After much thought and planning (mostly my part), we have decided for a holiday to Hong Kong with the girls, when Zaria still enjoyed infant rate for her flight, and no admission charges to any of the theme parks.

The week before we left for Hong Kong, I had dinner with my dad. Seeing the girls running here and there and could not sit still during dinner, my dad shook his head and said, “I don’t know how you are going to handle them in Hong Kong.” And seriously, I didn’t know how we were going to survive. Unlike most people who would only go with the older child, or bring along the maid or a relative to help, we braved Hong Kong as a family, just us 4, planning for the worst.

We left a day after Jelly has gone home for her holidays. We were blessed with dry, sunny weather, with temparature around 20 degrees.

♥14th Dec♥
We got on a late flight and arrived in Hong Kong at 10:30pm. 1st night hotel was Novotel Citygate at Tung Chung which is near the airport; since Daddy didn’t want to tax the girls by travelling all the way downtown to spend the night.

By the time we got into our room, it was already 12am. Zaria had knocked off, and Zara had a quick wash up, and went straight to bed.

I didn’t know we were actually near the Citygate Outlets, until I read the brouchers I picked up from the hotel lobby.

♥15th Dec♥
I realised the Citygate Outlets were actually attached to our hotel. I told Daddy maybe he should stay in the room with the girls, while I went shopping. His reaction, “You want to start shopping on the FIRST DAY itself?” (Why not?) “And I thought we’re here to see the Giant Buddha?” Grrr.. So there goes my shopping plan.

For breakfast, I walked over to the supermarket near our hotel to grab some croissant, bread, fruit juices, soya bean and had them in the room, so we can eat in peace. (All breakfasts for the next few days were eaten in the room except on our last day)

After breakfast, we checked out, and left our luggage with the hotel, and started our journey to see Tung Chung. A whistle was looped around Zara’s neck, so she could whistle for our attention if she were lost, and a leash was attached to Zaria every time we went out. Thus began our visit.

Girls marveling at the water fountains just outside the Citygate Outlet mall (while mummy marveled at the shop display). Spot Zara’s daily companion the whistle, and Zaria’s leash.

If only I could shop I would be as happy.

Tung Chung is famous for the outlet shopping Ngong Peng 360 cable car ride and the Giant Buddha, the cable car will bring you all the way to the Ngong Peng Village where the latter is.

It was a ~30mins ride on the cable car, with very scenic view of the mountains in Lantau Island and the sea.

One of the few rare shots of the Zaria smiling especially with Zara’s arms around.

Extremely stable (even when the wind is howling) and scenic ~30min ride on the Ngong Peng 360 cable car.

Besides the Giant Buddha, surrounding Ngong Peng, there are some really nice walking paths. I especially like the walk to the Wisdom Path, where you find 8~10m high wood columns with Chinese calligraphy arranged in the ‘infinity’ symbol on a slope of a hill.

For most part of our trip, we were amazed at the girls’ ability to walk for long period of time, and when they got tired, they took turns to be seated on the stroller or to be carried.

Girls were very happy to spot some Nutcrackers as Christmas display in hotels, and this one, in Ngong Peng.

Love this shot of Zaria on Daddy’s shoulder, with the Giant Buddha at the back, taken just before sunset.

Just before sunset (~5pm), we took the cable car back to Tung Chong. I requested for some time to shop at the outlet mall. With Daddy constantly asking, “Is it really cheaper here?” “Do you want to lug that all the way back?” “Are you done yet?” and the girls going wild in the shops, I only managed to spend like 30mins in Esprit (in the whole Outlet mall) and bought myself some really cheap tops and a pair of pants. Grrrr..

We left Tung Chong with some food stuff from the supermarket (and our luggage of course) and took the MTR to our next stop.

When we got to the Disney’s Hollywood Hotel, Goofy was doing his round at the lobby. Without warning, Zaria just dashed towards him, ignoring the queue of people who wanted a photo with him, and gave him a hug, and since then, every time Disneyland was brought up, she will say, “Goofy loves me!” and “I love Goofy very much.”

I don’t know why there were lots of bad comemnts about Disney’s Hollywood Hotel. To me, it’s perfectly fine. There’s a robe and slippers for kids, they folded the small towels into animals, and knowing we got 2 young kids, they even installed 2 bed guards on our 2 queen beds. The only complain is, the beds were a bit too high, I had to put a chair in between the beds to act as a stepping stool for the girls.

After 1.5 months of blog break, I got what I needed to do done, well, almost.
During this time, no watching DVDs, no book or blog reading, trying to be very focussed.

What did I do this 1.5 months?

Worked really really hard and long hours of course, just before the long break.
Completed the 8 photobooks just in time!!
Celebrated Zara’s birhtday with some planning.
Celebrated Zaria’s birthday almost last minute.
Found a new school for Zara and Zaria.
Went on a week’s holiday.
Did whatever minimum housework that I needed to do.

My 4 weeks leave is almost over.
The girls will be starting in a new school next Mon. Jelly will be back next week, and I’ll be back to work on Thurs!

Here are peeks of what went on in the household.

Zara’s birthday, celebrated with the family and neighbours in the house. I baked her ‘birthday cakes’ this time.

Zara with her ‘fairy’ cakes.

Zaria and Tasha blowing off candles over and over again on a couple of the cupcakes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Christmas was celebrated at my bro’s house. With my nephew’s band performing.

My niece, Ally, being the Santarina.

My niece, Sam, did some magic tricks to con awe the below 5.

Of all presents, Zara loves the musical jewelry box from King’s Wife. Seen here the girls gazing at it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zaria’s birthday was planned very last minute. Without a maid, we just had KFC and Dominos Pizzas, and cupcakes from Cupcake Chic. You think she’ll be thrilled to get to blow her candles?
Wrong! She cried when the birthday song was sung. Not sure if it was because someone turned off the lights, or accordingly to her, “I don’t want Ah Ku to sing.” (Ah Ku, i.e. my brother, some one Zaria fears).
And Zara sulked big time, claiming it’s not her birthday, so she didn’t want to participate. Grrrrr..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And here is a sneak peek of our week long holiday. Can you tell where we went? (Those who were told of the trip should not review the answer). The post will come later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy New Year All!

I’m sure those parents who have daughters (and probably some sons), will experience the same thing; their girls going for heels, or shoes that sparkle. For my girls, it’s the same, even better if the shoes make the clickety clack sound when walking around with them on.

The ones that the girls have is this pair a neighbour gave us, and they call it click clock shoes (in Zaria’s case it’s tick-tock shoes, since she can’t pronounce the ‘cl’ sound).

Both of them like this pair of shoes. And when one of them (remembers to) wear them, the other will (be reminded and) also says she wants it, sometimes ending in a fight or tug of war with the loser crying (most of the time Zaria looses because she’s not as strong as Zara yet). So we taught them to share, and sometimes they agree to.

One wears the left side

The other wears the right side

That’s how far they will go sharing this pair of click clock shoes.

o.O”

Zara was eager to check out what I got in a package a few days back. When I showed her the book, My Mommy’s Tote, she was eager to check out its content.

My Mommy’s Tote is a board book shaped like, well, a tote, with handles that you can carry around, and pages depicting sections of a tote.

A wallet, make up purse, a clock with dials, photos, mementos and a cloth handkerchief are just a few of the items you find in the tote. Witty writings as how a child look upon his/her mommy are included in each page, such as, “My Mommy is very kind”; “My Mommy and I like to do special things together”.

What the girls like most about this book is the detachable computer. They both ‘fight’ for it, and claimed is theirs. They will take it out and pretend to type on it, and ‘read’ the display on the screen. They also like carrying the tote around pretending they are going out. Zara loves the white board which she can doodle on and also the picture of mommy dancing with a girl; she said that’s the two of us doing some silly dance.

The book provides a lot of entertainment to the girls and allows a glimpse of what mommies keep in their tote, the closest they can get since I disallow them to dig into my bags. Haha.

We went over to King’s Wife‘s place on Saturday so that the kids could play with fire lantern together with their cousins.

Before dinner, it was jamming time. Guitar is getting so popular all the older kids know how to play it.

Love this shot of Sam

This nephew of mine has joined a band. This can probably be his cover shot if he produced an album.

After a take away dinner, we all went to light the lanterns and strolled to the park to enjoy the night. It was a hot night but the sky was clear. The kids upon seeing all the candles litted by the other kids, left their lanterns totally and joined it. Blowing candles after singing Happy Birthday, lighting more candles, etc.

Zara and Zaria had their first taste of ‘playing’ with fire, and even though occasionally the wax dripped on their fingers and they yelped in pain, they went on.

Tasha blowing off the candle, of course after the Happy Birthday singing

King’s Wife’s nephew, Wei Hao, lighting candles.

Zara playing with sparkles

Zara blowing off candles, also after birthday song was sung

Girls love lighting the candles, I didn’t stop them as it’s good for developing their dexterity

More birthday song singing for Zaria to blow off the candle.

Sam lighting candle

When it was time to leave the park, Zara protested. Mummy I want to do some more grave yard thingy.” …. It took me a few seconds to realise that she was relating lighting candles with graveyard because that’s what we do when we pay our respect in my mother’s grave.

(Daddy took all the photos while I spent time gossipping with my sisters/sister in laws.)

Last weekend was a long weekend, my sisters, their kids, my dad and our family decided to make a trip to Pulau Ketam.

To take the boat over, we went to the jetty which is at South Port, Port Klang. A ~30 minutes boat ride cost us RM7 for adults, and RM4 for school going kids.

It has been ages since I last went to Pulau Ketam. It’s still very charming; every thing is built on eleveted ground, with small narrow cement streets (only bicycles allowed) and colourful houses in different shades of turquoise.

For the kids, Pulau Ketam has not much to offer, but for us adults, it was the food : sea food, lala (Malay : clam) omelete, cendol (one of the best I’d tested), and fried prawn dough (some kind of cucur udang).

Ok, my sis told me to mention this. We had lunch at the first restaurant that faces the jetty (can’t remember the name), recommended by a local we met on the boat. Food was so so, the waiter was rude. Only the gong bou har gou (Cantonese: spicy crayfish), and steam red snapper are worth mentioning. RM190 for a set meal for 8 adults + 4 kids. My sis said, “Make sure you write this in your blog, the waiter is damn rude, food is not good, don’t ever eat here.”

I’m not sure about the other smaller restaurants further down the busy main street, but you can probably give this big one a miss.

After our early lunch (we were warned wait time in restaurants can be more than an hour on public holidays when people start flooding in), we went exploring. The kids have their cousins to play with, that kept them happy. We didn’t go far though, because my dad was in a hurry to go (always the case), and a storm was also brewing.

We left at 3pm, after snacking in a coffee shop. The boats between island and mainland operate like busses, there was a long queue when we reached at the jetty. When a boat arrived, every body was like trying to squeeze themselves forward to get into the boat so as not to miss it. Such is the way of Malaysians, sigh.

When we got back to the main land, my sister asked, “So, whose bright idea was it?” o.O

The guilty man claimed we’ll go back again another day, when there’s no rain and no rush to go home so he could take more photos.

Here are the photos taken.

For Sale – Dried sea food claimed to be produced by home industry.

Zara all messy eating her pre-lunch snack.

Daddy is very proud of this shot he took.

Shops in different shade of turquoise.

At the back of the main street, looks like every one owns a boat.

Zaria enjoying the breeze and checking out the boats from a bridge.

Turquoise rules.

A window to a Senior Club.

A dying trade, a barber ‘grooming’ his customer.

Tasha sheltering from rain with an umbrella hat.

Zara having a good laugh (aha, she’s also in turquoise).

Zaria about to doze off.

Love this shot of my sister and Tasha.

We still co-sleep, the 4 of us. Daddy, Zaria and myself on our queen bed, and Zara on a single bed which is parked next to my side of the bed.

It started with either Daddy or myself had to stay with the girls, and only after both of them fall asleep could we leave the room. I always fell asleep before they do.

Later, after Zaria had fallen asleep, I would tell Zara I had to shower, or I had to shut down my computer, so that I could leave her bedside. Most of the time, she would be asleep when I finished showering or blog hopping shutting down my computer.

When she started being able to reach for the door knob and could get in and out of the room on her own, she began to allow me work in the study while she slept; knowing she could see me from the bed room (our room has a window which can look into our study) and able to get out of our room to come to the study if she needed me.

So we only had to wait for Zaria to fall asleep before we could leave the room to do our own things.

Yesterday, at bed time, I told Zaria I would leave her to sleep with jie-jie, while I get some work done.
Zaria : “No! Mummy lie down (with) you (me).”
Me : “Mummy still got work to do. Jie jie sleep with you ok?”
Zaria : “No. Mummy lie down here.” *patted her side*
Me : “Jie-jie will sleep with you and take care of you.”
Zara : “Jie-jie will take care of you, don’t worry.

While Zaria was still protesting (more like complained), I sneaked out, and the 2 of them kept each other company. When I went back in to check on them 30mins later, both were soundly asleep.

YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!! Hope this will be another mile stone.

♥Zara has to sleep with her children (that’s what she calls them) : Fifi, Mr Blue, Mr Blue’s twins, Lamb, Toffee the bear (from Simple American) every night.♥ (photo taken early Jul)

♥Zaria on the other hand doesn’t need anything to hug, but lately, she insisted that I lay the ‘sarong’ for her to sleep on♥ (photo taken early Jul)

After the incident, we still went ahead and brought the girls to Bagan Lalang.
(Daddy said he’ll try to bring us there every once a month if not more.)

You asked how to get there? Where it is?
Bagan Lalang is actually after Sepang. So we took the KLIA highway, and then turned into Sepang. You’ll see the sign board pointing you to Sepang Gold Coast or Bagan Lalang, just follow that.

Why go there so often?
Because the girls like it. Imagine Zaria will suddenly say this at home while playing, “Want go Alang-alang. Play play sand.”
The water and sand is cleaner than Port Dickson or Morib, the waves are calm, and there’s a big stretch of shallow pool. We probably only need to worry about the jelly fish.
Daddy likes to see the girls a bit tan.
This is such a good place to take photos of the girls at play.

The only problem is bathing the girls after they play.
We bath them outside a shop, using the water from the hose, and pay the owner some money.

Photos for this round :

Daddy and the girls.

Zaria giving thumbs up to Bagan Lalang.

There are lots of crabs hiding out.

Zara combing the beach for sea snails.

Zara picking up sea snails.

Zaria loves the mess.

Zaria loves the mud.

Zaria playing in the shallow pool (big area of the sea is with this water level).

Migratory Birds (?).

Love this shot of the girls (I wouldn’t join in, afraid the mud will stick to me, since I don’t have a place to shower).

Zara showing Zaria how to dig for crabs.

Zaria picked up the skill very quickly.

See how dirty she got?

After Zara stopped and left the beach, Zaria still wanted to dig for crabs.

The short stretch of sandy beach at Bagan Lalang.

We stayed till sunset. And the view is marvelous.

However, we also got attacks from sandflies, and all of us got bumps all over when we got home.

Saturday morning, Daddy and I wanted to plan for an outing, so we went to the study to surf for info. I left Zara in the room with a diaperless Zaria, telling them we’ll be quick, and asking Zara to keep an eye on Zaria.

A few moments later, Zara came tugging at my t-shirt, “Mummy I locked meimei in the room.”
I went to confirm and sure enough, the room door was locked.
Zaria was knocking on the other side of the door saying, “Want come out.”

While Daddy went to search for the spare key, I told Zaria to wait and at the same time, I gave Zara a good scolding.

Daddy found the bunch of keys and started trying them one by one. ~20 keys and none fit! I start getting worried. My scolding started getting worse,
“How can you do that to meimei?”
“What if something happened to meimei? The police will come and ask who lock meimei inside.”
“Are you a wicked step-sister?”

Daddy tried the 20 keys again; and then my turn to try, while he went to search for other keys he’d kept. Zara was sobbing quietly (because I threatened if she were to cry, I was going to smack her), while I scolded her. Zaria still calling out calmly, “Mummy, open door.”
“Mummy come hug you(me)”
“Want go out.” and finally
“Poo-poo oh-di (already).”

SHIT! She’s diaperless, remember?

Daddy was digging this box, and that box, while I kept trying the 20keys again and again, Zaria calling us, Zara sobbing, this went on for like 30mins. All these while, Zaria was just calling out to us, not crying, not panicked. The only time she cried, was when she heard the gate opened and Daddy unlocking the car (to search the car for any keys). She cried and said, “Want go kaikai (Chinese : go out). Want go kaikai!” When I reassured her we’re still all here, she then stopped crying and continue to call out calmly, “Mummy, open door. Want go out”
“Poo-poo oh-di.”

I told Daddy I’d drive out to look for a locksmith. I left, and found a hardware shop with a big KEY sign board. I went in and very quickly told my story. The owner of the shop said he didn’t have a locksmith, but gave me a contact. Just before I left, he told me I could try giving the door knob a few hard knocks with the side of the hammer.

I called the locksmith, he’s 30mins away from our house. He asked me to sms our address to him. I didn’t know how to operate Daddy’s phone (my mobile locked in the room with Zaria), so I went home and told Daddy to sms the locksmith. I also told Daddy what the hardware shop owner mentioned. He quickly dug out his hammer, placed a piece of cloth over the door knob, and knocked the door knob. One, Two, Three times, and the door knob fell off (such quality!), the door opened.

The smell of shit!! FoooooooooYOH.

Zaria was sitting on the bed, hands and tigh all covered in shit, happy to see me and declared again, “Poo-poo oh-di.”

Zara stuck her head in, I was still angry with her, so I told her to go out, and stay in the guest room, I didn’t want to see her.

Got Jelly to change the bed shit sheet and mop the floor with dettol, while I gave Zaria a bath. Daddy went out to purchase another lock.

While I was changing Zaria, Zara stuck her head into the room again. I told her, “I’m still angry with you. Go out! Don’t come in. I don’t want to see you.” She said gingerly, “I just want to say sorry.” I was still angry, so I told her, “Say your sorry and go!” She walked into the centre of the room, faced Zaria, “Sorry Zaria”, then me, “Sorry mummy.” and then went out again.

*heart melted*.. I forgave her immediately.

In the night when I tugged Zara in, she said, “Luckily you have a good idea to bang the door opened. If not, police will come and catch me, and lock me up in a dungeon right?” I had to tell her only if something happened to meimei, and police don’t lock people up in dungeons.

We can still smell shit in the room as of today if we took a deep breath. Buek!
And guess where we found the spare key to the room? Daddy kept it in the room! How clever.

I could have shown you the real thing, but I’ll be kind, this is close to it.

When the girls heard Bagan Lalang, they all got excited! Daddy brought them there once when I was away on my business trip, Zara said it was fun, Zaria squeled, “Play Play Sand!”

I wasn’t quite convinced especially after seeing the photos that Daddy had taken the last trip. Like this one here.

But, for the sake of the girls, I relented.

I made some onigiri (my first attempt) using the rice Daddy bought from Japan. (Yums! But the girls didn’t like it)

Packed a picnic basket, and an ice box filled with our favourite drinks; off we go, on a cloudy Saturday.

Check out what we found in the shallow pool.
Guess what this is?

.
.
.
And look how much they love it.

Zara danced and did gymnastics

Zaria was so happy she was smiling and laughing all the time.

Zaria jumped on puddles after puddles. See her ‘lifted’ here.

They played and fed each other ‘mud-pies’.

Zara catching crabs

And my favourite of all the photos.
Zaria checking out what’s in the mud

The girls got really dirty at the end, but they had so much fun. Lovely outing! We’ll definitely go again.