Fun Way To Learn ABCs and 123s

There is no better way to help your kids learn than through fun and play.

Here's what I mean:

Check out Baby's left hand - wrapped up in a plastic bag to protect the IV catheter and bandaged from being wet. This pic was taken last week when she had a UTI attack and needed antibiotics jabs through IV for 4 days.

Bath times can be made into fun sessions and these foam alphabet and numbers from ELC are a great way to help toddlers learn. My sil from Hong Kong gave it to Baby 2 X'mas ago.

On another note, Baby could 'sing' the ABC song about a month back. She can 'sing' (though pronounciation is still not clear yet) and hum this tune, as with many other nursery rhymes.

A Visit To The Orphanage

On our way back from the hospital last night, we passed by a fire station. My kids were excited to see the fire station and the big, red and shiny fire trucks with sirens blaring away. Baby was really excited to see the fire station and fire trucks for the first time, after watching them on her favorite Barney VCD umpteen times. Hubby said that he will one day arrange for an appointment to bring them for a visit to the firehouse since he knows someone from that fire station. I told hubby that he should also bring the kids for a visit to the orphanage. That will be an eye opener for the kids, to show them how lucky they are, compared to the under privileged kids. Hopefully with the visit to an orphanage, they will stop complaining of what they don't have. I have long wanted to bring the kids to the orphanage and make a small contribution too. I wish I had the ability to contribute large sums, just like richard willich, the philanthropist. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Crazy Over This VCD

Baby is absolutely head over heels, besotted, crazy, hooked and addicted to this Barney VCD:


Barney's "Let's Go To The Firehouse".

Daddy bought this VCD more than a year ago and it's only last month that I started to play it again. Aly and Sher used to watch this but for a brief period. It was sitting inside the TV console drawer for ages!

Since last month, Baby has been asking for this VCD every single day during spoon-feeding milk (formula) time. She would go to the drawer and single out this VCD and say "house".... not just once a day but twice and sometimes thrice (that's the number of times I spoon-feed her formula milk). I can now memorize all the songs in the VCD and my 2 gals are sick of this VCD to the pit of their guts haha!


Baby fishing out the VCD just before spoon-feeding milk time. As long as she gulps down her spoonfuls of milk and make life breezier for me, I have no problem sacrificing my TV programs. What TV programs? Ooops, I almost forgot that I've not watched a movie or sitcom for aaaaagesssss! Talk about motherhood, it's all about sacrifices.

Fried Hakka Noodles, Cantonese Style

A relative went to Ipoh and brought back some Ipoh Hakka mien (noodles) for us. My mil then whipped up this dish with the noodles:

She shallow pan fried the Hakka mien into crispy noodles... which everyone loved, me inclusive. It's like munching on Mamee snack, can be very addictive!

Then she cooked the sauce for the noodles, which consisted of prawns, shiitake mushrooms, mustard green (sawi), sliced pork and fish cakes. The seasoning used were soy sauce and some dark sauce. She used an egg to thicken up the sauce. The sauce is to be poured on the noodles when it's ready to serve.



Sherilyn my noodles crazed brat whacked a few bowls of noodles...

Even I whacked a bowl of noodles. I don't normally eat Hokkien mien, in fact I don't fancy eating mien, with the exception of vermicelli.

Try this for your kids, they will surely love this dish, especially the crunchy fried mien.

Guess What They Are Eating?

Just make a wild guess what Alycia and Baby are eating?



See how well Baby can hold this bowl and not spill any of the contents from the bowl!


Tadaaaaa...... it's a bowl of Udon soup with veggie, beef slices and tempura. And best of all, this is a coin box! It's a fake bowl of noodles, muahahahahaha, gotcha!!




Check out my online store for some trendy new arrivals! Have a great Sunday everyone.

Chicken, Abalone, Dried Oysters Porridge

Last Saturday, I cooked chicken, abalone and dried oyster porridge for lunch. Everyone including Baby loved it.

Here's the BIG abalone that I tossed into the pot of porridge, about 15 minutes before serving the porridge. This canned abalone is already pre-cooked and does not require a long time to cook it, else it would turn hard and rubbery. I thinly sliced the abalone before tossing them into the pot of porridge.


The chicken meat was marinated with some sesame seed oil, pepper and sea salt before I dumped it into the porridge and cooked it for about an hour.



I also reheated some of the left over chicken nuggets and fish and chips from New Year's Eve poolside party.

Tonight, I am cooking porridge again. This time, it's porridge with roasted pork ribs (siew chue kwat), chicken drumstick - cut into bite size, dried oysters, a wedge of ginger (to expel wind) and the remaining piece of big abalone (there were 2 pieces in the can), YUMS!

What are you whipping up for dinner tonight?

Kids Ask The Darnest Questions

Lately, Alycia has been asking me plenty of questions, questions which often stumped me and made me ponder over them without being able to find an answer for her. The other day she asked me this question :

"Mummy, you always pray to God to heal Baby but why did she get infection again now? Is it because God was careless and left his magic wand behind, so he can't heal Baby? Or is it because God was asleep when you prayed to him?"

Now, how would you answer her? She knows we've been praying hard that Baby would not get anymore UTI but early this week, she got a UTI attack. It's her first UTI attack after her Ureteral Reimplantation surgery a little over 6 months ago.

Another favorite question of hers is "Mummy, God made Jesus. But who made God?" "Where did God come from?"

What are some of the toughest questions your child had asked you that you have been unable to find an answer?

Scolded By Jie Jie And Crest-fallen

Whenever Alycia and Sherilyn want to do something without Baby disturbing them, they will go into their bedroom and lock the door up. At times, they tend to forget to close the door and Baby will charge into the room, climb up the table and cause havoc.

Here, Baby climbed up the table when her jie jies were doing coloring and drawing. Alycia snapped at Baby coz Baby grabbed her precious new crayons that koo mar bought for her from Hong Kong Disneyland and broke one of it.


Check out Alycia's enraged expression....


Baby trying hard to control her tears here. Check out her red and teary eyes, drooping lips and red nose.
Dejected and crest-fallen....

After a few more snaps at her, she baaaaawled. Of all people, her beloved favorite jie jie snapped at her! Alycia hardly snaps at Baby.

But she gave Baby a hug after that and it was really heartwarming to see her sayang Baby again.


Doodling by Baby, which was wiped off by a damp magic sponge / ceramic sponge.

Our Sunday

On Sunday, the gals met up with their former Sunday School teachers - husband and wife team (they now reside in Singapore) and now they have a cute 1 year old boy, Joshua.


After church, we had buffet lunch at Le Meridien Hotel. Hubs wanted to utilize the free voucher for 2 adults' meal before it expired. And he ended up paying RM100++ for the 2 kids' meals! I regret having lunch at Le Meridien Hotel as I ended up having food poisoning! Hubs should have just listened to me and packed some yong tau foo for lunch, which was our original plan.


Could this plate of sashimi be the culprit for my food poisoning?



Or this plate of teppanyaki?


Or this plate of raw oysters and mussles?



Or salad? Yes, raw salad is a high risk for salmonella food poisoning!

Jie Jie #2 brought Baby to get free balloons from the waitress.



The wide selection of nuts and tid bits.


Foor presentation is good - Choice of salad dressing encassed in shampoo-like bottles.


The ice-cream teppanyaki is a great hit with everyone. I don't think the culprit is ice-cream coz everyone else ice-cream and they are all A-ok.



My favorite almond coffee biscotti.

Another highly possible culprit is the ice cendol which I ate.

That will be our second and last time lunching there. The food is only mediocre, expensive (RM90++ per pax) and worst of all, I ended up with food poisoning and purged more than 10x yesterday.

Random Pix Of Baby C

Dowan, dowan, dowan milk milk, only want mummy's nen nen...


This bunch of stinky beans sure looks weird and feels bumpy too. I wonder why mah mah always buys them coz they are SO, SO stinky, eewww....



The view up here is certainly better - I can watch mah mah peel anchovies and I can read jie jies' books too!

Preparing Alycia For Primary 1

Today marks the last day of the 6-week long school holidays. Tomorrow marks a brand new chapter in Alycia's life as well as mine. She will be going to Primary 1 at a Chinese school. My precious baby has to wake up at 6am to get ready for school and a private car will pick her up before 7am. I hope she will get used to this brand new routine. I am glad that she enjoyed herself during the 2-day orientation at her school last week.

Last night, I gave her a short lecture of what she is not supposed to do in school, in particular NOT following any Tom, Dick and Harry that is not known to her, in the pretext of picking her up from school. I petrified her a wee bit with exaggerated stories and told her that she will never see mummy again if she ever follows a 'bad person' home. I also told her about accepting candies and food from stranger is like Snow White accepting and eating a poisoned apple. I think I'd sent the message to her and she was almost in tears :S



Here's my precious baby in school uniform. Her hair is still a wee bit too long according to her school's rules and we are supposed to bring her to the hair saloon again to have it trimmed. Else, I'd have to tie it up in a bun O_o!! I also have to get her another pair of shoes as spare.

Happy end of school holidays everyone and here's wishing everyone a great week ahead!

Yoke Fook Moon Hong Kong Dim Sum, Ipoh

During our stay in Ipoh recently, we had breakfast at Yoke Fook Moon Hong Kong Dim Sum @ Leong Sin Nam Street. There are 2 other well-know dim sum restaurants along Leong Sin Nam Street, namely the famous Foh San Restaurant and Ming Court Restaurant.

Here're what we dug into at Yoke Fook Moon Hong Kong Dim Sum:

Har gao - very fresh and springy prawns, kwai mei dim sum (which literally means weird taste dim sum in Cantonese and yes, it does taste weird!) and mussles (I find the mussles too tough).


Hong Kong cee cheong fun - nice.


Char siew pau and an assortment of other dim sum - all nice.


Fried fish balls - tasted almost the same in most dim sum restaurants.


Deep fried prawns with mayonaise - nice. There is a very good choice of deep fried items at Yoke Fook Moon Hong Kong Dim Sum and all of them look mouth watering. However, we tried to stay away from deep fried items and ordered mostly steamed items.


Siew loong pau - not nice. The meat was kinda overly cooked, too soft and 'mui', like it wasn't really fresh. I still prefer the siew loong pau from iDragon, Duck King and Din Dai Fung.


This is nice - fish meat on top of fish balls, coated with minced ginger.


Custard pau and lotus paste pau - satisfactory.



Baby was restless and the pen and paper managed to keep her still on the highchair for a while.

Overall, the dim sum is good. This restaurant is full-house on most of the days. On weekends and public holidays, the crowd can be quite crazy. In fact, all the 3 dim sum restaurants there - Foh San, Ming Court and Yoke Fook Moon are as popular and overly crowded on most days.

The damage wasn't very big coz the items were all priced very reasonably (they have to keep it low coz there are 2 stong competitors around) but I can't remember how much the total bill came up to coz my dad settled the bill. Most of the items cost between RM3.50 - RM5.00 per plate.

Address: No. 67-69, Jalan Leong Sin Nam, 30300 Ipoh.
Tel: 05-2416589

Sale At My Online Store!

My online store, Old And New Stuff For Sale is turning 1 month old on 4 January 2010 and is growing stronger by the day. To celebrate this occasion, I am offering a 10% discount on items that begin with the code ID for the period 1 Jan 2010 - 7 Jan 2010 only.

Don't miss out this great opportunity and quick hop over to Old And New Stuff For Sale !

Here's wishing all my readers and customers a very blessed and happy new year!

Ribena Ice Lolly

Whenever I'm too busy to entertain my 2 older brats, they will self-entertain themselves. They even 'self-service' themselves to the food and drinks in the kitchen and fridge. They made themselves Ribena ice-lolly here...


While Alycia licked the ice-lolly neatly, rascal #2 used a fork and kept pricking on the ice lolly... then poured the melted Ribena from the cup into a bowl... and created a big, big mess....
She tried to clean up the mess and pulled heaps of toilet paper! I can never ever leave her alone to eat or drink anything, aaarrrghh!!!!

Check out the sticky Ribena spilled everywhere. I told her "that's it, no more Ribena ice-lolly for you, EVER" hahahaha!

Here's wishing all my readers and customers of my online store a very blessed, happy, prosperous and smooth sailing 2010! Thanks for visiting my blogs and patronizing my online store.

Homecooked Dishes And Homemade Bread

This is a backdated post.

My mil cooked these dishes the week before she left for Hong Kong:




Chinese basil leaves omelette.


Stir-fried celery, yellow capsicum, fresh lily bulbs and sweet peas.


Pork chop with big onions and green peas sauce.

On another night, she cooked these dishes:

1) 2 types of steamed minced pork (one is with egg and the other is with preserved veggie - toong choy)
2) stir-fried yam with dried shrimps. She wanted to cook the yam with pork ribs but found out at the eleventh hour that there's no more pork ribs!
3) 'tai yee mar kar lui' (braised gourd with dried shrimps, left over char siew from lunch and glass noodles. I have no idea why this dish is called tai yee mar kar lui, which literally means second aunty's daughter is getting married, when translated from Cantonese to English lol!.


Braised Pork Ribs With Organic Japanese Pumpkin and stir-fried leek flowers on another night...

The flesh of the organic Japanese pumpkin is dark orangy/redish. Very tasty and creamy.



2 loafs of pumpkin bread made from organic Japanese pumpkin, organic sunflower seeds and kampung chicken eggs (free range chicken).


2 loafs of orange bread. The ingredients are orange rind, 1 medium sized bottle of marmalade jam, butter, milk, flour and free range chicken eggs.

Now that she's away in HK again for a few months, I gotta start cracking my head again to whip up tasty dishes that will whet my 3 fussy eaters' appetite, sigh...