(Just For The Records)

Last year, during Chinese New Year my dad was diagnosed of having a 14cm tumor in his liver. After his surgery, he recovered well, and for this year’s Chinese New Year all of us were glad to see him, although thinner, looking good.

It’s another year of blessing, and good health is all we wish for.

At times the girls get along beautifully, at times, they fight like they are the worst enemies. I guess this is the same in most housewhole.

We notice that Zara sometimes can be a big bully. When she wants something Zaria is holding, she’ll snatch from her, without asking. She doesn’t do that to her friends, this ‘rudeness’ is only reserved for her sister.

Zaria on the other hand, blames Zara for everything!
When she fell once in the living room, immediately she said, “Jiejie make me fall.”
I went o.O” because I saw the whole thing. I asked her how could have Zara caused her to fall as Zara was siting on the sofa far from her.
She replied, “Just because jiejie moved the sofa, so I don’t know where to step.” (Zara repositioned the sofa earlier on, but the sofa was far from where Zaria tripped and fell on her own). o.O

Another time, Zara accidentally stepped on Zaria’s feet. Immediately, the accusation began, “Jiejie stepped on me.” Then she checked her toes. “Jiejie stepped on me now my toes cannot straighten already.” o.O”
(actually, she’s born with a toe slightly crooked, but she now blamed Zara for that)

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When one of the girls are naughty, and we want to punish them, the other would quickly search for the cane, bring it right to us.

When Zaria is the naughty one, Zara happily fetch the cane for us to punish Zaria. However, she won’t allow us to carry out certain punishment on Zaria.
Once Zaria was really naughty, i.e. she smacked Daddy when Daddy scolded her, when Daddy smacked her, she kicked Daddy repeatedly, and then she wailed loudly non-stop.
I wanted to put her outside the house (within the compound), and Zara blocked my way, claiming, “Even when Zaria is naughty, you cannot put her outside of the house. What if bad people catch her?”
I pushed past her and got Zaria to stand outside.
Zara was standing at the door, watching and guarding over Zaria, and kept turning to glare at us. She got so upset and angry, she didn’t want to talk to us for a while after that.

When Zara is the naughty one, Zaria would somehow behaved really well, and then tell us something like jiejie is so naughty, but she’s so good girl. o.O”
When we punished Zara, and Zara started crying, Zaria will be fetching tissues to wipe Zara’s tears, and then will be hugging Zara.

This is the way they show their sisterly love.

While the children are settling down to the school routine, I thought I’d better start posting this back dated post or it’ll be stale news soon.

Zaria, who celebrated her birthday at the end of the year, wanted a birthday celebration at Jungle Gym too, but she only wanted to invite Tasha (my niece). Being a work day for my sis, we had to postponed the Jungle Gym play date to the weekend, so on her actual day, Daddy arranged these for her.

A visit to The National Science Centre. It’s free, don’t expect it to be as nice as Petrosains, but it has lots of things for children to play with.

There’s some dinosaur exibition going on (admission is RM25 for whole family) which we brought the girls as well.

(Obivously, they don’t know how to read signage yet)

For lunch, I suggested Japanese. Zaria asked, “Is it your birthday or my birthday? It’s mine right? So I get to choose where to have lunch.” And she chose Wendy’s.

After lunch, I was feeling tired and wanted to nap, but Daddy and the girls were all eager for more activities. What came after next? KL Bird Park.

(I looked after the girls, and Daddy had a jolly good time taking all these shots.)

This girl obviously is not afraid of going near animals.

Their favourite…… Petting Chicks at the hatchling.

It’s rare to see her smiling so happily for the camera. She had a great time picking up one chick after another and didn’t want to leave.

She really enjoyed herself that day.

For her cake, I did a boo boo. I used a new recipe, and the recipe specified a cake pan too small. The cake overspilled midway, and cannot be used as a birthday cake.

Luckily, Aunty C, sent a set of 4 cupcakes over after she saw my FB status.

And for the last day of the week day, we brought them to Bukit Cherakah, just to wrap up the school holidays. It’s a really nice place, but not well managed and maintained. We like the Four Season House the best, where the season is constantly set at Winter.

The thing is we were not properly dressed since we didn’t know there’s such a place in there.

We could only stay inside for a while, but the girls love it, and claimed they have now seen snow.

During the school holidays, the girls spend most of their time watching TV, playing iPad, doing drawing, etc etc.

Daddy has been deligently coaching Zara with her BM to prepare her for Standard 1. Zara dreads each class. Today, she even went hiding (and took us 15mins to to find her) when Daddy called her to start her BM revision. o.O”

Weekends when we are not working, we bring them out to check out Christmas decorations.

Bring them out for ice cream,

Meet up with their cousins.

One of the fun thing they did was to join the Christmas Carols organised by our BEC. We had 2 rounds of practice and then went around singing in people’s house on the weekend.

To Zaria, the nicest thing about carolings is going to people’s house to ‘collect’ packet drinks, sweets and chocolates.

The girls of course sometimes play together, and do all sort of funny stunts.

We made a weekend trip to Melaka as well, but didn’t spend much time outside, as I wasn’t well, and the girls preferred to stay in the hotel and watch cartoon and enjoy the aircon.

And then, look here, see who came to have a play date with the girls?

Dinah, myself and another mutual friend, C, has been organising this play date, and it finally materialised yesterday. They started with drawing…

And the highlight is actually doing cupcake decorations.

Our youngest member, Kaine (C’s son), at work. He’s kind of torn between eating the sprinkles and putting them on his cake.

After a while, Zaria preferred to play with water serve her friends water.

Slightly more than a week to go, and then it’s back to school.

I think the most expensive toy that we’d bought for the girls is this doll house we got them for Christmas 2 years ago.

What we did was we got the house (which came without furniture) and the dolls, and then informed my sisters and SILs to get them furniture as their Christmas and birthday gifts, so by the end of all these celebrations, they have a complete doll house set.

The thing is, Zaria was too young then, she was more interested in ‘breaking’ the items than playing. And Zara didn’t show much interest either, so off the house went, into the store room.

The girls have recently requested that we brought out the doll house. So we did today. Opening 3 more sets of furniture which were given 2 years ago.

They had some fun playing with it in this morning.

The house is the height of Zara, it’s sturdy and very good quality. It’s rather heavy too. So after playing, they will have to push it back to lean against the wall or it’ll take up too much space in the centre of the room.

Any way, not sure how long their interest with the house will last, but I do hope we don’t have to push it back to the store room any sooner, and wasted the 3 new sets of furniture.

Gee, it’s the holidays, and the girls are spending the whole day with me on a work day. They watch lots of TVs and play lots of iPad games. I screamed at them a lot, and they screamed back at me or at each other a lot too. At times, the two of them will chi chat or they will play a quiet game together, and that’s when I said, “It’s so nice to have two girls.”

Here are some chatter that’s worth the mentioned.

They were taking their naps in the study, and I overheard their conversation which started about ghost.

Zaria : You are older than me… Mommy is older than you… Daddy is older than mommy… Giant is older than Daddy… The ghost is older than giant…. Then the transformer is bigger than the ghost, right jie?
Zara : The sun and the moon is bigger than transformer.
Zaria : Even the clouds is bigger right, jie?
Zara : The clouds is nothing, it’s just vapor.
Zaria : It’s paper?
Zara : No, vapor.
Zaria : What’s vapor jie.
Zara : You asked mommy, I don’t know. (Don’t know but know how to use the word. o.O”)
So I have explained to Zaria what vapor is.

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Daddy is not very happy the girls and I are spending too much time on the iPad, especially playing games. He told the girls while they play, they have to describe what they are doing, then they’ll learn; as the iPad was meant to be a learning tool and not a gaming tool, yada yada…

Zaria was taking her bath right after she had her turn of games on the iPad. I over heard her talking to Jelly.
Zaria : Auntie, you know iPad is for learning, not for playing games… You know how you learn? You must talk when you play. Talk talk talk, play play play. o.O”

I told Daddy about it, so he quized Zaria.
Daddy : What must you do when you use the iPad?
Zaria : You must talk when you play.
Daddy : You must describe what you are doing. But you are always playing, and not describing.
Zaria : Got wut.
Daddy : I see you playing, but you don’t tell me what you are doing.
Zaria : Who said, I got talk wut.
Daddy : If you only use it for playing games, and not learning, then I’m going to sell off the iPad
Zara : Dad, just because you bought the iPad doesn’t mean you can bully Zaria, ok?
o.O”

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We went out for lunch with our neighbour C in 2 cars as C would be heading for her facial afterwards. The girls went in C’s car. As C is a Taiwanese, I’d let her know before to speak to the girls in Mandarin, so that they have more exposure to the language.

After lunch, C left for her facial, and I had this conversation with the girls.

Zaria : I want to go in Auntie C’s car again.
Me : Auntie C is going for her facial, you can’t go in her car.
Zaria : What is facial? (they are not exposed to this word obviously because their mom had never ever gone for a facial since they were born)
Me : Facial is you go to the shop and let people wash your face.
Zaria looked aghast.
Zaria : You mean Auntie C doesn’t know how to wash her face at home so she has to ask people to wash her face in the shop? o.O”
I have to explain to her that some people like pampering in a facial etc etc but she still had that question mark on her facial expression. 😛
And then I turned to Zara : Did you talk to Auntie C just now?
Zara : Ya I did.
Me : What did you talk about?
Zara : Well, actually right, I don’t know what she was saying about because she was speaking in Chinese. o.O”
(I asked C later what they talked about, she told me Zara was answering her questions in short answers, sometimes answering something not related to the question. So I guess, when it comes to Chinese, she’ll pretend to know what is being said although she doesn’t really understand it.)

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I ran out of cash so I was complaining, “Oh no, I have no more money.”
Zara gave me the solution, “Well, you can always take a few more (biscuits and cupcakes) orders, and charge really really expensive.” o.O”

Girls went to Zara’s classmate’s birthday party. Parents now are so willing to spend on children’s birthday party except us.

After a month of juicing and peeling apples almost daily, see what I can do now….

Within a month, our residential area has a big Mid-Autumn Festival pot luck, and then another Hari Raya celebration cum Family Day within our clusters of homes. I’m so loving our housing area.

At times when we have things to do in the night, the girls will entertain themselves. Here, Zara was reading a book to Zaria, and then sharing a joke.

I was wondering why it took Jelly more than 30mins to hang up the clothes to dry, and then I saw this.. she was on her phone smsing non-stop!! That’s why.
Maybe we should start imposing no cell phones policy during working hours.
We allow them a cell phone just in case they need to stay in touch with their families, and they abuse it. Sigh.

I so like this little French boy.. Sethy.

Girls had their sports day, and boy, they can run! (Daddy has to improve on the panning skill.)

She’s so focussed on the race.

One day, Zara decided to write some Chinese sentences. Alright, there’s some mistakes, but I think quite a good attempt.

While shopping, I was passed this brouchure.

The girls took over the brouchure, had a look and both said, “Eeeeeyer… so disgusting… How come the auntie gave you thiss??”
I told them she’s trying to sell me this coffee that will make me be lovey dovey after drinking.
“It’s a love potion?” They asked.
I didn’t reply, but just joke with them. “I think I should buy this to drink.”
Zaria shrieked, “Eeeeyer, then you and Daddy will be like that?”
Zara agreed, “Eeeeeyer….I don’t want” Then she thought for a while and added, “Anyway, how does it know who to make you love?”
I told them it doesn’t make you love someone new, it just makes you love a person you already love more.

Zara then said, “I think Zaria should drink this… that will make her love her family more and will not beat them.” (as Zaria has been throwing lots of tantrums last week, and always beat us when she’s not happy).

After a couple of days, she picked up the brouchure and said, “I don’t think it’ll work with you and Daddy.”
I asked her why?
She said, “Because, it’s the way you treat each other. You always scold him, and he….. *shook her head* I don’t know how to explain it.” o.O”
I asked her, “So, what should Daddy and Mummy do to be more loving.” (hoping she’ll give us our visa to go out)
She said, “You should just think and not say anything. Just think… and then after that, do whatever you need to do.”
I probed further, “Huh? How will that work? Just think?”
She replied, “Yes, just think….. think a lot, think a lot on how you can be loving, and just do it.”

o.O” I don’t know what she meant, but she’s speaking like a love guru.

There are a couple of changes in the household these past weeks.

♥Juicing For Health♥

After comtemplating for a while, I decided not to get the extremely expensive Vitamix (~RM3000), or its OEM equavalent (~RM1000). Since we just bought a Philip blender a year back, I thought I better make more use of this.

And for almost a month now, I’d been juicing. Well, not really juicing, but blending fruits and vege, and drinking up all the juice and pulps that comes with it.

Using the Philip, and having it set at Smoothie mode, most vege/fruits can be blended to a smooth drink packed with goodness in 3 minutes. I change the fruit and vege daily to give ourselves a variety. In case you wonder, the juice does not taste fibrous or yucky as long as some water is added to make it not ‘paste-ty’. Unfortunately, at this point in time, the girls still do not like the taste of any of the juices (Zara said it taste like a ‘salad drink‘), so it’s just Daddy and I getting a glass each to start our day.

♥Change of Milk♥

After being a sucker for Enfa milk for the past 4.5 years (Zara started taking formula only when she was 1year +), and accomodating their ever escalating price, we’d finally had enough!

Switched the girls to Dumex which is 1/3 of the price! If you were like me who didn’t know, Enfa milk is Made in Thailand with milk from US. Dumex is Made In Malaysia with milk from Australia and New Zealand.

Girls didn’t mind the change, they claimed, “They taste the same.. This one (Dumex) not so sweet.”

Their bowel movement remain the same. Oh maybe they will be less inteligent than the Enfa kids (so the Enfa advertisement claims), but we pumped them up with DHA pills and they have fish every meal time, should be enough brain food for them.

Unless Dumex becomes greedy too, or the girls are allergic to the milk, Dumex it is.

There, Enfa, you just lost 2 loyal customers due to your greed by always increasing your price!

♥Change of Sleeping Partner♥

I’d been Zaria’s sleeping partner since she was born. She won’t sleep with anyone else if I were around.

Suddenly these past 2 weeks, she said she wanted to sleep with jiejie instead. Not everyday, but maybe a few times a week.

So when she wants jiejie for the night, she’ll share a bed with Zara, poke Zara’s belly button; I kind of enjoy seeing this closeness between the girls. On days, when she wants to sleep with me, I still love her small body next to mine, and her roaming fingers finding my belly button in the middle of the night.

Continue from here.

♥1st September♥

Each day, we probably spend more than an hour at breakfast. Girls have their daily egg (ommelete or just egg white sunny side up) and heaps of bacon.

Zaria who doesn’t quite like using cutleries, having fun with her bacon here.

She told us, she’s turned into bacon vampire.

After breakfast, it was straight to the pool again.

I went out with my sis to have a massage done in town, and got Daddy and Annie to watch over the kids.

We have to pay 200Baht 1 way to go to town, but it was worth it, Massage was good and cheap, 400Baht for 2hrs. The Heavenly Spa in the hotel was charging 4 times that price!

T and I are not fussy people when it comes to food, so we just had some street food for lunch, and packed something back from the supermarket before we headed back to the hotel.

Girls were in the room and napping with Daddy keeping watch on them.

In the evening, T, Tasha and Annie were going to watch Fantasea. We didn’t follow because we thought the ticket was way too expensive. Instead, we spent the event strolling to the Gypsy Village via the beach.

Zaria who likes the beach, kept stopping and playing with sand. She was trying to dig a hole just like how a dog would have done, using her 2 bear hands.

We have to stop a couple of times to hurry her to come along.

I think the Westin stretch of beach is constantly being cleaned and combed, making it look sooo spotless. However, I think the water is probably very poluted. On our 1km walk to the gyspy village, we saw 2 Fugu-like fished washed ashore, probably poisoned by the sea water, struggling to get back to the sea. Beyond Westin, the beach was extremely dirty, with lots of rubbish, and among the human created dump, we found bodies of fishes, crabs and squids.

At the Gypsy Village, there were lots of fishing boats. You can see from this pix, the hotel is not that far from the village.

The people there depends on the sea for a living. We saw women digging up cockels at the shore, and men mending or making cages for fishing.

Children have simple toys. We saw girls having competetion on shell pickings, and the boys, have a make shift snooker match.

And to get back to the hotel, we took a bike taxi back. The whole family squeezed into the small area, and got taken back to the hotel for 50Baht.

That night, we just have a simple dinner at the hotel.

♥2nd September♥

After eating in the hotel for breakfast for more than 3 days, the food is getting a bit boring. The dishes remained the same, except 2 or 3 variation.

Girls although still eating, were getting a bit bored at times for the long wait to get to the pool (they finshed early, but have to wait for us to finish ours, since we took our time).

Zaria found games to keep herself occupied.

(and Zara obviously bored)

My sis went to town again for another round of pampering. We got Annie to help us watch over our girls at the pool, and we rented a bike to explore the island.

We wanted to go all the way south, but struggled a bit just to get out of Phuket town. Then there was also a sudden downpour, so we had to stop at Wat Chalong to wait for the rain to subside. I saw a big sign “Factory Outlet” just outside the temple, and thought I can shop while waiting. Guess what Factory Outlet was that? A latex mattress factory outlet! And even if I wanted to buy any mattresses, I cannot afford the price, the cheapest, a thin single mattress, was going for 18000baht!

We got to Cape Promtheap eventually, the southern tip of Phuket, with beautiful view, and super strong wind.

On our way back, we even have a little adventure. The tyre got punctured and we were lucky we were near a bike repair shop. Got it fixed (for 180baht) in 20mins and moved on.

It took us less time to get back to the hotel, but still we arrived at 3pm with our packed lunch. Girls and Annie were femished, they gobbled up the food very quickly and went back to swim.

I stayed with them while Daddy explored Siray Island.

In the evening, with Zaria constant begging, we took the girls out to the beach.

Zaria really had fun.

Zara kept asking us when we could go back to the pool.

Tasha didn’t mind either.

For dinner, it was back to Look Mai again, for some cheap(er) home cooked meal.

♥3rd September♥

Check out after breakfast. As it was raining, the girls spent time at the Kids’ Club.

When the rain stopped, the kids went back to the pool.

The hotel gave us a room to shower and change before we departed to the airport for our 6:30pm flight.

The girls knocked off in no time on our way to the airport.

Zara and Zaria really enjoyed the holidays. Zara said, “This is like the queen of all holidays.” I think having Tasha around made them enjoy themselves even more.