Cooped Up In The Hospital For 1 Whole Week

I keep wondering how I am going to spend my days in the hospital when Baby C goes in for a surgery next week. It’s not just a day or two but one whole week. I will be cooped up in the hospital room for 7 long days! OMG, I know I will be bored to death. I hope I will be able to leave the hospital for a couple of hours on one of those days next week to go shopping at the nearby shopping malls to chill out and at the same time shop for some clothes or perhaps some women's shoes. I hope hubby will be able to handle Baby C in the hospital with the help of my maid.

Bring Me Out Or I'll Puke Mummy!

This is my naughty sweetie-pie sticking her fingers into her mouth to threaten mummy to bring her out of the playpen. Each time she puts her hand into her mouth, she would almost puke and on several occasions, she actually puked inside the playpen. My cheeky sweetie-pie is exactly like Sherilyn cheh cheh who was this cunning when she was Baby C's age. She always won the game coz I would be so terrified of her puking and messing up the playpen that I would always bring her out of it each time she threatened me with this ploy *shake head*

Look at me mummy, bring me out k.....


If not, hehe.... I will put all my fingers in and puke inside, hehe....

Spoon-Feeding Baby C With Formula Milk

In order to jack up Baby C's weight so that she's one healthy baby with an average weight by the time she goes in for a surgery in a week's time, I have started to feed Baby C formula milk powder. I started to supplement her breast milk feeding with formula milk powder about a week ago (amount of breast milk still unchanged) and I must say it's a very, very tedious and stressful process. My sweetie-pie would struggle, arch her back and whine each time I force feed her with formula milk powder. She was on Enfagrow A+ and our pediatric surgeon advised us to feed her with Pediasure to boost her weight increase at a more rapid rate. She could only drink 2 - 3 ounces each time (which seemed like forever for her to finish) and she would drink it twice a day.

I first tried to feed her with an Avent milk bottle but this fler kept playing and pushing the teat with her tongue, whilst giggling away! Next, I gave her a straw but this fler kept blowing bubbles with the straw and blew out the milk all over me and on the floor. The only way to make her drink her formula now is by spoon-feeding her... drop by drop.... and gawd, I tell you, I feel like crying and spanking her each time I feed her... coz she would spill her milk and it's messy and sticky, she would struggle and I would sweat as if I'd just completed a 3km run. For night time feeding, I even have to switch on the air-cond in the living room and sit right in front of the air-cond! And I have to sit her on my lap right in front of the TV while talking and singing to her so that I can better manage her coz if I put her on a high-chair or on the floor, this fler will move her head and move a lot to avoid the spoon.

I feel like giving up on formula. I think my poor sweetie-pie must be feeling so stuffed everyday and wondering why mummy is stuffing her with food and formula everyday. She has even been throwing up for the past few days as a result of over-feeding. Last night while nursing her to sleep, she jumped up all of a sudden, cried and puked all her milk out. She must be too full and I think she has a very shallow and small tummy, just like Sherilyn. Sherilyn used to puke a lot too when she was younger.

Tell me, should I just give up on formula milk powder for Baby C? It's really very stressful for me and stressful for my baby.

Barb, I salute you. I really don't know how you spoon-fed Ashley with milk for so many years!

Ocean-Green Seafood Restaurant, Penang

When we were in Penang recently, hubby's friend who is a Penangnite recommended to us Ocean-Green Seafood Restaurant for good seafood. These are the dishes that we ate:

The restaurant's signature dish - baked stuffed crab with cheese.


' Pak cheok har' - steamed prawns



Spinach in superior soup with garlic, century eggs and scallops.

'Hoe chean' (fresh oyster omelette).


Steamed cod fish. We ordered this dish so that Baby C could have it for her dinner.


Deep fried spring rolls with sweetened Lea & Perrin sauce and fresh cut chillies as dip.


2 'koe hai' (female crabs with roe) steamed with wine.


Steamed egg with no salt and seasoning, just for Baby C.

Baby C enjoyed her dinner of cod fish, steamed egg and spinach. She could finish her bowl of food as she was deprieved of a proper meal the whole day.
See how 'blur' she looked here, as she had just woken up from her nap. When she saw us eating crabs, she too wanted to have her share of the crab! She also had sips of our coconut water and fresh lime juice (sugar-free).

BTW, total bill amounted to around RM194.

Ocean-Green Seafood Restaurant is located at :
c/o Paramount Hotel
48F Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah
10050 Penang
Tel : 04-226 2681, 04-227 4530, 04-227 3649

A Long Stroll Along Gurney Drive

Since we could not request for an extended check-out time on Friday, hubby and I decided to while away our time at Gurney Plaza. We wanted to take a cab there but taxi operators in Penang charge exorbitant fees. We were slaughtered 3 times there. For a drive that lasted less than 5 minutes, we were charged between RM10-RM12! So we walked from Northam Suites where we stayed to Gurney Plaza, which took us about 25 minutes. It was a long walk and thankfully it was really breezy and not too hot. But when we finally reached Gurney Plaza, we were both really sweaty and hot. I quickly did some shopping and bought some clothes while hubby took over Baby C. He had cakes and juice at a nice little English-like eatery that sells cakes and tea, served in dainty and pretty plates and cups.


At Gurney Drive. The weather was really fine and it was really breezy that afternoon. We could walk quite comfortably along the beachfront at 3pm and smell the not-so-fresh ocean breeze.

Back From Penang

I am back from Penang.... and I am terribly exhausted and sleepy. I didn't get a good night's sleep last night as the darn pillows in the hotel were terribly soft and really bad for breastfeeding. I can only sleep soundly with a firm neck-support concave pillow and just hate soft pillows that don't support the neck. We did a LOT of walking in Penang and also at the airport. But it was quite a fruitful trip and felt more like a short holiday! Will update my blogs tomorrow. I'd just put Baby C to sleep and dozed off myself. I pulled myself up from bed to check my emails and my eyes can't seem to open now. I really have to hit the sack now coz my mind is blank now. Good night everyone!

Short Blog Break

I'll be on a 1 to 2-day blog break starting from today. Hubby and I will be bringing Baby C to a private hospital in Penang to consult our new pediatric surgeon. Our flight to Penang will be in 2 hours' time. This will be Baby C's first time on board the aeroplane and I hope she won't fuss. She's a tad cranky since yesterday evening and has been refusing to eat, except for mummy's milkie. Will update my blog once I'm back tomorrow evening. Have a great day everyone!

Cheeky Baby C

My sweetie-pie is becoming more and more like Sherilyn cheh cheh by the days, character-wise. When Sherilyn was Baby C's age, i.e. at 12 months, she would always put her hand into her mouth to make herself puke whenever she wanted to get out from the playpen to play on the floor. Sherilyn knew that if she cried or screamed, we would not bring her out but if she puked or almost wanted to puke, mummy would frantically run to her aid and carry her out of the playpen instantly. It was like a game and she always won! This is happening to Baby C now. Each time she wanted my attention or wanted to get out from her playpen, she would first scream to get my attention, then when my eyes were on her, she would deliberately put her hand into her mouth, make herself choke and puke!! See the striking cunningness!

When Sherilyn was around 12 months up until she was 2+ years old, she could sense it on most mornings when I wanted to leave the room to go jogging. She would then wake up and refuse to go back to bed and would refuse anyone to carry her but me. I would then strap her onto the stroller and brought her along for jogging. The same thing is happening to Baby C now.




I just hope this cute sweetie-pie won't transform into a brat, who drives me up the wall everyday with her whims and fancies, whining and temper tantrums, just like #2.

Mesothelioma Cancer

Have you heard of the disease Mesothelioma? It’s a rare and serious form of cancer in which cancerous cells are found in the mesothelium, a protective sac that covers most of the body's internal organs. The majority of mesothelioma patients have worked on jobs where they had inhaled asbestos particles. If you know of anyone who is suffering from mesothelioma, please let them know that they can get answers pertaining to mesothelioma from the Mesothelioma lawyers and will be guided accordingly.

Flash Cards Session In Pre-School

This is a back-dated post.




Alycia and Sherilyn's pre-school has since January this year rescheduled their school hours, beginning at 8:15am and dismissing at 11:45am. There is now a 15-minute flash cards session everyday. Now, Alycia and Sherilyn can recognize many words and I think this is really a good move by the pre-school. The teacher will motivate the students by putting a cute cartoon stamp/chop behind the card if they can recognize the words or Chinese character.

I Like Alycia Cheh Cheh's Stickers Best

Look meh meh (mummy), I can stand on my own now....




...yayyyyy...., now I'm going to walk round the house and play with Alycia and Sherilyn cheh cheh's toys...




... and I like Alycia's cheh cheh's stickers best....

Purple Cauliflower

When I was shopping for groceries at Jaya Grocer the other day, I saw a lovely head of purple cauliflower. I am one who is easily attracted to veggie that are brightly colored. And since it's quite rare to see purple cauliflower around, I told the lady manning the veggie section that I'd like to buy half the purple cauliflower and asked her to cut the cauliflower into half. I wanted to use the cauliflower to cook Baby C's porridge.

When I came home and unwrapped the plastic cling wrap on the purple cauliflower, I saw black dots all over the head of the cauliflower like this:


The black dots looked like mould and was found on the entire head of the cauliflower.



I Iwanted to throw it away as there's no way I was going to feed my baby with it but my mil said that the black dots can be cut off from the cauliflower.



And so my mil stir-fried the purple cauliflower with some chicken breast.... which tasted good, though the purple cauliflower has a tinge of bitterness in it. We also had red spinach for dinner, which made our dinner quite a colorful one.

Weather Is Freaking Hot

The weather has been freeeeeaking hot for the past 3 days. It's so hot that I am having prickly itch all over my body, especially on my face and head. The skin under my boops is also red and sore, as a result of the friction between my sports bra and skin plus the terrible sweat, after my work-out session in the morning. I tell you my skin would sting when sweat touches it, as if it were grazed by a stone. I'm one who really can't stand the heat and the swealtering weather is making me sweat profusely, so profusely that I showered 4 times yesterday! Today, I've already showered three times.... and I'm feeling the itch all over my body again, aaargh...

Wendy's Fast Food Restaurant @ Jaya 1 PJ

We've been talking about going to Wendy's Fast Food Restaurant for a long time each time we have lunch at Jaya One PJ. Hubby kept telling us that the food at Wendy's is really good. Last night, daddy promised Alycia and Sherilyn that he will bring them to Wendy's for lunch after church today. And so Wendy's it was that we went to today and here's what we had:

1/4 pound double cheese burger. I heard that Wendy's is the only fast-food restaurant that serves square-shaped burgers.

Verdict : very yummy. Love the burger and the bun. The bun is really soft and fluffier than other buns and have something that tasted like toasted corn on top, which added flavor to the bun.


I had a Caesar's garden salad with grilled chicken.

Verdict : Love the grilled chicken. Very juicy, tender and flavorful. The plate of salad was quite large and I couldn't finish it... so we packed it back home.


Baked potato with skin. This is something quite unique and something you can't find at other fast-food restaurants. The baked potato comes with 3 different kinds of topping. The one we had was a very cheesy topping which I loved! A very, very fattening dish!

Verdict : Very yummy. I noticed that almost everyone at the restaurant ordered a baked potato dish. Next time, I have to try the one with broccoli and cheese topping.



This is called Chillies. It's made of minced beef with baked beans and kidney beans. Goes very well with my Caesar's Salad.

Verdict : Lip-smacking tasty! Will definitely order this again.



Alycia enjoying her meal of nuggets and french fries. She also chomped down 1 whole fried chicken drumstick, which was supposed to be mine!

Will definitely visit Wendy's again but I told the hubs that next time, we have to take-away. I didn't quite enjoy my meal coz you know how squeezy the space is and how small the tables are at fast-food restaurants.... definitely not baby-friendly. With Sherilyn my Miss Whiny whinning away and Baby C fussing away, I was steeeressssed. It's difficult to enjoy my meal when I have to feed Baby C and eat at the same time, on a small table with flimsy plastic cutlery.... and have Miss Whiny buzzing away like a mozzie next to me lol! Baby C had to be carried by my maid, whilst I fed her.

I also hated the plastic disposable cutlery and there weren't any plates or bowls to eat our food.

Would rate the food 8/10 and price is also very reasonable. Hubby paid RM83+ for 2 pieces of fried chicken, 3 burgers, a salad, 2 kids' meals, 1 cup of Chillies, 1 baked potato, 3 bottles of mineral water and 1 Oreo Twist Ice-cream.

Click here to read my review of Wendy's Oreo Twist Ice-cream.

Lola My Kitchen Helper

For someone who has sensitive skin and eczema, I can never touch dishwashing liquid. That's the reason why I only buy those that are gentle on hands and those that cost a little more. Though I have a maid, I still wash some of the dishes myself... can't leave everything to my maid. Moreover my maid often does slip-shod jobs and I always find food and soap residue on the bowls, plates and cups. Instead of nagging her everyday to wash thoroughly, I wash my kids' eating utensils myself.... with a dishwasher that comes with a handle. The first one that I had was a gift for me from my sil several years ago. She bought it from Europe. It's really handy and my hands don't have to be in contact with dishwashing liquid anymore. Yesterday I bought another one, called Lola :

Lola comes with a soap dispenser on the handle and can sit neatly at the corner of the counter top, above the sink...




You can also get re-fills for the sponge for Lola.

Alycia And Sherilyn's Collection of Stickers

Alycia and Sherilyn have heaps of stickers. They will surely bug daddy to buy them stickers at least once a week. Some were bought from the pasar malam and some from book stores. Apart from daddy, koo mar from Hong Kong always sends them stickers from Disneyland too. Their stickers were collected over a period of 3 years and they are everywhere in the house - their drawers, the floor, in their school bags, under the bed, on my bed, on their clothes, on their face and body, on the house phone, on the TV console and just about everywhere... which makes my eye sore! Though I've been drumming into their heads that they have to keep their stickers in one place, kids being kids, one minute what you tell them goes into their head and the next, it's out their ears again.

The other day an idea struck me. I fished out a brand new clear folder from the cupboard and told Alycia that all her stickers are to be placed inside the plastic sheets of the folder. I told her that this folder will hold her collection of stickers and that she has to take good care of them for a very, very long time... just like mummy who has kept her stickers for more than 2 decades and are still around till today! She was really happy that finally she can have a folder for herself for all her stickers. We spent over an hour inserting her stickers into the plastic sheets of the folder and this is her Sticker Collection Folder:


The cover of the sticker folder...



Some of her collection of stickers...



... more stickers...



... and more stickers....



See how thick the folder is. It's bursting with stickers and very soon, I'll need another folder to keep her stash of stickers.

Another Solution To My Maxed Out Photo Storage In Blogger/Picasa Web Album

This morning as I was jogging, an idea struck me. I was trying hard to find alternative ways of uploading my pix without having to pay companies like Picasa Web Album and Flickr to upgrade my storage space. If you've been following my blog, you would have read that I have already maxed out the free storage space of 1GB allocated to me by Blogger / Picassa Web Album. I then went to Flickr but after happily uploading pix there for just a week, I found out that I am only entitled to 200 pix (I already have 189 pix in that account, which means I only have 11 more to upload) and thereafter, I have to upgrade to Pro account, which means having to dig into my pocket.

So I found a solution. I created another Gmail account and created another blog under Blogspot this morning, in under 15 minutes. This means I now have another 1GB of photo storage space... without having to fork out any money. It took me 2 years to utilize the 1GB of photo storage space allocated to me. Hopefully, this extra 1GB for my new blog can last me another 2 years. Well, if it takes me earlier to exhaust all the space, I will create another Gmail account and another blog under Blogspot! Now, I can save more than USD20 a year on photo storage space, hehe.....

Whether I have time to maintain my new blog in Blogspot...., now, there's another story. Let me think about what I'm going to write in that new blog when I work-out tomorrow morning. I tell you, I have lots of ideas spewing out from my brain each time I work-out in the morning.... thanks to the feel-good hormones endorphins, hehe....

Continue Breast-feeding Till 2 Years Old?

When we were at our pediatric nephrologist's clinic today, I asked our doctor if I should wean Baby C off breast milk, to which her reply was that I should NOT. She said that breast milk is still the best for Baby C. Along with other food that's high in protein like chicken, fish, eggs, green veggie, etc., breast milk should preferably be continued until she's 2 years old. If however I'd like to introduce formula, I can still do so but I should have mixed-feeding (breast-feeding + formula) until my sweetie-pie is 2 years old. Our doctor is all for breast-feeding. I'm still not decided if I should really continue breast-feeding Baby C for another year. If I don't fall sick so easily and so frequently, I don't really mind. With my recent frequent bouts of colds, flus and throat infections, I'm really suspecting that Baby C is sucking me dry and withered with very little nutrients left in my body, thus my compromised immune system. I'll see how things are after her impending surgery.

BTW, I'm glad that Baby C's weight has finally breached the 8kg mark, yay!! I now wonder when her weight will ever touch the 10kg mark. With a surgery not far away, I am hoping and praying that her weight won't drop after the surgery.

Alycia And Sherilyn Finally Weaned Off The Milk Bottle

Surprise eh when you read the name Alycia? Drinking milk from a bottle at age 5? I'd tried to wean Alycia off the milk bottle for over a year but she kept telling me that the milk tasted funny whenever she drank it from a cup! It's all in the mind right?

One day last month, I asked her this question : "Alycia, are you still going to drink from the milk bottle next year? Next year you'll be in Standard 1 you know? Your friends will surely laugh at you if they know that you're still drinking from the bottle." Alycia gave me a grin and shook her head to a no. A few days later, when I was going through the kitchen cabinet, I found a new water tumbler that koo mar bought for her from Hong Kong Disneyland last year. An idea struck me. I asked Alycia if she wanted to drink her milk from the new cute Mickey Mouse water tumbler and to my surprise, she said 'YES'. Yes, she has finally agreed to drink from a cup... and she did not tell me that the milk tasted wierd when she drank it from the water tumbler!

Hooray, it's been almost 2 weeks since she and Sherilyn (a copy-cat who follows everything that her cheh cheh does... and also weaned herself from the bottle!) drank from the cup... and I can now say good-bye to their Avent bottles!

Teaching Baby C Colors

That's how I teach my sweetie-pie colors. First I show her the card, for eg. a flash card with the color red, then I show her something from our house that is red in color - her cup. She loves this card-flashing session and it's one way of keeping this restless baby still on her high-chair during meal times. Another very good mode of teaching her colors is through the Baby Bright VCD (It's A Bright First Year, for 3 months - 2 years old). She loves this VCD too. My 2 older gals loved this VCD as well when I bought it for them 3 years ago and they are still loving it now (though they are a little too big for the VCD now).