Over the New Year

We met Karen, Kit and Kylae on New Year's day. They were up from Singapore to visit their family. We didn't dare to see baby Christian who was sleeping at home though, fearing that we may still be contagious even though we were already recovered. Luckily we didn't see him because the next day, my flu came back with a vengeance.

Kylae is just 3 months older than Sean but she's already speaking so fluently while Sean is still on his "No no no" phase. He can say the word "No" with a variety of nuances! But I'll blog about another time. Once she got over her sleepiness, they managed to somehow play together. Lol.. Sean just jumped around and Kylae followed. No fighting, unlike when he plays with other boys.

It was nice to catch up with Karen ad Kit. Now that it's a new year, I should really try to catch up with other people too! =P

Nick Vujicic - A giant of a man

This man is truly inspiring! When I first saw the Utube video, I had tears in my eyes. He makes us normal people who are blessed with all our limbs pale in comparison to his courage and strength. I hope you'll enjoy watching these as much as I did.

Happy New Year 2009

Happy New Year 2009!
May the coming year bring good fortune, good health and happiness to everyone.

Sean had no voice for several days. I think he had a throat infection. We wanted to bring Sean to Dr kwan, his doctor, but it's been Christmas, the weekends, and the another public holiday. By the time, the doctor's clinic was open, Sean was alright.

But on the day Sean was alright, Sam fell sick, and then the next day, it was me. I think I got an ear infection as well. I was terribly tired the whole day. But thank goodness, we're all better in the evening, after lots of doses of Pei Pa Koa, 100Plus and water.

One thing that amazed me though. Sean was terribly good when he was sick. He still had lots of energy and was driving around in his car round and round the living room as if he wasn't sick. You wouldn't know that he wasn't sick if he didn't have such an awful voice!

And of course it was harder to feed him. He runs away when we come with food. He lived on snacks the last few days. He was willing to eat anything that wasn't healthy for him, but when it comes to proper food, he just runs away!

Sam, of course, took it worst, moaning and groaning about how sick he was. As boys grow up to become men, their resilience to sickness totally drops! =P

Back to toys. ..... Yes, John. Sean plays just like you did. Totally destructive! I'm re-thinking my wisdom to buy those small legos. Maybe I should get Duplo size blocks for him. at least, it won't take me such a long time to put it back when he destroys them and ask me to put back together!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

We had a pig out on Christmas eve. As usual, we've invited the relatives to come for a christmas eve party with turkey, lamb roast, spaghetti bolognaise, mashed potato, fruit salad, garlic bread, noodles, cream puffs, and 2 cakes brought by the guests, chocolate and white macademia.

We were going to get Sean a box of Lego for his Christmas present, but I've found a china made lego that works as well as real Lego and asked the in-laws to join their Sean's Christmas budget with ours to get him the pseudo-Legos together so that he gets a whole set to play with.

We got him a hospital , ambulance, 2 race cars, an excavator and a Jet fighter plane. So he's been having a great time crashing his jet fighter to the hospital and crashing the cars and taking them apart. And of course, we've been fixing it every time he breaks them apart since he doesn't know how to do it yet. It can be troublesome fixing things over and over again, but he's having such a great time that he hasn't watch as much TV the last few days.

The one thing that has marred these few days is that Sean got laryngitis yesterday. He's been pointing to his neck the last few days, but I thought it was because he knocked his chin on the table. He woke up with no voice but still tries to talk and scream with it. He sounds really terrible, especially today.

I've given him cough mixture and honey water. Does anyone have a better idea of what to give him? Should I bring him to see a doctor for laryngitis?

Craft: How to make a Haloween Basket

Halloween Basket

This post should have been done before Halloween, but I didn't have the time then. Anyway, the idea can be used for any other types of baskets, for example, Easter baskets or flower baskets. I'm planning to make a flower basket for Mary's wedding this way. I'll post up the picture when I make it next year.

Materials:
Crepe papers, plastic container, scotch tape, double sided tapes, anything soft for padding, scissors, color papers, ribbon.

Instructions:
1. Cut crepe paper according to the size of the plastic container you are using. Cut enough so that it can be folded in. Stick padding around the side of the container to make it look chubbier.
2. Gather the crepe paper on a strip of scotch tape to make it crinkled. Make sure you leave sone tape un-covered by the crepe paper.
3. Stick the crinkled crepe paper all around the inside of the plastic container.
4. Cut a round piece of crepe paper and stick to the inner bottom of the container with double sided tape.
5. Fold over the crinkled crepe paper and stick the rest on the outer base of the container.
6. Stick the ribbon handle with double sided tape.
7. Cut leaves from green crepe paper. Line the inside of the container with double sided tape and paste the leaves neatly.

Other decorations:
Face:
Cut little triangles for eyes and nose, and a smile from black paper. Stick with glue or double sided tape.

Bat:
Draw a bat on hard black paper. Stick on green circles for eyes and draw 2 dots for eyes. Cut it out and stick on the ribbon.

Witch:
Cut the witch face from green paper, witch hat fro black paper. Cut a small piece of red crepe paper and cut tiny strips, leaving the top uncut. Crinkle the red paper to make hair and stick on the head. Stick the hat on top. Draw the face and mouth.

The instructions are not that detailed but I hope the pictures help. Click on the picture to get a clearer image. =D
Happy Crafting!

Sean 27 month - Stubborn

Despite still refusing to speak much, Sean's growth has been bringing much joy and despair to us. =D Why do I say that?

Joy... because he can be really charming when he wants to. He never used to respond when I said smile. Now he's full of goofy smiles and silly grins. Which is why he doesn't get punished very often.

Despair.. because he is so stubborn! His stubbornness seems to grow as he grows older.

Since he found the small plastic balls, he's been messing the whole house everyday. Sometimes I clean up, sometimes I leave it to the maid. But this can't go on forever.

This afternoon, we went down and he immediately went to the ball baskets and turned it upside down. He was so proud that he messed the living room. This was it! I told him to pick the balls up and he looked at me "innocently". As I kept repeating myself, his look became more and more stubborn. We came to a stand still. I punished him (sitting on chair), swatted his foot (which kicked the ball instead of picking up), and told him " No food, No TV, no toys, until he picked up all the balls". When he was still not responding. I asked " Are you comfortable on that chair?" He nodded, so I said " No chair!" and got him to sit on the floor, which of course made him cry harder.

Seriously, there weren't that many balls since I've already helped to put back some, but he just refused to pick them up. He preferred to cry his crocodile tears and still tried to sucker up his mummy. This went on for 1/2 hour, when he finally picked up a few balls and put them into the basket.

I could have saved myself a lot of energy repeating myself "Pick up the balls and put the into the basket" 50 times and did the clean up myself in less than 5 minutes. But I just felt that he has to learn to do it himself. It took a lot more energy to get him to do it though. =P

Updates for the last 2 months

I have been neglecting my blog for almost 2 months now. Things have been busy and I've been really lazy to blog. So now I'm just going to have to breeze through what's been happening the past 2 months.

October: Hallowen

I had 2 weeks of craft duties for Hallowen. It just so happened that I can make pinata, so I made the base of a gigantic spider pinata and a pumpkin pinata for the week before Halloween. Some of the mothers helped to decorate them during playgroup.

I was also busy making Sean's costume. If you read manga, you'll recognize hims as Luffy from One Piece. I sewed the jacket by hand and and it took a few days to make the hat! On Halloween itself, we made pumpkin baskets for the children to fill candies with.

We had a pot-luck Halloween party and the children hit the pinata until all the candies came out. They had a blast eating candies. That started Sean on sweets. The next morning he had 3 sweets for breakfast before I knew about it! I had to hide the rest of the sweets.




Early November

I have been busy with all my students' exams since September. All their exams seem to come one after another. It was after all end of the school year. What made it extra busy was helping my Form 5 student prepare for the SMP exam. I had to help her with last minute notes preparation because she just had so little time. Even then I had to leave her halfway because I've booked our trip back to Jakarta months before before I knew the exam timetable. and when we came back from Jakarta, she was still in the midst of exams.

Travel to Jakarta

This trip to Jakarta went a lot smoother than last year's trip. Sean had his own chair and behaved very well on the plane, except during the landing. His ears were in pain so he was crying all the way down. Nothing could help. Not breast feeding nor sweets. So I had to hugged him and hoped that the pain subsides soon.






Our first day in Jakarta was rather tiring though. We went straight to my parents' shop and had to wait for a long time before we could go home. It is a hardware store. He enjoyed himself running around, but being paranoid parents, we were watching Sean like a hawk the several hours we were there. So it was like " Don't touch that!" " Sit down!" "Stop that!" Totally exhausting.

Sean really enjoyed the visit this time. He got along quite well with his cousins (Fendi 9 and Frederick 6). They had a blast jumping on the beds until they cracked the wooden support beam of my bed! I also let them jumped around like crazy during the weekends. I didn't realize that they weren't encouraged to do so. Ooppss...=P




I combined my visit to my family with our friend, Yulius' wedding. His wedding was beautiful but unfortunately we couldn't stay for very long. Like many Indonesian weddings, it's cocktail style, which means there are no tables. They have buffet style food and the guests mingle around carrying plates and chit-chatting. Sean was crawling on all floors. I don't know why he suddenly thought it was really fun to crawl on all four, but we (Eny and us) decided to leave early and have pizza somewhere else, where Sean could be seated and we could eat in peace.

We also managed to meet up with Eny several times and caught up with her and her cute daughter Rena. Eny brought us to several places which on on our we would probably be too lazy to go to. The new malls are beautiful but food there was so expensive. What we paid a the up-class food court could have gotten us good food at restaurants here. We are such ulu people! =P

But...it's wonderful to meet up with friends you haven't seen for such a long time. I'm glad we got this opportunity to meet up! =D

We went to over to see my aunt and grandmother, but most of the time we stayed home. My objectives is just to catch up wit my family and the best time is just to go over to my parents' room to chat.

And then it was time to go back home. Eny gave Sean a cute little "Luigi" luggage bag, which he insisted to pull around. So he pulled his own diapers and snacks by himself. So cute! =D


Back in KL (late November)
The first few days back in KL were really hectic. My student was doing here Physics and Biology papers. So we concentrated on that. After that I thought I was going to have lots of free time because my students took a break from tuition for a few weeks. But YMCA called. They urgently needed an English teacher for their school holiday program. It was really last minute and I was given a few days to prepare for the week-long classes. It was only 1.5 hours everyday but the class consisted of students from 6 to 11 years old. So it was quite tricky to prepare.

Early December
Then Mary, Sam's younger sister came back with her fiance, David, to do wedding preparations. So that week was really packed with me teaching at YMCA in the afternoon ad running around with them helping them for their wedding preparations. Towards the end, Sam and Sean were really grumpy because I didn't really spend very much time with them. Oopppsss..Sean had been sorely neglected. Got to make it up to him. =P

Recent events
Things are getting back to normal now. Tuition has started again. We went to an early Christmas party at Margaret's house on Thursday morning, 11 Dec. Her house is beautiful. As you enter her house, you're welcomed with the vision of an infinity pool with the Bukit Gasing hillside as the backdrop. It felt really tranquil and wonderful to be there.

But... I couldn't really sit and enjoy myself chit-chatting with the other mummies. Sean just couldn't sit still and wanted to go out of the house or walked near the pool, or wanted to push toys or other people into the pool. Sigh....He even feel off a 1.5 meter ledge!

For an instance, I was terrible afraid because he disappeared from my sight from behind the staircase and ended at the bottom of the basement steps. But it was a great party in a beautiful house and wonderful hosts. Thanks Margaret for inviting us to your house! =D

Then last Friday, 12 Dec, the KDTA gym had a year end party. It was nice to meet up with the rest of the people from the gym. I haven't exercised for 3 years! Oh my goodness....time flies so fast! I managed to snatch conversations here and there. But with an active toddler who was intent on making mischief, my concentration was just not there, but I still managed to have a good time. Eventually, Sam brought him to the gym next door and let him run round and round until he was exhausted, or so I thought. He went home and was still suer hyper. But that night, he slept really well. =D

Last but not least, I've finally gotten myself a new laptop! Yippee! =D
We got it at the PC Fair on Saturday night but it took several days of going to Digital Mal to get the O/S and drivers uploaded before it could work properly. I only got it back today.

So now, I've got my own internet access again. So hopefully I'll be checking other people's blogs more often and updating mine more regularly too! =D