Cassie The Menace

Cass doesn't have her two sisters to annoy so I am now the victim. See what prank she pulled on me yesterday evening?

Gave me a total shock when I saw it 😱😵




And the rascal laughed like a hyena when she saw my disgusted face and commented that it's her best laugh this year.  She sculpted the 'poop' with a cardboard toilet roll holder soaked with water.

100% score on creativity and prank skill.

Cass : this is really funny mummy.  I am laughing so hard I can feel my bladder bursting and the stitches on my stomach exploding.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!  This is really the best laughter I've had this year.  You laughed too, right?  I made you laugh too, yay!!

And this morning, this rascal forced me to play hide and seek with her when she got up from  bed and sent me looking for her everywhere in the house!



Yesterday on our ride back to KL from KLIA, Cass mastered the art of solving one side of the 5x5 Rubik's Cube in 2 minutes.  Previously, she could solve two sides of the 3x3 Rubik's Cube in under 2 minutes.  Her goal now is to learn how to solve all the sides of a 4x4 Cube in under 1 minute, just like how Alycia does it.

Cassie the menace. Aged 9 years 8 months.

Cass Finally Learned How To Swallow Pills And Capsules

Cass has recently started to master the art of swallowing pills and capsules. That's a big achievement for her considering the bitter experiences she has had in the process of learning how to swallow pills. When I first purchased Izumio and Super Lutein primarily for her consumption last year in April 2015, we both went through a very rough time trying to get her to swallow Super Lutein.  She would store the capsule in her mouth and just couldn't bring herself to swallow it. The more tensed she got, the harder it was for her to swallow the capsule.  Moments later, she would spit it out, only to see that the capsule had half melted into a dark brown sticky paste. The all-natural dark brown paste contains 6 types of carotenoids, blackcurrant polyphenols, anthocyanin, vitamin E, B group vitamins, DHA and various other nutrients.  She didn't like the taste of it as it has fish oil and would stifle a puke.  She would have tears in her eyes trying hard to swallow the capsule but alas, the capsule would end up in the bin with her puking. We both got so frustrated that I stopped forcing her to swallow Super Lutein.  I gave her a break of over a year for her to get over her traumatic bitter pill experience.

Ever since Cass had a UTI attack in November 2015 and was given strong dosage of antibiotics via IV and oral, her immunity took a plunge. She would have a minor cold or flu every month on end. But she got well pretty fast too, thanks to Izumio. But we were both very frustrated that she kept getting bitten by the flu bugs every month.  It was so frustrating for her that she asked for Super Lutein as I have always been telling her that this supplement will strengthen her immune system. She wanted to try popping the small tear-drop like capsule again.

It was around July this year that Cass finally had the courage to try swallowing Super Lutein again. Before we started, I had a Eureka moment. I remembered how my mum used reverse psychology on the girls when they were younger to get them to drink water and milk by challenging them to compete with her to see who finished the drink first. I tried the same tactic on Cass.  This brat who is quite competitive in nature loved the challenge as she wanted to win me all the time!  By making pill-popping seem like a fun competition, the brat conquered her phobia of pill swallowing and voila, she finally swallowed her first Super Lutein without much fuss, and then the next and the rest they say is history. She now pops 2 capsules of Super Lutein a day. And would you believe it if I told you that she doesn't get colds and flu so often now? I shan't say more. As you know, Chinese folks are very 'pantang' (taboo) if a child is praised excessively. I kind of believe this taboo too.

However, the brat would only willingly swallow her Super Lutein only if I compete with her each time, which isn't a big deal to me. Most times, I fake losing to her :D   She gets the honor of winning the race and I have one less worry.  Life is so much more easier when your kids are healthy. This I am sure every parent out there would agree with me.


 

All About Cass

Although I own an online store selling clothes, I do not splurge on clothes for my girls and myself as and when I fancy, albeit most times I will be really tempted to do so.  This I have to give credit to my dad and mom on training me how to be frugal since young :)   Some of my suppliers dress their kids up in new clothes almost everyday.  They keep a piece of every apparel design for their kids before selling them.   I wonder if their kids have the chance to wear so many clothes.   At home, my kids don on old clothes, sometimes in rags like a hobo as they said rags are more comfortable to wear!

In fact, it is me who often ask my girls if they would like to have new clothes by showing them the photo of the apparel from my supplier's website. Most of the time, they will say "NAH, no thanks"

Just the other day, I asked Cass if she would like to have some of those pretty dinner dresses and this was her reply to me "it's OK. I am worried that if you keep buying me clothes, you will go BANKRUPT mummy.  You save the money ok!"

Bankrupt?  Can I even go bankrupt buying clothes? LOL!

Cass is pretty matured and logical in her thoughts. Sometimes she shocks me with how  well thought  her reasoning is.


After less than a year of lessons from a new swimming coach, Cass can now swim pretty well. She has finally gotten rid of her phobia of breathing in the water.




I bring her swimming 2-3 times a week. I would love for her to swim everyday but she has other  activities and tuition on other days.  Swimming can strengthen her muscles and studies have shown that daily swimming of 30 minutes can help to treat incontinence.  The only downside from swimming so often in the afternoon is that she now spots a permanent tan on her skin... the healthy looking kind of tan that is! ;)

Cass' Chinese Story-Telling Competition

Cass was chosen to take part in a Chinese story competition about 2 months back. Initially, she declined to take part in the competition, citing reasons that her Chinese is not good and lack of confidence to go up stage. However, after I encouraged her to take part in the competition and spoke to her teacher, she agreed to take part. Her teacher gave her a Chinese story book and asked her to memorize the book.

Days and weeks past and the story-telling competition gradually slipped my very occupied mind. I suddenly remembered about the story-telling competition just last week! I thought that we still have another month to practice. I asked Cass to check with her teacher again on the date of the competition. I started to panic when we were told that the story-telling competition is in  one and a half week's time, holy moly! There isn't enough time to go through the entire story book in just a week.  Hubs and I could not help her as we are yellow bananas.   I got the Mandarin tutor's help to guide Cass and she has been helping Cass 4 times a week.



It does not matter if Cass does not get into the semi-finals, though she really wants to. I just want her to have the exposure of reciting for a competition and going up the stage to present her story. I want her to overcome stage-fright and most of all, to be confident and competitive. Winning is secondary.

A Historic Week For Cass

I just realized that I have not updated this blog for 9 days!  Wow, that's how busy I have been for the past 9 days, with Cass especially as she just started Primary 1 a week ago.  I spent my first 3 days with her in school and on the 4th day, I followed the transporter to school in the afternoon to pick her up. I am so glad that we survived the week without any drama, albeit I fell sick (flu and scratchy throat resurfaced) as a result of lack of sleep and being brutally burnt by the scorching hot sun for 4 days while in school. I did mention before that I am allergic to the sun, didn't I?  :D

Last week was a historic week for Cass. There were many firsts for her.  Apart from the transition to primary school, she also sat on a school van for the first time and bought food from the canteen on her own for the first time (and bought junk food too, despite me reminding her repeatedly not to do so!). She gained her new found freedom and was really thrilled to be able to buy things on her own at the canteen.  On Saturday, her long awaited day came. She had been looking forward to her first piano class since 2 Saturdays ago.  Her teacher is a 19-year old law student.  I hope her interest will still be this strong many years down the road.





Cass' first pop piano lesson on 17 January 2015...





Last week also marked the week that Cass finally succeeded in learning how to skate on her roller skates shoes.  Her aunt SM gave her a pair of roller skates shoes when we were in Auckland but she did not know yet how to skate on it when we were in Auckland.  When we came back, she kept practising on her roller skates shoes. On New Year's Eve at our dinner with friends, she saw her friend skating on a roller skates shoes very gracefully. She observed intently and the next day, she practised again and voila, she finally got it!  Since then, she has been wearing her roller skates shoes out whenever we are out to the mall or restaurant. She can now skate effortlessly just like her friend. This was one of her happiest and most victorious moments!


Can you see  Cass' bulky roller skates shoes? My toes had been squashed by the weight of her on the shoes umpteem times!  So were her sisters! We are now terrified of her each time she wears this pair of shoes lol!




Cass at Old School @ Jaya One, PJ today, enjoying coconut ice cream.  Love the wall mural of this bas sekolah!!






Hari ini dalam Sejarah.... Cass at 6 years 9 months :D

Cassandra's Doodle

Cass loves drawing and 'writing'. She definitely has her daddy's artistic DNA running in her blood.

While eating lunch yesterday, she doodled this :


 

I am putting this picture in this blog for online storage before I bin it. She has too many drawings and I am already running out of space to keep them.

 Cass at 5 years 5 months

A Funny Little Story From Cass

My youngest SIL from Hawaii came back 2 days ago.  Today, as she was lying down on the bed with Cass, she asked Cass to tell her a story. So here goes the funny, short story from Cass...

"Once upon a time, there lived an ice-cream.... a talking ice-cream.  Sarah ate the ice-cream and the talking ice-cream ate up her kidneys..."   .... upon hearing this, Alycia, my sil and I broke out in a loud guffaw....

".... and then the ice cream ate up Sarah's bones and the ice-cream said "yummy"  and lived happily ever after"

I was amazed with how Cass can cook up such a witty and funny story without even stopping to think what she was going to say.  I can't wait for Cass to know how to read and write. I'll bet she'll write loads of funny stories and stories related to KIDNEYS!   For those of you who follow my blogs, you will know why Cass and I are so obsessed with kidneys.

Cassandra's Very First Concert

A week ago, my baby girl participated in her very first pre-school concert. It was an Alisan dance (a Taiwanese mountain dance). Watching her dance on stage made me emotional and teary-eyed. I seem to get very sentimental each time I see my daughters perform. I felt the same when I watched Sherilyn dance during her concert cum graduation from pre-school last year and during her ballet performances. I have never watched Alycia perform in any of her concerts during her pre-school years as I was too busy and preoccupied with Cass who had a very difficult and painful babyhood. Anyway, it's not late. I still have plenty of years ahead of attending my daughters' concerts and performances.

 Cass with her bestest friend, Sasha, who looks like a living doll due to her pint size...

 

Something funny happened just minutes before the 4YOs were to go up stage.  A student cried, which seemed to be really infectious and then another kid cried, and another and then like a chain reaction, about 10 of them were crying.   The girl next to Cass was crying for a good one hour and thank goodness she stopped short just moments before she went up stage.  And thank God the crying spell did not infect Cass, phew!!

 


Cass with her handsome classmate, Ryan

Cassandra's First Sports Day Event

I remember very vividly that Alycia attended her very first sports day event in pre school in June 2008. It was held on the day after Cassandra's full-moon party. Only the hubs and my dad attended Alycia's sports day, along with Sherilyn, as I had to care for a newborn baby. In the past, I had never attended any of Alycia's sports day event, pre-school concert and ballet presentation (I am ashamed!) and only attended one of Sherilyn's sports day event and pre-school concert as I was too pre-occupied with Cassandra's health issues since her birth. Ever since Cass recovered, I vowed that I have to try to attend all my daughters' school events to give them moral support, albeit I really hate to be exposed to the sun (those who know me well will know that I will literally melt in the sun!) and I find all the school speeches before any concert or competition so boring that I can doze off right away!

Cassandra attended her very first sports day event in pre school yesterday. Her friends and she had been practicing marching and practicing their respective class events very hard for the past 2 months. Cass was really excited yesterday and she darted off from bed immediately the minute I woke her up in the mornng (which is something that is very rare for this dilly dallier). Cass did pretty well in the marching and bean bag event for her class. The hubs, who is the ever sporting daddy, took part in the family event as usual. It was an eye opener for Cass and she was very proud that she received a trophy from her school. She has been telling everyone  "I won this GOLD in my sports day" LOL!!! We took many pictures at the sports day but I ain't going to post any pix here for my kids' safety as everyone was in the school uniform. And nope, my Facebook ain't going to have any pictures of my girls in their school uniform or in their school as well. Kidnap cases are too rampant these days and there are thousands of pyschotic paedophile out in the w.w.w. lurking around. So I better be safe than sorry.

Have a great week ahead everyone!

Cass At Work

Years ago, it was her che ches who used to help me with the sticking of docket plastic bags onto the Pos Laju parcel bags. Now that her che ches are always busy with school homework and tuition, I have trained her to take over this task, which is no easy job, especially for a 4-year old. One needs to have good hand and eye coordination and hand dexterity to handle this job well.  It's not easy becoz if you do not handle the sticky section (which is super sticky and flimsy too, thus making it difficult to hold the piece of sticker bag) of the docket plastic bag with care, the entire bag will be twisted or damaged.  But my baby girl could  carry out her job very well with almost 0% damages done, thus far! Good job Cassandra!

Cassandra's 2nd Day Of Pre-School

Today is my baby girl's 2nd day of attending pre-school. She is coping very well. This morning, she had to don on her PE attire to practice field marching. The kindy's annual sports day will be held in early May. Yep, I can't believe that my once frail and sickly baby girl will be doing marching and taking part in her school's sports event!

When I talked to her class teacher, she reported to me that Cassandra is coping very well and can follow everything that's being taught. I was really stunned when she showed me the current reading book that the 4YOs are being taught to read now. There were 5-6 lines of sentences on each page and I think that the level is for kids aged 6YOs at least. The teacher then pointed out to me the kids in Cass' class who could read that book. Gosh, I wonder if my baby girl will be able to cope, given that I hardly ever have the time to teach her how to read.

Something that I look forward to everyday - walking my baby girl to and back from school...

Finally She Did It!

This is something which I must pen down. It is Baby's achievement at 3.5 years old. Nope, it is nothing academic but it is something that we can be very proud of. It is a big achievement for her and for me for she can now poo poo in the great big white throne and no longer in her diaper! Super hooray for my baby girl! For years, she has been shunning the potty (both the small and big potty) and I was frigging worried how she will fare when she goes to pre-school next year. She would surely be the laughing stock of her classmates and teachers if she still poo pooed in her diaper. But thank God, my worries are unfounded. My baby girl has now conditioned and programed her body to poo poo at the same time everyday on the great big throne, just like an adult. She can now say good-bye to her chronic constipation problem too. My prayer to God to strengthen Baby's bladder continues...

My cutest model at Old And New Stuff For Sale.

Cassandra Writes And Draws

For the past few weeks, Baby has been writing and drawing. She can now recognize almost all the letters of the alphabet and numbers as well as write them. Whenever she writes a letter or number, she will proudly show me what she had written. I think it is a big mile stone for her since I did not do much to teach her, apart from letting her play with my iPad2 and laptop to learn them on her own.

Here, she has drawn a cat or was it a dog? Whatever it is, all her drawings of living things now look the same - with a roundish face, 2 eyes, nose, ears, hair and a big smiley face :D




Cassandra at 3years 5 months

Learning Numbers From Sudoku

Not that she can recognize all the numbers, but Baby likes to pour out her che che's Sudoku game and then slots the squares back one by one into the box. As she slots them back, I will ask her to find me a certain number. Fun way for this fella to learn her numbers. And oh yes, the stairs climbing method of learning numbers has proven to be very effective. At 3YO, she can now recognize the number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Why ends at 5? That's because we live on the 5th floor haha! Next time, we have to climb all the way up to the 10th floor and then walk down so that she recognizes the remaining numbers too. Plus it's a fun way of exercise for the girls and they love this style of flexing their limbs!

Jig Saw Puzzle Aficionado

My little cili padi is one very determined girl. When she sets her mind on something, she will complete it, no matter what it takes, even if it means forgoing her favorite things. She can even skip going out to complete her jig saw puzzle piece, skip her dinner and even going to bed, cracking her head to finish the last piece of the puzzle up to 11ish pm!

Good job baby girl. Mummy's very convinced you will be one very determined, disciplined and hopefully successful girl in future.

Solving a 100+ piece puzzle meant for 4yo and above. Here's she's skipping her lunch to finish off the last few pieces of the huge Fun Fare pic puzzle.

With help from her jie jie, she managed to complete the puzzle at last!

No More Spoon-Feeding

I have been spoon-feeding Cassandra her milk thrice a day ever since she was a year old. She will turn 3yo in April 2011. For those of you who have gone through the throes of spoon-feeding milk to your toddler, you will know that it ain't an easy task. It takes lots of patience and time and for me, I need the tellie to distract her too! That's one of the cons of breastfeeding your baby direct from your boops without the use of a bottle. Most babies who are exclusively directly breastfed will reject the bottle.

I tried to introduce the straw to Cassandra about a year ago but she didn't like it. It's only recently that she got attracted to the straw. Now, I no longer need to painstakingly spoon-feed her milk 3x/day and 1x Nutrifresh-Refresh daily. Just give her the straw and she will happily suck all the contents and of course with some blowing and playing with the straw but that's A OK, as long as I don't need to spoon feed her. Keeping my fingers crossed that the novelty of the straw will not wear off on her!!

Potty Training Baby

I started to potty train Baby 3 days ago. The first day went quite smoothly, though she kept going to the potty every 5 minutes! The potty is placed conveniently in the living room for her to wee wee anytime she wants haha! The second and third day, she kept having small accidents. She would wet her panties throughout the day but as soon as she wet her panty, she would tell me "mummy I shee shee". I hope tomorrow onwards she will have a better control of her bladder and will have fewer accidents.

Hello Daddy

Each time the house phone or my mobile phone rings, rascal #1 and #2 will rush to pick up the phone, as if competing with each other to see who gets the phone first. Now the 2 jie jies have a rival and the tiniest rascal always get to answer the phone. This is what Baby normally says when she answers the phone "Halo.... ar ar, halo.... ar ar" Why "ar ar"? That's because we adults always say that whenever we answer the phone, like saying "Hello, yes yes" (in response to saying that it's me on the phone) but we say "Hello ar ar" in Cantonese or Mandarin hahahah!

Yesterday Baby grabbed my mobile phone when I had forgotten to put it up on the shelve and she pretended to key in some numbers and then went "halo daddy, ar ar...." LOL!!

Another Sherilyn In The Making

My sweetie-pie is speaking her mind out loud and clear now. Yesterday after feeding her Nutrifresh + Refresh + Scott's Emulsion in front of the TV (she would only obediently open her mouth and swallow her formula milk + supplements if she's put in front of the tellie), I wanted to turn off the VCD player (playing her favorite Barney). She ran to the TV and said this ""I wan see first, go away mummy" and pushed my hands away! At only 22 months+, this litttle rascal is really vocal and I can see that she is another Sherilyn in the making!

Tough Cookie

I must say once again that Baby is indeed a tough cookie. All the pain that she had endured the past 14 months of her life had moulded her into one very tough cookie. The other day, her thumb got pinched by the buckle of her booster seat. I know it's darn painful coz my finger got pinched many times by the buckle of the seat. But Baby did not cry a wee bit, though she did flinch and cringe in pain. When I took a look at her hand, I was shocked to see blood everywhere. The skin of her lower thumb was wedged off by the buckle of the booster seat, yet my tough cookie didn't cry!

Another thing I want to put in record is that Baby's speech is developing very well. She is now very chatty and parrots everything that we say. Today, rascal #2 drew a cat on her doodle and Baby said this to her jie jie "good job jie jie!" Good job to you my baby girl!