Child Proofing My Cabinet

I bought this cabinet for extra storage space after my second daughter was born. As I knew toddlers like to explore and open doors of cabinets and drawers, I purposely requested the furniture shop owner not to install any handles on the cabinet doors and drawers. We adults would just open doors and drawers by grabbing the sides. Worked fine for us for a few years because my girls never bothered with the 'doors that cannot be opened'.

Came my son Yang who was even more curious with never give up attitude. He was very interested with the doors and would spend time studying the opening at the sides. One day, he managed to pry open the doors and there was no turning back since. He would open the doors time to time and take everything that looked fun to him. Baking utensils, snacks that I bought but want to 'hide' from the children before giving them, pasta, can food, containers etc. Smacking and reprimanding him was not effective at all at this curious stage.

I was not keen to install those child proof thingy looks ugly and since Yang would probably be the last baby in my house, I did not want to waste money and space later to store those things. I came out with a very simple but effective solution. To turn the doors and drawers side of the cabinet facing the wall but the ugly plywood side would be facing us.

 Before

Luckily, it was very easy to solve as I had been to a 'DIY shop' very frequently and there were all sorts of unique stuff that could help solve our organizing and home improvement problems. I bought 2 rolls of wood patterned adhesive paper to co-ordinate with the cabinet surface at the front and sides.  I spent one night measuring and sticking and came out with nicer looking back of a cabinet. I bought some fruit stickers and pasted on surface to distract my son from discovering the sides of the adhesive paper and starting to peel them off.

 After

He was a bit annoyed for the first few days because he knew the doors had been turned to the other side. He tried to slip his arms at the gap between wall and cupboard but no avail. I distracted him by teaching him names of fruit on the stickers. So he started learning 'Nemon' for lemon and 'Memon' for water-melon. Mummy won this round. Ha! Ha!

It worked fine for me as the things stored inside were those I need only once in a while. I would need to move the cabinet out to get my things but it was a lot better then having Yang opening the doors every hour.

Totally Weaned

Yang was totally weaned off breast milk end of May 2013. So this is a very back dated post. I just want to jot this down as a closure of my previous post 'Weaning in Progress'.

Drinking his last bottle of breast milk

It was an easy transition. Probably due to hubby's involvement in making him sleep at night so Yang did not relate dad with 'milk'. As I weaned him off slowly, there was no problem for me as well. I just prolong duration between pumping sessions (pumping only when necessary) and after a few days, milk supply disappeared.

I felt free (although with some guilt involved as some mothers were diligent enough to extend breastfeeding as long as possible). I managed to spend more quality time with my girls at night when hubby brought Yang to sleep. I accompanied them doing their homework, reading from books and kids encyclopedia, drawing lots and lots of pictures, chatting with them and teaching them to pray with me before sleep. I became more patient with them with less yelling and threatening. Yang grew up to be happy, healthy and very active.

 He wants to do whatever his sisters are doing.

 Playing with our pots and utensils is his favorite past time. Toys are just not good enough.

Since he likes climbing so much, we bring the kids to playground to spend their energy.

In conclusion, we were all happy. Hubby said I was more stressed when breastfeeding because I did not have enough time to do what I wanted. Then I felt guilty because of not doing them. 15-16 months of breastfeeding was good enough, he said.

Weaning in Progress

I started to feed Yang with formula milk once a day since he was 13 months old (2 months ago) to replace expressed milk. Just to make sure he would not reject formula when I started weaning. Being an easy going baby (where foods are concerned), he would finish the whole bottle but he would laugh as if to show he knew what I was trying to do.

When he was 14 months old (1 month go), I stopped breast feeding him directly before bedtime which I knew if he could get use to this, weaning would not pose any problem. First night, we went out before bedtime and fed him formula milk in the car and he fell asleep when he was too tired. Yoohoo...easy. I breastfed him when he woke up at night though.

On the second night at home, I fed him formula and tried to coax him to sleep without success for more than 30 minutes. Later I left the room and asked hubby to pacify him. He managed to make him sleep. Maybe it was because when I was in the room, he would relate me to 'food'. So hubby was given the 'honorable' task of feeding him formula milk and coaxing him to sleep until now.

I still express milk 2 times a day and once at night to ensure sufficient milk for him during daytime.
Yang is 15 months old now. I have stopped breastfeeding him at midnight and replacing with formula. I am seriously considering to stop expressing milk as I have exceeded my initial plan to breastfeed him until one year old.Without direct breast feeding, milk supply would reduce due to 'no demand' signal sent to our brain. So it is just a matter of sooner or later.

Feeding, expressing milk, washing pumps are occupying a large chunk of my time in a day. Sounds selfish, I know but I need to spend quality time with my 2 elder girls too and to complete my income tax submission as soon as possible so that my tax submission company will be able to complete tax submission before end June. *groan*

I am glad that I have decided to breastfeed all of my children. First girl for 4 months and stopped due to inexperience and second girl for 13 months and this boy for more than 15 months. It was no easy task but seeing them growing healthy and smart is the biggest reward for me.

Tao says ...

My second girl, Tao thinks very logically and she will apply whatever we tell her into different situations.
Below is one of her conversations with my mum when she discouraged Tao from sleeping on her bed when she was here to visit us.

Grandma: Tao, you have to sleep on your mattress on the floor. You cannot sleep on my bed.
Tao: Why?
Grandma: If you sleep on the bed and fall down, you will knock on your head and will not be clever anymore. Then you will not be able to get number 1 position in your class.
Tao: OK, that means next time if I get number 2 in my exams, I must have knocked on my head already.
Grandma: *rolls with laughter*

Baby Yang Updates

It has been months since I updated my blog.
My baby Yang is now 6 months plus. I would like to jot down some milestones just to keep as reference.
On 30 June 2012 (at 4 months and 20 days), he started to roll over without us helping to push his butt.
During last week of July, he had fever and diarrhea, then we realised his first tooth erupting from his sore gums. No wonder he had been gnawing a lot.

On 16 Aug 2012 (around 6 months), he had his 3rd Hepatitis B jab and weighed 8.1kg (only slight increase from last month due to his sickness) and measured at 71cm (a sharp increase from 60cm at 3 months). Not bad, considering he has a short mum but luckily his mum managed to find a tall dad for the sake of taller offspring. Haha!

I started introducing solilds to him as below and I am glad that he eats everything I have prepared:
5 months & 2 weeks: 1 scoop of Organic Mix Cereals once per day
5 months & 3 weeks: 2 scoops of Organis Mix Cereals once per day
6 months: 2 scoops of Organic Mix Cereals once per day + strained organic veges like carrots, pumpkin or brocolli. Sometimes 1 scoop of Cereals in the evening
6 months 1 week: Organic rice porridge with mashed veges like carrots, pumpkin, brocolli and 1/2 tsp of organic coconut oil. I fed him only once per day.
6 months 2 weeks: Same as 6 months 1 week preparation but I feed him 2 times per day. Added salmon (mashed) a few times and he likes this combination.

He is fully fed on breastmilk. So this mum is busy with lots of daytime expressing and night time feeding. Hopefully after introducing solids, I can decrease my expressing frequency from 4 times to 3 so that I can do more work at home.

Something New

Hubby (Fiance at that time) and I bought our first car when we started working in Johor. We had some savings that we brought back from working part-time in UK. It was quite substantial for fresh graduates like us after converting those British Pounds to Malaysian Ringgit. So we were able to buy a new car even before we got our first paycheck.

Our first car, Proton Wira

For 10 years, we used this car to cart us to and fro our workplaces, outings (Cameron Highlands, KL, Melaka, Pahang, Singapore) and occasionally our plantation. We did not really take good care of this car except scheduled servicing. Car washing was never a priority.

After 10 years of usage, the car began showing its age with more and more repairs needed and the amount for repair/ service was increasing each time. Our family was expanding. From two of us as a couple to two girls and one baby on the way. Using saloon car was not feasible anymore because I insisted our girls must sit on booster seat with seat belt and baby would need to be in car seat. Two booster seats and a car seat would not be able to fit into a saloon car. After much consideration, the solution was
.....
.....
.....


to purchase a 7-seater car.

Since January, we are able to enjoy more space in the car. I look forward to more outings as a family of 5 after my confinement in March.

Home Sweet Home!

I was in Sibu for 2 weeks before coming to Kuching last Satruday. Hubby accompanied us from Johor to Sibu and he went back one week later. He will be coming to Kuching later this week to attend my brother's wedding and accompany me to bring our girls home.

During my stay in Sibu, I had a great time indulging in Sibu food that I had missed so much. I had not return to Sibu for 3 years since I was pregnant with my second daughter.

It was a pity that hubby was not there for longer duration so that I could bring him to newer and fancier places that are popular among the youngsters now. We only brought him to a few 'Must Try' places for typical Sibu food and one Sunday morning, we went to the Tien Ming Ngu stall that we frequent since we were kids.

The stall was packed so we had to sit at the coffee shop opposite the stall and order from there.

The long awaited Tien Ming Ngu finally arrived!

When the Tien Ming Ngu came after a long wait, we were quite disappointed with the taste. It seemed to have lost its signature 'dried cuttlefish' fragrance and the soup tasted somehow 'diluted'.

We did not finish the servings and the girls (who had their father's gene of eating only tasty food) did not want to eat them as well.

Then we saw many passers by stopped to buy something from a small confectionery beside the Tien Ming Ngu stall. We saw that their 'kuih bahulu' and 'kompia' were quickly refilled and thought those must be quite good.

These 'kuih bahulu' cost only RM1 for 4 and tasted quite good with egg fragrance and very soft unlike those sold at stalls in shopping centres which contained mostly flour and very 'brittle'.

We also bought some 'kompia' to try (RM1 for 5, really cheap) and we liked them as well. My elder girl liked to scrap the sesame seeds out and eat them first.

We ended having those 'kuih bahulu' and 'kompia' with our coffee-O and teh-C and the girls enjoyed them very much.

I don't think I will miss Tien Ming Ngu anymore when I am back to Johor.

Mid-Autumn Festival

We did not not do anything fancy on the Mid-Autumn Festival last Monday. Parents in law just came back after a week of shopping trip to Thailand (Haadyai and Samui Island). MIL fried beehoon and we ate the 'steamed salted chicken with Chinese herbs wrapped in paper' that they bought on the way back from Ipoh. (I do not know that actual name for that dish)

The weather here was quite hazy and luckily I had already let the kids play with lantern a few days ago.

The girls playing lanterns with neighbours' kids last Saturday

On the actual Mid-Autumn night, we just brought out some kids tables and chairs and had some moon cakes and Chinese tea. The girls carried their lanterns around but they got bored after a while and would rather eat.

About moon cakes, we did not buy fancy and over-priced moon cakes with weird ingredients from those advertised famous bakeries and franchises. However, we did have some friends who gave us moon cakes.

'White butter skin pandan sweet corn paste' moon cake given by MIL's friend. It was exchanged through some points for going to Sentosa's Casino in Singapore. It was nice, fragrant and not too sweet.

However, we were used to traditional flavoured moon cake like red bean paste and lotus paste with egg yolk. Therefore, we bought from a bakery in Kluang. The moon cakes there were so popular that people from far would go there and buy in boxes, not to mention they were cheap too. No gimmicks, no advertisements and simples boxes that consumers were just paying for the moon cakes. There was also no preservatives added and we had to put the cakes in refrigerator after 3 days if not consumed.

Red bean paste moon cake that cost only RM13.00 for 4 in a box

Lotus paste Shanghai moon cake with double salted egg yolk that cost RM24 for 3 in a box

Too much durians....

Hubby grew up in kampung with plenty of fresh durians to eat. Even now he has an uncle (FIL's brother) and an aunt (MIL's sister) who have durian plantations nearby. So what does that mean? He has become a durian gourmet (snob). He only eats durians within 24 hours after they dropped from trees. He does not even want to taste durians with ends that are split (the flesh would not be dry) and he certainly would not touch durians packed in polystyrene packs at hawker stalls or durians that has been kept in fridge as that would be too inferior for his taste buds.

During this durian season, we had relatives and family friends who would give us durians but they always gave too much and due to hubby's expectations of durians, we ended up having A LOT of leftover durians that I would pack in freezer to eat after durian season ends. This year, due to pregnancy, I had to control myself from indulging too much (I normally could have about 20 plus seeds of durians at one sitting) because I was worried about effects of heatiness so I had only about 6-10 seeds each time.

Freshly dropped durians given by relatives.

This is the best type of durian I have ever eaten, called 'Shen Xien' in Mandarin and translation in English would be deity. I prefer this than those 'Mao Shan Wang' (Musang King) sold around JB.

The durian supply kept on coming and our consumption could not keep up with it and our freezers were full with durians. Coincidentally, we watched a program about a visit to Thailand and it showed how durian cakes were made. Simple. Just scrape the flesh off the seeds, stir in the wok over low heat and add sugar.

Durian and sugar in the wok.



After left to cool for a while, I wrapped the sticky dough into plastic cut lengthwise and tied the ends with rubber bands. Tadaa! Homemade durian cake with natural ingredients and without preservatives and chemicals.

Accidents in young children. Are they preventable?

I read a very heart wrenching news yesterday in the newspaper. A 1 year old plus toddler was thrown out off a car that he was travelling with his parents when collided with a vehicle. Another vehicle coming from the other side of the road could not stop in time and crushed the boy to death. The incident left the parents in shock and they were unable to provide any information required by the police after that.

I pity the family but one question that popped out in my mind was, 'Why was the 1 year old boy not safely strapped in a car seat?' That would have prevented the boy from being flung out of the car when the accident happened.

Many parents will think that car seat is only needed when there is nobody in the car helping to hold a baby. When they are other adults in the car to supervise/ carry the toddler/ baby, why bother with the car seat?

Of course I would think differently because I have had a few minor accidents before (who won't if you stay at JB and people are driving at a speed as if rushing for re-birth) and once with my 4 yo in the car and luckily she was strapped to her booster seat although I was just fetching her home from her pre-school.

I am the one who will insist to strap my kids properly at the car park even with drivers waiting impatiently to park at our space. It takes time as I have 2 kids to strap but if people want our parking space, they just have to wait patiently, right? If we need to travel using another car, I will insist to take our car seat (for our 2 yo) and booster seat (for our 4 yo) from our car to another car that we will be using. I will only forgo car-seats and booster seats when we are travelling to another state and I can only pray for our safety.

Conclusion: Use car-seats/ booster seats whenever possible because we are not able to predict accidents.

One Night in Kuching....

I was in Kuching from end May to mid June (school holidays) with the girls and we stayed at my brother's house. My mum was in JB so she helped to accompany me to bring the girls back to Kuching and hubby went there one week later so that he could enjoy himself and accompany us home.


One night, my brother took out a red wine from my dad's collection for hubby and I to try out. He said if they were good enough, he would use this brand for his wedding at the end of the year. Nothing grand about the brand and the red wine was from Spain (not France or Italy where red wines were supposed to be more well known). To our surprise, the red wine tasted really nice. Smooth with a tinge of sweetness.


Hubby wanted to have some food to bring out the taste better so we raided my dad's cupboard and found a packet of straight dried shrimps. We ate some and finished that bottle of wine.





On the next day, remembering the dried shrimps I went to nearby grocery shops to buy shallots, chillies and lime and used them to marinade a bowl of dried shrimps with a bit of sugar. Hence, we had an extra dish to go with rice that day. I liked this dish as my mum used to prepare this when we were young.

So my dad gave me some of the dried shrimps to bring back to JB but before I could make another round of dried shrimp with marinade, I had 'accidentally' finished eating them all as snack. Whoops!

Tian and Tao's Birthday!

Today is Tian's 4th Birthday and Tao's 2nd Birthday two days later but we celebrated the girls birthday together last Sunday.

I had quite a hard time planning their cakes as I did not want them to share a cake for candle blowing (superstitions?) so I had to find a way to buy a cake for eating and another 'spare' one just for candle blowing (My hubby and his parents do not like sweet stuff so I know I will end up having to finish up 2 cakes and it would be a waste if I was not able to do so). Tian mentioned she wanted princess cartoons on her cake and Tao was into anything Mickey Mouse at the moment so I decided to order a black forest cake with a Mickey Mouse as decoration and I more or less forced the bakery to sell me a sugar/ icing thingy with princess cartoon. Then I bought a normal sponge cake from another bakery, did some chocolate frosting for the sides, sprinkled some colourful sugar rice onto the cake before pasting the cartoon on the top. So I got another cake for Tian according to her request at a cheaper cost and to her satisfaction. Heh!

I cut out their names from coloured A4 paper and it was too tiring so I decided to print the 'Happy Birthday' wordings from computer and cut them out.

Tian's Princess birthday cake. She thought I made the cake for her but in fact I only decorated the sponge cake.


Tao's Mickey Mouse birthday cake.


Jelly made from Dutch Lady strawberry flavoured and chocolate flavoured milk. I wrapped the packet drinks with coloured paper and pasted Disney cartoon stickers and the girls were happy to drink from their favourite cartoons.

'Mee Suah' in red yeast wine chicken soup. Foochow people in my home town practise cooking this for birthdays and we have adapted to that culture.

Tian and Tao getting ready for candle blowing.

My 2 sweet girls: One is 4 years old and another one is going to be 2 in 2 days time. I hope they grow up happy, obedient and healthy.

More vegetable planting....

My father-in-law was 'invading' more and more land for planting vegetables. Haha! Actually, those were public land at the side of the road, in front of TNB sub-station etc. It was no easy job to turn those barren soil into plantable land. He had to remove all those rubbish buried by contractors when houses were built, condition the soil with fertilizer (chicken feces) and turn the soil every few days before actual planting could start.

Those small vegetable patches are now full of variety of vegetables.

Sweet Potato Leaves. This is Taiwanese species as the shape is different with the normal types with pointy edges. More tender to consume.

Okra. Our favourite

'Di Wang Miao'. I don't know the English name for this vegetables. Holes can be seen on the leaves because we do not apply pesticides on our vegetables.


Chilies. This species is extremely hot and we end up seldom using them for cooking. Using half for one dish is more spicy than 'cili padi'.

Aubergine. We plant our own because aubergine and chilies are two types of vegetables with most pesticides if we buy at market.



Our little helper helping to carry our harvest.

Things they did

On most Saturdays, Hubby needs to go to work (although self-employed) and I am stuck at home looking after my 2 girls as my parents-in-law will go back to their home town nearby for a break.

I try not to 'work' but try to accompany them as much as possible. I will also get hubby to buy simple lunch like chicken rice or fish ball vermicelli so that I can skip cooking. Sometimes when I need cook lunch for them, they will end up watching TV and I think the time is better spent on bonding time with them.



Several Saturdays ago, I did some simple crafts with them. I helped to cut out shapes from coloured paper and Tian could do her own pasting. I would deliberately leave some details undone, in this case, the ladybird's spots so that Tian could colour by herself. After the bug was done, I pasted it onto a straw and she used it as a magic wand.



I also bought a 'pool' so that they could play with water without having to go to beaches or swimming pools.

They had a great time playing but Tao (my younger girl) could not understand why she needed to come out of water after playing for about 20 minutes and she would cry for more than one hour. Every time she peeked outside and saw the pool, she would cry again. Since then, I have kept the 'pool' in storeroom until she could understand "Enough is enough".

I know it is unfair to the elder girl as she kept on asking me when she can 'swim' in the pool again. Maybe one day, when hubby is at home and can help to keep an eye on them, I will let them play once in while.

Double Expenses

My girls have reached a stage where I have to buy everything for them in pairs. Tian usually refuses to share her things with her younger sis and the younger sis will throw temper tantrum to get anything her sister is having.

Usually we will insist for the elder girl to share her toys with her sister but on some days, I just simply could not resist to buy something for both of them so that they are both happy (and I do not have to start persuading, lecturing......and punishing).

Another reason is that I will do anything to encourage them to drink more water and I do not mind to stock up on all those formula milk powder for this.

Free gifts from growing up milk for Tian.

Tian is such easy-going girl and I can alternate between this and another more premium brand depending on sales and free gifts available. She used to drink the 'dolphin' brand but I started to mix organic soy, millet, oat milk into the girls milk one year ago (which is more pricey) so I balanced out by buying less premium brand for her. I plan to switch Tao's milk from 'lion' brand to less premium brand when she is four like Tian. After all the recent hoo-haa about added sugar in formula milk, I am even more determined to cut down on formula and replace with organic soy, millet, oat milk which has less sugar.

A visit to Johor Bahru Zoo

I am ashamed to say that I have been staying near Johor Bahru for nearly ten years but I have never visited any places of interest here.

Previous week, Tian came home from her pre-school and kept on pestering us to bring her to zoo. We wondered how she knew about asking us to bring her to zoo. Peer pressure at 4 years old? What will happen when she is 12 then? We promised to bring her to a zoo but I was thinking that Melaka Zoo would be too far away for a day trip with 2 kids and I remembered my ex-colleague mentioning a 'small' zoo at JB so I surfed net and found the location. A zoo only 20km plus away from my home!

Two Sundays ago, we went to zoo after breakfast and buying a new canvas shoes for Tian so that she could walk comfortably. We reached there around 11:30am and it was scorching hot (I forgot to bring sunblock for the kids, only hats) and it was difficult to find a place to park our car.

We bought tickets (RM2 for adults, RM1 for kids and free entrance for 2 yo and below and there was a compulsory ticket to buy for birds show which was RM1 per person) and the kids had a good time looking at real animals while my hubby and I was sweating all over and still had to chase after them.



There were about 100 species of animals on the 5 hectares land. Although the zoo was small compared to other zoos in Malaysia, one to two hours of strolling and 30 minutes of birds show were long enough for younger children. The compound was well managed and clean.



The area for birds show. The shops sold tit-bits and beverages at reasonable prices.


Hornbill and other birds could be seen near the entrance.

At least there were tigers and lions to see. A zoo would not be like a zoo if there wasn't any king of the beast and king of the jungle, right?

Baby elephants could be observed at close distance as they were chained as we walked pass the enclosure. I hoped that they were not chained all the time.

There were shelters with tap water nearby so it was convenient to let kids (and adults) to take a rest and for mothers to clean them up after feeding them. Tian and Tao had a great time playing in the 'hut'.

Birds show: It was a pity that there were only a few birds performing. Maybe due to smaller zoo management, they were not be able to organize performance on bigger scale.

As we reached home, hubby and I were dizzy due to the heat. I quickly cooked some cooling dessert so that the kids would not get sick. Papaya (not too ripe) and white fungus with dried winter melon, red date and dried longans. Cooling and refreshing!

Stay focused!

I am trying my best to stay focused with my most important task a the moment. That is to compile all necessary receipts, cash bills and documentations for 2010 Inland Revenue submission for hubby's business. There seem a lot of details to confirm and documents to dig out. Although there are still 2 months left but I plan to complete early and submit to the company dealing with taxes so that they will have enough time to review. There are 2 weeks holidays in June so I am sure I won't be able to get much done during that time. I keep telling myself not to surf net so much, watch movies or tidy up the house (I always like to tidy up or clean my house when I have more important stuff to attend to. Denial, maybe?).

Crafting Week

Sometimes I feel guilty being a work-at-home mum but seldom accompany my girls as much as I want to except during weekends when my parents-in-law are not with us and I have take care of them on my own. Even so, I will leave them to play on their own while surfing net or doing my admin work. However, since last two weekends I decided to accompany them on Saturdays without touching my laptop except when they are both sleeping. I actually feel better because I am able to concentrate with one task at a time and my girls are happy that I can play with them, read to them and do some crafts with them. One evening last week, I told my 4 yo I wanted to make a mask for her and she chose to be Belle, the character from Beauty and the Beast. My 2 yo would want anything that her sister had so I made her a simple mask. I was getting lazy so I just simply cut out a piece of paper with two holes on it. She was satisfied. A few days later, my 4 yo pestered me to let her draw pictures with water colour. Normally, I would only let her use water colour when the younger sister was napping. After she promised she would share with her sister and would not fight with her sister, I let them play at the garage. Reason due to I HATE CLEANING UP just in case they spilt the water and colours. To my surprise, they played peacefully for more than half an hour. Last Saturday, I cut out some shapes from a paper plate and let the girls pasted the legs, head and tail to make a stegosaurus (I got the idea from one of my ex-school mate's blog). Again, they spent about one hour doing all the pasting plus some colouring. My 4 yo even helped her sister draw the eyes and colour the body of her dinosaur.

Finished work of two stegosaurus