Creative Mind

Alycia is pretty creative in her art, just like daddy. Daddy is one very creative guy who has very good drawing skills. Tssk, tssk.... this is one of his qualities that I was attracted to 19 years ago.... hehe... Anyway, here's what Alycia created with her hairclips and a piece of paper whilst I was tying her hair into a bun on Saturday for her mock-up ballet exam:



After creating this, Alycia said "mummy, look, this is a bunny" and I went "wow, this really looks like a bunny!"





She's creative, isn't she?

Our Sunday

After church today, we went to Jaya 33, PJ for lunch. We wanted to have dim sum at the Oriental Chinese Restaurant but the queue was horrendously long! Talk about economic downturn and recession but many people are still eating at nice restaurants! We didn't want to wait, so we went downstairs to Nagomi Shabu-Shabu Japanese restaurant. This is what we ate:



Shabu-Shabu (Japanese steamboat). We ordered 2 sets of shabu-shabu - 1 chicken and 1 beef.
This restaurant claims that the broth and dipping sauces for the shabu-shabu are free from additives, flavorings and artificial coloring.

Alycia shared her chicken terriyaki bento with kakak. Check out the steam from the hot pot of shabu-shabu!

Chinese cabbage, tofu, fresh oyster mushrooms, radish and carrots for the pot of shabu-shabu.
Hubby also ordered a sushi set, maki and California rolls.


Raw chicken balls and super thinly sliced chicken meat with egg yolk.

My bowl of shabu-shabu with fresh oyster mushrooms, lots of Chinese cabbage, chicken balls, very thinly sliced chicken and beef. I love the broth and the tasty dipping sauces.

Verdict : price reasonable, very clean and comfortable restaurant, tasty food, will definitely patronize again.

Another Solution To My Photo Upload Woes

I just discovered another solution for my photo upload woes in my Blogspot blog. Remember my previous post where I said that my free photo upload space of 1GB is already maxed out and I need to purchase the space from Picassa Web Album? Well, I can go to Flickr and upload my pix there. I've forgotten all about my Flickr account. I can even link my blogs to my Flickr account and upload pix as well as blog from Flickr without having to log in to my blog! I've spent my afternoon trying to do it and have successfully uploaded and made a blog post from my Flickr account. However, the blog post needed some adjustments to the codes and I have yet to find the time to do it. You may want to try blogging and uploading your pix from Flickr too to save the free space in your blogspot blog!

BTW, I'm not that smart. Credit should go to my sifu, the super blogger who earns big bucks from her blogs. You'll flip to find out how many blogs this lady has!

I May Have OCD

Do you know that apart from being a health freak, I am also a clean freak? My need for being super clean is so great that I think I am suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)! Despite having a maid, I still wash my own bathroom and I even mop the kitchen floor whenever I see oil stains, food or dirt on the floor! This is just one example of my quirks and I have lots more! I’m crazy huh? I think perhaps I need therapy to rid myself of this OCD lol! I wonder if there is a center like a drug rehab for people with such a mental disorder like mine.

Photo Upload Problem Solved

First I deleted some pictures from my blogspot blog. Though deleted, I was unable to upload new pix immediately as it will take up to 24 hours for the pictures to be deleted from the system and from my Picassa Web Album.

I also went to my Picassa Web Album to check what pix I could delete. I was really astonished when I found out that I have over 3,000 pix in my 2-year old blog! I then tried to delete a picture to see if the picture would still be in my blog. Of course not! If you want to delete any picture in your Picassa Album, you will also lose that picture in your blogspot blog.

After an hour or so, I finally managed to upload pix in my blog. But this is only a TEMPORARY solution. If I want to continue uploading pictures in my blogspot blog for the months and years to come, I can't be using free stuff anymore. My free image upload space of 1GB is maxed out. I now have to dip into my pocket to pay for more space in my Picassa Web Album. Here are the charges:

10GB - USD20 per year
40GB - USD75 per year
150GB - USD250 per year
400GB - USD500 per year

I have opted for the 10GB per year plan.

Unable To Upload Pix In My Blogspot Blog

Darn it, I have been unable to upload pix from my blogspot since a few hours ago. Each time I tried uploading pix, I get a message stating that I have exceeded my free total photo upload limit in my Blogger account. Fyi, images and photos that are uploaded through Blogger get stored in our Picasa Web Albums, which are part of our Google Account. The number of images we can upload is therefore dependent on the amount of space we are using on Picasa Web Albums. I now have to purchase more storage space so that I can continue uploading pix in my blogspot. Eeeessshhhh, this is really frustrating!

When My Sweetiepie Wakes Up

This is what happens when my sweetiepie gets up from her nap:




First she cries to get attention....



Then she whines a little and tries to open her eyes wide... while feeling a tad crabby and blur....



Then she yaaaaawns...



After a few minutes, she regains equanimity and everything surrounding her... and realizes that mummy is still there... and starts playing with her toys. Most times, she would want me to carry her out of the playpen. Offering her my boops is the best way to satisfy her and make her one very happy and contented baby!

Our Saturday

Check out what Alycia and Sherilyn are up to here.

Organix Organic Biscuits For Toddlers

That's one of my sweetiepie's favorite biscuits :

My mil bought a few boxes from Hong Kong recently coz Sherilyn had been bugging her for animal biscuits. Even I like these biscuits as they are sugar-free, made of whole grains and taste good too. This brand of biscuits can be bought from the pharmacy at Jaya Jusco @ Mid Valley Megamall and certain organic shops.

My sweetiepie likes them so much that she would always thrust the whole biscuit into her mouth. She has to be watched really closely when we give her biscuits coz she can go wild and really greedy when she has her favorite food in her hands.

Sherilyn My Energizer Bunny

I wonder where my princess wannabe gets her unbounded energy from. She hardly ever gets sleepy or tired. I know I should be very happy as this only means that she's in the pink of health. But when she doesn't want to take her afternoon nap everyday, she really gets on my nerve for she will be gallivanting the house, disturbing and distracting me, climbing up and down the couch and window grills, among others. The other afternoon, I was shocked when I opened the girls' bedroom door to find a 'monkey' on top of the head board of Alycia's bed with Alycia sleeping beneath, on the bed! Sherilyn had climbed up the head board and attempted to hang from the air conditioner unit!! I almost fainted hahaha.....

On a typical afternoon, you can expect to see this :




Sherilyn on the couch at 5pm, with her energy level still at the peak and refusing to nap..... and taken over the cane so that I can't whack her!!

Check out my sweetiepie... she's having a whale of her time trying to walk.

Baby C At Hilton Sentral

That's my sweetiepie on the super king-sized bed of our bedroom when we stayed at Hilton Sentral Hotel 2 weeks ago.

Sweet smile of freedom crawling on the huge and cold bed with clean and crisp white sheets....








But when daddy put her into the playpen, she went "boo hoo hoo..... bring me ooooooutttt meh meh"



And guess where daddy put her when she cried incessantly? Daddy cushioned the long bath tub with pillows and placed her inside the bath tub! Boy, I tell you, she was squealing away inside the bath tub! Didn't snap pix of her in the pillows-filled bath tub as I was on the throne ;)

More Gifts From Hong Kong Disneyland

These are some of the gifts that Alycia and Sherilyn received from their koo mar during their recent trip to Hong Kong Disneyland:


Princess math flash cards,



Marie The Cat writing pad each for Alycia and Sherilyn



Mickey Mouse Clubhouse remote control car,



More stickers, a pack of card game,


Mickey Mouse pens.

Alycia and Sherilyn are really lucky hor? I wish I too had a koo mar who would shower me generously with gifts all the time!

My Maid Dropped My Birthday Cake On The Car Floor!

Hubby got me this blueberry cheese birthday cake from PJ Hilton when we went to Genji Japanese Restaurant for lunch yesterday. After lunch, we stopped by a nearby mini mart to shop for groceries. Just as my maid was about to alight from the car, she dropped the cake on the car floor.... aiyoh!! I'd not even seen the cake yet and that lady dropped it and we all heard a loud 'thud' sound. My hubby was fuming mad. She's been making far too many mistakes lately and always infuriating us with her disobedience. He hurriedly opened the box containing the cake only to find that most of the fruits and chocolate decor on the cake had fallen off the cake onto the box. One side of the cake got stuck to the box o_O! My hubby quickly separated the cake from the box and quickly tried to salvage the cake. Luckily the cake wasn't smashed but the wordings on the piece of white chocolate had smeared completely. When we got home, hubby spent another 15 minutes fixing the cake and reattached all the chocolate pieces to the sides of the cake and tried to 'straighten' the cake, haiz.....



My disfigured blueberry cheese birthday cake. And don't be fooled, I'm not 30 years old. I'm much older than that. Those candles were there just for Alycia and Sherilyn to blow!

Baby C Loves Bread

Baby C is just like me, a min pau por (bread lover). If I allow her to choose between biscuits and bread, she will definitely take the latter. Sherilyn is also another bread lover while Alycia is a fan thoong (rice lover). When we had lunch at the Sudu Coffee House @ Hilton Sentral Hotel last Sunday, we kept Baby C still with the buns and Meiji plain crackers (which she did not really eat as the crackers were a tad too hard for my toothless baby) from the buffet counter. She chomped down 1 medium size plain bun on her own!



Baby C will go crazily greedy if I allow her to hold a bun or a slice of bread for she will chuck everything into her mouth and then choke on them!

Check out the video of Baby C calling "cheh cheh" HERE.

Simple High Protein High Fibre Dinner

When Alycia and Sherilyn were in Hong Kong last week, I had very simple meals everyday, lunch and dinner. For lunch, I simply tar pau lunch back when I went jogging in the morning or have toasts. For dinner, I either steam or fry a fish and stir-fried a veggie. But when the girls are around, I have to cook according to what they like. It's never easy coz Sherilyn would ALWAYS want noodles and Alycia wants rice with chicken.

This is one of my dinners when the 2 older girls were away last week :

Homemade pork chop and stir-fried por choy veggie, minus the rice. I never eat rice. Following high-protein, low-carb diet to stay slim mah! I made pork chops enough for 2 meals and ate them for 2 days straight so that I didn't have to cook the next day!

Gurney Drive @ Gardens, Mid Valley

We had lunch at Gurney Drive Restaurant @ Gardens, Mid Valley the other day. Gurney Drive offers local hawker delicacies from Penang at almost double or triple the price of the ones sold at hawker stalls. What you get in return for the pricey food are a very clean and comfortable restaurant with a nice view of KL. But the taste of the food? I was really disappointed with not only the taste of almost everything that we ordered. I was also mad that the bak kut teh that I had ordered never arrived. When I asked the waiter, he said he had forgotten to take down our order o_o! As we had already spent over an hour at the restaurant and were disappointed with the food, we left the restaurant and I later had a double cheese burger from McD which I likey!


Kangkong with sotong - run-of-the-mill, nothing to shout about. I prefer the ones sold at hawker centers.

Nasi lemak - satisfactory.

Satay - satisfactory taste. But that's not really what we ordered. The hubs ordered half a dozen of beef satay and half a dozen of chicken satay but only 3 sticks of each variety came!


Popiah - nothing to shout about. The popiah sold at the pasar malam at Taman Desa tastes much better.




Char koay teow - the one served at Little Penang Cafe at Mid Valley Megamall tastes better.

I think it will be our second and our last visit to Gurney Drive @ Gardens. The next time we will go to the actual Gurney Drive in Penang!

Baby C Keeps Talking

Baby C loves books. Ever since I dug out one of Alycia's first books (which is a hard cover tiny book on fruits and vegetables) last week and gave it to her, she has been flipping and 'reading' the book with much interest. Today Baby C tried to say the word strawberry when I read to her. She kept saying "ta bear yee" and the next moment she said "bear yee". She also said "pear" and "papa" (papaya). She could also point to her biscuits and say "ket". I hope my sweetiepie will start to talk in no time and can join her 2 doting cheh chehs in their conversation!

Baby C trying to talk on the phone.


My sweetiepie's favorite item- the phone.

Disney Stickers

Here are some of the stickers that Alycia and Sherilyn got from their recent trip to Hong Kong Disneyland:














You'll be amazed to see their collection of stickers. The stickers that I had collected all my life as a young girl are no where near their collection. I would have gone crazy over these stickers 20-30 years ago, though I have to admit that I still love stickers :S

Blessed With A Youthful Look

When I was at the gym of our condo a few months back, a man in his fifties who was working out on the treadmill next to mine struck a conversation with me. When he asked me if I was still studying and staying with my parents at the condo, I wanted to burst out laughing! When I told him that I had 3 kids, the man was in total disbelieve. He went “What? You have 3 kids? No joke? If you didn’t tell me, I thought you are still a student!” I tell you, this man’s remarks really made my day, woo hoo! Thanks to my parents’ ‘young-looking genes', many people have been commenting that I look very young and can even pass off as a student, definitely no where near a woman who is in her mid thirties. This is one of the great gifts God has given me and I am thankful that I don’t need botox or the best HGH to help me look youthful.

Alycia's Sudden Love For Math

Alycia astonished me yesterday when my daughter who didn't seem to have interest in Math previously asked me to practise doing equations with her. Ever since she mastered the skill of doing mental addition about 2 months back, she's been very proud of her achievement. But yesterday, I don't know what piqued her sudden interest in Math as she kept asking me to set equations for her. First I set some additions for her, then some subtractions. She's still quite confused with her subtraction though. Sometimes she would also get confused with the plus and minus sign.

I put the bigger number in my head, then show 3 fingers... so ten plus three is..... ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen!



Busy doing her additions.



Today she asked me for more equations! Woohoo.... whenever I hear Alycia asking me to do Math with her, I tell you, that's like music to my ears! And she's getting better and better each day.