30 June 2012

Carry me

Just 5 minutes ago, the little girl turned over to Daddy and said 抱抱..




27 June 2012

The mothers know





We needed to get new socks for Joy Joy; she's outgrown the every other pair we have. To prevent me from getting the wrong size, I brought the only pair of socks that can fit Joy Joy to work today.

When I was searching for my EZ link card to get on the train, one of them dropped out and a lady picked it up for me. She gave me a wide smile and said "I'm a mother too".

It reminded me of the other time I had a motherhood moment.

Haha.. Motherhood. Warm and fuzzy.

When you need a diaper cloth...





26 June 2012

Parenting

Recently I've been thinking about parenting.
How do we want to parent the little girl?

The traditional chinese way is too stifling. The American way is too indulgent. And i am not familiar with any other way.

I know it's not going to work like a textbook. As in you do this, you get that. I also considered not thinking too much and going with the flow. After all, I believe that a huge part of parenting is about instinct, understanding the child and then bringing your child up in the best way I know how to and because of that I've parked the parenting thing for sometime.

Until we realize that the little girl has a reallyhuge temper.
And she is very violent. Often hitting people, pinching people or slapping people.
When she's not happy about something, she screams and she sweeps things away.
She doesn't do it much with me but she bullys her grandma and I witnessed it myself on a few occasions.

My feel about the little girl is that she is aware of what's happening but she gets so frustrated, so bored, so impatient sometimes. And she only knows one way of expressing how she feels... By throwing a tantrum.

I thought about the kind of person we would like JoyJoy to be. But I realize theres more.
As in the things I don't want her to be.
I don't want her to be self-centered. This world was never made for just one person.
I don't want her to be unable to cope with frustrations. Life holds many frustrations.
I don't want her to be disrespectful or rude. To me, this is a deal breaker in many social situations.

I also don't want her to think that throwing tantrums is a way of getting her way.
But how am I going to teach her all that? As in what exactly do I do to teach her all that? I repeat myself to death (read: nag)? Not going to work.

Whilst I wasn't actively looking for a parenting style, I seem to have found one accidentally. French parenting. Not that i know a lot about it...I've only read a grand total of about 3/4 of a book on French parenting but it seems to be a perfect match:


From what I understand, it's similar to the traditional Chinese authoritarian style but what I grasp is, there are some non-negotiable limits set and these limits set are put in place for a reason (safety, manners etc), the child is given unlimited freedom within the constrains of those strict limits and most importantly, the kid is respected as a person. French parenting is purposeful and intended to educate the child, not rein them in.

I think my focus will be parenting as a priority.
Upbringing is important education which a child must receive from her parents and in many ways, I think it is more important than whether she can read by 1 years old or whether she eventually goes on to get a masters degree in some field.

Assuming that she chooses some occupation that does not reap significant monetary returns, we would have done our best to make sure that she is able to make the best out of situations she finds herself in.

Epitome of kiasuism.

The anniversary flowers

This is what's become of the anniversary flowers:




And those petals? They look like this when dried:




Anybody knows how to make potpourri? :)

22 June 2012

Be grateful





Our little girl is currently blemished and would you just look at that glorious ring at her jaw? It used to be a red raised round patch.

Her cousins who live nearby go to childcare, they had to stay home 2 days ago because the two of them have a bad cough. The grandpa went over to take care of them for a day before coming back home to take care of the little girl.

When I reached home from working late yesterday, the little girl looked visibly sick. Red, watery eyes, running blocked nose, hacking cough and a fever. My heart was broken the minute I saw her and worse after she kept going "eh eh eh eh eh eh" continuously when she saw me. Not in the usual mischievous way, more like she was pleading with me. My heart was aching big time.

When I put her to bed for the night, she was unusually impatient, obviously unwell. Although she seemed to feel better after puking all over me.

We also spent quality time together throughout the night. I was up at various points in the night stroking her hair and holding her hand to comfort her.




She could only rest by hugging me like this throughout the night:




When I moved, she would cry. So like a good mummy, I just do what I needed to. Let my hand go so numb from being in the same position that it didn't feel like it belonged to me when I was woken up in the morning.

The photo of the little girl hugging me was just taken tonight. After she nursed for a long long time, holding on to my hand whilst she nursed. Being able to comfort her and knowing that the nursing comforts her is priceless to me and any mother to a child.

I really like the PD we saw today. She said the little girl would be well in no time if she gets ample rest. I'm glad the medication causes drowsiness because the little girl has bad sleep problems. She also helped me convince the grandma that the sarong is bad and you shouldn't leave anything in the sarong to increase the chances of suffocation. And I think our PD ought to be the spokesperson for this product, she raved about it so much that even the Grandma was convinced we needed it. And so we now have a new toy:




I haven't slept for more than 2 hours continuously since last night. Need to crash now but I just want to say that I'm grateful to have the chance to take care of the little girl. Especially after I saw this on FB last night:




This little girl suffered from some illness and had almost no chance of survival. Her parents decided to donate her kidney and liver, It saved the lives of two children in the next room. The picture shows them saying their last goodbye to their little girl. She looked like she was sleeping.

And now my heart is aching even more.

20 June 2012

And the shopping begins

There was a new shop that caught my eye yesterday during lunch. One of those little ones nestled in an obscure corner. They sell clothing and accessories for little girls, not too expensive either.

So I sinned.














I put one of the clips on Joy Joy's head and she looked so cute! Can't wait for her to have more hair...




My heart is pleased.. But my wallet probably won't be!

19 June 2012

Endless




(1) Melissa Women's Ultra Girl Jason Wu II Flat The moiff is an owl. I have such a thing for owls!
(2) Melissa Women's Campana Papel Ballerina Flat Dusted in subtle gold.. Chic.
(3) Melissa Joy Manning "New Elements" 14k Gold Herkimer Diamond Earrings Simple, classy but not boring.
(4) Melissa Joy Manning "Neptune" 14k Gold Bezel Set Blue Hemimorphite Druzy Post Earrings Irregular gem set in gold..love.


Today, I saw a friend's post on her facebook about her new Melissa flats and she mentioned Endless.com. Before this I had already seen Melissa shoes and have been swooning over them so I went online to take a look..

I found these which I love (♥-♥) . To expensive to afford all of them but nice to look at!

A Daddy is...

Someone you watch tv with...



Someone who laughs with you...



Someone who sulks with you...



Someone who smells your shit...



Someone who takes care of you...


Someone you can hold on to...



Someone who protects you...



Someone who loves you.



We had a good father's day weekend with lots of family time. More please!

18 June 2012

Deja Vu

Isn't the baby adorable?! This is a still from A Happy Event, a French movie.




Daddy watched this movie on one of his flights and he said it reminded him of us. When he got back from the trip, he was laughing when he told me about the movie and he said I really gotta catch it.

The movie looked good from the trailer, I hope the movie shows in Singapore!

Disconnected

I realized that I left my phone in Daddy's car almost right after he dropped me at the station.

Before the withdrawal symptoms set in, I thought it was not exactly a bad situation to be in. Not bad.. Not having my phone today means I can focus better today. But withdrawal symptoms set in when I sat down in the train.

so what do I do now?

I'm so used to catching up on my emails / Facebook / blogging on the go that I suddenly have no idea what to do with all that time. 25 minutes is a lot of time for me.

I looked at what I had in the bag and immediately found something to do. Clean my bag of the receipts and papers I've randomly thrown in because I was in a rush.

I looked up from furiously sorting the papers in my bag once in a while and saw a few people who were watching me sort my bag and people looking at their mobile devices. More people looking at their mobile devices.

20 minutes later I ended up with this:



See the amount of junk i've been carrying around with me? Victory! Blessing in disguise.

It was manageable too for the rest of the day. Just that I had nothing to read whilst pumping milk, nothing to note down the groceries I had to buy after work.

Only thing was that I was supposed to have a call tonight. Not impossible without my phone but difficulty level became significantly higher for a variety of reasons.

"Just do it" I told myself. Before I left, I log back into the network to print the call detail, thinking to myself "maybe the call will be cancelled tonight. I logged in and saw this:



This is a good Monday by my standards. So grateful!

16 June 2012

Melaka stands for food!

We were all happy that Daddy's back home and since was the week of our anniversary, Daddy said "Let's Go!". And off we went to Malacca. One of my favorite places. (Ahem) Has all my favourite food.

It's not easy to travel with the little girl because she violently objects to being constrained in any way and hence her car seat is not exactly her best friend.But we survived the trip there and I feel very proud of us. Daddy for getting us there safely and me for singlehandedly entertaining the little girl and even getting her to sleep about an hour on our way there.

Long story short, we went, we saw, we conquered. we bought what we wanted and ate more than what was good for us. But then when you're in Malacca.. who really cares what is good for us.. just EAT!!!!

This trip, we discover this glorious cake from Yeast Pastry House..and it is really simply heavenly. Soft flufy sponge with the most delicious cold cream filling that doesn't make you feel sick. Helps that it comes with a crisp sweet crust top. We had 2 each before dinner but I craved for more. Absolutely delicious. Be still my heart.


Yeast Pastry House
No.3 Jalan Kota Laksamana 3/8, Taman Kota Laksamana Seksyen 3
Melaka, Malaysia 75200
Phone +60 6-283 1088

And then we discovered this famous one. Like finally. After countless trips to Melaka, we finally tried it and its really quite good.


Nadeje Cake Shop
Nadeje Plaza Mahkota
G-23,25 & 27 Jalan PM4, Plaza Mahkota,
75000 Malacca Town, Malaysia

We also discovered that Donald and Lily will be relocated and we happen to be there on their very last day of operation at the charming little eating house that has become their trademark.
Some pictures from our first visit there in 2010..








The new location is not really accessible and there are no other places of interest around that area. It also looked more commercialized. Looking at it from the outside, the eating place has lost the charm. I'm not sure if it was a good business decision for them to move.

We also went to eat the Jonker88 where I found the little girl dancing with her daddy halfway through my bowl of Assam Nonya Laksa. Hello Nonya Laksa.. I miss you.


The night we arrived, our close friends brought us to this seafood place called crystal bay but I think it can't beat our 2010 experience at Alai Seafood... And I'm posting photos to make up for missing Alai this trip (T.T). Everything you are going to see next tasted so good, I've been thinking about them since 2010...Especially the butter prawns!




And finally... The last meal we had at Jane's place..Major love! Especially her mom's Nonya dumplings.!


I've gotta wait another year before we'll be back in Malacca for a much anticipated wedding but we'll back!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Ads