Going away

We will be flying off tomorrow.....going on a holiday for 10 long days =)

Feeling excited and can't wait to eat all the good food that I've missed.

It has been seven long years since my graduation and I haven't gone back to visit.

Hehehe......

Will blog about my trip when I am back.

Attending the wedding of daddy's best friend

Last weekend, we were back in KL to attend hubby's best friend's wedding. It was a very tiring affair, especially for hubby who had to travel to Ipoh twice! Nevertheless, it was also a very heartwarming moment, especially when we saw the two of them walking into the ballroom happily together as a married couple. Reminds me of my own wedding just three years ago! Anyway, here are some pictures that we took.

Joshie was so captivated with the fishes.

A picture with the bride in her beautiful red dress, bought by the groom.

Joshie slept at about 8:30pm, all the way till the dinner ended. I was surprised that he slept, but maybe he was tired coz he was coughing the night before and hence, did not have a good sleep.

Hubby and I with the newlyweds.

Self Check @ Tanglin Marketplace

Last week was the first time I used the Self-Check machine. Actually, I have noticed this machine for several months already but always headed to the cashier counters as I couldn't be bothered. Haha........might as well let the cashier scan the products and proceed to payment while I entertain my cheeky son.

However, last Monday, all the counters were fully occupied. There were like 2-3 people lining up at each counter, BUT they all had a trolley full of stuff. And I only wanted to buy milk and cream cheese. So, I tried lar.......... It was quite easy, just scan the milk and cream cheese and ta-da, the total price appeared on the screen. Swiped my card and I was done! Easy =)

Turning a year older

I celebrated my 2*th birthday today. As usual, birthdays aren't a big thing in our family, so it was just another day, except that we'd go out for dinner.

After Joshie's school, I decided to give myself a treat and headed to Pretticure for a pedicure. I like this place because all their equipments are sterilised. More hygienic compared to some other places which I have been to.

My dear son was very co-operative. As pictured above, he sat on a stool next to me and watched tv. Of course he was very curious as it was his first time watching mummy's nails being done. He even stretched out his legs and wanted the aunty to put colour on his nails......hahahahaha.

After that, we went to Sushi Tei for lunch. My son was being very cheeky. While waiting for our food to arrive, I asked him to show me three different expressions which he learnt recently.

"Joshie, cheeky smile"

"Funny face"

"Pray"
We had dinner at another Japanese restaurant with the hubs. Can't remember the name, but it's very close to Orchard Road. Food was good and we'll go back again.....hehe. Will take pictures next time =)

His 2nd term at LeapSchoolHouse

The theme for this term was Fairytale. The lessons were mainly based on these three storybooks; Green Eggs & Ham by Dr Seuss, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See by Bill Martin, Jr & Eric Carle and The Bamboo Princess by Kyoko Iwasaki.

Pictured below are some of his work from school.

The children were given a paper plate and 2 printouts of green egg and ham. They were supposed to paste the green egg and ham on the paper plate. Also given crayons for them to add on more food.

Joshie had to smear glue on the mountain before adding sand (yes, real sand from East Coast beach). He had a real fun time doing this activity.

The bamboo trees were printed out with dotted lines. The kids had to use a marker to join the lines and then paste the bamboo princess in the tree.

Ice-cream lover

Joshie's been quite reluctant to stay in the kids room when I go to the gym recently. I think he's fed-up of the minimal toys that they have there, even though the room is quite big. Even though I brought his own Elmo DVDs (which are his current favourites), he didn't want me to leave him behind. So I had to resort to bribery....."Joshie, mummy needs to exercise. If you stay here, mummy will buy you an ice-cream after our lunch ok?"

And it worked.........I managed to exercise, so he got his reward.

Licking the mini Cornetto ice-cream which I bought from Fair Price. He insisted that mummy eat too, so there goes my diet. Luckily it's just a mini one.

Yummy........

Cheeky smile with chocolate all over his mouth.

Royce Gym at Liang Court

A wonderful play area for children, more of a toyland than a gym, I reckon. Lots of toys to choose from, although I'd say the range of toys that they have are more suited to kids who are below 5 years old. The whole area is very safe, soft and padded so there's not much worry about your kid hurting him/herself.

I knew about Royce Gym since beginning of this year. However, we only signed up recently as I felt that they are quite pricey. You have to be a member in order to bring your child in. Membership fees is $50 and has to be renewed every year. Moreover, you have to pay $12 for an hour of play each time you bring your child in.

Anyway, here are some snapshots of Royce Gym.

A little playhouse.

Big choo-choo train. There's a slide in the train.

Lots of toys to choose from.

Joshie was pretending to call his daddy dearest on the telephone.

What I like about the gym. There's an air purifier in every nook and corner. Moreover, the gym closes at 12:30pm every day for half an hour of clean up. Good place to bring the kids to although a little pricey.

Dim sum with the kiddos

Had a crazy lunch outing last Monday................four mummies together with their four toddlers! Was quite chaotic, but nevertheless, we had a good time too........think the kids enjoyed themselves the most!

We went out for dim sum at Lei Garden @ Orchard Shopping Centre. The kids were making so much noise as they were hungry. And I was desperately asking for the menu and ordering the dim sums. Hehe, I think the waitresses were a bit dazed when the four noisy kids walked into the restaurant the moment they opened for business at 11:30am sharp!!! Managed to get all the kids buckled in their high chair, ordered food and still trying to calm and entertain 4 hungry toddlers when the head waitress walked over to me and asked if we could get them to lower down their noise volume. Oops, I apologized and then told her to be quick with our order since they are all hungry.

Some of the dim sums that we had. From left, siu mai, har kow and the Lei Garden special (some minced pork dumplings with vege). We also ordered their new item; chicken & yam spring rolls (sorry no picture taken as that was the first dish that arrived, so we quickly stuffed the spring rolls into 4 hungry little mouths) which were delicious. Also had fried rice, century egg & minced pork porridge, shrimp chee cheong fun, siu loong pao and egg tarts.

And this was our dessert - mango pudding. Melt in your mouth, with bits and pieces of sweet mango flesh. Joshie loved it a lot, he kept telling me, "Joshie like it".

My boy enjoying his egg tart.

Four mummies with four kiddos..............and four nationalities; hahaha.......Malaysian Chinese, Japanese, Australian and Japanese-Taiwanese.

The bill came up to $130. It's quite pricey but everything that we ordered was delicious, except for the chee cheong fun.

My very own cheeky monkey

See my little cheeky swinging happily. I was really surprised that his arms are that strong........he was holding on for nearly one minute before he called for help from mummy. And after a little rest, he wanted to swing again.

All this time, he has been swinging from very low bars. I guess that wasn't thrilling enough for him and he has always asked me to carry him so that he can swing from the higher bars. He's getting more adventurous as he grows older.

Updates on potty training

He is not wearing diapers at home anymore and there's been very minimal accidents. But the problem is, he is half-naked. Otherwise, he'll conveniently pee/poo in his pants. So next month onwards, I'll try to let him wear pants at home and keep reminding him to pee/poo. Also must teach him to pull down his pants whenever he needs to relieve himself.

Not much problem getting him to poo in the potty like before. I used to bribe him with vitamins, hehe....told him he could have a vitamin after doing his big business and that was very attractive to him. He loves his Pureen Kids colostrum chewies. Oh, and this morning, I had a good laugh. Right after he did his business, he stood up, looked into the potty and said "snake, ssss sssss..." Yes, indeed his poop looked like brown snakes! Haha, pardon me for describing my son's poop, I know it's very disgusting. Thousand apologies =P

I am now confident enough to let him go diaperless when we go for short outings. Of course it means more 'work' for me as I need to constantly bring him to the washroom, maybe every 90 minutes and get him to pee. But it's slowly working out for us, so I have no complains. =)

However, we'll be going on a 10 day holiday end of this month and I am not sure how this potty training will end up. From experience, when we went back to KL for a week plus, he seemed to 'forget' everything again and had a few accidents. Thus, for now, I'll just let things be and observe again when we come back next month =)

Still in birthday mood

After having two birthday parties and one birthday dinner, my little cheeky seems to think that birthdays last forever. In his little innocent mind, he remembers the candles that he blew on his beautiful birthday cakes and the presents that he has received.

He would mention "birthday cake", "Joshie blow candles", "Happy Da Joshie" (which means Happy birthday Joshie, he can only pronounce the word birthday on its own), "uncle give presents" throughout the day. I keep telling him that birthday is only once a year and he needs to wait another year for his birthday! =)

Few days ago, we were playing with PlayDoh. He asked me to help him flatten the playdough and then he stuck a plastic knife vertically into his imaginary cake! He then asked me to sing the birthday song and after that, pretended to blow the 'candle'.

Some random pictures of my 2 year old

Joshie clutching onto his beautifully sculptured Elmo balloon. He got it from the mall opposite our condo on Children's Day.

Joshie and Rion in the shopping cart at FairPrice while the mummies did their grocery shopping.

He brought the newspaper to me, pointed to the Burger King ice-cream and told me, "Mummy, Joshie like 'ah-krim'."

Gym time

No, not gym time for Joshie, but it's for Joshie's mummy =) After being a lazy bump for 2 whole years (except for the 3 month period when I joined a small gym), I am now a member of a gym again! I made quite a quick decision, just happened to walk in one fine day to enquire and after telling them I'd think it over, I signed up and became their member the very next day!

Entrance of the gym is towards the left. On the right, is the spa. And no, my gym package does not entitle me to use their spa. I need to purchase a spa membership, which I didn't lar. Already paid so much for gym membership already.

A snapshot of what's inside. There's also 2 exercise studios.

Anyway, this is what made me sign up so quickly. The kid's room. There'll be a staff who will take care of Joshie while I exercise. I was initially worried that Joshie would cry. But then there's another plus point too. Since the gym is so near to our house (it's located at City Square Mall which is right opposite our condo), I can leave Joshie with hubby during the weekends or even weekday nights, if he's not comfortable being in the kids room. So looks like I will be able to exercise twice a week, which is better than nothing!

So far, I have been to the gym three times, and left Joshie at the playroom twice. No crying at all, even though I have to go in together with him and slowly sneak out when he's engrossed watching tv. But I have been brainwashing him before we leave house, saying that mummy needs to exercise and he has to stay with aunty in the kids room. Also told him he's already a big boy, so "no cry-cry". He seems to understand and I was told that sometimes he repeats "mummy go cise (exercise)" to himself =) Hehe, success!

Oh, and regarding their spa. I have been there twice so far. Was given a free 45 minute body massage and $50 voucher upon signing up at the gym. Their massages were really good. Nevertheless, I am annoyed with the staff there. They practically sit me down and force me to sign up for their packages. Not cheap. Think the smallest package is $500 and it goes up all the way to $10k. I know it's their job to try to secure more sales but I have been to lots of other spas and have never encountered such "stress" when I decline to sign up. I shared my woes with my friend who also goes there for a massage and to my surprise, she also faced the same issue with me, even though she and her husband have purchased a $1,000 body massage package. According to her, they (Ms T in particular) continue to bug her to buy facial packages or to top up their existing package. My friend plans to bring this issue up to top management if they continue to pester her persistently again. As for me, I'll just stay far far away from the spa =)

Of Penang and its food

After Ipoh, our next stop was Penang. We were to attend my high school friend's wedding dinner and at the same time, we wanted to visit my maternal grandma. Joshie's great-grandmother!

We drove down after lunch the next day as my mum also wanted to follow us. Arrived in Penang around 2ish and after dropping by at my grandma's house, we went to the market to buy some yummy kuih to fill our tummies =) Joshie loved the kuih, and kept on asking for more. By the way, I am a real "kuih person". And I can get really pernickety when it comes to kuih. I guess I have been too spoilt with the good nyonya kuih in Penang since I was a little girl.

We gobbled up everything and dropped my mum at grandma's house again before heading to the G hotel at Gurney Drive to check in. Josh and I headed to the reception first while hubby parked the car. The receptionist asked for the check-in slip. But we had just realised two nights ago that we had forgotten to bring the slip. However, our past experiences with other hotels assured us that it'd be ok. We just need to give them our name, photo ID and credit card to verify. Moreover, we have paid in full!!!!! We booked through Asia Web Direct and full payment was required, not just a deposit. Close to a thousand ringgit just for 2 nights. Should be no problem right? So, I just apologised and told her we had forgotten to bring the slip and it's in Singapore. Even showed her the confirmation email on my Iphone. Imagine my surprise when she told me she can't proceed with the check-in because I did not bring the slip! She just stood there and stared at me, as though expecting me to magically produce the confirmation slip. I was quite annoyed with her and asked her to check with her superiors regarding my case. She walked away and soon came back, telling me I can go to the Business Centre to print out the confirmation slip again. So both Joshie and I went in and after some trouble with the printer, managed to print the slip again. And hubby made sure they did not charge us for the cost of printing. Hubby, who travels so frequently said he has never encountered this with any hotel before. So anyway, we got our room and were annoyed with their service again when we needed to remind them a few times to deliver the baby cot to our room. And when the cot came, there was only a mattress in there. No pillow or blanket at all. If this were a lower class hotel, we'd understand but G hotel's supposed to be 5 star. And the rates aint cheap too! So, we called to enquire again and they came back with a pillow and a bed sheet as the blanket!

Ok, enough ranting about G hotel. Let's focus on food instead. That very night, we had dinner at Restoran Bali Hai, which is along Gurney Drive. My mom and uncle came over to have dinner with us. We had steamed pomfret, baked cheesy prawns, claypot tofu and stir fried broccoli with scallops. The food was really good. Actually, most of Penang's food are really delicious! For the next two days, we feasted on apom balik, curry puffs, kuih, char kway teow and Penang prawn mee. Since Joshie's already 2, I was more relaxed about what he ate and he also walloped everything together with us.

Here's Joshie enjoying one of Penang's delicacies.

Even has to lick the bowl. Bowl licking good!

What was he eating????

Something that will melt in your mouth.....=)

And a dirty Joshie post tau sar pheah. There were crumbs all over his face and hair. A very happy and satisfied boy.

And here's a picture of me and my high school friends at the wedding dinner which was held at City Bayview Hotel. The little cheeky had a gala time running around, playing with older kids and shouting at the top of his voice! =)

Main Convent class of 1999.