When Zara saw these for the first time ……

She pulled on my hand excitedly, “Look! Look! Mummy! So many big fizzy drinks!” (she really thought they were canned drinks)

And then the other day, Zaria saw this for the first time buzzing about in our house.

She pointed to the zooming fly and shouted, “Bird-Bird! Bird-Bird!”

Ha! Ha!

See, I don’t miss TV (which is never turned on on weekdays except for the girls’ program) because I get free entertainment from my girls. 😛

What is Beauty, what is pretty? Who is it to judge if one is beautiful?

Even Zara at the age of 3, judges beaty by its appearance. I had this conversation with her a week back :
Me : Zara, will you still love mummy if mummy is old and wrinkly.
Zara : No.
Me : *teasing* So you want to have another mummy?
Zara : Yeah. Next time when mummy old already, not pretty any more, Daddy will marry another girl.
Me : You want to have a step-mother?
Zara : No. No. Daddy will get married with a kind girl (she relates step mother to wicked)
…. Giving her father the go-ahead to marry another, if I got wrinkly.. o.O” ….

I talked to her further about beauty, and taught her to judge beauty by the heart and not the looks, or what people wear. Etc etc. In the end, when I repeated, “So now, Zara, will you still love mummy if mummy is old and wrinkly.” Her reply was,“Yes, because mummy is a kind mummy.”

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How many young girls out there think they are not pretty enough, how many even think they are ugly? How do most define beauty?

Dove Self-Esteem Fund, a global program, invites us all to play a role in supporting and promoting a wider definition of beauty, to raise self esteem of girls and young women to make them feel more beautiful and confident every day.

As a mother of two girls, I thought this is a wonderful program, but I wonder how they intend to reach out to more people especially outside of the US. My two girls will grow up one day, and would be part of the crowd who are hung up on looks. This same crowd may have their self esteem affected if they think they are not the stereotypical beauty.

This program will help young girls out there understand what is beauty, and it’s not just about looks, which in turn may help raise confidence of these young girls and women.

The program is looking for passionate and genuine real beauty advocates to be part of this online community of supporters. If you are interested, do drop by their website.

Note : This is not a paid post…Oh well, I only got a t-shirt to spread the word. The conversation I have with Zara is 100% real, not made up at all.

LB gave the royal order to do this tag. Such a 8 tag….

♥8 Things I’m Passionate About:♥
1) My girls, Zara and Zaria (but of course)
2) Food – I just love good food!
3) Cooking and baking – I always wonder why I didn’t go into this line
4) Natural Skin Care and Body Care
5) Child care – that’s why I work from home, so I can supervise the maids and not let them do what they feel like doing
6) Photography – but I suck in this area
7) Books
8 ) Blogging

♥8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:♥
1) Write a Will (please don’t let me die before I get this done)
2) See my girls grow up
3) See my girls walk down the aisle
4) Visit the Grand Canyon
5) Make my first million (possible?)
6) Read all the books I have on my book shelf
7) Watch all the DVDs/VCDs I’ve stocked up on
8 ) Visit my Greek friend’s twins in Greece

♥8 Things I Say Often:♥
1) Zara! (shouting warning)
2) Mei Mei! or Zaria! (shouting warning)
3) Xxxxxxx Yyy (shouting Daddy’s full name when I need him to do something for me urgently)
4) What is it now?! (upon hearing crying or screaming while working)
5) Zaria, danger! or Mei Mei, danger! (if no. 2 didn’t work)
6) Be careful! (to the girls)
7) I love you (to the girls)
8 ) Kiss Mummy

♥8 Books I’ve Recently Read :♥
1) Twelve Dancing Princess
2) Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
3) Princess and The Pea
4) Beauty and The Beast
5) Sleeping Beauty
6) Baby, Boo!
7) Maisy’s Bath Time
8 ) The Long March – by Sun Shuyun (my current read)
(Every day before the girls’ bed time, we have to spend about 30mins on book reading. Most books selected by Zara is princess related, and Zaria likes her Baby, Boo! and Maisy series, so these are the books I read repeatedly to the girls. I do love reading, but then, I only get to read my book in the toilet ahem while doing my business. So it takes like 3 to 4 months to finish one.)

♥8 Songs I Could Listen To Over and Over: ♥
1) Don’t Panic – Cold Play
2) Everyboy Hurts – REM
3) You Raise Me Up – Josh Groban
4) Something Changed – Pulp
5) Somewhere Over The Rainbow
6) 沙滩 (Blue Moon) – David Tao
7) Dear God – David Tao
8 ) Sorry – Jackie Cheung

♥8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends: ♥
1) Intelligence (at least able to catch my jokes)
2) Willing to lend a ear to me when I need it
3) A good heart
4) Comfortable to be with
5) Balance in decision making
6) Humour
7) Positive mindset
8 ) Empathetic heart

♥8 Things I’ve Learnt This Past Year: ♥
1) Be creative and create my own recipe for baby meals
2) Simple cup cake decorations
3) Breastfeeding Zaria on alternate breast while lying on my right
4) Setting up an ADSL Router
5) Managing 2 attention seeking children
6) Blogging for money (ok, I’d just started this, so I’m still learning)
7) Being creative in my excuse, reasoning, ‘lecturing’ with Zara (as she’s getting more intelligent and tough to get conned)
8 ) Pacifying 2 crying children at the same time :-X

♥8 Person I want to tag :♥
1) JO-N
2) Jaccs
3) Jasmine
4) Nadia
5) Sunshine
6) Kitty Cat
7) Vien
8 ) Chooi Peng

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Here is another tag from Chinee and JO-N :

♥7 things you don’t know about me♥ :

1) I studied 12 years in a famous Chinese school (not even government but semi-private where everything is taught in Chinese) but I think my English is better than my Chinese. 🙁
2) I used to be a teacher : 1.5yrs in a primary school, and then another 2yrs in an English Language Centre for children. I thought I was going to make teaching my life time profession.
3) I normally do relatively well academically, but for A-levels, I scored 2Ds and 1N and received several warnings from the college because I skipped classes way too often (all because of a stupid ex boy friend)
4) I almost gave up hope trying for a baby, and thought we’ll never going to have children, and then we got Zara.
5) I’m very impatient, I get very upset if I needed to repeat something several times and the other person just don’t get it. I think I’m a lousy teacher to Zara.
6) I absolutely hate clutter but then I myself am not a very tidy person.. I mean I want to be tidy, but I have difficulty maintaining it.
7) I’m very sentimental, I like to keep rubbish mementos. My BT phone card during uni days, the entrance ticket to museums I’d visited, the extra small blouse I once was able to fit in… I have more cupboards than Daddy in the house to store all these. 😛 And he calls me a rubbish collector.

And I pass this to :
Syn; Seng Kor (You have become a mystery); Irene