Last day of school.... PARRTTTYYYY!!!

This is almost so deja-vu... the beginning of school holidays and Vic was down with cough and flue.

Vic had just two more days of school, one of which was her last exam paper ie Chinese, and the next was her kindy's term party. This year's theme was Indoor Beach Party and the kids were told to wear handmade costumes. Afterwhich, the two weeks of school holidays... aahhh, bliss! (Mummy can wake up later too!)

On Thursday 26th May, Vic woke up with slight nose bleeding, and was having a sniffy nose. When I picked her up, she was really quiet, obviously getting weaker as she was not her normal self and developed a cough.

The next day was Party Day, so wouldn't want her to miss it, but in the morning she felt warm and I gave her some paracetamol to control the fever.

She wore a simple blue sarong skirt that she had never wore before, and her full piece swim suit together with the headgear and goggles. Then she wore her jacket over it, and I told her that when it comes to the parade, she can take out her jacket, and wrap herself with the bathing towel to complete the effect. But she wasn't keen, anyway, I put the towel in her bag.

With some friends and her good friend Abigail on the left.

With her class teacher
One with the brother. Look at all the wonderful art work by the children at the background
All the other kids

After picking her up, I realised her headgear and goggles were not on her head, and found out that it slipped out on the way to school, so she merely kept it in the bag. When I picked her at school, the joy on all the children's faces were obviously excited that the school holidays arrived and the teachers did a great job with the decos. But my Vic, she was solemn, glum, serious, and maybe I could say... unhappy. Can't blame her, as she must have been feeling so unwell the whole morning.

With another good friend, Keon. Eversince Keon's birthday party in March, their friendship must have blossomed, maybe because of a common interest in Ben 10, and he's given her a hair ribbon for her birthday and on another occassion, a self-made card. How sweet. :)

On the walk back to our car, I did some probing, as usual, on how her day went. She told me that she didn't get "a point" for her costume, and she was clearly disappointed. So I told her nevermind, it's ok. But she added, "It's all your fault, Mummy, coz you didn't make me the shark costume."

Hurt inside, I told her that, and also told her quite matter of factly that this is her party, I am under no obligation to make costumes for her. (Note: Making costumes is an optional role that some mothers take on quite effortlessly, whereas yours truly is NOT into these things.)

She apologized, and apology accepted. Reassured her that winning or losing is no big deal, most important is to enjoy herself. But I think she wasn't listening as she was under the weather. Thinking back, she was probably expecting to win because she won last year's best costume award in her class.

Before reaching our house, Vic slept, and she slept until 230pm then only had her lunch. She was still running a fever.

William also started to have runny nose, so I have two sick kids at home, and it's the beginning of school holidays! Knowing them, and not trying to sound pessimistic, but my kids' sickness can be very cheong hei ie long-winded.

Oh well, kids are kids! Since Friday, they have been taking 3 days of coconut water, and 3x daily medication, seen the paed on Monday, Vic went on the nebuliser as there was mucuous detected in her lungs, William not so serious, both have been pretty easy kids to manage eventhough sick, and they are on the road to recovery no doubt.

William's imaginative talk

This boy likes story books, he's been read to, from children bible stories to Disney hit stories like The Lion King, Beauty & The Beast, Little Mermaid, Robin Hood, etc to all-time favourite children stories like Little Red Riding Hood, Emperer's New Clothes, Shoemaker & The Elves, The Enormous Turnip, Frog Prince, Fox & The Stock, just to name a few, to Ladybird series of Sly Fox & The Hen, The Little Red Hen, Magic Porridge Pot, The Little Yellow Digger, Little Lost Puppy, and more.

Eversince he's discovered TV when we introduced Toy Story to him, he's always been excited to watch DVDs, and most times can sit still, oblivious to what's happening around him. We always tease him that when this happens, he's already part of the "cast in the tv." : )

Now, with all these stories and movies, he's got some crazy funny ideas and talks with lotsa imagination too. Don't feel bad if you hear him talk and can't understand a word he says, either due to his poor pronounciation as he doesn't quite bite his words, or simply that he's rambling about well... stuff.

Most of the time I forget what he says, but over lunch today, despite his drippy runny nose, he rambled on about things like (excerpts as I can't remember all)... wolf comes and bite the lamb's tail and then the lion roars and the wolf falls down the gorge... blah blah... then crocodile going round and round hanging on our fan, then dropping down dead, and dogs with sharp teeth going into the sea to bite the sharks, and hyenas chasing dunno-what, and lions and pigs and stuff, and a whole lot of imaginative talk.

Well, that's William. Funny he is, loveable and never wanting mummy to get angry at him (he apologizes till I acknowledge him) and when I get my smell-fix from him, he'll tilt his head towards me so I can sniff his sweat from his head. Aaaahhhhh....

Casual updates

Victoria

Studies

Victoria just finished her one week of exams, comprising of 4 papers ie English, Malay, Chinese, Numbers, one paper a day. She did quite well in her trial papers during their revision week, except for some very careless mistakes like in Numbers, she rearranged the numbers wrongly in "ascending" and "descending" form.

Her strong subjects are:

1. Chinese (Vic enjoys her chinese tuition classes)




2. Numbers (At home, Vic is already doing subtraction and addition with 3 digit numbers, whereas school work is still two digit + or - one digit ) and

3. Malay

Surprisingly, I feel English is her weakest subject as she still struggles with some spelling and forming words. This little girl's reading has improved much, but the passion of reading is still not there yet.

Allergies

We are still battling Vic's allergy but without any drops or medication. Purely diet control (as what we have been doing the past 3 years) but recently we have introduced treenuts in her diet.

Sadly, yesterday she had a little sniffy nose and this morning she had nose bleeding again after she woke. I gave her some antihistamine to control the sniff and itchiness. Hope it gets better. Looks like our weekend swimming plans have to be postponed again.

Having overcomed her fear of Nemo movie last year, Vic is now scared of watching Beauty & the Beast. Says Gaston and Beast is scary.

Vic tells me she loves me in the most gentle, quiet way. Totally unlike her brother maybe due to age difference and gender, she would touch me, or hold my hand when going to sleep then say she loves me.

Enjoying ipad games together. The Angry-Bird craze is on...


William

... has been less obsessed with Toy Story for the last few months, but lately has been taking out his TS books and CDs and Buzz Lightyear who's been standing untouched on the TV cabinet has flown again.

William likes this compilation of Disney cartoons. Still drinks his milk from the bottle, and a couple of nights back as he was sucking at his milk bottle and me on my ipad, he suddenly expressed, "Mummy I like you!" and then like a shy teenage boy but with a cheeky smile, he chuckled away. I was surprised, as he normally says "I love you mummy" (I'm spoilt with this, as he pronounces his love for me so generously and ever so spontaneously). So I pretended I didn't hear him, and he repeated himself, followed by the same boyish smile.

Ohhh... mummy's heart melted.



At other times, he may suddenly climb on me, hug me, hang himself on me, come sit next to me and wrap his arm around my neck. At one stage he became so dependent on me, asking me to do everything for him... when I say everything, I mean really EVERYTHING.. from feeding him, to keeping his CDs and toys, to taking things for him, opening the car door for him and escorting him out (he won't accept others) etc. Quite fed up, I had to be mean to be kind, giving him the ultimatum to feed himself and do things for himself... if he wants to watch tv. Hahaha... bribery always works!

If you ask William if he's a baby, he tells you "no, I'm not a baby. I'm William."

Story books continue to fascinate this boy, and he will ask for stories before he takes his afternoon nap, and at night, even sometimes in the morning and while I'm driving.

Myself

Some friends have asked what was my decision after I blogged about my dilemma about a job offer. While waiting for the full job description and presentation, a month ago, I received a phone call from a franchise owner that I spoke to previously - which later turn out to be my 2nd open door.

In the same week, my ex client revert to me asking to meet up for the JD, presso and interview. Regretably, I have to politely turn him down, of course this is not something I find easy to do. But he was cool after that, guess not meant to be. To make sure the door didn't close with a slam, I sent him a little personalised token of appreciation, and we moved on from there.

As for the phone call, this will be my future. Our future, as the family will have to make some minor adjustments and sacrifices. Hopefully it'll be a nice little project for me to kill time as well as benefit the kids at the same time. I will share more about this in July.... watch this space!

Victoria's special skincare, toothpaste and supplements

Having very sensitive skin means Victoria not only has to watch her diet but also have special daily skin care.

I want to say that Vic has used brands like Cetaphil, Eubos and Polytar before and I have no complaints over that, but just the list below are what she's currently using. Please feel free to recommend and feedback if any.

Since reading on Moogoo products in the newspaper, I have bought their shampoo and milky wash for Vic to use. Moogoo products are chemical-free (that means, no parabens or laureth sulphates) and environmentally friendly. They claim to have the same skin irritation score as water. That means, if you are ok with water and not allergic to it, then you'll be ok with moogoo : )

She just recently finished her first bottle of Moogoo milk wash (500g cost RM69 before discount, officially available at all Caring Pharmacies, but I discovered this also at Babyland SS2 PJ) which lasted her around 5 months (admittedly she's the only one who uses this, and William has only used a few pumps only because I ran out of his J&J shower gel).

After bath, or anytime during the day, normally during the night, Vic puts on Bio Oil, which is to reduce the redness and scars caused by the ezcema and little accidents on her feet. Occassionally, I use Protopic oitment on her inner arm folds if the itch returns and causes redness. I find Protopic very effective. Besides Bio Oil and Protopic, I rotate these with Virgin Coconut Oil too, this one as a gift from Popo.

From left: Olive Oil for the hair, Bio Oil for skin, Bencoolen Virgin Coconut Oil


For the Queen's hair, we use good old traditional olive oil (not the Indian coconut oil from glass bottles that I used when I was Vic's age, the smell is unbearable) since she was a toddler.

For her toothpaste, eversince Dr Wong detected a slight allergy to mint, Vic has been on Chicco's raspberry flavored toothpaste for 3 years now. The last time she changed to Colgate based on his recommendation, her lips became itchy and swollen, either due to the toothpaste or something else. So we changed her back to the Chicco's toothpaste.

As for diet, she's still abstaining from eggs and yeast (includes all types of mushrooms, fungus) and any foods containing or that may have cross-contamination of these (including commercial non-organic pasta and spaghetti).

She's still on daily probiotics, currently now Lactogg best taken with an empty stomach 3 hours after her last meal, and 1 hour before the next.

Almost every other day, she's taking half a table spoon of food supplement from Be-Well manufactured by a British company based in Peterborough. More info here. This was recommended by Dr Wong after we voiced our concern that she MAY be lacked of certain nutritients due to her restricted diet, but of course her size and height definite shows otherwise.

She was on Scott's Emulsion cod liver oil capsules (with Omega 3) but now that that has finished, we are looking out for a good brand of fish oil made with/by natural triglyceride. Anyone knows any, please recommend.

In a way, I'm thankful she's followed her Daddy's genes when it comes to swallowing capsules because she can just chew on them, whereas mummy would have puked even before the capsule made its way down my throat.

Hot air balloon, horse riding and playground!

This morning we left the house at 830am to Taman Tasik Titiwangsa in KL with no promises to the kids that we can ride on horse carriages, but just good family fun time at the park. Of course, having read this on another mummy's blog recently and checked it out on the internet, hubs and I were quite sure we can find some horses, but didn't want to hype it up in case of disappointment.

We had breakfast in the car - Hong Kong chee cheong fun for the kids, and lo mai kai for hubs and myself. That saves us easily 20 minutes!

Upon arriving, we round the place awhile to find the horses, and found parking quite easily. The place was clean (relatively cleaner than TTDI park) and not crowded even on a weekend.

Kakak pushing William on his stroller. So much easier like this, otherwise you may see a crazy maid chasing after a runaway boy in a park

We spotted a hot air balloon in the air and the kids unanimously decided to go for that first. When we arrived there, we were told by the lady in charged that it was an event advertisement, not for public rides, but out of her kind heartedness, she allowed me and Vic up together with another couple.

Hot air balloon! For free!
Victoria with her first hot air balloon
Mummy and Vic going up... must be minimum 120cm but the lady let Vic on. Poor William not qualified yet. He was not happy.
The view from on top

Down on land, William was very disappointed and almost cried. Daddy promised him an extra horse ride and ice cream.

We didnt fly around, instead just going up on air for a minute, then down again, but it was good enough experience for the 6yo and her mummy ; )

After the ride, William still have his "black face" on...
Come on, boy boy... smile lar...
This is better... seen here waiting for the horse carriage

Too tired... her turn in the stroller now

After the hot air balloon, we walked towards the field where were horses were, and paid for double rides each since it was ridiculously cheap, costing 50cents per child and RM1 per adult.

The horse that pulled our carriage. Her name is Wangsa




It was slightly passed 10am by the time we finished the horse rides. The kids spotted the 3 big playgrounds nearby earlier, and asked for it now. So we brought them there in the mid morning hot sun for a 15 minutes play. Mummy hid in the shade.

Some other pictures taken at the park

My little girl touched a snake!

Victoria went on a school outing to Zoo Negara about 2 weeks ago and she came home telling me that she touched a snake, under supervision.

I let out a squeal of disgust and shock. Then I asked Vic if she touched the snake like this ( indicating a quick jab on the arm) or like this (stroking the arm)...

And she replied, "like this, mummy... (stroking the arm)".

She stroked a snake! But then she told me it was a skinny green snake ie grass snake. Not the white fat python, thank God.

She is definitely more brave than mummy.

Snarled the wolf

I shared a packet of 5 tau sar peah with William this morning over breakfast. He asked me what it was. I said tau sar peah.

"Mummy, I love tau sar peah."

Then I said, "yea it's won-der-ful" (with exaggeration)

And he repeated after me, "It's wonderful"

Mummy: It's delicious.

William: It's delicious.

Mummy: It's super.

William: It's super.

Mummy: It's magnificent.

William: It's magnificent.

Mummy: It's lovely!

William: It's lovely.... snarled the wolf.

With a cheeky smile and tau-sar over his lips.