Happy Father's Day!

For my childrens' father


Gifts from the children :

From Athena - Fish (aka Nemo). She says blue is daddy and pink is her

Nemo - coz' the daddy does the role of bringing up Nemo
From Aricia - err........ this is done mainly by me. She did the writing (guided), put glue on the craft sticks and .... I was telling her to "don't touch, don't pull" for the rests. Haha! She's too young to do all these.

Penguins - in reality the papa penguin takes care of the baby while the mother goes out hunting for food.

Card from Athena

Take a quiz here

Happy Father's Day to all fathers

Found!

Found some short video of my lil' girl which we took last May in NZ.

*pardon for my irritating laughter/voice*

Trying her best

With great determination, she tried again. Should have realised this is her personality - never say die

Playdate for the IJ Princesses

This playdate was planned prior to end of the second term.

Invitation cards were given out about a week before the kids' hols starts, together with a note for the mummies/daddies as I do not have any of their contact numbers except for B's dad.

All the mummies were very prompt with their RSVPs, a date was set within a few days. At the same time I invited a girl in che-che's Berries class. Also an IJ girl, they are very good pals in class.
Athena was looking forward to it (ay! that girl looked forward to anything as long as she didn't need to study/practice piano)

16th June (Tuesday)
Cookies were baked till 2am. I like nice printed out cookies but .......that always take up alot of time. Athena helped a little with 3 cookies for daddy (seen in second picture on first row). Didn't want to wash up so many cookie cutters and kept to using one small tiara-shaped cutter instead. Used the lettering stamp to imprint names of the little children. After that was done, I went on to imprinting sight words on cookies. Hee!

Packed and everything was "wrapped up" at 2+am. *yawn*

17th June (Wednesday)
Was busy the whole day and I only found the time to make the buttercream in the late afternoon. By then I couldn't put in the butters, had to ask KZ to help me with it. Came back home to see my double portion buttercream .. reduced (??) She told me she put in the cubed butters one by one as instructed but had the walls; her hair; clothes splattered by buttercream. ?? sigh....... Lesson learnt, never leave things for her to do especially when it comes to baking coz' she really makes a 'mess' - yah! she gotta clean it up too! Anyway gotta thank her too otherwise I can't find the time to do it in the night when everyone else is sleeping and the mixer disturbs the quiet night.

18th June (Thursday)
Baked one batch of chocolate cuppies in the night. Was expecting 6 children (incl Athena) in total but M's mummy informed that she can't make it last minute.

The playdate's tomorrow. Looking forward to it too coz' I'll be meeting the parents of her classmates. Classmates who might be for many years to come?

19th June (Friday)
In the morning, we were thrilled with an unexpected delivery from M's mummy. A Care Bear jelly. The 2 kids were so happy, Aricia was saying "Haa ppi Ber day, sing Haa ppi Ber day song" and started clapping her hands.
The kids ran into their room to take out their 3 Care Bears. Haha! And this Birthday Bear? Aricia asked for it, I bought for her and then she didn't want it - so it became Athena's.
Snacks for the little children, this time round tried to get more healthier snacks. Consists of mini oreos, san-zhar, vegetable crackers, fruit strips (which I only realised I took the wrong one - sour - when I was putting them in the tray), milk candies, ribenas and I gave them a Butterfly pouch craft kit from my recent shipment.B first came at close to 12pm. Then A and I came along with their mummy. Lunch first then the baking starts. As usual, the kids will play in the room while the cuppies are baked. I like it using the cups too coz' it's faster. Imagine the last one we did, I used the thinner cupcake liners and had to put in muffin trays - and I can only do 6-12 in one bake setting. This time round, almost everything went in the same time.
Decorating their cuppies. Hmm.......most of them ended up having almost similiar colours.

Their final work of art.

Ashley's sweet pink purple-ish cuppies

Very impressed with Isabella's work, she used one of her cookie to put on the cupcake. And I understand what her mummy say about her being good in art. She is!

Athena's work. Ay.....that girl hor....... I don't like it when she acts so arrogant and too playful (pour the whole lot of colouring into her buttercream when she knows only one small dot of it is sufficient, I had to toss that bloody buttercream - yes, I mean bloody coz' she played with my red colouring) when she has her friends over. She was de-briefed after the playdate ended.

Amanda's cuppies - that girl is so shy. Heehee!

Bonita's works - you can really tell alot about a child through the things she do. I can see that Bonita is one very meticulous girl. She does it slowly but nice.

We finished at around 4+, snacks served. I prepared some tuna mayo sandwiches cut into triangles. Wanted to do bento but didn't have the time, plus I didn't want to eat so much scraps.
Served :
a) Tuna Mayo sandwiches. (I wanted to make ham sandwiches - thank goodness I didn't coz' we were overwhelmed with food)
b) Konnyaku
c) Breads - kindly sponsored by B's daddy
d) ice-cream - kindly sponsored by A's daddy
e) Huge jelly - kindly sponsored by M's mummy
f) fruit tarts
(I forgot to take out the Yakults and Milos)
What we didn't prepare in the end were the sotong balls, fish nuggets, sausages. Really! I had to let them bring home the above items as it is.

Aricia didn't sleep at all, which I was rather displeased with KZ coz' she could have come out to help me instead of pretending to ... and I didn't have the time to check on Aricia to realise that Aricia refused to sleep.
I reckon the reason why she didn't sleep was she wanted the jelly so much. The moment she came out, I hear her "jer ly, I want ......jer ly."
It wasn't a birthday celebration (eh.. actually today's 19th??-Aricia's birth month??) but since the kids were awed by that jelly and there were 2 candles we just did out of the norm thing by singing a birthday song to everybody. Haha! (B's daddy played the piano while we sang. Very nice! Of course lah, he used to teach in Yamaha and is a musician! I think my house needs this kind of nice music once in a while.)

Packed up the extras for all to bring home. I forgot to pack the konnyakus, which I was left with 2 packs of 7 inside the fridge.

Packed up snacks for the children, using the spare party loot bags from the previous years.

The friends left at 5+, Ashley stayed on a little longer to watch 12 Dancing Princess. When she's ready to go home, called her mummy to inform her.

The kids had an enjoyable time, Athena was debriefed in a room. (sigh)

The kids had their cuppies after dinner. Quality of the plain pound cake wasn't that good, turned soft on the top coz' the kids whisked too much.

Mumblings

Motivation
Should have thought of this earlier - MY SHOP. Got this idea from R's class. I used to give her rewards too but the rewards were things like fries; bubble tea; and if she hit certain number I'll get her a toy etc.. This time round, I decided to be a little more generous by giving more value things and at a shorter interval. Then she's even motivated to work even harder. These days accumulating more stickers for me or rather for herself. Mummy's pleased!the result-siao mother.

R's class
Want to stop Ari's homebased class but a little not willing to too. Ari looks forward to every lesson, hops as she walks to the class from home to car to R's place. She don't do that any other day.

To sum it up why I have this perplexing issue with this.
1) I'm exhausted, I need to free one more day for Athena. Currently I only have Tuesdays as a full day with the children where I can torture them in the " electric chair study chair"
So I can concentrate more on Athena. End up less (again) time spent on Aricia

2) I feel so bad that I don't have much time to do more with Aricia, such that I have to 'outsource' her Shichida's and R's homeworks to KZ. Certain days I do sit down with her but I don't spend that much time, the same amount of time I spent with Athena, with her. Guilty. I have tons of books stocked up for Aricia which I need to finish and I definitely don't want to outsource to KZ. But then I feel that I'm shortchanging Aricia for more knowledge (with her attending R's class, I can skip certain topics which is covered and concentrate on others but... at the expense of me rushing for time every Mondays)

Have to outsource
As I spoke to R, explaining to her that I'm caught in between. She mentioned that with 2 kids it's difficult to give the same 100% as we did with the older kid, she outsourced her younger 3rd son to the helper too. At that time, I felt some consolation that I'm not alone. But after some time I thought - she has 3 kids whereas I have 2. If I cannot cope with 2, then I must be really useless lor... And I don't even have any excuse! At least R's running a school, she's working whereas I'm not and I should have the time!! Also .... if I can't spare the time for my kids then why should I have kids??
Would you 'outsource'? What's your take on this??

杀!杀!杀!
Finally rid of the roaches problem in my car. I don't allow the children to eat in the car now. Consolation is I realised that although with my children eating in the car and my 3x a week thorough interior cleaning, the roaches didn't come into my car coz' of the first reason. But...I think I had been parking directly downstairs at the block in mom's place during those days when I had to go over to do printing. Main chute = roaches = crawl into my car. Whatever it is, NO EATING!!


For Scrapbooking lovers
Woah ho! Check this out!!

Waah...........so nice. I wanna buy (Impulse buy! coz' I don't scrapbook and may end up in the cupboard more often) Price is one factor, another factor is I never dare to shop anything electronic online. I think about how those guys throw our bags in the cargo hold .. Freight maybe not so but still... I love cutesy things.

非常にかわいい
Speaking about cute, I saw these items in ToysRUs. Can't resist temptation but .... I already have tons of bento equipments and so many cookie cutters........
I can't seem to load the pictures fully so provided a link here :-
Item 1
Item 2
Saw this in Kiddy Palace
Item 3
All these items are cheap compared to the online purchases I made for my stuffs, plus you don't have to wait for freight delivery.

16th June - Vitagen Jelly
I am never an adventurous person where I'll try to do something on my own without a recipe. Somehow I had the inspiration to try out something new, perhaps something not done before (??)
I have to junk the first batch of jellies which were too hard, so I tweaked the amount again.
This is the second batch, it's soft and nice but perhaps too soft to hold the mold shape. I will try again.

Thank goodness I have my 2 greedy girls as my avid supporters, giving me the thumbs up! Hee!

Vroom Vroom

Your Driving Is is: 66% Male, 34% Female

According to studies, you generally drive like a typical male. You're confident in your driving skills, and hardly any situation gets the better of you. And while you may have a few tickets under your belt, you're still a very good driver.

Do You Drive Like a Guy or a Girl?

Outing

She did another 4 more papers for me today, out of 2 she scored above 95%, the other two were between 86%-90%. I was very pleased with her coz' she managed to solve alot of trick questions. Hubby decided to reward her.

That girl asked to go Suntec, lil' one didn't follow us coz' she had mild-fever 37.7 and didn't seem to have any appetite for food.

Hubby dropped by the IT Fair, while I brought Athena up to the Kids Zone. There was a magic show going on, we watched. I kept nudging that girl to volunteer, but she's shy. Then she noticed that either by going up the stage or answering questions the kids get a bottle of Bubbles. At first she refused to put up her hands to answer, finally when she did - the guy didn't notice her. Sigh.........I wish he'd notice her. I know it's really selfish of me to say this, I mean so many kids around. Of course he can't be noticing my girl. But... a few times when she finally found the courage, she's not selected. I feel so sad for her. I wonder how she feels, I'm too sensitive to ask her just in case she might feel hurt.
When the show ended, the announcer announced about Face Painting on the RS of the stage. That girl was so enthusiastic and ran. I've never seen her so excited, normally she's so afraid.

This is my happy girl today!





Hubby came looking for us, holding a GPS. He has good sense of directions, the wife can navigate well... wonder why he bought it. Maybe he tried GPS for the first time during our recent trip and liked the idea?
I'm so impressed with this, it has audio prompts. And it's really cool.......just the way I'd prompt him. It shows the ERP gantries; food centres; petrol kiosks; even MacDonalds!!! The only setback? It didn't have our address! I keyed in Punggol Central, brought me to a blank screen. I can only get the nearest block opposite our cluster of flats.

After some time, we used our APS - Athena Positioning System. Wah.......her instructions' really funny, cannot rely on her.

Shopping

Economic downturn hasn't stopped me and Athena from shopping. It means more online shopping for me, not my own things though!

Athena did her shopping today, that's for scoring 95% and above for the test papers she did. In these few days, she did a lot more papers and she scored more than 5x of that percentile.

She chose this from MY SHOP Promptly did it and pinned it in her room's corkboard.

As for the GSS ongoing now, I hope I can find a time to shop for myself.

HAPPY SHOPPING EVERYONE! Remember you're helping our economy.

ごめんなさい!

Apologies for this superbly late entries and all the mass updates.ごめんなさい!

School hols - I'm suppose to be a little free than usual, but no..........life remains the same. The only difference is that I can sleep in a little longer. I leave the house at 8am now, bring her in at 8.25am. And 11.45am I leave the house to pick her up.
Che-che has some work to do, I bring her out for short outings. I have 2 playdates coming up, I can't seem to plan much during this hols - though it's a month long break. Coz' their enrichment classes are still on, therefore I don't have many free full days. Che-che hasn't met her friend A for quite some time already and honestly I have no idea if I can squeeze in a time for them.

Holiday Program - I normally don't sign che-che up for any holiday programs, this year however I noticed that Shichida offers a BrainChamp 3-day program. Sounds really interesting... dunno if that girl is willing to stay from 8.30am - 6pm without me around??

I do plan to bring them on a trip to the Zoo or maybe Bird Park ... nothing's really confirmed. You know that horrible feeling you have when you want to do so many things but you don't have enough time??

Goash! Prior to typing this entry, I had so many things in my mind which I told myself I need to blog it down. Now, I forgot what I need to blog. ?!?!? Ai yah! Don't care anymore!

白玉

I did 白玉 - Shiratama today. I used the チャック付白玉だんご粉 I bought from Meidi-ya. Wanted to replicate the nice tint of pink and green 白玉 but can't seem to do a nice soft pink look.
I am going to try 大福餅 next and then maybe Macha 羊羹 and then ... お汁粉. Woah! I simply love their red bean paste, don't ask me why ... I don't even like our Red bean paste that much.

My 白玉! The first one on the top is coated with うぐいすきな粉.
I decided to put Nutella as well. And see which one Athena will choose to eat
Ha! Nutella of course!!
She finished all in the afternoon, another 4 more in the night.

And this is how I eat mine .. in a shot glass

.

Heard on the radio

Heard it on Class 95 in the morning, when Glenn talked about "which part of our body do we wash first".

I found something quite similiar on the web, but it's not the same as what Glenn mentioned about the personalities description.

Oh well, here it is : - Click here

Aricia

I really have no idea what happened to my lil' one.

She's fiercer and getting naughtier now, she pinches/hits her sister for no reason, she shouts loudly at her sister. And when the moment I pull her aside, haven't even started scolding her yet - she started to wail out loud. And highly drama too, her tears well up very fast. Looks like I gotta use the 5 mins suggestion method soon.

That aside, I was pleasantly surprised when on Tuesday I had to ask her to sit on the seat (without her carseat, forgot to move back to my car) she listened to me and sat still. Think she was really tired.. she dozed off in the car. See how she looks. So cute, I feel like pinching her cheeks.

In the evening, she was throwing tantrum -wanting to eat biscuits. Ignored her and then it was all quiet >> saw her in a funny position.

Knows what she wants
This girl knows what she wants and FIGHTS FOR IT!!!
She can even tell me what she wants to wear, which shoes (speaking of which, she kicked her fake Croc shoe off - RS @ CompassPoint and now we can't find it) to wear and >> how to tie her hair!! Can you beat that? I don't remember Athena telling me what she wants at this 2+ age.

This is what she calls her "Baa Baa Black Sheep" hairstyle. Hee! LOL. That girl ah.........Beyond her age
I've never seen a kid doing this before.
My lil' one is very mischievous. She can deliberately make a person confuse by saying she wants this and then that, and then switch back again. And then she can give you that sheepish grin.... you know she's up to her tricks again.
And another thing, she learnt is to cover her ears when she choose not to listen to what you say. Selective listening! Must be the mother's constant nagging lor.........that's why she's doing that?!

Her pronunciation is still eating into me, very jialat but she's expanding her vocabulary. Can tell me "mummy, enough or-ready (already)" or "mummy, too muchh"

Able to recognise more words. Yay! My hard work pays off!! But don't talk about Chinese. That angmoh kia ..... sound really funny. And she gets so confuse when I ask her about the parts of her body in Chinese. Oh my! That explains why I'm so bloody happy when she can recognise the word "mother", "father" in chinese.

Another time, we took out her plaits and she went "..wah...Princess Belle", she remembers Princess Belle has nice curly hair. That girl is so chor-lor how to be a Princess??

Can you hear me?
She's got a very bad habit, or perhaps she's trying hard to get attention. She always like to interrupt us when we're talking. She shouts to get your attention, you ignore her, she walks up to you and puts two hands on your cheeks and turn your face to her. And it's not like we can't hear her, she's got a very sharp voice.. when she gets angry she shouts into your face. Wah......deaf liao......
At one of our dinner in Ipoh with the group, the adults were talking and that girl was yakking. We ignored her, the other people were probably too engrossed in our conversation and didn't notice her. She was sitting next to me and while talking, I kept hearing her sharp shrill voice. Then she gets louder and louder. We talk; she talk. Until I cannot take it, told them that she's waiting for her turn to talk. One guy asked her "okay Princess, now you talk." She started yabbing about the stars; the moon; the clouds and pointing to the dark sky. Haha!

I'm really exhausted taking care of her......she keeps me on my toes. Too active already! But she entertains me too!! Love her loads. Smuack!!

Back!

Came back in one piece but mentally drained. Blah..............

Hubby decided to join this trip this time round. I thought I'm game for the adventure since we we had so much adventure in our last long drive in NZ. And if I can survive on that long trip, this short trip is sup-sup-suay. In reality, if you thought that was a trip that brought me a step closer to God", let me tell you - this time round our trip was no better.

The kids, I mentioned before, seems to be fighting alot recently. And when you have the 2 of them for the next 8 days, added on top of being confined to them in the car (where noise bounces around) for more than 8 hours of driving (with breaks in between) - it's horrible. The noise from them, from us - trying to stop them fighting. Che-che don't want to give in to mei-mei. Mei-mei also knows how to fight for herself, she even dares to scratch her sister (dunno where she learns it from) or beat her sister or....bite. Then sometimes it's mei-mei who starts the whole thing. Ai yah.... I don't really know where to start to explain. All I can say is my kids are barbaric like me.

We're lucky to have nice friendly people with us. That somehow made the journey enjoyable. Once we close the car doors, I need to bring out my whip to tame the children.

I was so proud of che-che, she was game enough to try canoeing. *splashing water at me* Hmm.... I haven't canoe-ed too for the longest time I can remember. Though haven't been working out for quite awhile, my arms didn't ache after that paddling. Hubby paddled us back to the boat while our guide swam back. Heehee! For non-adventurous people like us, it was a feat definitely to be out in the sun, sea and yucks sand. Certainly brings out the ah-soh me!! Hair bunned-up; face red; smelly;untidy.

Patong, the bar strip, is definitely not for the children. While walking back, we passed by one bar where the women were dancing to the pole, no stunts, but that kept our girls' eyes in that direction; head tilted upwards; mouth open. *slap head*

The next day, we saw the travs.. che-che said the girls are pretty. That puts me to shame! And seeing them so slim .... I haven't worked on my NY resolution as yet.

We spent 3 nights in Phuket, in a rather nice hotel. Good place to nuah, walk out and it's the beach. Nah! I hate sand. With that convenience to the sandy beach, I can't help but think this hotel should be one of the affected ones during the December tsunami.

At our last layover in KL, hubby decided to extend our stay since we haven't brought the kids to Sunway Lagoon before. Can't believe this family of spoilt; pampered people actually went under the sun (again). And that fierce lil' girl suddenly turned chicken. Ai doh! If one Ah-nia is not enough; we need to have another one who screams into your ears until you go deaf."I dowan.........I scared............." apparently she learnt all these from her sister lah!

Will we do this road trip again? I think without the kids will be fun, but since we usually don't join tours for our holidays ... going in a group will not have the flexibility that we like. But of course we have the nice company. If going alone across the causeway.... I'm paranoid over those robberies that we read in the papers.
Hubby asked if che-che wants to go Phuket again, we can always make a trip down every year. I think the heat has burnt his head!!! Mummy wants to go air-conditioned places lah! And we'll fly in for sure if he intends to go there.

I don't like the idea of going through so many tolls in M'sia. Think it's absurd. Everything also want to charge money!! They charge a rental fee for those floats in Sunway. Siao! Once I was sitting in the float, (so bloody stressful. Wanna have fun also must lug that dumb big float around) while hubby brought the kids to play. This lady came up to me and said "this is my float." Crazy woman! She lost her float and think she can any-o-how point to one float and say it's hers? Told her that is mine and the number is tallied. Later I saw her looking out for her float. Duh...

Anyway, I do prefer to go to cooler climate areas - though our luggage will be heavy with winter clothings.I hate perspiration!

Photos :

*sorry this post is out really late, coz' I needed to upload the photos first