves swimming. When I am mopping the floor, she can spend the whole time following me (or more like the bucket) and playing with the water in the bucket. I know it's dirty water but I wash her after that anyway, so it should be alright.

She likes to point with her index finger. If she likes you, she will point at you with her index finger and will even try to touch your nose or face or hand with it. She reminds me of ET.

"Art" by 5-year-old

2010-09-22T00:53:00.000Z

22-Sep-2010:

One evening, after I've bathed and everything and went to Dom's room to check on him, I saw this on his room door and the words written on the paper.

His New Pet

2010-09-21T01:28:00.000Z

21-Sep-2010:

Dom has a new pet. Several new pets actually. :-) He was pretty excited about it at first but not anymore. He still feeds them everyday though.

One day, one of the fish died. He wasn't too upset about it but over the past few weeks, we've been having talks about death. It came about when he overheard Saimun and I talking and he caught me saying "your mother" (refering to Saimun's mum). After that, he came about asking me where my mother was and I told him that she's dead. I think he must have been quite confused because he then proceeded to ask me where my grandfather was and I said he's dead too. Over the next few days, he would bring up the topic whenever he felt like it and asked why my grandfather died. How? Did he die in Ipoh? Is he still in Ipoh? The moment he asked that last question, I knew that he didn't fully understand the meaning of death. We had several conversations where I told him that yes, my grandfather is in a graveyard in Ipoh, and then had to explain what's a graveyard. He asked all sorts of questions. How did he breathe in there? Is there a house in there where he lives? But where does he live? So I had to explain that he doesn't live because he's dead, yadda, yadda, he's turned to dust and all that. He asked if he will wake up? How about bringing him to the doctor. I said when you're dead, even the doctors can help. To my surprise, he insisted that yes, can! If he goes to the hospital the doctor can make him wake up!

Well, that was many weeks ago and we had those conversations before the fish died. When the fish died, he witnessed death the first time and saw his daddy throw the fish away. I told him, that is death. The fish has died, it won't move anymore and you won't see it anymore, forever. "Can we go buy another fish?", he asked.

At night, he told me that he wanted to pray to Jesus so that daddy and mummy don't die. Incidentally, during one of our conversations, I also told him that he is very lucky because he has daddy and mummy and a sister and a nice house to live in. (The topic of luck came into play while we were driving and we hit green light after green light at the traffic lights without having to stop). I told him that some children do not have daddies and mummies and have no one to love them. He instinctively told me that it's because those children didn't pray to God and didn't go to church!

Well, well, well ... this son of mine is growing up quickly and is very amusing, and also very, very naive too. He has got so much more to learn.

Big Screen

2010-09-17T01:49:00.000Z

17-Sept-2010:

It started with Dom asking, "Daddy, are you a rich man?" Daddy: We have enough. Why? Dom: Can you please buy a bigger TV? This one is too small!

As a result, his daddy bought a 42-inch plasma TV. He said it was "value for money" (costs only RM2k). The reason it's so cheap is because, like I said before, technology moves very quickly, especially when it comes to TV. Plasma is an old technology. Now, we have LCD, LED and even 3D TVs. I still remember probably about 5 years ago, a large screen plasma TV was probably about RM10k. Well, he said he doesn't mind old technology because what is "new" now will become "old" in just a few months time. Besides the format of the content hasn't caught up with the new technology yet.

So here's our big screen. We recently subscribed to IP TV (i.e. TV via Internet). So far the only channel that we watch is CBeebies.

My Kuching Trip

2010-09-14T03:20:00.000Z

14-Sept-2010:

As you may already know, I went to Kuching for a weekend break with my colleagues in early August and here's what we did.

Actually I can't quite remember what we did but overall, it was a nice a trip. We took a plane from LCCT to Kuching. It was my first time in LCCT and my first time on Air Asia. Was surprised that the airport was so happening. There were plenty of people and plenty of food outlets. The last time we flew from Subang airport to Redang, there was nothing at all to eat at the airport and I was expecting the same at LCCT, hence had packed my own breakfast and snacks. Turned out, we had McDonald's instead.

The moment the plane started moving, I almost regretted choosing this trip. All sorts of terrible thoughts went through my mind. What if the plane crash and I never see my children again? I should've taken a bus instead. Thank God, thank God, thank God, I am still here and alive. :-) I don't know when I started to get so paranoid and worried about everything.

We arrived at Kuching airport and it was bigger and nicer than I had expected too. We headed straight to the hotel, checked in and then took a taxi to the "Main Bazaar", i.e. a shopping area. The shopping wasn't that much fun, especially since I really dislike shopping. Besides, all the shops were selling the same stuffs. It was interesting to note that the exact same thing can differ by quite a lot in price in different shops. Since we were there almost the whole afternoon (accompanying colleagues), I bought some pepper and small souvenirs for the kids.

The next day, we visited the Cultural Village - basically a display of all of the pre-bumi's houses - Kadazan, Bidayuh, Melanau, etc, etc. I actually had quite a lot of fun here although it was scorching hot. In the afternoon, after lunch, we visited the Orang Utan sanctuary.

On Sunday morning, the gang went to the market (to shop again but I didn't go. I went to church instead. Very impressed that the service started and ended right on time as per what was written on the bulletin. Took a cab there, but after the service was unable to find cab back! Thank God again for very friendly church fellows who sent us back to the hotel in their car. Promised to keep in touch via Facebook but now have forgotten their names. :p

Emily!

2010-09-06T01:21:00.000Z

6-Sep-2010:

Emily is one week short of turning 11 months old and she already took her first step! :-) She is now able to stand unsupported for longer and managed to walk 3 steps (at most) without falling or squatting down.

Other than that, she was repeated saying "bah-bah" or "buh-buh" a few weeks ago and now has started to say "la-la" instead. She has also started addressing people, for example when we came downstairs from the room and she saw her daddy (who just came home), she waved her arms at his direction and said "eh! eh!" as if to say "Hey, you're back!". She also waves "bye-bye" to Dominic when he goes to school.

Since birth, many have asked me if Dominic is jealous of his sister. The answer has always been "no". Rather, I have noticed that Emily is jealous of his brother. Once, when I came home and hugged Dom instead of her, she started crying. Sometimes, when I played with Dom she would make a noise and tried to push him away and then promptly climb on my lap instead. If I was playing with her and Dom tried to participate, she would lift her face to Dom and "waaa-aaahh-ahhhh!" into his face and flap her arms, shoo-ing him away.

Dom on the other hand is a loving brother and he likes to play peekaboo with Em, i.e. hiding behind the curtains or behind the bean bag and then ... "boo!". Em will laugh hysterically at this.

Once Dom was building his Lego following the instruction booklet and he needed a piece of small yellow Lego but couldn't find it and he turned to Em and said "Where's my yellow Lego? You swallowed it, is it? Is it? Is it? Ha? Ha? Ha?", putting his face very near her and dauntingly said this. It was very, very cute.

Sometimes Em felt left out when she was downstairs and she heard Dom and daddy upstairs. She would stand at the foot of the staircase but would only dare to climb the first step. Somehow, compared to Dom I feel like she grows much faster. Or it could be because I spent day and night with Dom before he turned 1 whereas only see Em for a few hours each day.

Rest of House

2010-08-23T03:21:00.000Z

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.

Catching Up from "High Class" Campus

2010-08-18T23:55:00.000Z

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.

Catching Up from

2010-08-18T23:54:00.000Z

Taking a Break From the Kids!

2010-07-28T22:03:00.000Z

29-July-2010:

Tomorrow morning, I will be flying off to Kuching for a weekend break with my colleagues, leaving the kids behind with Saimun for 3 days. My heart feels so heavy. I've never been away from them since Dominic was born more than 4 years ago.

I am not worried about Dom. He is independent enough and knows what he wants and will ask for it. I'm not worried that he might get hungry, hurt, cold, bored, sad (probably) or whatever. I told him that mummy is going for a holiday for a few days and he is to stay home with daddy. His first question was, "After that, are you coming back?". Of course, of course, my dear boy! Don't forget to pray when mummy is not around.

With Emily, I think that's where my concern is. My prediction is that she will not get breakfast. Lunch will be bits and pieces from daddy's plate. She will not get milk until she's crying for it. Her nappies will be changed every 6-8 hours. Nobody will notice that she has done a poo until hours later. Maybe she will skip a bath on Friday or Saturday. She might bump her head once or twice, or put something horrible into her mouth. Sigh ... I think I need to pray really hard when I'm away.

With Saimun, I have an inkling that he is less laid back when I'm not around. Let's hope that I am right. I might come home on Sunday and find that the house is all cleaned up and the kids well taken care of. Or he might forget to throw out the garbage and attract cockroaches into the house.

Whatever happens, I can be sure that MIL will spend a lot of time at our house. She has already planned to spend Saturday afternoon there and cook porridge for Em. I think she is more worried than I am.

Getting Back into the Fun!

2010-07-28T02:57:00.000Z

28-JULY-2010:

Now that I have my own kitchen again, life is more fulfilled. First of all, we have a new oven. We first tested out the oven with a frozen store-bought pizza and then the following week (or the week after) I proceeded in making my own pizza from scratch. It turned out ... well ... not perfect - the bread is little too crispy, but to Dom, a pizza is a pizza. :-D

Here are some pictures, including some pictures taken by Dom while I was too busy to notice.

I have also just received a new breadmaker (housewarming gift) from a relative. I've yet to try it but will make sure I put it to good use. :-)

Dominic - Add-On

2010-07-22T21:31:00.000Z

23-July-2010:

As an afterthought, there is something that I'd like record down about Dominic. We had many conversations and I enjoyed them very much and often found him amusing. Due to my aging, I can't remember them all. They lurk around at the back of my mind, telling me that there was something amusing and interesting that he said, which I have to relate to his daddy, but I can't remember what it was. One incident I remember though, happened some time last week, and I only remembered it this morning (it's a Friday) because he reminded me so.

As a rule (since we moved in to our own home), Dom is not allowed to watch any TV except on Friday. He accepted that without any argument. However, he does not know it when Friday comes. Sometimes, he will ask if it's Friday yet (when it isn't a Friday), and I'll say no. One Friday evening, his daddy was home early and saw me unpacking the shopping (I also have the habit of doing my groceries on Friday, during lunch). He asked casually if I went shopping. I replied, yes, I go shopping every Friday. Dom, who was minding his own business nearby overheard and he got all excited. Suddenly, realization dawned on his face, and he gave a gasp before asking, "Is it Friday, mummy?". Yes, I said. "Gasp! Oh ... can I watch TV?". Haha.

This morning, it happened again (that is why I remember the incident now). From the car mirror, he saw his PE uniform hanging at the back. "Gasp! Is it PE today?". "Yes". "Is it Friday today?". "Yes". "Yeah ... means I can watch DVD today!". (Note: He only watches DVD now because we haven't got the TV aerial connected and we don't subscribe to any pay TV).

What is so attractive about the TV?

Father's Day Crafts

2010-07-22T05:20:00.000Z

22-July-2010:

This is another extremely outdated post but I realized I've not been mentioning enough of Dom and he seems to be somewhat neglected from my blog since Em arrived. Truth to be said, he is not as "interesting" as his sister at the moment and there isn't much to write about him.

Anyway, about a week or two before Father's Day, it was the semester break and he told me that he had a "prize" for daddy because it was going to be Father's Day soon. I promptly corrected him that it was a "gift", not a "prize", for you only give somebody a prize if he wins it and daddy didn't win anything. He insisted that it was a "prize" anyhow. After the term break though, he came home with this, and indeed, I was wrong. It was a prize!

Apart from that, he also made several Father's Day crafts in church. The pen holder is by far the most useful thing he had ever made and we've put it to good use.

Next, there's the notebook that he made during Emily's baptism.

Finally, here's a photo of him at the church "choir" during practice. He looked rather shy in the photo but boy, he brought the whole place down with applause when he sang right into the mic, "Thank you, Daddy. Daddy, I love you!" during the actual performance.

Emily's Baptism

2010-07-20T03:19:00.000Z

20-July-2010:

Emily was baptised on June 13, 2010 (this post is very outdated, however I think I've briefly mentioned about this event in a previous post). I suppose I've said everything I wanted to say in that previous post. The purpose of this post is to show you some photos of Emily on that day and also some photos of the church. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of Emily while she was being baptised since I was out there with her and her daddy had disappeared amongst the crowd somewhere.

Emily was baptised in St. Paul's Anglican church in PJ. It is about 15 minutes drive from our new home. The people are mostly Indians or English-speaking Chinese, i.e. most of the Chinese there probably can't speak very good Chinese. There are also foreigners, mostly from Myanmar, and particularly one rather good-looking Burmese priest. :-D The church runs a lot of activities - missionary trips to here and there, classes and discussion groups, movie nights, bible studies and lots more but I'm not involved in any of them. Here are some photos of the church compound.

This is the main building where services are conducted. There is a bell tower in front of it which rings everyone in when service starts. It is not automatic. Somebody has to ring it by pulling a string. Dominic had requested to ring it a few times but so far did not have the privilege to do it yet.

This is the church hall. The children's service is conducted here before they break out for their classes. Classes (for the adults & youth, not Sunday school classes) are conducted upstairs.

Attached to the church, behind the hall, is a kindy. Sunday school classes are conducted in the kindy.

There is also a children's playground. This is where Dom will be every Sunday before the bell rings. At first, it was his incentive for coming to church, but now he enjoys his classes very much and has made some friends.

On the day of Emily's baptism, at first before the event, she was crying because a stranger (aunty Ellen) said hi. Haha.

And then she stopped crying when given the pacifier but still looked warily at Ellen.

She had a buddy that day, i.e. baby Esther who is only one month younger than her. To me, they both behave exactly the same way!

During the service, Dom was in Sunday school class, making Father's Day craft. Will blog about that later.

Mad Twilight Fans Paying US$200 for Fake Vampire Fangs

2010-07-14T22:09:00.000Z

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Twilight-Fans-Pay-Cosmetic-Surgeons-To-Have-Fangs-Put-In/Article/201007215664278?f=rss

My 8-Month-Old

2010-06-29T04:33:00.000Z

29 June 2010:

Here's a quick update on my baby Emily. She is 8 1/2 months old now and I've observed the following:

Hates being left alone. Can't be left alone and will cry her head off the moment I (or her daddy) walk away.
Still cries before going to bed but for only about 5 minutes or less. Doesn't cry as loud now.
Doesn't use a tub for bath time now (although MIL still uses it). Instead, when I bathe her, she sits on a stool and we use the shower. Doesn't like it when I shower her hair.
Eats lunch and dinner. Can handle small pieces of fish and meat. Can also handle whole pieces of fruits.
Understands no. Sometimes cries when we say no to something that she wants.
Able to climb out of her carrier car seat, if not strapped on.
Able to climb up the stairs.
Might start to walk before she hits 1.
Anxious about strangers. Will cry when strangers stick their faces into her pram. Can somehow able to differentiate friends of her parents and will allow them to hold her.
Doesn't suck her thumb anymore. Uses a pacifier instead.

New Place, New Lifestyle

2010-06-21T22:32:00.000Z

22-June-2010:

After two nights of sleeping in her own room, Emily has almost lost her voice from crying. On both nights, she woke up twice between 9pm and 6am. On the 3rd night, there was improvement. For the first time, she fell asleep on her own (after much crying admittedly but nevertheless she didn't need any of us to be in the room with her). At 5am, I jerked awake, heart thumping, afraid and wondering why hadn't she woke up the whole night since going to bed at 9pm. Not even to cry. I went into her room and she was fast asleep. At 6am, she was still sleeping but I had to wake her up for a feed because we'll be leaving the house at 7am.

Dom had a breakthrough too. He didn't end up in our bed last night. But he still wouldn't go to bed alone. I think his daddy worked on the laptop in his room until he fell asleep.

Yesterday evening worked out quite well too but I've got something to mention. I reached the in laws' place at 6:30pm, had dinner and fed Emily. The plan was to leave the place by 8pm. In reality, I had plenty of time to eat, feed and pack. But the MIL was rushing me so much that I felt like I was being chased out of the house. She kept helping me to pack things up while I was having dinner and told me to leave the dishes and that she'll wash them. I know she meant well because in her mind late = traffic jam, but in actual fact late = traffic cleared. Anyway, we left at 7:45pm because Dom wanted to finish watching a show on TV. We reached home just before 8pm.

Actually, the thing I wanted to mention was that my MIL bundled up the kids' dirty clothes (which were wet) and told me launder them at home. I don't mind doing my kids' laundry but I just wonder why she would wash all of my SIL's kids' clothes but not mine? Maybe she has her reasons but I felt that she was very biased. Never mind. In a way, I like having full control over my children's affairs. :-)

Back at home, there was a lot to do. I had to bathe Emily (not necessay coz she's already bathed in the afternoon but I think she sleeps better if I bathe her) and put her to bed. Then I had to clean all the bottles, lunch and breakfast tupperwares, Dom's water bottle and prepare Em's meal for the next day. There was no TV in the house to entertain Dom but he was an angel (as usual) and didn't give me any trouble. The troublesome person was Emily but I just let her cry herself to sleep in the room, checking on her occassionally. I think she cried for about 45 mins or 1 hour last night. I think she might have cried less if I hadn't gone in to check on her. Everytime I went in, she cried louder and tried to climb out of the cot (not that she could). When I said "no", she screamed even louder. Let's see what happens tonight.

Saimun came home at around 8:30pm and had dinner (which I ta pau from the in laws'). After everything was done, I managed to read a book and went to bed at around 10:30pm. Not bad at all, I'd say.

Updates Updates Updates!

2010-06-20T23:26:00.000Z

21 June 2010:

Wow ... I feel like I haven't been blogging for ages! What happened was the busy schedule at work. Seriously, I'm so used to being free and having nothing to do at work, I actually found myself having difficulty adjusting to the work load! Plus it was the school term break and I took 2 days off to spend time with Dom, which made my work pile up even more. Anyway, I'm glad that there hasn't been any late nights. In fact, everyone knows that I leave at 6pm sharp and the boss and colleagues don't seem to mind. Or perhaps they're talking behind my back now on Facebook! :p

Over the past 2 weeks, two major events had happened. (1) Emily got baptised at St. Paul's Anglican church on 13 June 2010. Dom was there, attending Sunday school while the baptism took place. Saimun was there too. My brother and his family were also there. Ellen flew back from the UK to be the God parent (thank you, Ellen!) and Grace came with baby Esther.

(2) We moved in to the new house just 2 days ago (i.e. last Saturday). We cooked our first meal at our new home on Saturday night. Dom slept in his own room for the first time since we moved back from London, and Em slept without me, in her own room for the first time. And how did it all go? Firstly, the dinner - I sent Saimun out with a shopping list to get rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, some vegetables, fish and garlic - the basic stuffs. He came back with (i) the biggest cheapest bottle of oil he could find - must have been 20 litres there, (ii) rice that must have been cheap too because the grains were broken and (iii) soy sauce that didn't taste good even though I wrote "Lee Kum Kee" on my shopping list. I think he felt that he should be really thrifty after spending so much money on the house. On Sunday, I had to make another trip to the supermarket to get more stuffs because his parents were coming over for dinner. It was the first time I went grocery shopping on a weekend (normally I do it on a Friday afternoon during lunch) and I'll never do it again. It took forever to look for a parking, then had to fight my way to get a shopping trolley or even a hand basket. It also seemed like most things were sold out (it was around 4pm) and then I got in the queue for the cashier with the rest of the people who filled their trolleys up to the brink.

At bed time, Em had to be patted to sleep, which was not so bad because at least she didn't cry to be breastfed. Saimun had to sleep in Dom's room until he fell asleep. I felt like all my efforts of training him to sleep separately from us (which he had done great before this) were wasted. At 10:30pm, my head hit the pillow. At 12am, Em cried for her milk (she was fed at around 8pm before going to bed). She went back to sleep immediately after feeding. At 4am, Em woke up to cry. Saimun fed her water and she went back to sleep. At 5am, Dom was sobbing outside our room and eventually got himself into our bed. At 6am, Em woke up again. It was time to feed her anyway because in about an hour's time I gotta get ready to go to church. The next night, the same thing repeated ... roughly. The end result was that Dom ended up in our bed again and I had to get up about 3 times during the night.

Today is the first day of school after the holidays. I had to get Dom to the in laws' place by 7:30am. After he left for school at around 7:45am, I had plenty of time before I had to leave for work. In the end, I was very early at the office. I wonder if I can shift my working hours by 30 mins so that I leave earlier in the evening too.

More updates coming on how this evening goes.

Next, a short update on Emily. She's 8 months old now and very, very mobile. She's crawling very quickly, climbing on steps and cruising along furnitures. She likes to pull herself up whenever possible, holding on to the chairs, the fridge, oven, boxes, someone's lap, etc, etc. She has very strong separation anxiety, to the point where she can't be left alone in an empty room for even a minute. She's taking 6 feeds of milk a day, plus lunch and dinner. I have substituted 3 of the feeds with formula and the rest are still breast milk. She usually has either rice porridge or oatmeal for lunch and dinner. She's taking a variety of vegetables now, fish, and a little bit of chicken and pork. She can handle whole pieces of fruits such as apples and oranges. Very often, she cries in the middle of feeding and I don't know why. She'll be alright after I distract her with some objects. I think she can recognize a few songs because she laughs when those songs are sung. Reading a book to her is challenging because she keeps grabbing the book and putting it in her mouth. She doesn't use a tub for bathing anymore and uses the shower instead. She hates it when water gets into her eyes while washing her hair. She loves swimming though and has learnt to kick and splash with her arms. She cries her lungs out in the changing room everytime. Perhaps there's something in the room that scares her.

Finally, a short update on Dom. He had his "exams" before the school holidays. I haven't seen the results yet but according to him it was "very easy". He also received a toy iPhone from the school because he "got all correct in exam". I asked him for which subject and he said "all of them". A few weeks before the exam, parents were given notice and a list of sample questions that the children will be tested on. They seemed to me quite difficult for a 5-year-old (in Dom's case, he was barely 4.5). They did addition and substraction for maths, among other things such as counting, comparing, etc. They did recognizing words and the sounds, spelling, etc for english and malay. For Chinese, they learnt words that even I didn't know. Although very academic, I like this school because Dom enjoys it thoroughly and he has learnt a lot. He's very popular among the teachers because of his talkativeness. I knew long ago that he was going to be a teacher's pet. Dom also has a lot of questions and sometimes the questions that he asked made him sound very naive for his age. He asked if babies can be boys too (I think it's because both the babies at home are girls). If they grow up will they have a "ku ku jiao"? If they don't, how do they wee-wee? Why do girls have breast? This one is good. I said if mummies don't have breasts, how do the babies drink milk? He said, how about milk powder? He also asked if he cried a lot when he was a baby. Was he cute when he was baby? Is he still cute or not? When we moved to the new house and unpacked the stuffs that we haven't seen for almost a year, he asked if this pan is from London? Is this the London microwave? I'm very surprised at how good his memory is. Last Sunday, for the first time we drove to church from the new house using a new way, he said "This is the way to my old school", which we used to take last year. He recognizes all the roads, even the way to the zoo, which he has only been once. Last Sunday was Father's Day and the kids sang a song in church. Dom hogged the microphone and got a round of applause. He sang the loudest of all. I'll try to download the song and upload it for all the fathers out there.

Mother's Day Craft

2010-06-02T04:17:00.000Z

2-JUNE-2010:

This is really way overdue. Mother's Day was on May 9, 2010, which was almost one month ago, but seriously, I've been very busy both at work and at home. In fact, as I'm typing this (at work), I've got a lot of things still incomplete on my plate but will do to take a break.

This year, Dom made two Mother's Day crafts at school and he hung it on the knobs of our chest of drawers in the room. I saw it when I came home on Friday and he was having dinner in the kitchen. When he saw me, he said to me, come, mummy, come, I have something to show you (he didn't know I've already seen the thing he wanted to show me). When we reached the door to our room, he said, wait here, mummy, don't come in, it's a surprise. He then retrieved his crafts from the room, hid them behind his back and then he shouted 'Surprise!!!' and showed them to me. :-) Of course, I pretended to be surprised.

He made Mother's Day craft at Sunday school too, which is a necklace. The kids learnt to sing a song which they performed in front of everyone on that Sunday. Basically, I was one of the mums who actually sang louder than the kids and we were quite happy singing for ourselves. Haha! Dominic on the other hand got stage fright, was teary and couldn't open his mouth on stage, whereby during rehearsal he was singing at the top of his lungs.

Baby in Hair Clips

2010-05-27T01:44:00.000Z

27-MAY-2010:

A couple of friend bought Em these hair clips when she was 1 month old and all these while I've been using them (once in a while). Until one day, I tried them on her. Em has a full head of hair ever since she was born, but the reason I didn't use the hair clips on her (and still don't) is because she could have grabbed them in her hands and swallowed them. My friends who bought the hair clips don't have kids, so I'm sure they didn't think of this. :-)

These photos were taken when she was around 6 1/2 months old. She is 7 1/2 months old now and had a hair cut (by her daddy) since then. She has grown up a lot since then too. Now, she is able to:

1. From a lying position, get to a crawling position, and to a sitting position, and then back to lying or crawling.

2. Push her self up to a standing position by holding on to furnitures, her cot or me, and back to a kneeling position and then subsequently to a sitting position.

3. Crawl properly (not caterpillar style anymore).

4. Remember incidents - for example, when I was washing the dishes while she sat on the highchair next to me, she kept blinking a eyes and shifted uncomfortably because previously water had splashed on her face. She's also afraid of the baloon and would blink and jerk when her brother hit the baloon with his hands. Had she seen a baloon bursting before? Not that I can remember but she must have experienced it somewhere. She would make noise if the baloon got hear her.

5. Distinguish people, for example, she would cry out if she saw her grandfather or myself walk past but would not cry out for anybody else.

6. Has started to develop separation anxiety and her grandmother is complaining that she can't leave her alone to do run her chores.

7. Still has 2 teeth since she was 4 months++. When are the others going to come out?

8. No problems with feeding and she is taking varieties of vegetables, fruits and fish. Her milk intake hasn't reduced but I've substituted 2 feeds a day with formula.

9. Still wakes up at around 4am to feed (or cry, whichever but I feed her anyway to shut her up). She has her dinner at around 7pm, then takes a nap at 8pm, wakes up for her last feed at 9:30pm before going for the long sleep.

10. Loves swimming now and has learned to kick and splash the water with her hands.

11. Likes to taste magazine pages, brochures, toys, clothes hangers, tissue paper, playing cards, spoons, tupperwares, plastic cups, iPhones, my shirt, envelopes and whatever she can get her hands on. Cries when we take the object away from her and will not let us substitute it with another object.

12. Likes to scream loudly when left alone or does not get her own way. Laughs (or rather a triumphant chuckle) when being picked up.

13. Cannot fall asleep at night without mummy. Mummy is going to Kuching for a holiday in July and she will have to get used to daddy during that period.

14. Generally a happy, smiley baby with very bad temper!

15. Is approximately 6.5kg and 65cm tall.

Food at Grandma's Birthday

2010-05-25T02:47:00.000Z

25-MAY-2010:

This post is very overdue. Grandma's birthday bash was on May 1, 2010 and we all went back to Ipoh to celebrate it with her. As per tradition, we had dinner at the same Tai Thong restaurant, which has recently moved to a new location this year. I think I overheard my uncle saying that the cost of the dinner that night was RM300 per person. We had our own room with an en-suite wash room and karaoke system.

First dish was shark's fin soup. Please, don't talk to me about the cruelty of killing sharks and cutting off their fins and whether they will extinct very soon. But one question though - does the high mercury content of shark meat apply to the fin as well? Anyway, what we had that night was no ordinary shark's fin soup. There were two parts of it, (1) the fin and the gravy, (2) The soup. Basically the fin and gravy was tasteless, but the soup was tasty. I'm not sure we were meant to eat it. Were we supposed to mix the soup and fin? Or eat the fin and drink the soup separately? In the following photo, you can see that the fin is in one piece, not miserably thin strands.

Next on the menu was the standard suckling pig dish. Again, I know it's cruel to kill and eat baby piglets but it wasn't me who ordered the food. By the way, I don't eat this dish at all (don't like the pork smell) and I don't eat roast pork (siu yuk) unless it's been stir fried with vegetables and soya sauce. However, this time, everyone was saying how delicious this suckling pig was, and I took a bite and it was true, it didn't have that awful piggy smell.

What came next was this 'peach bun'? Basically, it was a huge bun made into the shape of a peach. I understand that this is a traditional birthday dish. No one was allowed to dig in until grandma had officiated the 'opening ceremony'.

After the 'opening ceremony', I saw that inside the huge peach was actually many small little peach buns. This represents the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. :-)

After that, we had all the usual stuffs - fish, mushrooms broccoli, prawns, etc, which were all divided into individual portions, which means that you get only one prawn, one mushroom, etc. No fun at all. :p

I had caviar for the first time - those black stuffs by the side of the prawn dish. Not sure what is so nice about it - do not know how to appreciate. :p

The 'long life noodle' is also a standard birthday dish.

For dessert, we had this - something (snow jelly or something) cooked in coconut. This was good but too much of it. It was the thing that finally filled up my stomach.

Of course, we also ate the birthday cake.

When the dinner was almost over, the chef came out to wish my grandma a happy birthday. The chef was quite an old man himself. Does anyone know why chefs wear tall hats?

From H1N1 to Birthday Celebration

2010-05-13T04:22:00.000Z

13 May 2010:

I have a backlog of things to blog about. First, there was the H1N1 case at Dom's school. Before I launch into the details, let me explain that Dom's school is in fact a private school that consists of the primary/secondary school and the kindergarten (they have their own entrances). A few weeks ago, we received a circular informing us that the primary school was closed for 1 week due to several confirmed cases of H1N1. The parents of kindergarten children are informed because first of all, it is good to know and secondly, some kindy kids whose elder brothers or sisters are with the primary school will be sent over to join their elder siblings after school dismisses so that their parents can pick them up together. That night, as we were lying in bed having our nightly chat, Dom said, "There are 'bye-bers' in my school". "Bibles?", I said. "But you have a bible at home too.". He looked surprised and asked me where? In the cupboard, I said. He was even more confused then. After a while, I realized that he wasn't talking about the bible at all and I asked, what 'bye-bers' are you talking about? And he said "The 'bye-bers' at the big children school that makes them sick!". Haha. "Virus! 'Vai-russs'", I said.

The following week, the H1N1 'bibles' have cascaded down to one of the kindy children and the kindy was closed for 2 days.

We received the news on a Saturday when we were on our way to Ipoh to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. I was looking forward to that for a long time, but rather sad that one of my cousins (and family) couldn't join us because her grandfather just passed away. There are many things to be said during the 2 days I spent in Ipoh. Firstly, about my grandmother who is 80-over years old now. She remembered my name, remembered Saimun's name, remembered that my son's name is Dominic, remembered that I have a daughter but didn't know she was called Emily, but I don't blame her because my aunt who was only 50-over years old asked me TWICE what my son's name was! Can you guess which aunt this is? :-D I think my grandma is in good shape but can't help noticing how she seems to stoop and bend a little and gets a bit shorter every time I see her. I think she was the happiest person in the whole world that day. What can be happier than having all your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren with you, celebrating your birthday?

Can anyone count the number of candles? I missed the cake-cutting ceremony because Emily chose that time to do a poo!

Next, I'd like to introduce my family. See the photo below - they are my grandma in the middle and her two daughters on each side plus the husband (one of them is not married). My grandma has 3 daughters but one of them was not there because her FIL passed away. Then you can see her 3 sons and their wives. My grandma has 4 sons but my dad wasn't there. The rest are the grandchildren and the 3 youngest ones at the back are her great grandchildren. There are of course more grandchildren but not all of them were there. Five of them are in Australia, three in Singapore/JB, and I think the rest are all in the photo. On the far right is the maid (but she's my grandma's God-daughter, someone said).

I was told the food we ate that night was expensive but actually I didn't think they tasted that great. I'll blog more about the food with more photos in another post.

It was late by the time we finally got home and close to 1am when my head hit the pillow. It seemed like only 5 minutes ago that I fell asleep when Emily started wailing because she had done another poo. The next morning (or should I say later that morning), I had to get up at 7:30am to go to church with my aunt (which is Cattypants' mum). This brings me to the 3rd thing that I want to say about this trip. I am never good with expressing myself, especially when it comes to showing my emotions and being touchy feely. As I sat next to my aunt in church, I wanted to let her know that I remember her hospitality when I lived with her for 3 months, but I didn't, therefore I hope she's reading this now, so that I can tell her how grateful I am. It was in those 3 months that I saved enough money to put down a down payment for our first apartment (which we are renting out now). She gave me a place to live - practically my own room (as I helped myself to Cattypants' wardrobe) with my own attached bathroom. Every morning, she bought me breakfast, even on weekends so that I never had to spend a single cent on breakfast. Her maid made me a sandwich for lunch everyday, so that I never had to spend a single cent on lunch either (although I got pretty sick of eating sandwiches everyday). I also had dinner at home so that's another meal covered. Her driver would come round every morning and drive the cars out to fuel up, and if I leave my car keys with the rest of the keys, he would fill up my car too. Basically, I put all of my salary in the bank except for parking charges. Every Saturday, we would have dinner outside. On the Saturday before I was finally due to go back to KL, the least I could do was to buy them dinner, but she wouldn't even let me do that and I had to fight my way to pay the bill. That was 10 years ago. I came back to KL and bought our first house and that was the beginning of my little family now.

Back to the birthday celebration, when everyone had sobered up and had enough sleep the next day, people started to feel hungry. Although I wasn't involved in all the planning and organizing (for it took a lot of consideration with such a big group), I felt a headache just listening to the arguments. All I wanted was a quiet, spacious, crowd-less place to eat. Doesn't even matter if the food was good. As it turned out, it wasn't that bad this year. At least we didn't have to fight for parking and tables. :-)

My Kids in the Pool

2010-05-03T04:29:00.000Z

This video was taken on Sunday, April 24 2010. Dominic was playing 'treasure hunt', i.e. throwing the goggles into the pool and then retrieving them. He had so much fun even playing alone. What a pity his cousins don't like to swim.

As for Emily, she has started to enjoy the water and knows that she is supposed to kick her legs. She doesn't like water on her head and face but we will try to train her. :-)

Swimming

2010-04-30T03:32:00.000Z

30-April-2010:

We have been swimming every weekend since Saimun came back. However, I don't get much swimming done. More like just a dip in the baby pool with Em. Problem is the girl is a total attention-seeker who doesn't like to be left alone at all. Our first time there with her, we took both the kids into the baby pool. After a while, I took Em out since her hands and feet were already wrinkled and it was the first time she swam so to play it safe, we took her out of the pool. I changed her, put her on the buggy then we all went back to the big pool to swim. After not more than 5 minutes, she started screaming. So while Dom and I swam, Saimun had to sit on the deck with Em on his lap (her pants was all wet later on because daddy was wet). I didn't get much swimming done too because Dom was with me, but at least I did a couple of laps. Gotta think of plan that allows all of us to swim.

Stephenie Meyer's New Book

2010-04-30T03:03:00.000Z

30-April-2010:

Stephenie Meyer has a new book coming up in June. It's called 'The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. You remember Bree Tanner, don't you? Those who read Eclipse. She was that 'new born' who was captured by the Cullens but then 'murdered' by the Volturi. Remember? Is anyone getting this? It's currently �5.99 on Amazon UK.

Ain't He Adorable Too?

2010-04-23T01:43:00.000Z

23-APR-2010:

In this picture, he looks like he's 3 instead of 4+ ... so innocent and cute. In the flesh, he has grown so much even his feet don't look small and cute now. But still, he behaves like a baby sometimes, especially during bed time. I guess he gets a little bit envious that his sister gets to sleep near us while he is in another bed across the room. He would ask, "Who can take care of me?", which is to say, "who will sleep next to him?". Haha. Sometimes I will crawl into his bed after Emily falls asleep and lie down with him for a while.

I cannot believe that his school gave him Ejaan, Spelling and 'Ting Sie'. Such a young kid and he has to learn to spell already. I'm not even sure if it's necessary. Nowadays, we have spell-check, don't we? Haha! Most of the time, it's only 3 words but still. He normally gets 1 out of 3 correct - which is in theory, a fail! But never mind, at least he didn't get a zero. I should blame myself first before I blame him because I think I was supposed to revise with him at home. The thing is, I wasn't even aware of it until he's had the spelling/ejaan/ting sie.

One positive outcome (out of many) from all these school stuffs is that he now enjoys 'homework' so much so that he asks to do his homework even though there isn't any, so we gave him activity and exercise books, and he really enjoys all of them. He now writes a lot of gibberish and asks us what the word is. I think he's still far behind most of the typical Malaysian kids in terms of academic but he's making steady progress. After all, it is tough to have to suddenly learn two extra languages. His 'bahasa' is getting quite good too. He can't yet converse in Bahasa but understands (and even spells) a few words.

Whether or not he wets his bed at night doesn't depend on him anymore, but on me instead. Which means he is still wetting his bed, unless I wake him up to wee. One early morning (around 5 or 6 am), he got up to pee and went back to sleep (shocking!). In the morning, we told him how good he was and gave him an ice-cream. The next day, he did it again and ASKED for an ice-cream afterwards. On the third day, I think he didn't want any ice-cream anymore, therefore he wet the bed. Haha!

According to MIL, he is very well-behaved when both Saimun and I are not around. He takes his nap in the afternoon (sometimes doesn't, such as yesterday) and eats his dinner all by himself without fuss. After living with his grandma and grandpa for 6 months, I still find him very attached to Saimun and I. Never once has he done a poo while we were away. He needs to wait for one of us to come home. He refuses to stay in the house with his grandma/grandpa on our non-working day and insists on going everywhere with us.

According to his teacher in school, he is 'very naughty and talkative'. I guess he's not the typical obedient kid. I wonder what she meant by 'naughty'. Is it mischiveous or plain bad? I didn't have a chance to ask because the teacher told my FIL when he sent Dom to school and I didn't hear it first hand.

Ain't She Adorable?

2010-04-22T03:49:00.000Z

22-April-2010:

She is 6 months old now and growing up so quickly (which is a good thing, I'm not complaining). At this stage, you can more or less tell what her characteristics will be like when she grows up. More than once, I saw a reflection of myself in her:

1. Bad tempered - she gets very angry and cries loudly when (1) she thinks that one of us was going to pick her but we walk away instead, (2) she's sleepy and Dom is making noise, (3) sometimes for no reason, when we put her down. Hungry? Sleepy?, (4) she's in her buggy and we stop pushing (sometimes). Bottom line is that she's an impatient baby, just like me, and easily annoyed. :p

2. Emotional - apart from showing her anger, she is also very generous with her smiles and laughter. About anything can tickle, even if it's just a peck on the cheek. I love her for this. I recall that when I was small, more than one person has called me 'Dai siu gu poh' (which means 'old lady who laughs big', I think).

A bit on her developmental progress. She can now roll over from front to back and back to front. When on her tummy, she likes to perch up on all fours, like crawling. She can also move forward but not actually crawling but pushing forward instead, if you get what I mean.

She likes to grab objects - anything within her sight and reach. She can now grab an object and put it into her mouth, and can also pass the object from one hand to the other and back. She's also quite good at throwing objects onto the floor/bed.

She can now sit unsupported for a longer period but still not very steady. The problem is she can't sit still and much too excited about her surroundings. She is always very happy to see me in the evenings. I think she must have been very bored during the day. MIL keeps her in the bouncer all the time. If you don't know what's a bouncer, it's one of those that has a metal frame and you pull a piece of fabric over it so that it functions like a hammock and you can bounce the baby up and down a bit on it, hence called a bouncer. I don't like Emily to be in that all the time because (1) It limits her activities. She is basically allowed to only lie on it and do nothing else. She can't crawl, can't "exercise" and I think it's so boring. (2) She now manages to roll over even in the bouncer, therefore not very safe. (3) The bouncer is placed on the floor and prone to accidents when other kids run around and play. Once, Shaynne fell, hit her head on the bouncer frame and got a horrible bruise. As selfish as it sounds, all I could think of was that fortunately she didn't fall on Emily, although Emily could have cushioned her fall a bit.

She is sleeping less during the day now. During the weekends when I'm around, she doesn't seem to be sleeping very much during the day and only for very short periods each time (hardly more than 1 hour). She doesn't fall asleep easily when there are activities around her, and when she does fall asleep, she awakes easily. There is no problem at night when the lights are off and everyone else is asleep.

She can recognize faces. At the least, she can recognize MIL and I. She follows us with her eyes around the room and sometimes cries if we ignore her. She has a terrible loud voice when she cries. FIL describes her as 'Old fierce hen' ('Ngok kai na' in Cantonese). It has just occured to me that both my kids have the following same characteristics: (1) Loud voice, (2) Big eyes, (3) Nice hair, (4) Wees a lot.

Weekend in Mid April

2010-04-21T02:50:00.000Z

21-APR-2010:

One of my friends commented on her Facebook, asking why Monday comes so soon after Friday but Friday is so damn far away from Monday? Another friend commented that and in between, you've got WTF too! Haha!

Truly, my weekends these days are so precious. In fact, I spend the whole week looking forward to it. I feel that my time here in this brightly lit office is "a waste of my time". As usual, I could have just worked 20 hours a week (instead of 40) and still achieve the same outcome. I just don't spend so much time chatting and blogging. :p

Anyway, last weekend was a nice one. We spent Saturday morning getting stuffs done around the house, such as ironing Dom's school uniforms, getting him to do homework and taking the new car out for a "spin" - did not actually spin it but just a figure of speech. I drove very, very slowly. In the afternoon, we took the kids swimming - Em's 2nd time. I think she's beginning to enjoy it, and Dom is now quite good too, although still swimming with arm floats on. I asked Dom if he would like a swimming instructor, i.e. a teacher who can teach him how to swim, and he replied, "Huh? But I know how to swim already!". I wonder if it is necessary to send him for swimming lessons? Both my brother and I did not attend any - we just goofed around and our grandparents showed us a few strokes and we both can swim pretty well now, but not saying that we're qualified to participate in any race, but at least can save ourselves if need to.

On Sunday, Dom and I went to church as usual. He is getting used to Sunday School over here, which is very different from the ones he attended in London. It is more serious here - they actually read the bible (but taught in a way of story telling) and they take attendance each week. Dom can remember some of the stories but not sure how much he actually understood.

In the afternoon, Saimun and his brother took the boys for a movie. They watched "How to Train a Dragon". I was rather excited about it, not because I was going to watch the movie but because it was an opportunity for me to go shopping with Emily while the guys were watching the show. I love shopping alone - no one to hurry me up and I don't have to wait around for the other person. It was going to be great, but unfortunately my MIL decided she wanted to come shopping with me too! It wasn't so bad but I'd really prefer more freedom and not being questioned on everything I so much as set eyes on. In the end, I didn't manage to buy anything except 2 bottles of nail varnish. Wasn't planning on getting those at all but I felt out-numbered when MIL bought 2 pairs of shoes!

BJ Diary

2010-04-20T01:01:00.000Z

Approximately 5 years after the book Bridget Jones's Diary was published, I read it for the first time and now I wish I can see the movie too. It was truly, truly enjoyable, so REAL and extremely hilarious. I totally love every bit of it, from cover to cover and wish that I can share with you all that I've read, but it would be crazy of me to type everything out. :-D So here are a few snippets, which I hope will entice you to read the book yourself. Does anyone have the DVD that I can borrow?

Tuesday 3 January

9st 4 (terrifying slide into obesity - why? why?), alcohol units 6 (excellent), cigarettes 23 (v.g.), calories 2472.

9 a.m. Ugh. Cannot face thought of going to work. Only thing which makes it tolerable is thought of seeing Daniel again, but even that is advisable since am fat, have spot on chin, and desire only to sit on cushion eating chocolate and watching Xmas specials. It seems wrong and unfair that Christmas, which its stressful and unmanageable financial and emotional challenges, should first be forced upon you one wholly against one's will, then rudely snatched away just when one is starting to get into it. Was really beginning to enjoy the feeling that normal service was suspended and it was OK to lie in bed as long as you want, put anything you fancy into your mouth, and drink alcohol whenever it should chance to pass your way, even in the mornings. Now suddenly we are all supposed to snap into self-discipline like a lean teenage greyhounds.

Sunday 15 January

9st (excellent), alcohol units 0, cigarettes 29 (v.v. bad, esp. in 2 hours), calories 3879 (repulsive)

6 p.m. Completely exhausted by entire day of date-preparation. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer - there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature - with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin, Dennis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwelpeter, blind as bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh, ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?

Tuesday 7 March

9st 4, 2 or 5?? alcohol units 0, cigarettes 20, calories 1500

9 a.m. Aargh. How can I have put on 3lb since the middle of the night? I was 9st 4 when I went to bed, 9st 2 at 4 a.m. and 9st 5 when I got up. I can understand weight coming off - it could have evaporated or passed out of the body into the toilet - but how could it be put on? Could food react chemically with other food, double its density and volume and solidify into every heavier and denser hard fat? I don't look fatter. I can fasten the button, though no, alas, the zipper of my '89 jeans. So maybe my whole body is getting smaller but denser. The whole thing smacks of female body-builders and makes me feel strangely sick. Call up Jude to complain about diet failure, who says write down everything you've eaten, honestly, and see if you stuck to the diet.

Saturday 22 April

8st 7, cigarettes 0, alcohol units 0, calories 1800

Today is an historic and joyous day. After eighteen years of trying to get down to 8st 7 I have finally achieved it. It is no trick of the scales, but confirmed by jeans. I am thin.

There is no reliable explanation. I have been to the gym twice in the last week, but that, though rare, is not freakish. I have eaten normally. It is a miracle. Rang Tom, who said maybe I have a tapeworm.

Tuesday 25 April

8st 7, alcohol units 0 (excellent), cigarettes 0 (v.v.g), calories 995 (continuing good work)

Humph. Went to Jude's party tonight in tight little black dress to show off figure feeling v. full of myself.

'God, are you all right?' asked Jude when I walked in. 'You look really tired.'

'I'm fine,' I said, crestfallen. 'I've lost half a stone. What's the matter?'

'Nothing. No, I just thought ...'

'What? What?'

'Maybe you've lost it a bit quickly off your ... face,' she trailed off, looking at my admittedly somewhat deflated cleavage.

Simon was the same.

'Bridgiiiiiiiiit! Have you got a fag?'

'No, I've given up.'

'Oh blimey, no wonder you look so ...'

'What?'

'Oh, nothing, nothing. Just a bit ... drawn.'

It continued all evening. There's nothing worse than people telling you you look tired. They might as well have done with it and say you look like five kinds of shit. I felt so pleased with myself not drinking but as the evening wore on, and everyone got drunker, I began to feel so calm and smug that I was even irritating myself. I kept finding myself in conversations when I actually couldn't be bothered to say a single word, and just looked on and nodded in a wise, detached manner.

'Have you got any camomile tea?' I said to Jude at one point as she lurched past, hiccupping happily, at which point she collapsed into giggles, put her arm round me and fell over. I decided I'd better go home.

Once there, I got into bed, put my head on the pillow but nothing happened. I kept putting my head in one place, then another place, but still it wouldn't go to sleep. Normally I would be snoring by now and having some sort of traumatized paranoid dream. I put the light on. It was only 11:30. Maybe I should do something, like, well, er ... mending? Inner poise. The phone rang. It was Tom.

'Are you all right?'

'Yes. I feel great. Why?'

'You just seemed, well, flat tonight. Everyone said you weren't your usual self.'

'No, I was fine. Did you see how thin I am?' Silence.

'Tom?'

'I think you looked better before, hon.'

Now I feel empty and bewildered - as if a rug has been pulled from under my feet. Eighteen years - wasted. Eighteen years of calorie and fat-unit-based arithmetic. Eighteen years of buying long shirts and jumpers and leaving the room backwards in intimate situations to hide my bottom. Millions of cheesecakes and tiramisus, tens of millions of Emmenthal slices left uneated. Eighteen years and the result is 'tired and flat'. I feel like a scientist who discovers that his life's work has been a total mistake.

Tuesday 1 August

8st 12, alcohol units 3, cigarettes 40 (but have stopped inhaling in order to smoke more), calories 450 (off food)

5 a.m. I'm falling apart. My boyfriend is sleeping with a bronzed giantess. My mother is sleeping with a Portuguese. Jeremy is sleeping with a horrible trollop, Prince Charles is sleeping with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Do not know what to believe in or hold on to any more.

Finally, there is a sequel to this. Mel, when can I get the book from you? That is to say, when are we meeting up again? :-D

Ageing

2010-04-19T03:55:00.000Z

19-APRIL-2010:

I celebrated my 33rd birthday last week. It was a joyous occassion, firstly because it reminded me that I am loved by the people who are important to me, and secondly because it is a blessing to have lived yet another year.

The day started with a 'Happy Birthday' greeting from Saimun, which I accepted groggily (from sleep) but happily. I know some of my friends normally get a "candle light" dinner (whether or not there is a candle in this case is not the point), or a branded handbag ordered all the way from Paris (really happened, I'm not making this up), or a piece of jewelry or something else fancy, or at least a movie night away from the kids but that has never been our style. In fact, I have mixed feelings about him getting me a gift, unless I choose the gift myself. :p Sometimes it's hard to understand what men were thinking when they bought their wives gifts. Haha!

Later that day, my boss bought me a birthday cake, we sang a song, ate the cake and I took the leftover home for Dom.

Feels so weird to be addressed as 'Leong Suk Ye' again while all the time in the past 4 years, I've been calling myself 'Sukye Leong' (sometimes Sukye Chim), and 'Sukye' pronounced as 'Suki'.

That night, Saimun bought me another cake and we had another cake-cutting ceremony at home. Dominic behaved as if it was his birthday. He blew off all of my candles before I could make a wish! He even chose the cake!

Emily's Weaning Diary - Week 2

2010-04-19T01:30:00.000Z

19-APR-2010:

In week 2, she tried carrots and potatoes, and I think she preferred the potatoes over the carrots. Here's a summary of week 2 weaning progress (at precisely 6 months old).

Monday - Two teaspoons of rice cereal with about 5 teaspoons of cooked pureed carrots, mixed with water. Didn't finished everything, obviously. It was more than double the amount previously, but ate quite a lot nonetheless.

Tuesday - Same thing as the day before. Again, didn't finish and didn't seem to be in a very good appetite. Noticed that she has done a poo when I picked her up from the high chair. Not sure when she pooped - was it before she started eating or while she was eating? Noticed bits of carrots in her poo. Haha!

Wednesday - Carrots and rice cereal again (I'm doing a 4-day rotation). MIL said she pooped in the afternoon. She didn't notice any carrot bits in it.

Thursday - Goodie, goodie! Mashed potatoes for dinner tonight, mixed with formula milk (this was the "emergency" formula that her daddy bought during the early days and it wasn't opened until now). The expiry date is next year or something but MIL said it has been on the shelf for so long and should be thrown away. Irks me ... ever so slightly. Anyway, she loved it. Cooked one whole tiny potato and she almost finished it.

Friday - Mashed potatoes for dinner again. One whole tiny potato again. Didn't finish everything, but had a good amount. Didn't poo today.

Saturday - Rice cereal with milk for breakfast. Mashed potatoes for dinner. Didn't poo yet.

Sunday - No breakfast today as mummy went to church and daddy didn't bother. Mashed potatoes for dinner. Still no poo. Is she constipated? Haven't done one since Tuesday.

Which Car Do You Prefer?

2010-04-14T22:28:00.000Z

15-APR-2010:

The blue/silver one is a Toyota and the grey (not black) one is a Mazda. Both of them cost the same, has the same engine capacity and almost the same accessories.

Reno Progress - Front Porch

2010-04-12T05:24:00.000Z

On April 7th, the men had started tiling works on the front porch. Work has slowed down a bit, it seems as there were only 2 men working, according to Saimun. The video is not very clear (with the iPhone) and I'm looking forward to see the real thing this Friday. Also, I kept telling Saimun to hold the phone horizontally when videoing but as you know men don't ever listen and as a result the video is so "narrow". And on this point, don't you think that the iPhone is really intelligent? When you hold the phone horizontally, the video automatically comes out in landscape format and when you hold it vertically, the video is in a portrait format. Unlike our Casio digital camera, the video will come out sideways if we hold the camera vertically.

Emily's Weaning Diary - Week 1

2010-04-12T05:04:00.000Z

4-April-2010 (Sunday) - Started off with 1 tsp of Heinz baby rice cereal mixed with approximately 1/2 oz of breast milk. Consistency of cereal is watery. She took to the feeding very quickly and immediately understood that she was supposed to open her mouth when she saw the spoon coming. Seemed to love it very much as her movements were excited and she tried to grab the spoon. Wailed when food was finished.

5-April-2010 (Monday) - Seeing that she didn't have enough the day before, increased rice cereal to 2 tsps but this time mixed with hot water instead of milk (didn't feel like having to warm up the refrigerated breast milk and besides, having a tough time pumping and catching up to her increasing demands - drinking 160ml 3 times a day). Again, finished all of her food. Half way through, wiped her mouth with a hanky as she got messy and she cried because she thought it was the end of the meal. Leaned forward excitedly when she saw more food coming.

6-April-2010 (Tuesday) - Same thing as Monday but fell asleep immediately after eating (fed her on her carrier car seat and let her continue sleeping there).

7-April-2010 (Wednesday) - Had dinner together with us (sitting on the baby high chair). increased rice cereal slightly to 2 *heap* teaspoonful and thicker consistency. Finished every single drop.

8-April-2010 (Thursday) - Same thing as the day before. Seemed ready to try out other food. Planned to give her some carrots or bananas the next day.

Friday to Sunday - Down with fever :-( Ceased feeding for 3 days. First fever since birth. Don't know what was the matter as there were no other symptoms. MIL kept asking us to bring her to the doctor but we didn't because she was playing, drinking milk and even smiling despite the temperature. Fever wasn't very high - only about 38 C. On Sunday, bought her a "weaning bowl" and spoon.

Today (Monday), she's been fine according to her daddy. No sign of fever coming back (thank God). What will she eat today? :-)

Inserting Photos from Flickr

2010-04-09T01:55:00.000Z

9-APR-2010:

Okay, as promised yesterday, here's a short post on how to insert Flickr photos into your Multiply Blog. If you're in anyway IT literate, this is actually 'basic' knowledge. :-)

Okay, so you're typing your blog here like I'm doing now and you want to insert a photo. So what you do is you go to your Flickr page, select the photo you want to insert and click on the 'All Sizes' button you see at the top of the picture.

Then, click on the size that you want. I normally choose 'Medium'.

After that, copy the text in the box that says "Copy and paste this HTML into your webpage". You can also use the text below that, i.e. the "Grab the photo's URL" text, but using the former one will enable you to link back to the original photo in Flickr for better quality viewing or to explore your other photos in your Flickr page.

Then, back to Multiply, you need to select the "Edit HTML" check box at the top right corner. You will see a bunch of HTML codes. And you just paste the text that you've just copied from Flickr into where you want the photo to be. It's a little bit tricky if you do not know HTML, but even then you can always paste the text right at the end and your picture will appear at the end of your blog.

Zoo Negara

2010-04-08T03:51:00.000Z

8-APR-2010:

I didn't go with them. It was Good Friday but I had to work. Dom was on holiday because his is a Christian school. He went together with his daddy. We had been wanting to go for a long time. Even before Saimun went back to London. But we have a small baby, and with our lousy sense of direction, we thought that Zoo Negara was miles out of PJ (in fact, it is just very nearby, according to Saimun). On top of that, my impression of Zoo Negara was that it would be hot and smelly and I would be pushing the buggy on uneven ground while sweating like mad. Emily would be complaining because it is so hot.

I don't blame me for thinking that because whenever we mentioned to anybody that we wanted to go to Zoo Negara, the responses that we got would be something along the line of ... "It's lousy, don't bother, the animals will all be sleeping, it's dirty and you'll get sun burn". I wonder how many of these people have actually been there. And I'm not talking about 10 or 20 years ago when KFC was still there and you hear on the TV the song, "Let's go to the zoo, there is lots of things to do ...". Anyway now, let's hear from the both of them who actually went recently.

From Saimun (the man with very few words indeed): There were lots of trees and it was quite shady, so it wasn't that bad. In terms of animals, it was okay but they should do some marketing to attract more tourists. There were very few people there, but perhaps because it was a week day.

From Dominic: Yes, I had a lot of fun and saw many, many animals - crocodile (not moving), snakes, penguins, giraffe, buffalo, elephant, cows! (didn't know they showcase cows in the zoo too, thought only wild animals), bear, hippopotamus, monkeys, tigers, lions and "something that looks like a camel", and I presume many more that he didn't mention.

All in all, I think it wasn't bad at all. So parents, if you are in KL, do bring your children to the National Zoo. It is better than bringing them to the shopping malls every weekend!! By the way, entrance fee is RM25 per adult (or was is RM20? Anyway, not a big difference). For children under 4, it is free of charge. Saimun told them that Dominic was below 4 years old therefore I do not know how much they charge for children.

Here are some photos:

Quick Update on the 33-Year-Old

2010-04-06T23:36:00.000Z

7-APR-2010:

Yes, he is no longer 32 years old. He had his birthday a couple of months back and sad to say, he spent it alone in London. Nevertheless, he received a birthday gift from moi here and Dom wished him a happy birthday on the phone. A few days later, we spoke on the phone again and Dom said, "Daddy, it's your birthday!". I said, "No, daddy's birthday is over." He looked confused and he stared at me momentarily. "But ... but daddy ... you didn't eat the cake and blow the candles!". Haha. Children. They are so naive and cute.

Anyway, Saimun is back for good. He is back to annoy me! Haha! I mean ... of course it's great to have him back. He helps to get Dom to bed so that I now have more time in the evenings. He helps to entertain Em when I need to do other stuffs. He sends me to work and picks me up so that I don't need to drive. He helps to look after the renovation and runs around buying stuffs for the house. It's all good.

He's been back for barely 2 weeks and he spent those 2 weeks (presumably) monitoring Job Street. If anyone of you has applied a job through Job Street before, you will know that once you've submitted an application you'll be told of how many competitors you have. Saimun told me about one job where there were 150 applicants. He didn't feel he had a very good chance there. On Monday, he was called for an interview but was told that he was 'over qualified', whatever that means?? Anyway, I am proud to announce that has found a job already and will start work "on the 17th", he said, but strangely 17th is a Saturday. Maybe he meant the 17th next month. Sooo lucky to have God's blessing.

House Reno Progress - Kitchen

2010-04-06T02:51:00.000Z

On 30 March 2010, the kitchen was cleaned up and the work top was completed. No one was at work on site today. The bathroom floors were smoothen up and the cement left to dry. Saimun was out burning his plastic, purchasing 4 units of WCs and bathroom sinks. The next day, he purchased a solar water heater.

House Reno Progress - Bathrooms

2010-04-06T02:40:00.000Z

This is another video uploaded by Saimun on 25 March 2010. All four bathrooms were stripped down and the plumbing works partially done. The electrical cabling was done and the walls have been patched up.

Quick Update on the 5-Month-Old

2010-04-05T22:13:00.000Z

6-APR-2010:

Fast approaching 6 months old and Emily is still unable to sit unsupported. Although I know that every baby is different, I can't help comparing her with Dominic, especially when I've heard countless times that "girls are faster than boys". Why, then, is my girl slower? I guess only in this physical aspect is she slower than Dominic. She's probably better when it comes to motor skills. She can now grab things and put them into her mouth. She grabs the blouse that's been placed next to her, his brother's book that we're reading, the rattle in front of her, my phone when we're watching video on it, her pacifier, and basically whatever catches her attention.

Here is my little girl learning to sit. First, sandwiched between two pillows.

Then, she got too excited and she slipped side ways. Haha.

After that, she could sit unsupported for a short time ... probably about 1-2 minutes.

And then .... whoa ... whoops! Toppling over! Haha!

Emily has also started solids 2 days ago. On Sunday, I gave her 1 teaspoon of rice cereal mixed with about 1/4 - 1/2 oz of breast milk. The instruction on the box was to give her just 1-2 teaspoons as a tasting but she finished everything! And even cried when there was none left!

On Monday evening, I again gave her 1 teaspoon of rice cereal, this time, mixed with hot water (because it was too troublesome to have to warm up the breast milk). Again, she finished everything and gave me an irritated grunt when I wiped her mouth at the end! She is definitely sooo ready for solid food. I recall that about 4 years ago, I had an anxious chat with a friend (online) because Dominic wouldn't eat the rice cereal I prepared for him. Now that I think about it, he probably wasn't ready yet. He was about the same age as Emily now. I am feeling so excited for her now! :-D

Emily Swimming @ 5 Months Old

2010-04-05T03:30:00.000Z

5-APR-2010:

We took Emily for her first swimming session on Saturday. We were concerned that the water would be cold (as it always was), so we went at around 3pm, hoping that the water would be heated by the sun by then. Another concern was that she might get sun burn, but fortunately the swimming pool that we went to (FIL's condo) was surrounded by the buildings and was very shady. In fact, we preferred a little bit of sun!

The water wasn't too cold. According to Dom, it was only "a little bit cold". Emily didn't complain at all. She was very still at the beginning and looked a bit confused. She kept staring at his brother and daddy in the water. After a while, she started wriggling and kicking, and even splashed the water with her hands a few times. However, she didn't stay in the water long as her hands and feet were getting wrinkled. After that Saimun and I took turns swimming with Dom while the other watched Em.

Here are some photos and a video.

Emily On Bouncer

2010-04-02T00:26:00.000Z

2-APR-2010:

This video was taken by Saimun this week. Emily was 5 and a half months old. I think her eyes look so lovely in this video.

Qing Ming

2010-04-01T01:30:00.000Z

1-APR-2010:

This coming Sunday is Qing Ming, or what they call "The Tomb Sweeping" day. This day is normally observed around April 5th of the Gregorian calendar and is an opporunity for the celebrants to remember and honour their ancestors at grave sites. Despite having no holiday status in Malaysia, the Chinese take this festival seriously and normally observe the festival on a Sunday. Many, like us, would prefer to do it a week earlier to avoid the crowd and traffic jam.

On Sunday morning, Saimun and his parents left at 7+ in the morning to visit his grandfather's grave site, which I was not obligated to go because I had to take care of the two kids (children have their uses sometimes). I don't expect to participate in this family event until both my kids are at least 15 years old and are allowed to stay home on their own.

However, when they came home at around 10:30am, I left the kids with Saimun and went with my brother to my mother's grave site instead. According to my MIL, I wasn't supposed to go because I'm now married and do not belong to that family anymore. But I didn't care. To me, I was merely visiting my own mum and at the same time an opportunity for me to catch up with my uncle (mum's brother), aunt and cousins.

I sat in front of my mother's grave, looking at her radiant smile on the tombstone, and I felt the urge to go forward and flung my arms around her. I felt sorry that she couldn't see how well I am doing. That I have a son and a daughter now. I felt sorry that she hadn't met her own grandchildren. At least, I found comfort in knowing that she had met Saimun and knew that I would be well taken care of, before she had to go. I also wanted to tell her that she need not worry about my brother anymore as he is also well taken of. He hasn't turned into a 'samseng' or a drug addict, like a lot of people had feared he would. In fact, he is now a responsible man and a responsible father, and moving ahead in his career. I can't believe I'm calling my little brother a 'man'. :p

Anyway, despite the memories, we actually had a good time catching up and laughing. There we were - my brother, uncle, aunt, my cousins and myself - catching up on our most recent or not so recent events. They haven't met my kids yet even though Dom is already 4 years old. We moved to London shortly after he was born. My uncle is now in interior design and I didn't know it. My cousin is opening a cafe soon and his youngest brother has completed his SPM. He was only 4 or 5 when my mum died. It was almost like a picnic and I was almost disappointed when it came to an end and we had to part. I promise that I will participate in this family event every year, whether a married woman is allowed to visit her mother's grave or not.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

2010-03-29T21:32:00.000Z

30-MAR-2010:

I read the first chapter and thought I would give up, but somehow and I read on and in the 2nd chapter, things got interesting. Before I knew it, I've finished the whole book. It is about an African woman, Mma Ramotswe (her name was Precious Ramotswe, who set up the first and only private detective agency in her hometown (Botswana) which was run by a lady detective. From reading the book, I deduced that the Africans address their women as 'Mma' (which may mean madam or mrs) and men as 'Rra'. Mma Ramotswe started her detective agency with the money that her father left her. He earned everything that he had from working in the mines in South Africa.

But things were bad in the past. Before we built our country we had to go off to South Africa to work. We went to the mines, just as people did from Lesotho and Mozambique and Malawi and all those countries. The mines sucked our men in and left the old men and the children at home. We dug for gold and diamonds and made those white men rich. They built their big houses, with their walls and their cars. And we dug down below them and brought out the rock on which they built it all.

Obed Ramotswe (Mma Ramotswe's father) died at the age of sixty.

I am sixty now, and I do not think God wants me to live much longer. Perhaps there will be a few years more, but I doubt it.

Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at the news which the doctor gave me.

At the age of sixteen, Precious Ramotswe met her husband Note Mokoti, who was a Jazz musician. He was also violent, and eventually left her with her unborn child. The child passed away just 5 days after he? she? was born.

He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across her cheek. But immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.

He came home late and he smelled of beer when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.

"You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening."

He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.

"I can drink if I want to. You're one of these women who stays at home and complains? Is that what you are?"

"I am not. I only meant to say that you had a good evening."

But his indignation would not be assuaged, and he said: "You are making me punish you, woman. You are making me do this thing to you."

She cried out, and tried to struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.

"Don't hurt the baby."

"Baby! Why do you talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any baby."

After her father passed away, she lived alone, running her detective agency. The book talked about the cases that she dealt with. Some of them are rather interesting particularly one where an Indian father hired her to find out who his daughter's boyfriend was so that he could get rid of him and arrange another man for her daughter. Such was the culture of the Indians.

There is a sequel, but I only recommend if you have nothing to read. :-D It is not bad, but not one of my favourites.

Reunited!

2010-03-26T00:11:00.000Z

26-MAR-2010:

Saimun arrived back here yesterday afternoon! When I got home in the evening, Dom was having dinner and he ran to me with a very sweet smile, hugged my hips (because he could only reach my hips) and said "Mummy, I'm so happy!".

Later that evening, his daddy showed him all the toys he had bought for him - almost the enitre suitcase and his toys alone weighed 8kg. There were some clothes too, which he ignored and 2 pairs of shoes which were too small for him (never mind, will save them for Emily instead). After all the excitement, he leaned his head against his daddy's lap and said, "Daddy, I am so happy!".

That night, he insisted that his daddy slept with him, which he did, and after he fell asleep, his daddy sneaked back into our own bed. As usual, in the middle of the night, I woke Dom up to pee and noticing that his daddy wasn't in his bed anymore, he asked, "Where's my daddy?" After I reassured him that the huge, dark lump lying on our bed was his daddy, he promptly went back to sleep.

Shortly before 7am, he woke up on his own - he never woke up on his own in the morning, I always had to drag him up and "support" him while he half-walked out into the living room to snooze on the couch for about 5 mins before brushing his teeth. This morning, he woke up and his first word was, "Daddy?"

The 3 of us squeezed into his single bed and my little boy was the happiest boy in the whole world.

I Want To Be Culinary Expert

2010-03-23T04:24:00.000Z

23-MAR-2010:

I'm thinking about the International Certification in Bread Making - course takes only 2 days. Taylor's staff gets 20% discount. What do you think?

New Hair

2010-03-23T04:07:00.000Z

23-MAR-2010:

It actually doesn't look too bad here (the morning after the cut, before the first wash), but subsequently it turned quite bad. :-( Feel like having another hair cut now.

Mistake or Deliberate?

2010-03-23T03:44:00.000Z

23-MAR-2010:

Was having a hair cut at the saloon last Wednesday and saw this ad in a magazine.

Brother and Sister

2010-03-23T01:24:00.000Z

23-MAR-2010:

Ahh ... so tired!

Clodagh - Final Chapter

2010-03-22T03:59:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

As the lift doors opened, Lisa sharply nudged Ashling and sneered, 'Well, look who it is.'

It was - of all people - Clodagh, looking extremely nervous.

Clodagh stepped forward when Lisa left. 'Just tell me to get lost if you want, but I was wondering if we could talk.'

Ashling was helpless with shock and it took a while to find words. 'We'll go to the pub next door.' They located a seat and ordered drinks and all the while Ashling couldn't stop staring at Clodagh. She looked good, she'd had her hair cut much shorter and it suited her.

'I've come to apologize,' Clodagh said akwardly. I've grown up an awful lot over the past few months. I'm different now.'

Ashling nodded stiffly.

'I see how selfish and self-obsessed I was and how cruel I've been,' Clodagh spilled. 'My punishment is having to live with all the damage I've caused. You hate me and I don't know if you've seen Dylan lately, but he's ruined. He's so angry and ... hard.'

Ashling agreed. She didn't like being around him any more.

'Did you know that I asked him to come back and he wouldn't?'

Ashling nodded. Dylan had almost taken out an ad on national television to publicize it.

'Serves me right, huh?' Clodagh managed a weak smile.

Ashling didn't answer.

'We've sold the house in Donnybrook and me and the kids are living in Greystones now. Miles out, but it was all we could afford. I'm a single-mother now since Dylan decided he couldn't cope with custody. It's a steep learning curve -'

'What was it all about?' Ashling interrupted sharply.

Clodagh twitched anxiously at the anger in Ashling's voice. 'Something I've been asking myself a lot.'

'And? Any conclusions? Bad patch in your marriage? They all have them, you know.'

Clodagh swallowed nervously. 'I don't think it was just that. I should never have married Dylan. This is probably hard to believe but I don't think I ever really fancied him. I just thought he was the kind of man you married - he was so good-looking and charming and had a good job and was responsible ...' She glanced around anxiously at Ashling, whose set, thunderous face wasn't exactly encouraging. 'I was twenty and selfish and I didn't have a clue.' Clodagh longed to be understood.

'And what about Marcus?'

'I was desperate for some fun and excitement.'

'You could have taken up bungee-jumping.'

Clodagh nodded miserably. 'Or white-water rafting.' But Ashling didn't laugh. She'd honestly thought she would. 'I was unfulfilled and frustrated,' Clodagh attempated. 'At times I used to feel like I was being suffocated -'

'Lots of mothers are bored and frustrated,' Ashling snapped. 'Lots of people are. But they don't have affairs. Especially not with their best friend's boyfriend.'

'I know, I know, I know! I can see that now, but at the time I was clueless. I'm sorry, I just thought I should have anything I wanted because I was so miserable.'

'But why Marcus? Why my boyfriend?'

Clodagh reddened and looked at her lap. She was taking a real risk admitting this. 'Probably anyone would have done.'

'But it was my boyfriend you picked. Because you didn't have any respect for me.' Ashling cut to the heart of the matter.

Shamefaced, Clodagh admitted,'Not enough. Which I hate myself for. I've spent the past months feeling guilty and shitty about it. I'd give my left tit for you to forgive me.'

After a long, sweaty pause Ashling sighed heavily. 'I forgive you. Like, who am I to judge?' I've hardly lived a perfect life. As you pointed out, I was a total victim.'

'Oh, I'm sorry!'

'Don't be, you were right.'

Clodagh's face lit up. 'Does that mean we can be friends again?

Another long pause as Ashling thought about it. She and Clodagh had been friends since they'd been five. Best friends. They'd lived through childhood, adoloscence and early adult-hood together. They shared a common history and no one would know her the way Clodagh knew her. That sort of friendship is rare. But ...

'No,' Ashling broke the tense silence. 'I forgive you, but I don't trust you. To lose one boyfriend to your friend is misfortunate, but to lose two is careless.'

'But I've changed. I really have.'

'It doesn't matter,' Ashling said sadly.

'But ... ' Clodagh objected.

'No!'.

Clodagh realized it was pointless. 'OK,' she whispered. I'd better go. I really am sorry, I just want you to know that ... Bye.'

As she left she found she was shaking. It hadn't gone the way she'd hoped. The last few months had been nasty in the extreme for Clodagh. She was shocked and indeed surprised by how painful she found her life. Not just her new grim, single-mother circumstances, but the insight she'd been given into her own self-seeking behaviour.

Contrition was a new emotion for her, and she'd expected that if she explained the understanding she'd had into her selfishness, and stressed how very sorry she was, she'd be forgiven. That instantly everything would be perfect again. But she'd underestimated Ashling and she'd learnt yet another lesson: just because she was sorry didn't mean people were ready to forgive her and just because people forgave her didn't mean she'd feel any better.

Sad and lonely and still burdened with the fruits of her destruction, she wondered if she'd ever be able to fix all that she'd broken. Would anything ever be normal again?

As she passed Hogan's a crowd of boys noticed her and began whistling and shouting compliments. At first she ignored them, then on a whim tossed her hair and gave a dazzling over-the-shoulder smile which elicited whoops of wild appreciation from them. All at once her heart lifted.

Hey, life goes on.

The End.

Clodagh - Penultimate Chapter

2010-03-22T02:04:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

To cut the story short, Clodagh broke up with Marcus and wanted Dylan back ...

Sitting down, Clodagh crossed her legs and agitatedly bounced up and down on the ball of her foot. Dylan had taken the kids out for the afternoon and was due back any minute, and though he didn't know yet, they were going to talk.

Every time they met, things were civil but unpleasant. He was bitter and she was defensive, but all that was about to change.

How could she ever have thought that Marcus would do? Dylan was wonderful: patient, kind, generous, devoted, hard-working, much more attractive. She wanted her old life back. But she expected a certain amount of rancour and resistance from Dylan and she wasn't looking forward to having to eat humble pie to win him over.

A racket of childish voices at the front-door indicated that they were back. She hurried to let them in, and gave Dylan a friendly smile which fell on stony ground.

'Could I have a quick chat with you?' She forced her voice to remain bright.

When he shrugged a flinty 'All right,' she put Craig and Molly in front of a video, closed the door and came into the kitchen where Dylan was waiting.

She swallowed hard. 'Dylan, these past months ... I was wrong, I'm very sorry. I still love you and I'd like you to - ' she choked, 'I'd like you to come home.'

She watched his face and waited for the golden light of happiness to wash over it and cleanse away the glittery hardness that had taken up residence there since all this started. He gazed at her incredulously.

'I know it'll take a while to get back to normal and for you to trust me again, but we can go for counselling and all,' she promised. 'I was out of my mind to do what I did to you, but we can make everything all right again ... Can't we?' she asked, when still he didn't reply.

Eventually he spoke and he said only one word. 'No.'

'No ... what?'

'No, I'm not coming back.'

She had not anticipated this. Not in any of her scenarios. 'But why?' She didn't really believe him.

'I just don't want to.'

'But you've been devastated by what I ... um ... did.'

'Yeah, I thought it was going to kill me,' he agreed thoughtfully. 'But I supposed I must have gotten over it, because now that I think about it, I don't want to be married to you any more.'

She began to shake. This wasn't happening. 'What about the children?'

That got him. 'I love my children.'

Good.

'But I'm not going to get back with you because of them. I can't.'

She was losing. All the power she'd thought she possessed was being revealed as a mere facade. And then something so unlikely as to be almost laughable occurred to her. 'Have you ... you haven't ... met someone else?'

He laughed unpleasantly. I did that, she thought, suddenly ashamed. I've made him like this.

'I've met lots of someone elses,' he said.

'Do you mean ... are you saying ... you've slept with women?'

'Well, not much sleeping gets done.'

She belly-flopped, feeling betrayed, jealous, cheated on. And his knowing, taunty tone roused a horrible suspicion. 'Do I know any of them?'

His smile was cruel. 'Yes.'

Her stomach flopped again. 'Who?'

'What a question to ask a gentleman,' he scorned.

'You said you'd wait for me,' she said quietly.

'Did I? So, I lied.'

Adventure Saturday

2010-03-21T22:36:00.000Z

22-MAR-2010:

Saturday saw me taking Dom and Em out to lunch again, this time at Mid Valley Mega Mall. Some people (particular those who don't have kids) wondered how I managed to bring the kids out so often. Well, this time I was faced with some small difficulties. :p

I had arranged to meet a friend (Adel) for lunch. Lunch is normally around 12:30pm and I thought I would leave around 11am, so that:

I can find parking and beat the jam
I can go to Maybank and open accounts for the kids before I meet Adel (but where is Maybank in Mid Valley? I still don't know.)
I can top up my phone before lunch

I thought I would reach there at 11:30am and have 1 hour to do all those before lunch. Plenty of time. :-)

As per planned, we got there and parked our car just on schedule. But then, oh ... shit ... I felt a full blown stomachache. You know, the kind that you had to 'go' asap? Right. It's okay, I thought, plenty of toilets in there and we have plenty of time. The first that we found didn't have a disabled toilet. How? Where will I leave my kids? There wasn't enough space there for the buggy too. And there were people queuing up. Definitely not safe to leave the kids there by themselves. So off we went to look for another one. One floor up and we saw the symbol of the wheelchair. Cool! But Alamak! It was locked! Never mind, I just saw a signboard pointing 'Hotel' right ahead. Hotel toilets should be nice and cosy and cleaner too. So we crossed over to the other building to Gardens Mall. For those of you who don't know yet, Mid Valley now has a 'new wing' and an 'old wing'. The new wing is called Gardens Mall and that's where you'll find all your Coach, Prada and whatever.

Very nice place there. There was no crowd, the place was quieter and definitly more 'high class'. Looking forward to their comfy toilet. But alas! They charge RM5 per entry because it was a 'Premium Toilet'. Nah ... I wasn't going to pay RM5 to take a dump! So I asked if there were any other toilets in the building and the man hired just to collect money in front of the loo said, 1st floor, one floor up. By now, Dom was already complaining that he 'got no energy left'. Good boy, he had been tagging along without any complaints. One floor up later, we saw this sign: "Closed for maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience!" We eventually found a loo. A normal one, not one for the disabled. It was clean and rather spacious and there wasn't a lot of people, so I told Dom to stand by the buggy and 'take care of Emily', while I did my business. Haha. Had to keep talking to him through the door to make sure he was still there.

By the time we were done, it was time for lunch already. After lunch, we shopped around and I even bought a blouse, but ALMOST lost my wallet! Enough excitement for one weekend already. We stayed home the whole day on Sunday, except to the church.

Clodagh - Part 9

2010-03-19T01:34:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

Clodagh thought she was cracking up, she was certain she was. But she had to get dressed and collect Molly from playgroup. Once back, she returned to bed and attempted to take up where she'd left off, but Molly began agitating that noodles be microwaved for her. With resignation, Clodagh got up again.

Since ten o'clock this morning - was it really only this morning? - her entire life had become an out-of-body experience. From the moment she'd heard Dylan's key in the door, she knew. The gig was up.

She's paused from her frantic bucking beneath Marcus and cupped an ear to listen. 'Sssh!' In a fluid movement he'd rolled off her: frozen and bug-eyed, they'd listened to Dylan mounting the stairs.

She'd had every opportunity to jump from the bed, fling on a robe and hustle Marcus into the wardrobe. Indeed, Marcus had tried to skid out of bed, but she'd arrested him by gripping his wrist tightly. Then she'd waited with horrible calm, the scene set to change her life.

For the last five weeks she'd endured sleepless nights wondering where her affair with Marcus would end up. She'd vacillated between ending it with him and resuming a normal life with Dylan, or fantasizing about a situation where Dylan was magically absent, but without her having actually told him it was over.

But as she listened to Dylan's footsteps get ever closer, she'd realized that the decision had been taken for her. Suddenly she wasn't sure she was ready.

The door to the bedroom opened, and even though she knew it was Dylan, his presence shocked her into a stupor.

His face. The expression on his face was so much worse than she'd imagined it could be. She was almost surprised at the amount of pain there. And his voice when he spoke was not Dylan's. There was an Oof to it, as though he'd been slammed in the abdomen. 'At the risk of sounding like a song lyric,' he'd struggled for breath with pathetic dignity, 'how long has this been going on?'

'Dylan ...'

'How long?'

'A month.'

Dylan turned to Marcus, who was clutching the sheet to his chest. 'Would you mind leaving? I'd like a word with my wife.'

Cupping his genitals coyly, Marcus edged crab-like from the bed, snatched up some clothes and muttered to Clodagh, 'I'll call you later.'

Dylan watched him leave, then turned back to Clodagh and asked quietly, 'Why?' A hundred thousand questions were contained in that one word.

She struggled for the right words. 'I don't really know.'

'Please tell me why. Tell me what's wrong. We can fix it, I'll do anything.'

What could she say? With sudden certainty, she knew she didn't want him to fix it. But she owed him honesty. 'I think I was lonely ...'

' Lonely? How?'

'I don't know, I can't describe it. But I've been lonely and bored.'

'Bored?' With me?'

She hesitated. She couldn't be that cruel. 'With everything.'

'Do you want to fix this?'

'I don't know.'

He studied her in a long, painful silence. 'That means no. Do you love this ... him?'

A miserable nod. 'I think so.'

'OK.'

'OK?'

But Dylan didn't answer. Instead, he slid a holdall off the top of the wardrobe, bounced it on to the bed and, slamming drawers open and closed, began flinging in underwear and shirts. Nothing had prepared her for how shocking it was.

'But ...' she tried, her eyes flicking back and forth, seeing ties, his shaving stuff, then some socks hop into the bag. Everything was happening very quickly.

Suddenly the bag was bulging-full. Then Dylan was zipping it with a high-pitched whizz. 'I'll be back for the rest later.'

He swung from the room, and after a panicky second Clodagh dragged on a dressing-gown and ran down the stairs after him.

'Dylan, I still love you,' she implored.

'So what was that all about?' He jerked his head upstairs.

'I still love you,' she repeated, her voice more subdued, 'but ...'

'You're no longer in love with me?' Dylan finished harshly.

She hesitated. But she had to be honest. 'I suppose ...'

He shuttered his face. 'I'll be back tonight to explain things to my children. You can stay here in the house for the time being.'

'For the time being?'

'The house will have to be sold.'

'Will it?'

'I can't afford to pay the mortgage on this place and another. And if you think you're staying on here while I'm in some smelly shoebox in Rathmines, you're very much mistaken.'

And then he was gone.

She reeled from shock, from the speed it had all happened at. She'd fantasized about Dylan removing himself from her life, but now that it had actually come to pass it was ugly. Eleven years wiped out in half and hour, and Dylan in such agony. And talking about selling the house! Yes, she was wild about Marcus, but things weren't that simple.

Too stunned to cry, too frightened to grieve, she sat in the kitchen for a long time. A ring at the front door jolted her back to the real world. It might be Marcus.

But it wasn't. It was Ashling.

Clodagh hadn't been expecting her. She certainly wasn't ready for her. And Ashling's uncharacteristic angry hostility compounded the whole horrible mess. Clodagh had always been surrounded by love, but suddenly everyone hated her, including herself. She was a pariah, a scumbag, she'd broken every rule in the book and wouldn't be forgiven.

After Ashling left, then she cried. She crawled back into bed, between the sheets with their smell of abandoned sex. She'd never laundered so much bed-linen as she had in the past five weeks. Well, no need to do it today, nothing to hide any longer.

She reached for the phone and rang Marcus, so he could remind her that they hadn't really done anything wrong. That they were mad about each other, that they couldn't help it, that theirs was a noble entanglement. But he wasn't at work and wasn't answering his mobile, so she had to endure her anguish alone.

This isn't my fault, she repeated again and again like a mantra. I couldn't help myself. But, like a fissure into hell opening, she caught a glimpse of the atrocity she'd perpetrated. What she had done to Dylan was unforgivable. Unbelievable. With shaky speed she grasped the nearest magazine to hand and tried to forget herself in an article about stencilling. But the fissure opened again - worse this time. It wasn't just Dylan she'd fucked over. It was her children. And Ashling.

Her heart beat faster and with a hand slidy with sweat she pressed buttons on the remote control until she found Jerry Springer. But he wasn't enough to distract her from herself - normally the people he had on seemed like cartoon characters with their ridiculously convoluted private lives, but today she didn't feel any different from them.

She flicked to Emmerdale, then Home and Away, but nothing worked. She trembled with shock and disbelief at her own actions, at the devastation she'd wrought. Then she remembered she'd have to collect Molly from playgroup and had a panicky seizure of paralysis. She couldn't go out. She really couldn't. It was impossible.

She couldn't be on her own and she couldn't be with anyone else and for a horrible moment she wondered if she was cracking up. This beyond-the-pale thought held her in its grip for a nightmarish while, then she struggled from the embrace of the bed. Cracking up was even more unpleasant than having to face the outside world.

Note: Ashling = best friend, Marcus = Ashling's boyfriend

My 5-Month-Old

2010-03-17T22:03:00.000Z

18-MAR-2010:

The other day, while talking on the phone with Saimun about Emily, he asked, "What else can she do now?" Well, nothing much actually, but here's a list of her "progress" since last month.

Has two lower incisors now. It shocked me to see her start teething at 4 months+ but a quick search on Google revealed that the normal age for a baby to start teething is between 4 and 7 months, so I guess she's normal. Just a bit on the early bloomer side.
Has started to become "demanding". She makes noise when being ignored, stops making noise and gurgles happily when being talked to (this applies to anyone in the house - myself, her grandma, grandpa, brother, cousins). Laughs when being picked up. Cries angrily when being put down.
Grabs things that are placed next to or near her. Holds and inspects the "thing" before her eyes.
Drinks 140ml (about 5 oz), 3 times a day during my absence. Have not started any solid food yet.
Sleeps at regular times. No change to sleep patterns. She wakes up around 10-11am, naps again at 12pm+ after her first feed, wakes up at 3pm+ for 2nd feed, then naps again, and wakes up at 6pm+ for the 3rd feed. Goes to bed around 8:30pm.
Can move forward to grab toys when lying on stomach - quite strong, can move very quickly when determined.
Cannot sit unsupported yet. At this age, Dom could already sit unsupported.
At this age, Dom could also bottle feed himself already. Not sure if Emily can because I don't bottle feed her. May ask FIL to try it.
Can listen to a whole book being read from beginning to end (Julia Donaldson's Monkey Puzzle, for example, so that you know how long the story is). Looks intently at pictures in the book and tries to grab book. Dom used to get impatient and cry everytime I read him a book when he was a baby.
Talks to herself in the mirror and squeals with delight. Maybe she thought it's another baby.
Adores her brother. Always smiles when brother puts his face in front of hers. Turns her head and searches for brother when she hears his voice.
Lifts both her legs up and exposes buttocks to be cleaned after doing a poo. I think this is so cute! When done, she will put her legs down again.

Clodagh - Part 8

2010-03-17T21:29:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

The pile of discarded clothes on Clodagh's bed grew higher. The tight black dress? Too sexy. The palazzo pants and tunic? Too glam. The see-through dress? Too see-through. What about the white pants? But he'd seen them already. The combats and trainers? No, she just felt silly in them. Of all the fashionable clothes she'd bought over the past two months, they'd been her biggest mistake so far.

For a moment the cloud of clothing anxiety cleared and she was inflicted with a sudden, unwelcome overview. What am I doing?

Nothing, she thought defensively. She was doing nothing. She was meeting someone for a cup of coffee. A friend. A friend who happened to be a man. What was the problem? This wasn't some Muslim country where she'd be stoned for being seen in public with a man who wasn't her husband or brother. Anyway, he wasn't even her type. She was just having fun. Harmless fun.

But she shook back her swishy hair, feeling exhilarated, buzzy, tingly.

Black trousers and a tight candy-pink T-shirt were what she eventually decided on. She looked into the mirror and saw herself through his eyes. His regard for her was endearingly obvious and she felt beautiful and powerful.

Coffee, she reminded herself firmly, as she swung out into the street. That's all. Where's the harm in that? And she pushed away guilt and anticipation that swirled nervously in her belly.

Clodagh - Part 7 (Clodagh's Night Out)

2010-03-16T01:33:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes (see below for notes)

It was Clodagh's night, no doubt about it. The comedians - intimidated by Lisa, sick of the sight of Joy and respectful of Ashling being Marcus's girlfriend - swarmed around Clodagh with her swishy new hair, gorgeous face and tight, white trousers. Ted's dark little face was miserable, but he was hopelessly out-numbered.

Clodagh, blazing a trail through Red Square after Red Square, was having a blast. During one of the breaks, Ashling overheard her saying to a cluster of men, 'I was a virgin before I got married.' With a twinkle in her eye she added, 'A long time before, mind.'

Everyone fell into convulsions and Ashling couldn't help a shameful little thought, It wasn't that funny. She pushed it away - it wasn't Clodagh's fault she was beautiful. And it genuinely was nice to see her enjoying herself so much.

Then Clodagh crossed her legs and all eyes flickered to the movement. Unselfconciously she eased her embroidered mule off her foot and let it swing idly on her big toe. Ashling watched several sets of eyes - all male - scud back and forth in time with it, looking mildly hypnotized.

Ted's act went down a storm and when he came back to the table, alight with triumph, Ashling watched Clodagh rub his shoulder and say, 'You were brilliant!'

Some time later Ashling saw Clodagh smiling at Jack Devine with the tip of her tongue poking out saucily through her teeth. Then Bicycle Billy got the same treatment. Oh no! It was her I'm-gorgeous-and-I-know-it smile, at least that was what she thought. But to quote Phelim on it, it was her scary-old-bat-from-Benny-Hill leer.

The next time Ashling looked, Clodagh had deteriorated markedly. With the slinkiness of an affectionate cat, she was rubbing her face against people's shoulders and explaining with charming bleariness to everyone, 'I've two children, so I don't get out much.' She hugged Lisa and said earnestly, 'I'm pissed! You see, I don't get out much.' Then she saw Ashling looking and exclaimed, 'Oh Ashling, I'm pissed. Are you cross with me?'

But before Ashling could demur, Clodagh had turned away and, skimming over the top of her words, was explaining to Mark Dignan, 'I've two chirn, soadoan get out much.'

Marcus was last on the bill and as took the stage Clodagh was whispering and giggling with Jack Devine. Ashling was annoyed, she'd really been looking forward to showing off how good her boyfriend was.

'Shush,' she elbowed Clodagh, then indicated the stage.

'Sorry,' Clodagh said loudly - too loudly. Then proceeded to absolutely scream with laughter at everything Marcus said. When, amid rapturous applause, he returned to the table, Clodagh propelled herself into his arms and insisted, 'You were HILARIOUS!'

Marcus gently disentangled himself from her and steered her back to her seat beside Ashling. As he sat down he squeezed Ashling's hand and gave her a secret smile.

'She's right,' Ashling murmured, 'You were hilarious.'

'Thanks,' he mouthed, and they shared a moment of warm mutual regard, which went on for far longer than was decent.

'Is that it, then?' Clodagh demanded. 'No more funny stuff. Do we have to go home?'

'Jesus, no!' Jimmy Bond looked aghast. 'Late bar until two.'

'Brilliant!' Clodagh exclaimed and promptly knocked over someone's glass. It clattered against the table and sent a stream of lager rushing over Bicycle Billy's thighs. 'Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry,' Clodagh insisted, fuzzily. 'God, I'm verr sorry.'

'Ah, the poor thing,' Ted sympathized. In unison, most of the table chorused, 'She doesn't get out much.'

Mark Dignan had just rejoined them and took in the scene, Bicycle Billy rubbing his soaked legs with the sleeve of his jacket, Clodagh apologizing thickly. Before anyone started to condemn her, Mark had some news for them. 'She's got two children,' he confided and furrowed his brow to urge compassion, 'so she doesn't get out much.'

Next Clodagh started up a long, huddled head-to-head with a woman from another table. They looked as though they were solving the problems of the world, but when Ashling eavesdropped, all they seemed to be saying to each other was, 'If you don't have chirn yourself, you can't understan'.' 'Thass right. If you don't have chirn yourself, you can't understand'.'

Then Clodagh went to the loo, and when she hadn't returned to their table after ten minutes Ashling anxiously scanned the room and saw her in intimate conversation with a trio of girls. The next time she looked, Clodagh was laughing with a man. Shortly after that Clodagh was talking to two boys, making elaborate hand gestures that looked exactly like she was demonstrating how to express breast milk. But she seemed happy - and so did the two boys - so Ashling decided to let her alone. Not long afterwards Ashling went to the bar and as she placed her order she saw Clodagh weaving between tables, then bumping into one, sending a dozen drinks rocking. 'Whoops!' she exclaimed loudly.

Two men leaning on the bar were also watching Clodagh.

'That was close,' one remarked, as the drinks just managed to pull themselves back from toppling.

'Ah, yeah,' the other replied, 'but she has two kids so she doesn't get out much.'

'Excuse me, could you change one of those Red Squares to a Red Bull?' Ashling, on impulse, asked the barman. Clodagh had had enough to drink.

But amazingly, drunk and all as she was, Clodagh knew she'd been fobbed off with an alcohol-free drink, and turned slightly nasty. 'Mus' think I'm a big gobshite,' she complained. 'Mus' think I'm a big, stupid, gobshite.'

'Should we get her home?' Marcus murmured.

Ashling nodded, so grateful for him.

'I'm not leaving until I've had another drink,' Clodagh insisted belligerently.

Marcus was sweet, as though explaining to a child. 'You see, Ashling and I want to go home, and it seems like a good idea to drop you off.'

'Well, go home,' Clodagh ordered.

'But we'd really like you to come with us in the taxi.'

'I might,' Clodagh said sulkily. 'But it's only because I like you.'

'Do you need any help?' Ted asked hopefully.

'No.' Ashling was firm. 'We're just going to drop her home to her husband.'

Clodagh enveloped Ted in a big hug, then puckered up - Ashling flinched - and kissed him on the forehead. 'You're cute,' she said fondly. 'Don't forget to come and visit me.'

'I won't!'

'Come one.' Ashling took her arm, but Clodagh had turned around and was trying to get to someone else.

'Bye, Jack,' she carolled.

'Bye Clodagh, nice to meet you,' Jack smiled.

'Nice to meet you too.' Clodagh's voice was like cream. 'Hope to see you again soo- Ow! Ashling! You're pulling my arm off!'

Grimly, Ashling tugged her towards the exit.

Notes: Marcus = Ashling's boyfriend and also a stand-up comedian, Lisa = Ashling's boss, Jack = Ashling's big boss, Joy = Ashling's neighbour and friend, Ted = Ashling's neighbour and friend and also a comedian, Red Square = Red Bull + vodka

Clodagh - Part 6

2010-03-12T03:26:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

On Sunday morning Clodagh woke, perched precariously on the six inches at the edge of the bed. Craig had shunted her to the margin of the bed, but it could quite easily have been Molly or both of them. She couldn't remember the last time she and Dylan had slept unchaperoned, and she was so well practised at sleeping hanging over the side that she was sure she could manage a great night's sleep on the edge of a cliff, at this stage.

Something was telling her it was very early. Five o'clock early. The sun was up and the gap where the calico curtains didn't quite meet glowed in a line of acid-bright light, but she knew it was too soon to be awake. The unseen seagulls beyond her window wailed shrill and plaintive. They sounded like babies from a horror film. Beside Craig, Dylan slept heavily, his limbs thrown across the bed in a random tangle, his breath whistling rhythmically in and out, each exhalation lifting his hair from his forehead.

Despondency lay heavy upon her. She'd had a bad week. After the disaster with the employment agency, Ashling had urged her to get a second opinion. So she'd put her expensive suit back on and tried again. The second employment agency treated her with almost as much disdain as the first had. But to her enormous surprise, the third proposed sending her for a two-day trial, making tea and answering the phone at a radiator-supply firm. 'The pay is ... modest,' the recruitment man had admitted, 'but for someone like you who's been out of the workplace for a long time, it's a good start. They're bound to love you, so off you go. Good luck!'

'Oh. Thanks.' As soon as Clodagh knew she might have a job, she didn't want it. Making tea and answering the phone, where was the fun in that? She did it at home all the time. And a radiator-supply firm? It sounded so dreary. In a strange way, getting a job and then finding she didn't want it was almost worse than being told she was unemployable. Though not much given to introspection, she vaguely realized that she wasn't actually looking for a job - she certainly didn't need the money - she was looking for glamour and excitement. And the reality was she wasn't going to find them at a radiator-supply firm.

So she rang Mr Recruitment and pretended she couldn't start because Craig had got measles. Children had their usus, she reflected. If there was something you didn't want to do, you could say they had a high temperature and that you were worried about meningitis. It had absolved her from attending Dylan's Christmas party last year. And the year before. And she fully intended to use it this year as well.

She shifted uncomfortably. Something sharp was digging into her back. A forage revealed it to be Buzz Lightyear. Outside the windown the seagulls shrieked again, their ugly folorn cries echoing within her. She felt trapped, painted in to a corner, blocked. As though she was locked in a small dark airless box, which was getting ever tighter - she couldn't understand it. She'd always been happy with her lot. Her life had happened exactly as it should and its progress had been ever forward, ever positive. Then, with no warning, it seemed to have stopped. Going nowhere with nothing to look forward to. A horrible thought wormed in - was it going to be like this forever?

Clodagh - Part 5

2010-03-11T20:37:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

To cut the story short, Clodagh was bored with her life and contemplated going back to work. During her shopping trip with Ashling ...

'I am very busy,' Clodagh acknowledged. 'Apart from a couple of hours when I go to the gym, I never have a moment to myself. Mind you, it's all inconsequential stuff; changing clothes that's been puked on or having to watch Barney video after Barney video ... Although,' she said, with a glint in her eyes, 'I've put an end to Barney.'

'Sometimes,' Clodagh sighed, heavily, 'I just wonder, what's the point? My day is filled with ferrying Craig to school, Molly to playgroup, Molly home from playgroup, Craig to his origami lessons ... I'm a slave.'

'But bringing up kids is the most important job anyone can do,' Ashling protested.

'But I never have any adult conversation. Except with other mothers, and then it's all so competitive. You know the sort of thing - "My Andrew is much more violent than your Craig." Craig never hits anyone, while Andrew bloody Higgins is a junior Rambo. It's so humiliating!' She fixed Ashling with a bleak look. 'I see magazine articles about the competitiveness of the workplace, but it's nothing compared to what takes place in the mother-and-toddler group.'

*****

Pushing open the door of the city-centre employment agency, fear and excitement manifested themselves in Clodagh's trembling hands. She stopped before a young girl with a pale-haired chignon, whose fresh, apricot-bloom skin was smothered with heavy foundation.

'I have an appointment with Yvonne Hughes.'

The girl stood up. 'Hello,' she said coolly, with surprising confidence. 'I'm Yvonne Hughes.'

'Oh.' Clodagh expected someone a lot older.

Then Yvonne gave her the mother of all firm handshakes, as though she was in training to be a male politician. 'Take a seat.'

Clodagh palmed over her CV, which had got slightly bent in her bag.

'Now let's have a look.' Yvonne had a delicate, very deliberate way with her hands. She kept stroking the CV with the pads of her splayed, child-like fingers, flattening it out, straightening it up, realigning it with the edge of her desk. Then before she turned the page she took a moment to grasp the corner of it between her thumb and forefinger and did a brief frenzy of rubbing just to make sure she hadn't picked up two pages at once. For some reason, this really irritated Clodagh.

'You've been out of the workplace for a long time?' Yvonne said. 'It's ... how many ... over five years.'

'I had a baby. I never intended to stay away so long, but then I had another child, and the time never seemed right until now.' Clodagh defended herself in a rush.

'I ... seeeeeee ...' Yvonne continued to toy with Clodagh's nerves as she studied her career details. 'Since you've left school, you've worked as a hotel booking clerk, receptionist at a sound studio, cashier in a restaurant, filing clerk in a solicitor's office, goods inward for a clothing company, cashier at Dublin zoo, receptionist in an architect's firm and a booking clerk at a travel agent's?' Clodagh had made Ashling put down everything she'd ever done, just to show that she was versatile. You stayed ... three days at Dublin zoo?'

'It was the smell,' Clodagh admitted. 'No matter where I went I could smell the elephant house. I'll never forget it. Even my sandwiches tasted of it ...'

'Your longest stint was at the travel agent's,' Yvonne interrupted. 'You were there for two years?'

'That's right,' Clodagh said, eagerly. Somehow she'd moved forward so that she was sitting on the edge of her chair.

'Were you promoted in that time?'

'Well, no.' Clodagh was taken aback. How could she explain that you could only be promoted to be a supervisor and that everyone both despised and pitied the supervisors.

'Have you done any of the travel-agency exams?'

Clodagh nearly laughed. The very thought! That's why you leave school, isn't it? So that you never have to sit another exam?

Yvonne twiddled her fingers in the air, before bringing each one down separately, to deliberately, hypnotically stroke the page flat again. 'What software did you use there?'

'Ah ...' Clodagh couldn't remember.

'Have you typing and shorthand?'

'Yes.'

'How many words a minute?'

'Oh, I don't know. I just type with my first two fingers,' Clodagh elaborated, 'but I'm very fast. As fast as some people who've done a course.'

Yvonne's child-like eyes narrowed. She was annoyed, although not to the extent that she would have you believe. She was just playing, having fun with the power she had. 'So I take it that you don't actually have any shorthand?'

'Well, I suppose, but I could always ... No,' Clodagh admitted, having run out of energy.

'Have you any basic word-processing skills?'

'Ah, no.'

And even though Yvonne knew the answer, she asked, 'And you're not a graduate?'

'No,' Clodagh admitted, fixing Yvonne with one normal eye and one red-veined one.

'OK.' Yvonne exhaled long-sufferingly, licked a finger and used it to smooth down a ragged corner of the CV. 'Tell me what you read.'

'How do you mean?'

There was a pause, so tiny it barely existed, but Yvonne had created it to convey what a hopeless idiot she thought Clodagh was.

'FT? Time?' Yvonne prompted. She didn't exactly sigh, but she might as well have. Then she added cruelly, 'Bella? Hello!?'

All Clodagh read were interiors magazines. And Cat in the Hat books. And occassional blockbusters about women who set up their own businesses and who didn't have to sit through humiliating interviews such as this one when they wanted a job.

'And I see you count tennis among your interests. Where do you play?'

'Oh, I don't play.' Clodagh gave a near-teenage giggle. 'I mean I like watching it.'

Wimbledon was about to start, there had been lots of pre-transmission publicity on telly.

'And you go to the gym?' Yvonne read. 'Or do you just like watching that too?'

'No, I really go,' Clodagh said, on much more solid ground.

'Although that hardly counts as a hobby, does it?' Yvonne asked. 'That's like saying sleeping is a hobby. Or eating.'

This caught Clodagh on the raw.

Clodagh wavered, then admitted, 'I'm not really. But you've to put something down, don't you?' (When Clodagh and Ashling had finally stopped inventing joke hobbies such as rally driving and devil worship, and had tried to assemble a list of real ones, pickings had been slim.)

'So what are your interests?' Yvonne challenged.

'Ah ...' What were her interests?

'Hobbies, passions, that kind of thing,' Yvonne said impatiently.

Clodagh's mind was frozen. The only thing she could think of was that she liked playing with her split ends, peeling the broken bit along the shaft of the hair, seeing how far up it would go. She could spend hours amusing herself thus. But something stopped her from sharing this with Yvonne. 'You see, I have two children,' she said feebly. 'They take up all my time.'

Yvonne flashed her an if-you-say-so glance. 'How ambitious are you?'

Clodagh recoiled. She wasn't at all ambitious. Ambitious people were weird.

'When working at the travel agent's, what gave you the most job satisfaction?'

Making it through the day, as far as Clodagh remembered. The idea was - and it was the same for all of the girls she worked with - they went in, suspended their real lives for eight hours and poured their energies into enduring the wait.

'Dealing with people?' Yvonne prompted. 'Ironing out glitches? Closing a sale?'

'Getting paid,' Clodagh said, then realized she shouldn't have. The thing was, it had been a very long time since she'd done any kind of interview. She'd forgotten the correct platitudes. And, as far as she remembered, she'd always been interviewed by men before, and they'd been a damn sight nicer that this little cow.

I'm not really interested in working in a travel agent's again,' Clodagh said. 'I wouldn't mind if you got me a job in a ... magazine.'

'You'd like to work in a magazine?' Yvonne pretended she was finding it hard to stifle a smile.

Clodagh nodded cautiously.

'Wouldn't we all, dear?' Yvonne sang.

Clodagh decided she hated her, this poweful, merciless child. Calling her 'dear' when she was half her age.

'What kind of salary did you have in mind?' Yvonne asked, turning the screws.

'I don't ... ah ... I hadn't thought ... What do you think?'

Clodagh handed the last vestiges of her power over to Yvonne.

'It's hard to say. I don't have much to go on. If you'd consider retraining ...'

'Maybe,' Clodagh lied.

'If anything comes up, I'll be in touch.'

They both knew she wouldn't be.

Yvonne accompanied her to the door. It gave Clodagh savage pleasure to see that she was slightly pigeon-toed.

Out on the street, in her hateful, ridiculous, expensive suit, she walked slowly to her car. Her confidence was shattered. This morning had been a terrifying lesson in how old and useless she was. She'd hung all her hopes on a job but, manifestly, the world of work was a too-fast place which she didn't have the skills to belong any more.

Now what was she going to do?

What's the Reason?

2010-03-11T02:14:00.000Z

11-MAR-2010:

One of my uncles has a sophisticated and expensive camera. One of those large ones with huge lenses. SLR, they call it, isn't it? When we were back in Ipoh for the CNY, he was snapping away with the camera - during the lion dance at the shop, of Emily when she was awake, of Emily when she was asleep and of the rest of the people too. That afternoon when we were home, I said, hey can I upload those photos of my beautiful daughter on to my Flickr now? He said, just a moment, he needs to convert the photos from its 'raw' format first, otherwise Flickr will not recognize the files. I think he took at least a couple of hours to do that (but that's due to a technical error). Then he spent some more hours adjusting the color of the photos, the hue, the saturation and what not ... one photo at a time. I felt exhausted just watching him do it. So my question is, what's the point of having such an expensive camera when you still have to spend so much time to digitally 'correct' the photos?

Let's just say that you're out shopping one day and somebody, say from UNICEF or WWF stopped you, said that people are suffering, the earth is suffering and would like to donate a small amount of money to help out? It's not a big amount. Just maybe RM36 per month, which comes up to only RM1.20 a day. What reason have you got to decline? I can't find any. I mean I am out shopping. On a work day. And I have spent a lot more than RM36. I can't say I can't afford to. But I can say that I don't want to ... which makes me feel selfish. What would be your excuse?

Clodagh - Part 4

2010-03-10T20:38:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

At quarter to seven on Saturday morning, Clodagh was woken by Molly. Head-butting her.

'Wake up, wake up, wake up,' Molly invited, fractiously. 'Craig is making a cake.'

There were some benefits to having children, Clodagh thought wearily, dragging herself from the bed - for instance, she hadn't had to set an alarm clock for five years.

She was meeting Ashling in town. They were going shopping.

'And I think we should start early,' Ashling had said. 'To miss the crowds.'

'How early?'

'About ten.'

'Ten!'

'Or eleven, if that's too early.'

'Too early? I'll have been awake for several hours by then.'

After she'd cleaned up the cake mess, Clodagh gave Craig a bowl of Rice Krispies, but he wouldn't eat them because she'd poured too much milk into the bowl. So she made him another bowl, this time getting the milk-cereal ratio just right. Then she gave Molly a bowl of Sugar-Puffs. As soon as Craig saw Molly's breakfast, he took violently against his Rice Krispies, declaring that they were poisonous. With much spoon-banging and milk-splashing, he loudly demanded Sugar-Puffs instead. Clodagh wiped a splatter of milk from her cheek, opened her mouth to begin a speech about how he'd made his choice and that he had to learn to live with it, then couldn't be bothered. Instead she picked up his bowl, tipped the contents into the bin and grimly banged the box of Sugar-Puffs down in front of him.

Craig's delight dimmed. He didn't really want them now. Getting them had been too easy, yet not quite right.

As Clodagh tried to get ready for her trip into town, the children obviously sensed she was trying to make good her escape. They were more clingy and demanding than usual and when she got into the shower, they both insisted on accompanying her.

'Remember the days when I was the one who used to get into the shower with you,' Dylan observed wryly when she emerged, trying to dry herself, children hanging on to her.

'Yeees,' she said, nervously. She didn't want him remembering how raunchy their sex-life once used to be. In case he asked for his money back. Or worse still, tried to reactivate things.

'Here, dry her.' She pushed Molly towards him. 'I'm in a hurry.'

As Clodagh reversed her Nissan Micra out of the drive, Molly stood at the front door and bawled, 'I want to go!' with such agony that several of the neighbours rushed to their windows to see who was being murdered.

'So do I!' Craig screeched in harmony. 'Come back, oh Mummy, come back.'

Contrary little bastards, Clodagh thought, as she sped down the road. They spent most of the week telling her that they hated her, that they wanted their daddy, then the minute she tried to have a couple of hours for herself, she suddenly became flavour of the month and immersed in guilt.

The Sun is Loading!

2010-03-09T23:00:00.000Z

10-MAR-2010:

Dominic used to like watching You Tube videos on the Internet, as well as culinary videos on food.about.com. When he was small, he used to say, 'Mummy can I watch food about dot com?' He has stopped doing that now because the Internet here is - I quote Dom - 'very very slow'. He would ask why is it taking so long and I would say, just wait, it is loading.

When Dom was small and when he used wake up very early in the morning, I always told him to go back to sleep because 'it's not morning yet'. Most of the time, he would just lie awake in bed and when the sky finally got bright he would say, Mummy, it's morning now, can we wake up?

Now that he is going to school, he wakes up very early in the morning, i.e. at 7:15am, and he leaves the house at 7:40am. The sky is usually already bright when he leaves but on one particular morning, we woke up earlier than usual and the sky was darker than usual. We had the following conversation.

Mummy, why?

Why what?

Why are we waking up?

Because you need to go to school.

But it's not morning yet.

It's morning already.

But I can't see the sun.

The sun is coming up. Very slowly, but it's coming up.

(Quiet for about half a minute) Ohh ... I know. The sun is loading!

Haha! We sat out in the front porch and watched the sun rise. We ended up with a few mosquito bites on the arms and legs. Nevertheless, it was my first time watching the sun rise with my son.

Clodagh - Part 3

2010-03-09T03:02:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

On Monday morning Craig followed his mother around the room. 'Why are you tidying?' Clodagh snatched up a snarl of tights and flung them in the linen basket, then launched herself on the mountain of clothes on the bedroom chair, her arms a blur as she tossed jumpers into drawers, dressing gowns on to pegs and - after a short hesitation where everything became just too much - everything else under the bed.

'Is Grandma Kelly coming?' Craig pestered.

He fully expected the answer to be in the affirmative - this sort of frenzy was usually followed a short time afterwards by a visit from Dylan's mother.

'Nope.'

Craig ran behind Clodagh, as she Tasmanian-devilled into the en suite bathroom, and noisily jostled a toilet-brush around the bowl.

'Why?' he demanded.

'Because,' she hissed, irritated at the stupidity of the question, 'because the cleaning lady is coming.'

'Molly, hurry,' Clodagh roared in the direction of Molly's elephant-friezed room. 'Flor will be here any minute.'

The thought of staying in the house while Flor did her stuff was beyond the pale. Not just because all Flor wanted to talk about was her womb, but because Flor's very presence made Clodagh feel horribly middle-class and exploitative. She was young and able-bodied - having her house cleaned by a fifty-eight-year-old woman with problems up the frock was indefensible.

She'd tried staying in for a couple of Flor's visits, but ended up feeling like an outlaw in her own home. It seemed that every room she went into, Flor arrived seconds later, girt about with vacuum cleaners and varicose veins, and Clodagh never quite knew what to say.

'Ah ...' followed by an uneasy smile. 'I'll just, er, move, ah, out of your way.'

'Not at all,' Flor would insist. 'Stay right where you are.'

Only once had Clodagh taken Flor at her word, and sat flicking through an interiors magazine, pulsing with shame, while Flor huffed and puffed with the Hoover around her feet.

Flor charged five pounds an hour. Guilt compelled Clodagh to pay her six. So uncomfortable did she feel that Clodagh couldn't bear to even see Flor, always making it her business to be well gone before she arrived.

'Molly,' she bellowed, thundering down the stairs. 'Hurry!'

In the kitchen, one eye on the clock, she grabbed her pile of wallpaper samples and scribbled a note for Flor on the back of one. In a couple of strokes she drew a Hoover - an upstanding rectangle with twirly lead snaking from it. Then she sketched a few squares and drew rainfall coming down on top of them. Next she drew two arrows - one pointing to the pile of shirts on the table, the other pointing to the duster and Mr Sheen next to them.

Now Flor would know that Clodagh wanted her to hoover, to wash the kitchen floor, to iron clothes and to dust and polish.

Anything else? Clodagh did a quick zoom around her head. Next door's cat, that's what. She didn't want Flor letting him in like she did last week. Tiddles Brady had made himself so comfortable he was practically watching telly with the remote control in his paw when she'd got home. And the minute Molly and Craig saw him they fell in love and roared crying when the cat was promptly escorted off the premises. So, speedily drawing a circle for his face, on top of a bigger circle for his body, Clodagh finished the quick protrait of Tiddles by doing his ears and whiskers.

'Get me a red crayon,' she ordered Molly.

Molly duly returned, offering a blunt, yellow pencil and a Banana-in-pyjamas.

'Oh, I'll get it. If you want anything done properly, you have to do it yourself.'

Talking angrily to the air, Clodagh rummaged madly through the painting box and found the crayon, then - with no little satisfaction - gouged a big, red X through the cat. Surely Flor would understand that?

Her last drawing done, Clodagh sighed heavily. She'd love a cleaning woman who could read. It had taken her weeks to find out that Flor was illiterate. In the beginning, she used to leave her all kinds of complicated notes, requesting Flor to do specific things like take the washing out of the washing machine when it finished its cycle or defrost the freezer.

Flor never complied and although Clodagh used to lie awake at night fuming, she was too mortified to take her to task. Despite the problems, she didn't want to lose her. Cleaning women were like gold-dust. Even the crap ones.

Not to mention that Clodagh had no faith in her own ability to command respect in this situation. She had visions of herself trying to berate Flor in a voice that quavered with lack of conviction, 'Now look here, my good woman, this simply won't do.'

In the end she forced Dylan to be late for work one morning so he could have it out with Flor. And, of course, she 'fessed up to Dylan, who was sympathy itself. Dylan had what they called Good People Skills. And, on Dylan's suggestion, they came to their current arrangement where Clodagh drew her instructions to Flor.

Between the guilt and the drawings, it almost seemed easier to do the housework herself. Almost, but not quite. Despite everything, Clodagh savoured the one morning a week when the pressure was off her. Taking care of the house was like painting the Forth Bridge, only worse. She was never on top of things, and the minute something was done it needed to be done again. No sooner was the kitchen floor mopped - no, wait! Even while she was mopping it - they were skidding across it in their shoes, etching stripes of mud through her good work. And her linen basket seemed to be like the refillable pint of mythology. Even after she'd done three loads of washing and to her knowledge laundered every item of clothing in the house, her warm glow of achievement disappeared the instant she went into her bedroom - for the linen basket which had been empty mere minutes previously would be mysteriously once more full to overflowing.

At least she didn't have to worry about the garden. Not because it was nice. On the contrary, it was a muddy shambles, the grass flattened and sparse due to being overrun by children, and there was a great bald patch beneath the swing. But she was absolved from having to do anything about it until Molly and Craig were grown up. Just as well. She'd heard terrible horror stories about gardeners from hell.

After several false starts - Molly wanted to wear her hat, Craig had to go back in and get his Buzz Lightyear - Clodagh hurriedly pile them both into the Nissan Micra. As soon as she put the key in the ignition, Molly screeched, 'I have to go wee-wee.'

'But you've just gone.' Clodagh's exasperation was heightened by the fear of running into Flor.

'But I have to go again.'

Molly was only recently toilet-trained, and the novelty of her new-found skill hadn't worn off yet.

'Come on, then.' Roughly, Clodagh bundled Molly from her car-seat and hustled her back into the house, turning off the alarm she'd only just set. As predicted, despite much contorting of her face and promises that 'It's coming,' Molly couldn't summon any wee-wee. Back to the car again and away they went.

After she'd dropped Craig at school, Clodagh wasn't sure where to go. Usually on Mondays, she dumped Molly in playgroup and took herself to the gym for a couple of hours. But not today. Molly had been suspended for a week from playgroup for biting another child, and the gym had no creche. Clodagh decided to go into town and go around the shops until it was safe to go home. The day was sunny and mother and daughter traipsed slowly up Grafton Street, stopping - at Molly's urging - to stroke a homeless boy's dog, admire a flower stall and dance to a fiddle player. Passers-by smiled indulgently at the beautiful Molly, cute and ludicrous in her pink, furry, deerstalker hat, attempting to do Riverdance.

As they made their way up the street Clodagh was in a pocket of besottedness, her heart swollen and sore with love. Molly was so funny, with her little sergeant major's strut, marching along with her chest puffed out, wanting to befriend every child she encountered. It wasn't always easy being a mother, Clodagh admitted dreamily. But at times like this she wouldn't change her life for anything.

The paper seller openly admired the short, shapely woman trailing a small girl in her wake.

'Herald?' he offered hopefully.

Clodagh looked at it with regret. 'But what would be the point?' She elaborated. 'I haven't had time to read a paper since 1996.'

'Not much profit in buying one so,' the paperman agreed, appreciating the back view of Clodagh as she walked away from him.

She knew he was watching her and it felt surprisingly good. His bold, roguish stare stirred memories of when men used to look at her like that all the time. It felt like a very long time ago, almost as if it had happened to someone else.

But what was she doing? Getting excited because a newspaper seller had given her a glad eye?

You're married, she scolded herself.

Yeah, she answered wrily, married alive.

It took a contented hour and a half to reach the Stephen's Green Centre and by then, according to the law of averages, Molly and Clodagh were due a bust-up. Sure enough, when Clodagh wouldn't buy Molly a second ice-cream, Molly promptly threw the mother of all tantrums. She behaved as though she was having an epileptic fit, thrashing about on the floor, banging her head on the tiles, screeching abuse. Clodagh tried to pull her up but Molly wriggled like an octopus. 'I hate you!' she screamed and though Clodagh was ashrivel with embarrassment, she forced herself to speak in a steady voice, assuring Molly that a second ice-cream would give her a stomach-ache and promising that if she didn't get up and behave herself immediately, she'd be going to bed early every night for the next week.

Scores of hard-faced mothers passed, laden with children whom they cuffed and hit on an automatic rota. 'Hey, Jason,' Ddush! 'leave Tamara alone.' Smackkk! 'Zoe,' Thump! 'if I catch you at Brooklyn again I'll fucking kill you.' Clouttt! With their scornful looks, the women derided Clodagh's liberal principles. Give that brat a good belt, their school-of-hard-knocks' faces sneered. Going to bed early, my foot. Bate a bit of sense into her, it's the only language they understand.

Clodagh and Dylan had made a decision never to hit their children. But when Molly started kicking her, while continuing to screech, Clodagh found herself yanking the child off the floor and administering a smart smack to her bare leg. It seemed the whole of Dublin gasped. Suddenly all the slab-faced child beaters had melted away, and instead Clodagh was assailed by pair after pair of accusing eyes. Everyone around her looked like they worked for ChildLine.

A wave of crimson shame slapped her in the face. What was she doing, assaulting a defenceless little girl? What was wrong with her?

'Come on.' Hastily she tugged the roaring Molly away, appalled by the mark of her hand on Molly's tender leg. To atone for her guilt, Clodagh immediately bought Molly the ice-cream that had prompted the ructions in the first place, and expected peace for precisely the length of time it took Molly to eat it.

Except the ice-cream started to melt and Clodagh was asked to leave a fabric shop after Molly rubbed her cone carefully along a bolt of curtain muslin, patterning it with a thick white trail. The morning had soured and, wiping a Father Christmas beard of ice-cream from Molly's chin, Clodagh couldn't help feeling that life seemed to have had more of a sparkle to it once, a kind of yellow glow. She'd always rushed forward to greet her future, blithely confident that what it delivered would be good. And it hadn't ever let her down.

Her requests of life had never been overly ambitious and she'd always got what she wanted. On paper everything was perfect - she had two healthy children, a good husband, no money worries. But lately everything felt like unrelenting drudgery. Had done for quite a while, actually. She tried to remember when it had started, and when she couldn't, fear squeezed perspiration through her pores. The thought of this mind-set crystallizing into anything like permanence was terrifying. By nature she was a happy, uncomplicated person - this she could see by comparing herself with poor Ashling who tied herself in knots about almost everything.

But something had changed. Not so long ago she was fuelled by anticipation and optimism. What was different, what had gone wrong?

Note: Ashling = best friend

Office Party

2010-03-04T22:59:00.000Z

5-MAR-2010:

On Tuesday, there was a CNY celebration at Taylor's. According to the others, there is one every year. Basically, there was a variety of food, lion dance and other performances. I left early (because of my babies).

This is what I had: Ikan bakar, yong tau foo, roast lamb with garlic bread and salad, popiah.

This is what I had the second round: Fried chicken wing, char kuey teow, tempura and ais kacang. There was assam laksa and curry noodles as well but I ran out of time - needed to leave before everyone did otherwise there may be a jam. But before I left, I managed to 'ta-pau' some chocolate cake and tarts for Dom.

Clodagh - Part 2

2010-03-04T02:02:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

It was after nine before Dylan got home. Clodagh had managed to get both Molly and Craig to bed, which was nothing short of miraculous.

'Hiya,' Dylan said wearily, flinging his briefcase against the wall in the hall and pulling at his tie. Swallowing anger as the briefcase buckles scratches the paintwork again, she braced herself for his kiss. She'd have preferred it if he didn't bother. It wasn't like it meant anything, it was just an irritating habit.

She opened her mouth to launch into her horrible day, but he beat her to it. 'Christ, the day I've had! Where are they?'

'In bed.'

'Both of them?'

'Yes.'

'Should we ring the Vatican to report a miracle? I'll just go and see them, then I'll be back down.' He'd changed out of his suit and into sweatpants and a T-shirt when he came back.

'Any news?' she asked, eager for information and excitement from the outside world.

'No. Any dinner?'

Ah, dinner.

'Between Craig's stomach-ache and Molly's tantrums ...' She opened the fridge looking for inspiration. Nothing doing. The freezer didn't help either. 'Alphabetti Spaghetti on toast do you?'

'Alphabetti Spaghetti on taost. Good job I didn't marry you for your cooking skills.' He shot her a smile. Was she imagining a certain tightness to it?

'Good job indeed,' she agreed, fetching a can from the cupboard. She couldn't be sure whether he was angry or not. He always acted sunny even when he was raging. Not that she minded, it made life easier.

'So how was work?' She tried again. 'What has you so late?'

He sighed wearily. 'You know that big American sale? The one that's been dragging on forever?'

'Yes,' she lied, sticking bread in the toaster.

'I can't remember what the state of play was the last time I talked to you about it. Had they actually made any decisions?'

'They might have been just about to,' Clodagh attempted.

'OK, so after deliberating for ever, they finally narrow it down to three packages. Then they say they want to test them. Which, as you know, is a huge waste of fucking time so I offer them the reports from the trial sites. First they say OK, they'll accept that. Then they change their minds and send over two techies from their Ohio office to run the tests ...'

Clodagh stirred the saucepan and tuned out. She was disappointed. This was extremely fucking boring.

Slumped at the table, Dylan let it all pour out. '... Then I get a phone call this afternoon, they've only gone and bought a package from Digiware, and they're not even going to test ours!'

This was the point where Clodagh tuned back in. 'But that's brilliant! If they're not even going to test yours!'

Busy Monday

2010-03-03T22:58:00.000Z

4-MAR-2010:

Monday was a very busy day. In the morning, I registered Dom for his primary school (which he is starting in year 2012). The night before, I googled the Internet to find out what documents I needed to bring along with me, but there was no such information, no even in the MOE website. Seriously, the MOE website is like shit. It is totally not informative (not for me anyway) and it doesn't even look good. When we were in London, the primary school application procedure was clearly documented and we were able to find out all the information that we needed, even for people like us who had no idea which school we wanted to apply for. Anyway, my SIL told me that I only needed Dom's birth certificate and a photocopy of it. Later that night, my brother called and he told me that I should bring along photocopy of my own IC and proof of address (i.e. water/electricity bills). Even later that night, my friend TS called me and said that I would need passport size photographs of Dom! In the end, you know I just brought whatever I had (just in case), but my SIL was right. All I needed was the birth cert.

We reached the school at around 8:30am (I went with SIL) and there were people already queueing up. The queue wasn't that long but the office was small and there were two queues. On the desk were two manila-card-folded signs that said '2004' and '2005', meaning one queue was for children who were born in 2004 and the other for those who were born in 2005. The trouble was that a lot of people missed those signs because there were placed on the desk and not hung up high and it was impossible for people who just came in and were at the back of the queue to see them. There was some confusion and a few people who misunderstood that one queue was for boys and the other for girls, gave the wrong information to others who came in later. I felt rather disappointed. They must have done this many, many times since every year, students need to register for school. Why haven't they learnt from their mistakes? Or maybe they just didn't bother to improve things. Anyway, the process was very quick and we managed to reach home at about 9am and I reached the office at 9:30am. Thank goodness it's not like in Singapore where you have to be a sponsor and do all sorts of volunteer work to get your child into the school that you want.

At work, it was rather busy as well. Saimun has finally decided that he will come back in mid April, so there was Oyster cards to be cancelled, vouchers to be claimed and used, loyalty points to be redeemed and all sorts. :-D Plus the renovation work on our new house has started and there were details to be finalized and huge checque to be issued. Top that up with my daily milk-expressing routine, I have to say, there was very little time to 'relax'. Hehe! And of course, I did some 'real' work too. I had a meeting offsite in the afternoon and met a professor from Netherlands who has been living in Malaysia for 17 years. He just said that he prefers Malaysia to Europe! That's a new one.

In the evening, my reno contractor came over to have a chat, and that totally messed up my schedule. I was so late and Emily was fussing to go to bed and I didn't have time to breastfeed her. That night, she had her last feed at 6:30pm and didn't wake up to drink until 3:30am! It almost made me worried.

Clodagh - Part 1

2010-03-03T03:54:00.000Z

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

Clodagh woke early. Nothing new there. Clodagh always woke early. That's what having children did to you. If they weren't roaring to be fed, they were squashing into the bed between you and your husband and if they weren't doing that, they were in the kitchen at six-thirty on a Saturday morning, clattering saucepans ominuously.

This morning they were on clattering-saucepans-ominuosly duty. She would subsequently discover that Craig, the five-year-old, was showing Molly, the two-and-a-half-year-old, how to make scrambled eggs. Out of flour, water, olive oil, ketchup, brown sauce, vinegar, cocoa, birthday candles and, of course, eggs. Nine of them, including shells. Clodagh knew from the quality of the racket that terrible things were taking place in the room below her, but she was too tired, or too something, to get up and intervene.

Eyes focused on nothing, she lay listening to chairs being scraped along the new limestone-tiled floor, month-old SieMatic cupboards being opened and slammed and Le Creuset pans being battered to within an inch of their lives.

Beside her, still in deep sleep, Dylan shiften, then threw his arm over her. She snuggled into for a moment, looking for relief. The froze in familiar reluctance and wearily moved away again as she felt his arousal unfurling and straightening against her stomach.

Not sex. She couldn't bear it. She wanted affection, but whenever she moved her body against his, seeking out comfort, he got turned on. Especially in the morning. She felt guilty every time she turned away from him. But not guilty enough to oblige.

He stood a better chance in the evenings, especially when she'd had a few drinks. She never deprived him for longer than a month because she was too afraid of what it would mean. So when the deadline loomed, she always orchestrated some form of drunkenness and delivered goods, her enthusiasm and inventiveness in direct proportion to how much gin she'd consumed.

Dylan reached for her again and she slithered across the sheets out of reach, with a nimbleness borne of many months of practice.

'Little fuckers,' Dylan mumbled, sleepily. 'They'll knock the house down on us.'

'I'll go and shout at them.' It was safer to get up.

... to be continued.

Long Weekend

2010-03-02T22:57:00.000Z

3-MAR-2010:

Last Friday was the Prophet Muhammad's birthday and was a public holiday. I had such a long weekend with no plans at all that I spent Friday and Saturday at home with the kids. On Saturday evening after dinner, my BIL made an impromptu suggestion to visit the I-City at Shah Alam. I was all for it. Anything to get me out for the house. :p

At I-City, it was "people mountain people sea", meaning there was a crowd. What is that place anyway? There were trees (fake ones, probably) decorated with bright colourful lights, sculptures of animals and plants again decorated with colourful lights. There were stage performances but I think only because it was a special weekend - Chap Goh Mei or whatever. As usual, with this sort of thing, traffic was horrendous and parking was nightmare (but we were lucky to find a space relatively near to the site). It was 11pm by the time we got home and close to midnight when we finally got into bed.

We got the kids some "light sabers" (according to Dom).

And Emily just entertained herself with her favourite past time - sucking her thumb.

The next day (Sunday), I took the kids to church as usual where the pastor talked to the kids about the Lent season and temptations. How much could Dom understand, I'm not sure, but at least he participated by raising his hands, saying his favourite food is McDonald's and that chocolates are not good for you (because somebody said he/she was giving up chocolates). I think kids are so cute, especially when one of the boys (older ones) raised his hand and said that he has given up vegetables! And another asked if he can give up school and homework. Haha! Last night, when talking to his daddy on the phone, Dom exclaimed, "Daddy, you cannot eat chocolate for four days!". "Not four days", I said, "It's forty days!". In fact, it is more than 40 days because you don't count the Sundays. Last year, I asked a friend if it means we can take a break on Sundays if they're not counted. I forgot what her answer was but last Sunday the pastor told the kids that they are not required to fast on Sundays. Therefore, after church that day, off we went to McDonald's! Dominic gobbled up a whole chicken burger while Em sucked her thumb. Dom didn't last 3 days without chocolate. :p

4-Month-Old Prayer

2010-03-01T23:27:00.000Z

2-MAR-2010:

Thank you God for the delicious milk that I just had.
Thank you God for my daddy and mummy who love me so much.
Thank you God for my brother who is simply fantastic and funny.

On behalf of my brother, I thank you God for the McDonald's burger that he had for lunch.
My brother would also like to thank you God for the McDonald's chips.
And the coke.
And the ice-cream.

Dear Lord, please let me grow up quickly so that I can taste the McDonald's burger.
And the McDonald's chips.
And the coke.
And the ice-cream.
My brother said they were delicious.

Thank you God for everything, thank you for bringing me into this world.

Father in heaven, please bring my daddy home safely to us.
Let him bring back lots of toys and pretty stuffs for us.
Please remind my daddy to bring home a birthday gift for mummy.

God, I also pray for my brother to be good.
Quick to obey and slow to talk back.
So that mummy will have more time for me.
But most of all God, please keep all of us healthy and safe.
Amen!

4-Year-Old Talk

2010-02-26T22:22:00.000Z

27-Feb-2010:

Scene 1:
He woke up on the morning. We were still in bed.

Him: Mummy it's morning. Can I go outside and watch tv?
Me: Yes, after you bathe and brushed your teeth.

And so he watched tv. After a while ...

Me: How many shows are you going to watch?
Him: I'm going to watch ... Ermm ... I'm going to watch ... (pause) ... Is 5 shows a lot?

Scene 2 - Telling Lies:
After dinner ...
Him: Mummy can I drink this Vitagen?
Me: Whose Vitagen is it? Please ask mama first.

He went and came back ...
Him: Mama said yes!

Later I asked his mama if he asked her. She said no.

Scene 3 - Reading the Bible
Me (reading from book): Jesus travelled from Bethlehem to Jerusalem ...
Him: Where is Bethlehem?
Me: Its the place where baby Jesus was born.
Him: Oh. Yes.

After a while ...
Me (still reading): Jesus asked John to baptize him ...
Him: Last time when the man pour water on my head and I'm baptized?
Me: Yes.
Him: And mummy too?
Me: Yes.
Him: Is my daddy baptized?
Me: Err ... No.
Him: Why?
Me: Because he didn't want to.
Him: Why?
Me: You ask him later.

Scene 4 - Talking on the phone with Daddy:
Him: Daddy, last time I went to Ipoh. You know, Ipoh is veeery veeery small one! You go round and round and round and round ...

Hahaha!

Scene 5:
Him: Last time when I'm taking bath mama said pandai! You know what is pandai? Pandai means good!

RPS Gathering

2010-02-25T03:58:00.000Z

25-FEB-2010:

The past two weeks came and went without any effort at all. Has Saimun been away for 3 weeks already? I forgot to count down. :p The secret is to keep myself busy and occupied. So when someone suggested a CNY reunion gathering, I organized one at Loo Yin's brand new house (because I didn't have a house myself).

It was on a Sunday lunch. I took the kids to church in the morning. On the way back, we stopped by to 'ta-pau' KFC for our pot luck lunch, then picked up Grace and her daughter Esther before heading off to the party!

Guess who is pregnant above?

Our CNY 2010

2010-02-24T20:00:00.000Z

25-FEB-2010:

This year's CNY is a little bit more exciting than usual, first being the only CNY we have celebrated without Saimun and secondly the first time with both my kids.

Before I got married, CNY was mostly fun and merry. There would be a reunion dinner on the eve at my grandmother's house where I would get to meet my cousins, uncles and aunts. On the 1st day of CNY, there would be an open house with lots of guests, mostly distant relatives that I saw only once a year, catered lunch, lion dance, fireworks, beer and a private "lok-lok" (steamboat) stall at the house (we used to have satay instead of lok-lok for many years until someone decided that satay was too boring). After I got married, there wasn't much of a celebration at my in-law's. With the exception of this year and last, we had a reunion dinner at home where I would cook a few dishes from my own home and SIL would cook a few from hers and we got together to eat. The 1st day of CNY was just an ang-pow exchange session and a few family photos. That was it. Last year we made it more interesting by traveling to Penang.

This year, however was different. We had a combined reunion dinner with my FIL's sisters (and brothers?). There were lots of people. Mainly I was popular because of Emily (hehe). They couldn't stay away from her (because you know she was so lovely, obviously!). And Dom had a lot of fun playing with the other kids. There was also an open house on the 1st day of CNY, so we actually DIDN'T spend CNY taking afternoon naps this year! :-)

On the 2nd day, we travelled back to Ipoh with my brother and his family - altogether 3 adults and 3 kids in one sedan - pretty cramp actually but I didn't want to drive on my own. Our luggage was aplenty too. For a one night's stay, it looked as though we were going away for one whole week. You know, with kids, there were toys and snacks as well as the other essential stuffs. I let Dominic bring his Trunki and asked him to pack his own suitcase. He packed his Lego's and a few books. "How about clothes?", I asked. "Don't you need to change?". "Oh ... sorry", he replied.

Dom made his first trip to Ipoh when he was about 3 months old (the same age Emily made her first trip to Ipoh). Both of them made the first trip without their daddy. I felt a strong sense of deja-vu. Both times, my brother drove us, although back then he didn't have a family yet so there was plenty of space in the car for "non-essential" stuffs. He asked if I was moving house when he saw what I brought including a moses basket for Dom to sleep in (which we didn't use). This time round with Emily, I went through the same thought process. Should I pack along her travel cot? Should I bring the bath tub along, otherwise how would she bathe? In the end, I did without any of them, since there won't be any space in the car for them even if I had wanted to.

Traditionally, there would be lion dance at my grandparents' shop on the 2nd day of CNY, so we went there straight. There, Dom was treated like a VIP customer where he was asked by my grandma to choose anything ... anything at all from the shop. :-D

We had dinner at Royal China (I think) that night and we had our own private room with 2 tables and an attached private loo. I think it was really fun, especially for the first time I had a maid to take care of my kids while I enjoyed dinner! There was an almighty traffic jam on the PLUS highway the next day and it took us 4-5 hours to reach home.

Here are some photos. More to come when I've collected the rest of the photos from the other cameras.

My 4-Month-Old

2010-02-23T21:40:00.000Z

24-FEB-2010:

Emily is 4 months+ now. During her visit to the paediatrician last Saturday, she weighed 4.7kg and her "height" was 62cm. Behavioural wise, she is still the same as one month ago. There is no change in her feeding pattern. She still feeds the same amount, at the same interval and same time of day, EXCEPT for one very important point, i.e. she has stopped waking up at 2:30am for her night feed. Instead, she awakes at around 5am.

For the past 2 days, I have been home due to an allergy to the eyes and have witnessed her normal routine on a weekday. It is as what my MIL has told me and as I've described in one of my previous posts. She sleeps through the morning and doesn't wake up until 11am. She "plays" quietly in her cot for about 5-10 minutes and smiles and anyone who pokes his/her head in. And then, my FIL feeds her water. There is a time for drinking water and this is it. My in-laws are very methodical and they carry out the same tasks everyday. After drinking water, MIL bathes her. Meanwhile, the breast milk is heating up in a bowl of hot water and by the time she is done bathing, the milk will be warm and ready. She falls asleep again shortly after feeding, and she remains asleep until about 3pm. In fact, I noticed the past 2 days that my MIL is actually quite free between 12pm and 3pm. She has time to take a short nap and read the newspapers, or just generally rest without doing anything in particular. Dom, Sern and Joe are in school. Em is napping. The only one needs watching is Shaynne.

Yesterday, Dom came back at 3pm and woke Em up. She has her milk and then she just watches and listens to the others play and talk. Eventually, the four of them all fell asleep. One by one, they start to wake up from their nap at around 5pm. Em only wakes up at 6pm. She drinks her milk, and then she basically does nothing much. Sometimes she falls asleep again. At around 8pm, she starts to fuss - we normally just shut her up with the pacifier or hold her up in a sitting position in front of the TV. After a while, she falls asleep.

Four-month-old Emily is very expressive. She must be the happiest baby I've ever seen because she's always smiling when she sees me or her brother or her grandma. She smiles when I look her in the eye. She smiles when I kiss her feet. She laughs when I kiss her cheek. She laughs even louder when I tickle her tummy. She laughed hysterically when Dom and Sern talked to her. I wish I had captured it on video. She shows fear when she's held up high in the air. She shows anger when I put her down while she expects to be fed. She shows excitement when she knows that I'm about to pick her up.

A Gift for Daddy and Mummy

2010-02-19T02:24:00.000Z

19-FEB-2010:

Dominic made these in school and he insisted that the fish be given to daddy. Since daddy is miles away, I told him that I'll snap a photo of it and show it to daddy. "But how do you show it to daddy?", he asked. Obviously, he didn't fully understand the power of the Internet yet. I explained it to him. He repeated what I just said, as though trying to get a confirmation, "Now you put it in the laptop and then daddy can see?".

We went back to Ipoh for CNY. On the way back to KL, there was a jam on the highway and Dom asked why there were so many cars. Distractedly, I said, "Because everybody is going to ma-ma's house". It took us about 4 hours to reach home. Just before going to bed that night Dom said, "Mummy ... my daddy said you cannot bluff. You bluff me". I told him to explain. He said, "You said everybody is coming to ma-ma's house!".

His Manglish is atrocious now. He's using expressions like "Where got?" and "It's not like this ONE".

The past few days were holidays and I suspected he watched a lot of TV at home. When I came home, he asked me questions. What's a sunken ship? Why is there no monster in our closet? Soya sauce comes from beans? I asked where he heard these things from. From the TV, he said.

Yesterday, we called his daddy to say good night as usual. He is slowly getting used to talking on the phone now. Previously, I guess he found it awkward and he spoke veeerry softly into the phone. It's because both Saimun and I seldom use the phone, you see. Yesterday, he yelled into the phone, "Daddy, what time is it?". "It's 3 o' clock", said his daddy. He turned to me. "And it's 3 o 'clock also in Malaysia?". "No", I said, "It's 11 o ' clock here". (He slept late last night because he took a long afternoon nap and it's still school holidays). He yelled into the phone again, "Is it morning time at London?" "Yes, it's afternoon", said his daddy. "Oh ... why is it night time in Malaysia and it's afternoon at London? Is it magic?" I said I'll explain it to him tomorrow. He yelled into the phone again, "Daddy ... yesterday it was raining at Malaysia. Soooo heavy ONE! Is it rain so heavy at London too yesterday?". Daddy said, "It was snowing in London yesterday!". He turned to me and said, "Is it because I shake the snowing thing and now it is snowing at London?". You see, when we spent the night at my uncle's place during CNY, there was a crystal ball-like thing in my cousin's room. When you shake it, the crystal ball fills up with "snow". The silly boy thought that when he shakes the thing, snow will fall in London!

When we first arrived at my uncle's house in Ipoh, Dom exclaimed, "Wah ... your house is so nice one!". Notice that he likes to add "ONE" behind every sentence? This is an influence from his cousins. They have great influences on him. When I told him that he is 4 years old, not 5 yet, he said, "But Wing Sern said I'm 5 years old", and he insisted that he's 5 already. Anyway, back to the incident in Ipoh. After he complimented the house (while we were still outside), we stepped into the house. He looked around and then he said, "Hmm ... this is a small house!". To be fair, it wasn't a small house. It was regular size for a double-storey house. Thing was, we just came from my grandmother's house which was a semi-D and much more spacious so it was no wonder that Dom found it small compared to that.

We had many, many heart-warming and laugh-inducing conversations lately but I just can't recall all of them at the moment.