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
.....
.....
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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.