Last Few Days of 2012

It's still a working day for me on Boxing day and Christmas this year was different compared to last year and other previous years as I did not get to celebrate it with my mom anymore, including my birthday which she never failed to celebrate with me. 

2012 has been a fruitful year for us, but with my mother's passing on, it was also a very sad one. She suffered almost 2 months in the hospital and it was so heart breaking to see her condition at that time. However, I'm very glad in a way that she no longer had to suffer after being wheelchair bound for 3 years. 

Moving forward, I'm seriously excited about the year to come. 2013 will be exciting for us because a new adventure is going to begin next year and I hope it'll turn out well. Fingers crossed. 

Oh, there will be a little getaway for us this coming weekend. Looking forward to it!!! 

Happy Holiday peeps!

The flu bug was here and still not leaving us alone!

Yes, me and Ziyi. She was down with cough and cold for the past 1 week, not too serious I'd say. I gave her Zyrtec for a few days and she recovered. Too bad, 2 days later her cough and cold took revenge and this time her cough is disrupting her sleep. She has finished her medicine earlier, so no medication this round. I was hoping to let her immune system fights itself. I can see improvement in her condition, lesser cough during the day and hardly any coughs when she's sleeping too.

This morning it was my turn to be bitten by the flu bug! Started off with sore throat and I did a quick home remedy.

I gargled with sea salt, took a teaspoon of Manuka Honey neat, drank a cup of honey lemon (juiced a whole lemon) and popped vit C too. I am feeling slightly better now but can feel the flu is coming and I've been sneezing the whole morning....

Hope all of us will recover soon!

DSLR... Should I??

I've been eyeing on a DSLR camera lately. It seems like everyone around me are using a DSLR camera. So I told hubs I wanted one too and we started surveying through the web and checking them out at the malls. A slightly upper-entry-level DSLR would easily cost us ~RM2,600 with just a kit lens. 

I am still contemplating on getting one...considering the size and weight, would I be complaining when I had to carry yet another small bag whenever going out on weekends. Should I or should I not??? 

my very first pair of ballerina flats

i was born with ugly looking feet. i have bunions on my feet since i was 5/6 years old, inherited from my mother's gene. i'm now so afraid ziyi would inherit this gene of mine!! 

i totally hate them as i can't wear closed toes shoes/heels. i had to giveaway my Ferragamo court shoes, Nine West boots, and many other closed toes heels i bought during my flying days. i always envy others who can wear pointed heels and ballerina flats. 

however, the other day when i went shopping in Mid Valley, i came across a pair of flats at Nose boutique and tried them. though i find it rather pricey, i nevertheless gave it a shot. in order to minimize the risk, i took 1 size bigger than my usual size.

to my surprise, i could wear them for at least 4 hours without any pain. quite comfy in fact. i need to hunt for more flats of this kind but it ain't easy to get one that suits my odd and ugly looking feet :(

being a full-time working mother

i do not have the luxury to be a stay at home mum, or rather a work at home mum. if given a choice, i would choose the latter. i don't think i can keep my sanity if i were to take care of a hyperactive child day and night. 

since i do not have the luxury to choose my own working hour, i therefore had to adhere to my company's strict working hour. my current working hour starts from 8.30am - 5.30pm and it takes me 1 hour to travel from my house - office and vice versa. however, ziyi's school hour starts from 7.45am - 6.00pm, meaning i can't reach my office on time and would have to leave the office earlier in order to fetch her by 6pm. 

juggling between work and family is not an easy task. waking up early in the morning to prepare breakfast for hubby and myself, getting ziyi ready for school and what makes things worse is her drinking habit. she always takes a good 20mins to finish her 7oz milk. every morning i will be yelling at her "drink faster, drink faster, mummy is late, faster faster!!" 

after fetching her from school, i have to bathe her, fix her some fruits and snacks (thank God she eats her dinner in school at 5pm) and spend some time reading and playing with her. by the time she's asleep, i would be dead tired too. not forgetting there are still housework for me to do since we do not have a maid to help me out. 

of late, i don't look forward to public holidays and weekends so much compared to last time. holidays like these means more work for me. cooking, household chores and entertaining her really exhaust me. i can't wait for ziyi to grow up and hopefully she would become my great helper. 

super unlucky day for me

this past Sunday was a very unlucky day for me. 3 unlucky incidents happened to me on the same day! so "suay".

first, we went for breakfast at McD and when hubby was reversing my car into the carpark space, he stepped on the accelerator a tad too much and couldn't brake on time, resulting to a minor dent and scratches on the car bumper. sigh!

then i had to rush out to Sunway Pyramid to meet my school friends for lunch at 1pm. after our lunch gathering, i spent some time at the IT Centre to search for a casing for hubby's Iphone4 and later went to buy some hair accessories for ziyi on my own. when i wanted to pay at the cashier counter, i realised i only had RM11 left in my wallet. where's the rest of my money? i remembered having few hundred bucks in my wallet. so i thought maybe i could have left the money at home. later i walked to my car at the basement level and drove to a nearby autopay station. after paying for the ticket, i drove to the exit but unfortunately there was a traffic diversion and we had to use the Sunway Hotel exit instead. traffic was at a standstill and it took me almost 20 mins to reach the exit point. at this point of time, i realised i have no parking ticket with me! gosh!! i looked for the carpark help desk and showed them my receipt to prove i have paid my parking ticket but the guy insisted to charge me RM20 for lost ticket. i was unwilling to pay him of course. first it was because i don't have enough money and secondly, i thought i might have left the parking ticket at the autopay machine. after almost an hour of searching for my ticket (i had to go to various levels to search for "the" autopay machine), i finally found it and managed to exit after wasting 1 whole hour at the basement carpark.

when i reached home at 6pm, i tried searching for my money frantically. no luck at all! later that night i checked my wallet again and i realised my IC and driving license were gone too!! i knew at that instance that my money was stolen at Sunway Pyramid. i usually have this bad habit of keeping my receipts and credit card slip together with my money. i realised one of my credit card slips was missing too. when i called the banks to block and cancel my cards, one of them told me there was an online transaction done about an hour ago. these crime syndicates were fast! they are definitely highly trained for pick-pocketing. they took my wallet out from my unzipped handbag (and mind you, my wallet is the longish type), removed my money, IC and driving license only. my credit cards and ATM card were untouched. and then put my wallet back into my handbag without me realising at all. so skillful!!

all these 3 bad things happened to me on the same day. i hope all the bad things are gone and good luck will come soon!

my new workstation

after contemplating for so long, i finally decided to get myself a workstation, to be placed in my room. i went into Ikea's website and found this table. it's white in color and i like it. we went to Ikea the next day to get the table and i commanded hubs to fix it immediately once we reached home! 

lil monster kaypoh-ing

no easy task, it took him almost 3 hours!

she too wanted to help 

tadaa... we even bought a white chair to complement it. 

my metabolic age & fatty me!

i have high metabolism rate as i feel hungry after 1-2 hours after a full meal. 3 weeks ago, i went to check my BMI and found out that i am underweight (my ideal weight would be 53 kg for my height of 157cm). bummer! i would be so fat if i were at that weight! 

my metabolic age is 23 yrs old! hah..that explains why i am always feeling hungry. when i was breastfeeding ziyi, my weight dropped to 42 kg when she was 4 months old, compared to my pre-pregnancy weight at 45 kg. sadly, after i stopped breastfeeding when she was 8.5 months old and once she turned 1 yr old, my weight shot up to my current weight at 46.3 kg. gosh, i blamed this on hub, since he is a food lover (so am i) and we really love to indulge in all our favorite food without thinking twice on the calories and fats! 

i am trying to control my diet once in a while, hoping to lose 2 kgs. fingers and toes crossed!

every parents nightmare: a DIFFICULT CHILD

here's a little run through on why i'd label my daughter a difficult child...

when i was pregnant with ziyi in 2008, i had to suffer for 1 whole month during the 1st trimester. people will usually say about morning / evening sickness, but in my case, it was a whole day sickness! i'd vomit after each meal. even when i was driving, i had to get ready a plastic bag with me. so it was considered a bad pregnancy experience for me. later when it was almost time for labour, my gynae found out that ziyi was still in breach position. i had no choice but to schedule for a cesarean section. 

i had a confinement lady to help me out during the first month after my delivery. ziyi was a 80% breastfed baby at that time and as far as i can recall, she was doing pretty well in the 1st month of her life. when the confinement aunty left after ziyi's fullmoon, my nightmare begun. ziyi had been crying everyday, during bath time, naptime, sleeptime, almost everytime! old folks used to say some babies would cry for the 1st 100 days of their life. very true indeed, but she extended hers to almost 4 months! she was slightly easier at about 5 months old.

ziyi @ 2 months old

i even had to become a full-time cow supplying her with milk as she refused to drink from the bottle when she was 1.5 months old. it was until later at about 8.5 months old that i found out that she didn't like the Avent's teat. i bought her Dr. Browns bottle and she was more receptive to it since the teat is so much softer compared to Avent  *fussy little ziyi*

next on the list was her solid food problem. ziyi never like eating her food until this day! i had to resort to using my laptop (for youtube) or the TV for her cartoons in order to coax her into eating her meals (at 8 months old). meal time has always been stressful for me.

ziyi @ 6 months old

ziyi, being a girl by gender, has a very boyish character and behaviour. she's very hyperactive, doesn't really like to sleep and very temperamental. i will be using the cane almost everyday in order to tame and discipline her. oh, did i mention she is also very demanding? she sticks to me like a super glue and wants my attention all the time. i must do everything for her, she doesn't want her father, grandparents, or anyone else except me! 

how to have a 2nd child when 1 child is already enough to exhaust me???

ziyi @ 2.4 years old... naughty girl

half a day shopping and dining with just hubby

we took the opportunity to sneak out of the house on a public holiday few days ago. there was a closed door sale at Robinsons on the 7th Dec. hubby needed to get himself some stuff and so we decided to take the advantage of the extra discounts given to Citibank cardholders. 

we sneaked out of the house at about 4ish pm after ziyi fell asleep. the road entering The Gardens was very jam but surprisingly we had no problem getting a carpark. we immediately head towards Robinsons and started our shopping mission :)

hubby managed to buy some stuffs for himself but nothing for myself nor ziyi. i usually can't shop for my own stuff when he's around. his impatience made me feel uneasy to shop, you know how a woman shop right? everything KIV, and then decided to go back to the first shop to get what she saw earlier. LOL!

when i realised it was already 7pm, i suggested dinner before continuing shopping. off we went to Chilli's for some American food.  since we were very hungry, we stopped by at Beard Papa's cream puff to get a durian cream puff to munch on. it was quite expensive, RM5 for a cream puff! i think it's really not worth it.

at Chilli's we ordered BBQ Beef Ribs, Lamb Shank and Caesar Salad, Green Guava Juice for me and a bottle of Tiger Beer for hubby. i think we were too greedy, too much meat and we couldn't finish our food. well, the food was just mediocre and nothing to shout about. 

the Xmas decoration at mid valley is so pretty! i just could not resist to take some photos with all the soft toys and decorations. what a pity ziyi did not get to see the decor there. 

later, we went to Isetan for a quick browse at the Men's Dept but couldn't find what hubby wanted. so we decided to call it a day and went home to see our princess at home coz hubby's already missing her. not me, coz i really enjoy paktoh-ing with hubby once in a while :D

MIA

i've not been updating my blog for quite some time, reason being we were away on a 2.5 weeks vacation and when we came back, the darn telekom's internet modem was down...totally kaput. we need to replace with a new one and configuring the setup, blah blah blah....

hopefully i'll be able to update more on our half sweet half bitter vacation stories... till then! 

mummy & baby fell sick

ziyi was down with mild flu 2 days ago and i gave her Atarax medicine. gosh... it has become extremely difficult to feed her medicine. she either cry and push me away or she will spit the med out!

i caught the pesky bug too, i'm having sore-throat now. been popping down garlic pill and vitamin C, gargle with salt water and taking manuka honey umf 10+ too. i've been sneezing the whole of today, guess i'm going to have flu too :(

finally...a new laptop for me!

i'm so happy with my new laptop! after searching around (through web & stores) for almost 2 months, hubby finally bought me this. it's an Asus A42F series. initially i was eyeing on Dell, whereas hubby Acer until we read an article comparing the percentage of manufacture defects among the few famous laptop brands and Asus has the least complains from users on manufacture defects. the price is slightly more expensive than the other 2 brands but i quite like this design compared to Dell. i was using Acer previously and honestly, i didn't like it very much.

at first we wanted to pay by credit card so that we can use the 12mths interest free installment plan. later we found out that there's a one-time charge of 5% handling fee. That'd cost us an extra RM119.95. So hubby changed his mind and paid by cash instead and we managed to negotiate for a further discount of RM50. better deal isn't it? we saved a total of RM169.95.

this laptop comes with an original Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. it has so many new features and i'm still struggling to familiarise myself with it :)

 

my "mang chang" handyplast

are all breastfed babies very attached to their mothers? ziyi wasn't like that until lately. she has been very attached to me for the past few days. she refused daddy carrying, feeding, and changing her. even holding her stuff is also forbidden. everything mummy has to do for her. haihh....where to find so much time to do everything?

she drove me up the wall last nite. first, i cooked her steamed egg with mushroom and brinjal, served with brown rice and ginseng soup. she didnt want to eat..kept spitting out her food. i tried giving her cerelac cereal later and she spitted too. so i let her be, didnt want to give her milk at all.

brought her upstairs to change her diaper. refused again! she is such an impatient, stubborn and determined child. she wanted me to play her barnyard blocks with her. when she couldn't unzip the bag to take her blocks out, she fussed, becoming very "mang chang".. that made my blood boiled again. i screamed at her and spanked her butt, like 3-4 times... real hard ones till it was all red. of course she wailed soo loud but i dont think it's because of the pain. coz she continued playing with her barnyard... see, how determined she is!

i was sitting behind her for few minutes, and started feeling guilty. so i told her "come, mummy sayang".. she came to hug and tap my back...aiyooo...that melted my heart even more. i was very very guilty for spanking her. *sob sob*

seriously i don't know how to handle her, especially when it comes to her temperament. it doesn't help when i myself is a very impatient and mang chang person.

she likes to sleep on the floor with her fav blankey nowadays.

it's getting difficult to tie or clip her hair now.

All my precious photos are gone!

i've been very busy before n during cny this year, did not have the time to update my blog for quite a while. when i finally found the time for it, my laptop "khong"! DIED!!!! so soooo sad... all the photos and videos of my precious baby are gone too! *sob sob*.......

i'm finding ways to recover the data fr my hard disk and found out that'd cost a bomb! i think they charge per megabyte. lucky i did backup some of baby's photos during her 1st year. i lost all the recent months photos including our trip to genting highlands, cny with family n friends, etc etc...:(((((

i feel so 'cacated' without my laptop now. i'm currently using office's computer but how much can you do in the office right and we are not allowed to access FB at all. been surveying for the latest laptop model and i do not want to spend so much on a laptop, probably around the budget of RM2k.

lesson learnt here: always always do backup your data/important documents in other sources ie; external hard disk, thumb drive, online storage, etc.

a weekend to ourselves!

my parents-in-law will be away today till this sunday. hooray!! we can have 4 whole days to ourselves... i'm going to monopolise the kitchen. i have to think think think...what am i goin to cook and bake?
hhmm... beef sandwich? fried chap jae? cookies...what cookies? we'll see.......:)

Laptop & handphone

i need a new laptop and a new handphone desperately!! the laptop i'm using currently belongs to my mom and it only has a memory of 256mb! can u imagine how slow it takes to load a window?? the message "Virtual Memory Is Low" always pop up at my desktop. it's either i upgrade the memory or get a new one.

next in my list would be my handphone, been using this pda phone for quite some time, around 2+ yrs i think. i've no complaints about my handphone, except for its talktime and standby time. it can only last me for 15mins of talktime with a fully charged battery! i'm now scouting for a new handphone and probably not a pda phone this time, and it shouldn't cost more than rm1000. i hv to make sure it's a handphone with long talktime and standby time. any suggestions what phone i should get?

excuses, excuses, and more excuses...

i know i've not been updating my blog for some time now... you know, i've been bz with work, juggling between my baby and work life, handling all the stress at work, blah...blah...blah...

okay, okay, i promise to update it more often okay??!!

well, i'll get back to you this weekend...LOL...

have a great weekend!