I find I have more peace with the kids sleeping next to me.

Although Zaria has her cot (away from our bed), I prefer her to sleep with us on our queen size bed. I place her nearer to my side of the bed, and I’ll just squeeze into Zara’s bed and share hers in the night. That way, Daddy sleeps more comfortably, Zara is happy to be able to hug me like a bolster to sleep and I get to check on Zaria in the night.

Every night, I have Zaria on my right, and Zara on my left. Before I go to bed, I look at both of them soundly asleep, and I feel blissful.

You know I have two beautiful daughters Zara and Zaria. I also have this other “daughter”, she lives in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and her name is Hairegulihan Tuerxuntuohuti. She’s my sponsored child from World Vision Malaysia(?????).

Our relationship started sometime in 2003. I didn’t have a child and I wanted one. I went to World Vision Malaysia website, and selected to sponsor a girl from Xinjiang. They found me Hairegulihan.  I wrote to her just once, in the very begining, and sent her some little gifts. Some how after that, I got very busy, and stopped writing to her (Yeah yeah, I know, it’s no excuse).

My other ‘daughter’ – Hairegulihan

Called it good karma, I got pregnant in 2004 (after 6years of marriage), and blessed with Zara.

Every year, I get a progress report from World Vision with her photo telling me how she’s doing. There’s this hapiness that I experiance every time I receive her progress report and see the smile on her face. Happy to know that some one far away is benefiting from a small deed I’m doing.

Hairegulihan’s latest progress report

World Vision Malaysia is trying get 5000 child sponsors this year to celebrate their 10th year anniversary. As a sponsor, your contribution together with others are pooled together to be invested in long-term development programmes that will give your sponsored child, his/her family and community a brighter future.

How much does it cost to sponsor a child? RM50/month.

If you are interested, click on the icon below or check out their website to get more information. You can also choose to do a one time donation to this trusted organisation which will use your fund appropriately to help those needed.

Change a child’s life today! click ->

You know your milk is delicious when :

1) Your baby drinks it up with no complain
2) Your fussy toddler (with acute sense of taste) waits by the side when baby is drinking the milk from a bottle and excitedly says, “Meimei, you don’t want huh? Cannot finish huh? Faster give jiejie drink then.”
3) Whatever your baby can’t finish (from the bottle), you toddler grabs it and happily empties the bottle, exclaiming, “Yummy” or “So nice” at the end of it
4) Your toddler occasionally cries and asks to be fed from the breast. When you tell her she’s already a big girl, she replies, “I’m only a baby, I want to drink from mummy’s breast.”

And if you want to know, nope, I didn’t let the toddler feed from the breast.

The kids were still sleeping at 9:45am! Not being awaken. I asked Tuyam, “Kalau mereka tidur sampai 12pm, you biar kan saja lar?” (Malay : If they slept till 12pm, you’ll leave them sleeping?)

My boss commented, “Full time mum and you have a part time job eh?” when I had my 1 on 1 with him. Apparently he read this post  “=.=

Zara was so happy to see me home yesterday, she wanted to sit on my lap while I had dinner, and kept stroking my face. I was away from her for 10hours (the last I was away this long, it was when I went for my biz trip in Jul ’06).

Zaria refused to drink milk from the bottle and cried every time the bottle was placed in her mouth. She took less than 4oz while I was at work. She preferred to go hungry, and waited for me. She drank hungrily when I offered her the breast when I got home. =.=”

Work?? Pile high! 3000mails and every thing is urgent!! Well.. almost.
There’s also this new program, which I have little knowledge of and I have to pick it up and run!

How time flies, my 3 months maternity leave came and went, WHOOOOSH…. just like that.

So how did I spend my time at home these 3 months? What have I achieved?

I moved to wordpress, did some blogging, watched a few DVDs, read a couple of books. I looked after the girls (bathed them daily & fed them),  brought them out couple of times in a week, played with them at home, brought them to the park every evening etc.

Books read and movies watched

Achievements :
~ Toilet trained Zara. She tells us when she wants to poo and pee, and with our help, do it on the toilet bowl. We only let her wear her diaper when we go out (just in case we can’t find a toilet) and in the night for ‘accidents’ (but she wakes me up when she needs to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and never wet her diaper the last 2 months)
~ Almost back to my pre-pregnancy weight, 2Kg more to go
~ Successfully breast fed Zaria exclusively (except the time she was in hospital for jaundice she had to be supplemented since I didn’t have milk stored)
~ Stock up on breast milk : 100oz (close to 3 litres) of frozen milk, almost enough for Zaria’s 5 days feed, just in case I have to go for any business trips.
~ Hired and trained a new maid

Play time – KLCC Water Park

Play time – Kidzsports

Play time – Park

Watched Her Grow

On Monday, it’ll be BACK TO WORK. Bummer!

I married a man who’s very ‘spontanous’. When we were dating, we would meet up with no plans in mind, and then suddenly he would be heading to Genting Highlands, with me in shorts and a sleeveless top. He has not changed even now that we have kids.

We wanted to take the kids for a holiday before I started work. So, on Saturday 1am, still surfing on the net, wanting to know where we should go for the w/end. Port Dickson? Cameron Highlands? Penang?

On Saturday morning, when the kids are all bathed and dressed up, I still didn’t know if we were going anywhere.
Me : Are we going any where or not?
Daddy: I thought we’re going to Fraser’s Hill?
Me : *Were we?* So? Confirmed?
Daddy said: Let’s pack first, we can always decide later

We packed a few pieces of clothings, and started our journey. The 2 kids, Daddy and I (NO MAID, crazy enough). In the car, we had to stop at the toll gate, still considering where to go.

At 5pm, we were at Fraser’s Hill. I was feeling queezy from the journey up hill, and hastily booked the first hotel that we came across, Shahzan Inn Resort. We realised, with 2 kids now, we actually need bigger room. We got a family room with 1 queen bed and 1 single. The room is basic, and very worn out, with smelly pillow and musky carpet.

There’s really not much Fraser’s Hill can offer to family with young kids. We went out for a walk, and stopped at a play ground for Zara to play. The air was cooling and fresh, but because we had to walk along roads meant for cars (since we have Zaria in a pram), inhaling some exhaust fumes was unavoidable. Kids were good during dinner, and we managed to eat without much problem.

On Sunday, we went to the Paddock in the morning, a place where Zara could ride a horse; and then headed to The Smoke House for a bite. Daddy shared a cheese sandwich with Zara, and I had the famous Dorset Tea (2 scones and a cup of tea). Scones was creamy and nice, but they actually used frozen whipped cream instead of fresh clotted cream. Sigh.

(Clockwise) : Zara at the play ground; Zaria sleeping (most of the time) in the pram; Ocassionally, Zaria wakes up to take in the view; Zara chasing chickens in the Paddock

(Clockwise) : With Zara on the horse; The sisters; Zara playing in the fields (and falling down, staining her t)

(Clockwise) : Zara on The Smokehouse swing; The famous Dorset Tea; Zare enjoying the garden in The Smokehouse; Zara being loving

Since there isn’t much else we can do at Fraser’s, we headed down hill after our meal. While driving towards home, Daddy asked if we should stop by Bukit Tinggi. However, it seems Genting Highlands is on the way, instead of Bukit Tinggi.
Me : So Genting Highlands then?
Daddy: Yeah, why not?
Me : Staying over?
Daddy: The kids have enough clothes?
(they did, but I didn’t prepare them for the cold)

So by 6pm on Sunday, we were checking into the newly refurbished Resort Hotel in Genting Highlands.

I don’t know why we never brought Zara to Genting Highlands before, this was really an over due trip. With its theme parks available, Zara really had a wonderful time; and best of all, for the Outdoor Theme Park, she got in for free because she’s still not 90cm tall yet. We tried to go on most of the family rides together, I have Zaria on the carrier, and Daddy handled Zara. It was a lot of fun.

Genting Indoor Theme Park at night : Fun for Zara

Genting Outdoor Theme Park in the day : More fun for Zara, but I didn’t want Zaria to miss out the fun too

The worst bit – for dinner on Sunday, Zaria cried the whole 1hr we were dining. I had to rock her on 1 arm, and tried to scoop slippery kuey-teow (flat rice noodle) into my mounth with the other hand. Luckily Zara was behaving, with Daddy helping her to some chicken wings.

Ok ok, now since we didn’t really get ourselves prepared for the cold weather in Genting Highlands, and Zaria is too young to handle the cold like Zara, I have to improvise. For day, I put on Zaria’s long sleeve overall over her short sleeve romper, and for night, even without the fan on and the window all closed up, it’s still freezing cold in the room, Zaria hands were cold and she wasn’t able to sleep until I dressed her up like this.

On top of her long sleeve overall, she had her socks as gloves, Zara’s socks as added warmth for her feet and my t-shirt became her sleeping bag

What a fun trip it was!

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

Answer for previous post :
Top Left and Bottom right Zaria, Top Right and Bottom Left Zara.

We used to look at my nieces’ baby photos and wonder who is who.

I was going through some of Zara’s old photos and then realise, oh boy, my girls look a like too at that age. There are subtle differences in the features, but maybe many years later, I’ll probably take more than a minute (just like my SIL, King’s Wife, used to with her daugther’s photos), checking a photo to see who is actually in the photo.

Can you tell who’s who here? I’ll post the answer later next week.

We used to bring Zara to Lake Gardens on weekends when we have no where to go, to feed the monkeys and also to play at the big play ground. Now, we found another nice place to bring her, Taman Tasik Titiwangsa.

What’s there besides the recently erected Eye of Malaysia? Zara’s favourite animals -> Horse!

We always go to the stable directly. You get horse carriage riding as well as horse riding there, and it’s cheap.
Horse Carriage : Adult RM1 Kids RM0.50
Horse Riding for kids : RM1 per round (a handler will actually pull the horse)
This is cheaper than going on a kiddie ride in a shopping mall which will normally be about RM2.  

And for Eye of Malaysia, it’s RM15 for adults, and FOC for children below 3. For this, we only went once, and that should be enough.

Here are some of the photos taken during our recent trips there.

She just loves horses! She prefers the horse riding to the horse carriage though.

Eye of Malaysia close up

Zara enjoyng herself in the Eye of Malaysia

We brought Zaria there the 2nd time we went, but she only spent the entire time sleeping, in the baby carrier. Zara running around the park after horse riding.

Zaria was crying the other day.

First time, Zara came and consoled her, stroke her head and said “Mei mei good girl huh, don’t cry, jiejie sayang”
Zaria stopped for a moment. Then cried again.

Zara again walked over to Zaria, stroke her and said, “Hush Hush, mei mei, don’t cry. Jiejie sayang you ok?”
Zaria again stopped for a moment. Then started crying once more.

This time, Zara stomped over the rocking chair, poke her finger at Zaria’s forehead and said, “I said don’t cry, you don’t know how to stop meh?”

Such sisterly love.

This Chinese New Year is just like any Chinese new year, it’s HOT HOT HOT! And just like every year, there’s some some visiting to do and dinner with family and friends.

The creative Zara has created her own Chinese New Year greetings unknowingly. Her way of saying GONG XI FA CAI is KUNCI (Malay : key, a Malay word she knows) FARTING since she doesn’t know Chinese, this is her way of remembering foreign sounding words using words she knows.

The girls’ new clothes for the New Year

Zaria clutching her first ang pow from ma-ma (Chinese : paternal grandma)

Our family’s Chinese New Year tradition, the younger generations offering tea to the older generation and receiving ang pows or red packets in return

Zara in The Curve. I like the Chinese New Year decorations there.

Besides the normal visiting, Zara also attending our neighbour’s Chloe’s birthday party