Hugs and Kisses... not Hershey style

When it comes to hugging and kissing, it's a little different between the two kids especially when dropping them off at school.  Maybe due to age, or maybe due to gender, or maybe due to upbringing during the first few years.  

Victoria

She'd happily walk off to school, pulling her bag behind her like a determined air stewardess boarding an aircraft, with only a quick good bye.  On better days, I'd hear her good bye loud and clear, and on good days, I manage to squeeze her for a one sided hug, and on great days, she'd wrap one arm around me in response.  

This could be when I drop her off at her tuition house, or leaving her after lunch at her school canteen, or at home.  Once when 5yo brother insist on hugging and kissing her IN her school canteen, IN FRONT of her friends and other kids, she was sooooo hesitant.  They were almost playing cat and mouse until William got his way.  He's one persistent little fler when it comes to displaying his affections even in public.  

One day last week, I dropped Vic and her friend off in front of her school gate.  After taking out their bags, I closed my car boot and within that 5 seconds, I look for Vic to hug her good bye.  All I saw was my baby's back some 10 metres away and out of earshot.  Just like that - no one sided hug, no one arm hug, not even a good bye.  Feeling rather sad, I shared with William in the car and reminded him that he mustn't forget to hug me even when he's older.  

Back home that night, I told Vic and this cheeky girl made up by hugging me tight whilst still in her PE clothes - still sweaty and sticky.  Oh well.  This still acceptable kua. 

William

Now this boy is a direct opposite.  In fact, if he doesn't get to hug or kiss me goodbye, he'd be the one feeling uneasy and incomplete.  Now that's true because a few times when Daddy walks him into class, he'd wait for me to come in for the ritual goodbye.  

He doesn't mind or notice that his friends laugh or tease him.  The girls would giggle and the boys would go, "Yeee-eerr, he's kissing his mummy."  At first I was upset at their reaction, like they never kiss their parents is it?!  But that thought quickly dissolve and I like to tease this particular classmate of his back, "Why?  You wanna kiss me also is it?"  Hahaha, only to see the boy's innocent pearly white smile!  

William would pull my face and hold my neck close to plant kisses and hugs before letting me go.  The same when I drop him off at his Chinese Enrichment Centre. In the beginning, his chinese teachers would wait closeby and look uncomfortably at us, now they sensibly stand a little further without feeling uneasy.  Do I feel shy?  Heck, yea!!  But I am one proud and lucky parent in this aspect, and I'd want my boy and girl to hug and kiss me good bye whenever possible.  Hubby doesn't get the same full privileges from William though.  

Surrounded by sharks and other sea creatures

Some weeks back, when the kids had no activities on a Saturday and mommy daddy have no appointments too - which is such a rare occasion that both conditions apply, we decided to spend the day with some really interesting sea creatures.... at Aquaria KLCC.  We bought the tickets from Groupon sometime back and decided it's now or never. 

So here are some of the sea creatures that we saw... I'm not going to label most of these pictures as I can't recall their names, haha.  So please don't test me. 

We decided to take the LRT there - took only 30 minutes direct from the stop nearest to our house to KLCC mall itself.  Although this was not their first time, the kids were elated!

The sand tiger shark

Shy tortoise or blur tortoise... doesn't know he can actually hide his head in his shell instead of under a leaf

Up close with the manta ray... so ghostly looking hor?

Cute little sea horse

Shark feeding show

And because we went on Merdeka Day, we got to see this, and the kids got free mini flags and pencils for answering questions related to animals found in our country

This was the only one happy and nicest picture took of William.  The others were gloomy sad or crazy funny faced ones. 

Counted a total of 6 feeding shows we watched - 2x otters, 1x denizens of the ocean, 1x water rats, 1x the great Arapaima and finally, the shark feeding.  Then we hurried back home, picked Kakak up and headed for the evening celebration at church.

Of different taste and place...

I don't normally do foodie posts as it's too tedious in my opinion, to document every single dish with review and note down locations and opening hours.  But here are a few exception:

Sitiawan 

The children's great grandma's birthday held at a local restaurant.  Food was Hokchiu, without doubt, and much anticipated as Hokchiu servings come big and plentiful with many signature dishes that I miss.  By the 3rd dish, the waitress will place plastic bags on each table for self-help take away.  No need to be shy here, because I notice locals will just ask, "Do you want this dish, or I will take it?"

RM1.40 for this big bowl of cendol come with generous helpings of kidney beans.  But a tad too little gula melaka.  A little bit more would have given it more "ummpphh"

My all-time favourite... the red wine chicken mee sua soup.  Mom cooks better than this

Egg with pork and fake shark fin and shredded vege, to be eaten wrapped in lettuce

Sweet dessert

Braised Pork Belly

Another one of my favourites - fish maw in spicy sweet egg gravy

And the "real" dessert comes in plastic bags like this.  Help yourself - mai pai seh

Then there was the fish head dish - super huge but very fresh fish head served with abundant garnishings and sweet soy sauce.

This is the place

Korean food with Korean friends... they always recommend the best places.  These were taken at Paniya Restaurant. 

No idea what are the names of each dish, and I notice that we can eat these Korean dishes at different stages - nothing goes to waste, even "leftovers" are made into a delicious, aromatic fried rice.  The waiters are ever ready and "on-time" to slice, flip and fry. 

And then there was Mexican with Gong Gong Popo... at Frontera Sol of Mexico at JayaOne, PJ.  If I recall correctly, the 4 of us adults had nearly 50 wraps that night for the eat-all-you-can buffet.  Money so worth it!

Kids made themselves at home at the bar.  They brought their homework along, much to the curiosity of the bartender.   Thankfully the boy didn't order a pint to go along.

The first order... then there were more and I lost count.  We had to refer to the menu again, and double triple check with each other on how many wraps we ate in total

And at Ho Ho Sek (former Chow Yang) at SS2, we had this glorious CKT.  My S95 tells no lie with the big succulent prawns and egg that you can bite into.  I likey!

Mid Autumn Festival

Frankly, I have no idea when this year's Mid Autumn Festival would be.  All I knew was it will be sometime end of the month, or nearing, or to be exact, sometime in September.  Please pardon my ignorance, because I do not have a Chinese Calendar but that itself is not an excuse I know.  Apologies beforehand if I offend anyone here who think I'm not Chinese enough.

But yea, I only found out the exact date from my aunt next door who passed me a pomelo bought by Great-grandpa.  When passing the pomelo to me over the gate, she suggested I slaughter the fruit on "Eight Month 15th Day" to which I replied, "What's that?"

She was obviously not amused, and asked me if I ate too much bananas.  Funny humour, she has.

Anyway, we did not really celebrate in any special way.  We bought no moon cakes, as in previous year, EXCEPT for one pricey organic Lotus Walnut mooncake for Victoria.  The mooncake was divided into 8 pieces, and each piece cost RM2, and Vic (bless her!) budgeted her mooncake and held on her excitement to gobble everything up.  By mid week, she was only 1-2 slices down, and I gingerly reminded her that she should finish it by end of the week so she gets to enjoy it fresh, as it contains no preservatives.

Even brother William wanted, but Vic and I felt he could eat the "normal" mooncakes - which we had none, at that time.  We don't buy mooncakes in previous years as people would bless us with more than enough and I had no plans to buy any this year too, however looking at how close we are to "Eight Month 15th Day", I may have to make an exception this year.

William shed tears as he expressed his disappointment that Jie Jie have mooncake to eat whereas he had none.  Vic gave him a small bite to pacify him.  A few days later at the night market, we saw mooncakes and I asked him if he wanted, but surprised that he answered, "No, I don't want.  I will eat mooncakes when I am older, like 8 or 10 years old."  Weird where he got this idea from.

I told hubby about this.  A few days later, hubby brought home a beautiful pink fabric box of mooncakes from Shangri-La Hotel, courtesy of a friend.  It was an answered prayer!

A day or two after that, another box came in, this time they were homemade mooncakes from a colleague who gave them to hubby out of the blue!  More mooncakes!

Victoria's lantern

William's lantern

Blessings of mooncakes

The kids made lanterns at Art Class, and they hung them proudly at our porch.  So beautiful!

On the day itself (Thursday, 19th September - see, I know now... hehehe) I slaughtered the pomelo and we ate it after dinner, with mooncakes of course).

How was yours? 

His favourite singer has to be Matt Redman

William loves to listen to Matt Redman's song.  It started with this song entitled "Blessed Be The Name of The Lord" from the same-name album.  He almost drove his sister crazy by turning on this song everytime he gets into my car.  (As for me, I have been immuned.)

Matt Redman

 After he "mastered" this song by listening to it 1000 times (kids do this so effortlessly) and watching YouTube a couple of times, he has added a few more songs in the same album to his list of favourites.
 He now sings and part murmurs the following songs...

 

Everytime for the past few months, whenever I send him to school in the afternoon, he'd quickly switch on these songs and sings along all the way to school. Sometimes we just listen and enjoy.

Wondering if he'd still sing for me when he's 18... : )

The little or not-so-little blue creatures

Look who we bumped into the other day at Pavillion Shopping Mall?  The kids' favourite cartoon characters!  We even brought them for a cinema night to watch Smurf 2 and had sooooo much fun! 

Victoria with the Smurfette.  She already has 2 Smurfettes at home.

The Smurfs are taller than the kids in real life! 

Thereafter we had dinner at Morganfields to celebrate Theodore's 5th birthday.  

Morgan field's... Home of Sticky Bones??

Kids had free meals.  

Hickory BBQ Spare Ribs

Garlicky BBQ Spare Ribs

And the colorful jelly cake with the Lego theme for the birthday boy

A Day in the Park

When I dream of parks, I dream of clear blue lakes with rows of swimming ducks, oblivious to their surroundings, and graceful swans and hungry geese strolling alongside waiting to be fed by generous park-goers.  I dream of sunshine with cool breeze and pigeons and maybe seagulls too. 

But alas... this dream is only a dream and a memory of the parks we know from UK.  Last school holiday in August, we visited our very own City Park in Seremban 2 where the kids can play on the playground, feeds the fishes albeit most are overfed already, and where we discovered the crows have made this their hangout place too.

Forget pigeons and seagulls, here are the crows...  they remind me of the evil guys in the animation show, "Epic"

Gong Gong drove all 4 grandkids there - Andrew, Grace, Victoria and William.  Sharon stayed home with Popo for her bath and morning nap.  Not long after we just arrived, Andrew had a nasty fall head first from the slide and bit into his lower lip.  Poor boy was crying due to the pain and hubby went across to an eatery to get ice for Andrew.  The other three kids ran around and played whilst we 3 adults tried to pacify him and assure him that he will be alright. 

After some time, the other 3 cousins came over and prayed to God to stop the bleeding, then we decided to move on to feed the fishes.  The bleeding stopped soon after - praise God for answering prayers - and the 4 kids were then engrossed with feeding the fishes and tortoises in the pond.  The fishes are now very big and didn't seem so interested in the bread crumbs that we threw in. 

Here fishy fishy... eat your breakfast

See how chummy and adorable this two can get - William (5yo) and cousin Grace (6yo).  At one time, Grace got upset when William didn't hold her hand... hehehe.

Here's one with all four kids taken from Gong Gong's camera.