V day 2014

Today is the western Valentine's day as well as Yuan Xiao Jie; eastern Valentine's day. According to the radio, the last double Valentine occur on the same day is 19 years ago which is 1995. Wow, how many more double V day would we come across in our lifetime?!

 

Frankly Valentine's day had always been another on of the days this far and I could not even recalled when is my last Valentine day's celebration?! At least I do remember that in our last 14 years (with the hubs), there don't appear to be one, not even while we were dating. For once I do not mind and fully agree with it as it do not make sense with the overpriced roses, bouquet fighting in the street (comparing who is carrying a bigger bouquet) and the obnoxious menus in the overly crowded restaurants. I do not wish to contribute to the smiles of the bosses and the ringing cash register. Okay not that I do not want it totally but I guess practicality gets the better of me. There was even a period of time I nearly got to selling flowers only on Valentine's day!

 

Anyhow Valentine's day is not just a day for lovers but also for friends, family and loved ones. A lot of friends come and go in my life till this point of my life, some I am more than glad to let them go, some I have no idea why the friendship fall out (without any major incidents, not that I am aware of), some who are influenced by other bad ones and the list go on. I have no wish to identify what, who are the causes, why is it happening or when it occur. Put it this way, if these are genuine people / friends then they should not readily give up the friendship without a fight. I have came to discover more of these people and though sad since it is never easy to establish and build a good friendship which I have always treasured but life still goes on and that's the way life is.

 

We have to learn to move on despite the regrets present. It had a scarring effect on me as honestly it's a classic example of once bitten twice shy. I try to give it all I can in any friendship though having said that I am never perfect as well so I could not have claimed to be the best friend in the world. Each of us have our flaws right, me included. From these learning curves and experiences, I do not think I am capable to give the very best I could offer anymore in any friendship. I have learnt that we have different priority in different stages of our life and family would definitely come in top of the list.

 

How did this post ever get so emo?!! Was it not supposed to be a happy post on "Love is in the air"?!

 

I would loved to have dinner together with the family on this special day especially because today which is the 15th day of CNY officially marked the end of the festival as it's meant for family to have a reunion and get together. Unfortunately we have company dinner tonight and it does not seem appropriate to give it a miss. Do not even get me started on why the dinner is today!

 

Last but not least, wishing everyone Happy Valentine's Day and have a great day with your family and loved ones!  

CNY 2014

Happy New Year!!

 

May the year of the Horsey rein in good luck, good health and prosperity for everyone!

 

As per previous years, we had a very busy Day 1 going around the island for visiting while Day 2 and Day 3 were relaxing, own time own target.

 

CNY eve ~

Did some last minute shopping in the morning after sending Zethan up the school bus. Packed quick lunch and soon after prepare for the feast at night. Daddy went off to place an order for a new washer as the current washer broke down a week back.

 

This year we had quite a feast seriously besides the usual steamboat we have as per normal. We made our own Ngor Hiang the very 1st attempt and I was pleased to say my masterpieces turned out well! 2 extra dishes was added this year, Stir fry leek with prawns and Chap Chai which kind of reminded us of our beloved grandmother and grandfather.

Post dinner, changed the children into their new jammies and as per past years tradition of our very own, both kids received their first angbaos! From mummy and daddy that is.

 

Day 1 ~

First to the kids' grandparents house and spent a good 1+ hrs there. No surprise both are allowed junk food (CNY goodies) and soft drinks. Yes, meimei had her share too.

Next we made our way to visit my great grandma (the kids' great great grandma) but received some not so good news that she had been admitted this morning due to breathlessness. Still we visited and catch up with a few relatives who we have not seen in years! Not too bad thing afterall.

Following another elderly's house who seriously I do not know how to address him in English so shall not crack my head over.

 

Proceeded next to Grandpa's house and meimei fell asleep despite the drive is a mere 5 minutes. The wait for a parking lot is terrible which took us close to 45 minutes which allow meimei to continue her nap in the car. Korkor was really very restless, having to wait in the car for such a long period of time. Grandpa was really very happy to see both the children and it's evident in the photo he is practically grinning from ear to ear. Meimei was quick to warm up and was soon all over the place, having fun out of simple activities e.g. transferring goodies from containers to containers like 5,000 times, trying to sit herself on the child size armchair etc.

Final stop as usual to my aunty's house at the far end of the island. The children fell asleep due to the long day we had and poor korkor slept in a bad position, being overly tired, remained so. The moment we reached was to prepare dinner for the children, very late dinner that is. We spend the rest of the day there as the kids played with the elder cousins and I had a good time catching up with my cousins too! By the time we reached home, it was closed to midnight which marked the end of our busy hectic day!

 

Day 2 ~

Relax at home though we did not managed to sleep in because the children woke up at around 8am, good enough. We were planning for the day's activity when mum received a call from a relative coming to visit in the evening. There goes our plans for the day.

 

We made a quick trip to the temple for prayers. It is very very crowded and the whole place is choking me with the thick smoke till I can hardly breathe. Interestingly, because this is the year of horse, the temple had a horse and pony brought in for visitors to take photo with! Of course the queue is snaking and never ending so we did not attempt to queue since we had to rush home.

Day 3 ~

First half of the day was spent relaxing at home, watching TV program. Had an early dinner as we will be visiting Godma later in the evening. For the first time in ages, we were early, sound like a good start for the year?! Korkor was so pleased to see his friends and had so much fun together. Can you imagine the noise level and the aftermath (the messy toy room)! I had a great time catching up with the mummies as well. That's what CNY is all about, visiting and catching up with people we hardly had much time to get in touch with. It's what I like CNY the best too!

 That pretty sum it up our CNY, how was yours?!

6 years

02 01 2014 marked our 6th wedding anniversary.

 

6 years isn't a very long time yet it is not that short after all. It is definitely not easy for 2 person to come together and accepting each other despite the different upbringing, family background and culture. I have to admit that our journey from paktorship to marriage have not been a smooth sailing one as well, I mean come on whose could be that perfect. We have to overcome a fair bit of indifferences, disagreements, arguments and fights (not referring to physical fights here). 

Just few days back, I happen to come across a bimbotic remark passed on one of the social media platform and felt utterly disgusted. In a nutshell the brainless lady expressed her 'disgust' on how one of her girlfriend who is her classmates from a branded institution with very well to do family background, self employed marrying her husband who is a ITE graduate, low income family background and employed doing clerical work. The brainless girl simply looked down on them, claimed that the girlfriend's family disapproved of the marriage to the extend of not attending the wedding in a 5 star hotel and needless to say she did not attend too and refused to acknowledge them in public. Fictional character or not, it's beside the point.

I am very glad that neither one of us do not belong to the rich and affluent category thus we have no such issues fighting against us. No nonsense of "öh, she married him because of the rich family". In the early days, it was mainly housing arrangements issues creating major problems between us. Both of us belong to extreme character so we are totally not a classic case of "soul mates" in this equation. We hardly had any similar interests and I must have to say we shared very different thoughts on the same matter so that would give a very good indication on how different are we. So much so that we could be north and south pole, each on the exact opposite end. Is that the reason why we are attracted, I have no idea.

To give my hubby due credit, his tolerance is very high in order to accept the nonsense I have thrown to him. I am a highly impulsive quick tempered stubborn mule while on the other hand he is often level headed, laid back and ever ready to back off whenever we are engaged in a major heated argument. Honestly this could worked both ways, good and bad. In a way, it does not helped if both are strong willed and stubborn in an argument which could escalate to some ugly situation. However it is also often his laid back (read as bochup) attitude which make me angrier than I already am if you know what I mean. I belong to the category where I would like to iron things out right there and then while he believe that we could not possibly communicate effectively when we are at loggerheads thus chose to remain in silence.

 

Over the years, we have however worked out our differences or at least tried really hard to avoid such argument and keep it to the minimum. I am unsure if my hubby would agreed with this statement but I felt like I have tamed down over the years. I have grown to accept that this is the way he deal with situations and there need to be a more efficient way to resolve matters. So we kind of backed off from each other, giving each other room to cool down and reorganize our thoughts (more often me than him I supposed). The only setback was that this could result in a cold war and issues left unresolved and swept under the carpet which we have yet to find an ideal solution to approach it.

 

I am in no way an expert when it comes to dealing with relationship and there is a lot more I could master in the many more years to come. All I can say is I have grown a little along the way, coupled with the limited experiences gathered, we looked forward to many more years of anniversary.

 p/s ~ looking back at our wedding pictures sadden a great deal.....is it seriously possible for me to return near to the shape and build right then?!!

18 months

And so the little princess turned 18 months old.

 

As most of her peers are starting playgroup today (well it is all over in FB), she will not be simply because the bad mummy have not thought of it at all! I am indeed guilty as charged as my mind is all about enrolling her in MKG in Pre-Nursery in 2015 thus did nothing for her this year, not even any weekend classes till this point of time!

 

I am really very pleased with her speech development as she is progressing very fast and her ability to pick up new words is rather amazing. Allowed me to praise my own daughter but honestly I am impressed with her. Definitely the sweetest word is when she put on her manja mood and go ~ mummy....music to my ears and I melt literally.

Some of the words she picked up over the last month: -

 

~ Night Night

~ See you

~ Mo more (no more)

~ Laining (Raining)

~ Nini (Minnie)

~ Bag (ransack my bag or hide toys in my bag)

~ Sit (when we ask her to put on her shoes)

~ Nion (lion)

~ Nono (Pororo)

~ S-cy (Spicy)

~ Ruff (Giraffe)

~ Fis (Fish - co-relate to images)

~ Bu(4) Yao(4) (Don't want in mandarin)

~ An(4) mo(2) (Massage in mandarin)

~ Xie Xie

The irritating flu bug have been with her for the longest time I can remember. A second trip to the PD suggest that she is most probably having sensitive airway and highly affected by the volatile change in temperature as well as weather. It certainly did not help that the weather these days are still rather extreme and on most days, rain and low temperature to be expected. So her condition can improved on one day and worsen the next day. She is being put on 2 weeks course of medications - Singulair, Aerius, Dhiatfen and Bambec. Pray hard that after completion, she will fully recover otherwise the Chinese New Year festive period might worsen her condition once again. It really break my heart to see her on medication for such a long period of time.

Physical growth is still less than ideal by my standard. Despite efforts to beef her up, she still remained at 9.3kg with very marginal increase in weight. This girl of mine is really very kind to my pocket, taking forever to outgrown her clothes and shoes. I am still hoping that she will put on slightly more weight and apparently it seem she is currently going through a growth spurt.

 

Oh, did I mentioned that she is sprouting 5-6 teeth at the same time, 2-3 molars inclusive! Telling me about grouchiness, coupled with her discomfort from the flu, double whammy! I had gone through a consecutive 4 nights of waking at 3am sobbing badly and could not be comforted for the next 30 minutes before falling asleep only 2 hours later. Geez I could have easily add on to the collection of Panda exhibits at River Safari, more panda looking than they are. Her teeth are not cutting evenly and the PD advise there is nothing we could do but hope for even growth for the next set of adult teeth otherwise save up for braces!

 

Happy 18months my darling and officially she is promoted into toddlerhood!

 

2014

Good bye 2013.....hello 2014!

 

2013 had been a very fruitful year for me. Switching from being SAHM to FTWM, was quite a major challenge for me having been out of action for close to 2 years! Took a while to adapt since I have not been a big fan of changes though I should be considered as good tolerance in adaptability.

 

Back to 2014, think setting new year resolutions are rather passé so shall give it a miss this year. Anyhow I have not exactly been able to recall attaining the resolutions set out for the past years, yes no typo, past years! Then again, I am still secretly wishing that my resolution can come true...I need to lean down and lose weight!!!

 

So how do we spend New Year eve? AT HOME LA, what else could we have done?! I spend my countdown amid baking and the children are nice to us, KO-ed a little past 10pm which is quite rare. My Japanese cotton cheesecake turned out well and the very 1st time the hub sing praise of it, not very generous with his praises but good enough.

 

Attended Cayden's birthday party on the first day of the year and yes we are indeed very honoured to be invited since it is a small family affair party, a Minion themed party!! Cayden was very happy and both of them stuck together for the whole afternoon. A whale of time both the boys had. Cayden kept on insisting to take photos with Zethan included! It is amazing how both of them turned out to be best buddy somehow despite the fact that we do not meet up as often as we would like it to be.

 

Some emo thoughts here. It is a great shame that we have 'lost' some friends but as the way life is, people in our lives come and go which is perfectly normal. The abnormality is being backstabbed by others for unknown reasons to lose another set of friendship, perhaps guilty conscience at work. Incapability and non performance refused to be acknowledged yet blaming on others. No wish of speculations but just a slight tint of regrets that situation to turn out this way. Honestly it's a classic case of quality and not quantity of friendship displayed. Just like what the hubby said, even if being sentenced to death, the least is to identify what had gone wrong but it is not in us to pursue it further. As in all different form of 'ship' be it relationship or friendship, it take a great deal to maintain and certainly two ways. Just do me a small favour, do not ever relate any 'secrets' or typical 'talk here and forget all about it' as end of the day ironically the subject of the topic turned out to be on such good terms with the person whom start it all! Freaky scary and ugly human. 

 

Well, on a positive note, all the negativity and evils eliminated in 2013 so we could have a great positive year in 2014! 

Daddy's birthday

As usual, a last minute affair, last minute deciding where to dine and being a Friday, everywhere is really packed.

 

We did not even buy a cake and so rushed that we forgot to take a photo =( so very sad.

 

And so the only photos we have of daddy's birthday are half of the dishes we had at The Soup Restaurant - his choice. Why only photos of half the dishes because the other half took forever to arrive and by then we are almost done with dinner despite several reminders, very bad service!

 Anyway Happy Birthday Daddy!

Gifts

The exact opposite of each other....Zethan can't wait to rip open the X'mas pressies while there is very little interest shown from Zelyn.

 

Thanks everyone for your love and the pressies!