Chinese New Year 2010

Today is Chap Goh Mei, the last day of Chinese New Year. It has been a really quiet Chinese New Year for us this year. We went back to my PIL's house in Kuantan as usual, and visited some friends and relatives. Other than that, there was nothing blogworthy – we didn't even visit the beach.

Top left: Posing at the porch; Others: Shots of the girls at the dining table during reunion dinner.

We went back to Ipoh to my maternal home on the 4th day before coming back to KL on the 6th day. The highlight for Yiu Yiu was certainly playing with fireworks and sparklers with Yihao in Ipoh.

The whole loot which cost about RM60, courtesy of 大姨姨 (big aunt)

Yan Yan's first angpow loot. Yiu Yiu had almost the same loot.

Bento post #118 – #123

While searching for the covered ice-cube trays, I picked up some new bento tools from Daiso – a set of heart and star cutters in various sizes, some silicon cups, and a heart shape nori puncher. It was a Sunday and that night itself, Yiu Yiu said she wanted heart shape seaweed to bring to school tomorrow. So the next morning, I prepared a simple strawberry jam sandwich cut into heart shape, and decorated with heart-shape nori. At the side are some grapes.




Chicken nugget with potato wedges, and tomato ketchup in the blue tub, with apples at the side.





French toast in the shape of dolphin and heart, with two meatballs for protein, and pieces of mandarin orange.



Pan fried chicken drummet with pan fried mini kaya bun, and grapes. Younger sis told me that Yihao only ate the grapes, coz he's not a fan of buns, and he only eats deboned chicken LOL. So if I prepare this again in future, I can give his portion a miss.



Yiu Yiu loves sushi with salmon roe. Since I didn't have any salmon roe at home, I prepared one with ham instead. She didn't like it, coz "I don't like the pink pink thing in the middle". Yihao on the other hand said, "It's simply too yummy" :-)



I woke up late, and had thought I wouldn't make anything for them that day but when I asked Yiu Yiu whether she wants noodles or Koko Krunch, to my surprise she wanted noodles. So I rushed to prepare this simple noodles dish – just blanched the noodles and toss them in thick and thin soya sauce, with a dash of oyster sauce and tomato ketchup, decorated with french beans picket fences, carrot butterflies and meatball Mr. Golden Sun. At the side are some mandarin orange pieces.

Yan Yan's first foods

Since Yan Yan started on solid food, I've prepared these for her:

Spinach, cauliflower, sweet potato, pumpkin and apple. (Top right) The frozen cubes.

We'll just add one of the vegetable or apple cubes to her cereal at each meal. And sometimes, instead of cereal, we just give her two cubes of sweet potato with one cube of vegetable.

P/S: The covered ice-cube trays are courtesy of Chanel. I searched high and low at Daiso and Ikea but the ones at Daiso were either too huge or too little, while Ikea had discontinued theirs. I sms Chanel to ask if she knows of any other place where I could get them and she graciously offered to give me her two extra trays. Thanks buddy.

Triple celebrations

Happy Chinese New Year to all who celebrate the lunar new year…

Happy Valentine's to hubby…

And Happy Birthday to elder sis (& Jazz)...

Little snippets of Yiu Yiu

Of sizes
Papa's hand is big, your hand is medium, my hand is small, mei-mei's hand is tiny.

Of keeping pets
Yiu Yiu has been bugging me to buy her a pet.
Yiu Yiu: Mummy, can you buy me a kitten?
Mummy: You want a kitten? OK, but you need to take care of the kitten you know. You have to feed the kitten, and when the kitten poo poo, you have to clean up the poo poo.
Yiu Yiu: Huh?!! Clean up kitten's poo poo. Don't want, so yucky.
Mummy: If you don't want to clean up, then cannot buy lor.
Then few days later,

Yiu Yiu: Mummy, chicken got poo poo or not?
Mummy: Of course.
Yiu Yiu: Huh?!! Like that cannot buy chicken also lor.
Mummy: You want to keep chicken and keep as pet is it?
Yiu Yiu: Yes. But I don't want to clean up chicken poo poo, so cannot buy. Which animal got no poo poo?
Mummy: Haha, all living things got poo poo one.
Yiu Yiu: (Sigh) Like that cannot buy any animal lor.
Hmm…shall I buy her a gold fish and keep it in a bowl, since it's quite low maintenance.

Of traffic jam
We were driving home and Yiu Yiu was enjoying her lollipop. She asked to go to my sister's house to play with her cousins but since I didn't want her to always 过家(go over to another's house), I told her no, and gave the excuse that she only had one lollipop, and Yihao and Xiaoyu may cry if they see her eating one while they don't have.
Yiu Yiu: So after (I) finish lollipop can go or not?
Mummy: We'll talk about it when you finish your lollipop. (Complaining to myself) Aiya, why so jam one?
Yiu Yiu: (Traffic) jam (is) good.
Mummy: Huh? Why jam is good?
Yiu Yiu: Then I can finish my lollipop in the car, and then can go to 小姨姨 (small aunt's) house.

Defending papa
Hubby has been having lots of meetings/entertainment for the last few months, and he's out 2-3 evenings every week, leaving me to tend to the girls alone. One day while driving home…
Yiu Yiu: Papa is at home already ah?
Mummy: No, he's not at home. He's having a meeting again. Every day meeting meeting meeting.
Yiu Yiu: No la, where got every day meeting? Two days only la.

She is getting more inquisitive and curious these days, and loves to ask, "What is…?" whenever we use a word that she doesn’t know.

And here are some recent photos of the cheeky girl, with Yihao:

Bento post #114 – #117

My younger sister, who has just shifted to a house several doors away from me was telling me about how her son's teacher told her that he's a picky eater, that he sometimes doesn't take the food prepared by the kindy. And the kindy actually prepares quite scrumptious food, alternating between porridge, fried noodles, bread, etc. So I volunteered to pack food for him too, on days when I pack for Yiu Yiu.

So with the little extra motivation, last week I did a little better – packed four out of five days :-)

Fried rice and butterfly shaped guava


Hard boiled egg in the shape of a fish (can you tell that it's a fish from the photo? haha), meat floss bread roll and grapes


Fish fingers with grapes


Heart shaped cheesy sausage, meat floss bread roll and grapes


Yiu Yiu seems to be eating her bento better. Most days, she would actually finish at least half the food during her 15-min break time, and the rest at babysitter's house. That's a huge improvement from last year, when her bento box would come home almost untouched. If she continues eating this way, I'll be a very happy mum.

Bento post #108 – #113

Yiu Yiu started her 2nd year kindy on January 11, the second week of the year. The timing is rather odd coz she's now a senior…haha. The first week of school was only attended by newbies as the kindy needed extra teachers to help the new students familiarize themselves with the school.

Anyway, she's been schooling for three weeks now, and I've resumed packing food for her, and that means waking up at 6.20am daily – barely enough time for me to prepare the bentos, nurse Yan Yan and tandem pump, wake Yiu Yiu up and get her ready for school, before rushing out the door by 8am. On the days that I woke up late or was rushing, she'd just go to school with some boxed cereals or nothing at all.

Anyway, here' what's I prepared for her in the first two weeks.

Pan fried chicken drummet with banana muffin and guava

Penne with bolognese sauce and checkered apples

Chicken nuggets with potota wedges, and apples. I was late on this day so I just peeled the skin off the apple instead of carving out the checkered skin.

Pan fried chicken drummet (again) with guava

Chocolate flavoured mantou with meatballs and pears cut into the shape of butterfly

Grilled cheesy sausage wrapped in roti canai and watermelon

Yan Yan – 6th month update

When we visited the paediatrician early this month for her 5th month jabs, her vital stats were as follows: weight 7.2 kg, length 68.9 cm and head circumference 42 cm.

She hasn't mastered the skills for crawling yet but she's been getting herself around over the last few weeks by creeping like a caterpillar – from a position of being on all fours with her body parallel to the floor, she would move her hands forward (thus extending her body and lunging forward), before dragging her feet forward. When lying on her stomach, she can also push her body up with her arms into a semi-sitting position, though she can't sit just yet.

She still puts everything that she grabs into her mouth, so I'm limiting the toys that I leave around her, and try to keep them clean. She didn’t like the teething ring previously, coz she can't get a good grip of it and it keeps falling off. But since she's getting better at holding smaller things in her hands, she's quite happy gnawing on it now.

Emotionally, she's starting to show her preference for me compared to hubby. Even when hubby carries her, she needs me to be in her view. Several times, as I move from the living room to the kitchen, her eyes would be trained on me and as I moved out of her sight, she'd purse her lips, and start to cry. She used to be extremely well behaved in the car but has started to wail on our daily journey home. Sometimes, she'd quiet down when her che-che makes funny faces/noises to her but sometimes, nothing seems to work to calm her down. Once it got so bad that I had to stop my car mid-way and carried her out from the car to pacify her.

She had her first taste of solid several days before turning 6 months. We were having watermelon and she kept eyeing the fruit so we let her suck on a small piece.

I started her on organic rice cereal last Saturday and she loved it. She eagerly opened her mouth and would shout out loud when I drew the spoon away to take another scoop. So impatient…haha!!

It's yummy, mummy.

Do you want a bite, too?

She's still taking only one solid meal daily but I'll be asking the babysitter to increase to two feeds. She's still on full breastmilk, and it's getting difficult to nurse her now as the little busybody would unlatch and turn her head towards any noise.

She loves to babble, and can sometime babbles non-stop, and her che-che would say that she's practicing her voice :-) She's showing an extreme curiosity towards computer. Whenever I have the laptop on, or whenever her che-che watches DVD on the laptop, she would never fail to creep over and press the keypads, much to the annoyance of her che-che.

Madurodam

Since my group had about eight hours transit in Amsterdam on the way to Montreal, we made a quick trip to Madurodam in Den Haag (The Hague). It took us just 30-minutes by train to reach Den Haag, followed by a short tram ride to its main entrance. Madurodam is a tourist attraction, with miniature models on a 1:25 scale of typical Dutch buildings and famous Dutch landmarks from around the country.

Main entrance of Madurodam

Cheese market

Tulip garden

Open air concert

Schipol Airport, Amsterdam

The famous Erasmus Bridge (Erasmusburg) in Rotterdam

We made it back in good time to the airport, grabbed a quick lunch before heading to the terminal for our onwards flight to Montreal.