Rainbow Baby

One day, my nephew made my mom very angry.  She didn't want to talk to him.  He felt bad but at the same time too stubborn to say I am sorry.   Then my mom told my girl, tonight I will sleep with you since you are a good girl.  I won't sleep with kor kor, because he is such a naughty boy. Just that statement alone, made me upset.  This is how sibling jealousy started.  It is all the parent's fault.   Growing up, I have always been the good girl.  Quiet and not much temper.  I listened to my parents and do whatever they told me to do.  In the eyes of my parents, I am a very good girl, compared to my sister. My sister is the complete opposite of me.  She gave my parents a difficult time.   I can't remember how many times that kind of statement would have spoken by my mom.  I don't know how much of jealousy my sister had harbored over the years, but finally one day it exploded and I realise...

This hashtag was going on in Facebook in the wake of the the sex scandals of Harvey Weinstein.  #MeToo is to denounce sexual assault and harassment and to encourage women to open up and talk about their experiences.   I am not sure if I have mentioned this anywhere in this blog, but yes, I was sexually harassed when I was younger.  It's not something that people can talk about and I have not spoken about it for a long, long time.  Eventually, I came to realise that I am not the only one and should not be afraid of it happening.   The first time it happened to me was when I was 10 years old, or around that age.  I started puberty early and started having mini boobs.  It happened at my uncle's house and the person who did it was my cousin brother.  I used to stay overnight with my cousin sister and spent time with her, playing games, watching movies, etc.  Her brother, who is like 5 years older than me, 4 years older than her...

I for one is a sucker for musicals.  I love them so much that I have been wanting to watch one, but no chance as none of the shows come to Malaysia.  Guess, in Malaysia demand to watch a musical is not as high, compared to a Jacky Cheung concert.   I was first introduced to a musical when I was about 10 years old.  It was The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  My cousin loved it so much that she duplicated the songs in the cassette tape that she bought and also hand-written the lyrics and nicely bind them for me.  Later, she introduces Les Miserables, but somehow the music didn't stuck to me as much as The Phantom of the Opera.   Then I realised I really love musical movies as well and when I watched The Sound of Music, I loved everything about the movie.  Then the next one was Oliver! and then The King and I.  I love them so much. And when Disney came out with musical cartoon movies, I was hooked.  Firs...

For our air travel, I researched for things or items to keep my girl busy during the 4 hour flight.  Eventually, I found this was the easiest to make and also handy to bring on the flight. I bought the ice cream sticks from the stationery shop.  They didn't have the coloured ones, so I bought the natural ones and colour them later with a magic pen. I got the free template here .  The difficult part was to ensure the template size fits into the 5 ice cream sticks.  I used Power Point for that.  I coloured each sticks with magic pen, which took some time to do.  At first I coloured only 1 side and then found that it's not as good as both sides.  So, I did both.  You can buy ready-coloured ones instead.  Then I used a nail profile to polish the sides to make sure none of the wooden piece is coming out and sticking out to avoid cutting my girl's hands.  I polished until they were really smooth.  That took some time...

Few years before I got pregnant, I made these baby soft blocks using felt for my friends who then just had their first child.  I felt a lot of love and warmth in my heart when I did these.   Now that I have my own kid, I can't find time to do them anymore.  Instead, I am now busy making a busy-book for her.  My aim is for her 2 years old birthday.  Hope it will be ready by then. I first tried with just simple ABC and 0-9.  It was so fun.  I used the self-adhesive felt for the numbers and alphabets.  So just cut and paste only.  Then sew the sides to make it into a box and stuffed it with polyester filling and sew to close and done. For these, I put 1 alphabet/number on each side.  So, it's 6 sides with 1 alphabet/number each.   Then I got a bit more adventurous and made these for another friend.  I loved this so much and I am still amazed at how creative I was ...

Since my girl has started to understand better and have a little bit more patience in listening, I have started reading to her while pointing at the pictures on the book.  With the help of the i-pen that I bought, last night I read to her, The Little Red Riding Hood.   When it came to the part that the wolf ate the grandma up, I told her the exact story, without twisting or turning the plot.  She has a shocked look on her face and kept on repeating, "Po po?  Po po?" Whether she understand that the wolf is a bad guy and ate a poor old woman or not, I have no idea.  But I myself felt horror as I imagined it as one of the thriller movies.   But the story is such that the wolf ate the grandma up whole and vomited her out whole when the hunter killed the wolf.  OK, so it's not reasonable but hey, it's a fairy tale.   I am not sure if she got nightmare from the story or not, but there are more horror fairy tales and nurse...

Last month, I shared this incident on Whatsapp with my friends and family.  This month it is being featured in The Star and World of Buzz.   Since the writer didn't know that the story came from me, so my name was not mentioned.  I am amazed at the power of social media.  How far and wide it went! My itchy fingers decided to read what the comments for these articles were like and guess what, I regretted reading them.  Some said the story is a hoax, some said I was stupid not to check the credit card bill.  Yeah, I know trolls and keyboard warriors are a plenty.  My intention was just to raise awareness on this issue which many are not aware of. It's ok if people want to jump to conclusion without looking at the whole picture.  Honestly, my Whatsapp message was also limited because I wanted to write everything in one (1) message, together with the picture.  So I didn't tell the full, complete story.   So, I am sharing t...

I wish I have lots of photos to show you but I don't.  I was too busy handling my girl and keeping her still in the stroller.   I wrote about my first impression of this stroller and it wasn't very positive.   However, after bringing it to China and back, I have a different opinion now. As mentioned in my previous post, we didn't use the stroller exclusively in Foshan, the place that we went, was not exactly stroller-friendly.  We were there for 6 days and we only used the stroller like twice.  The stroller was used exclusively at the airport though. By the way, no one else was using the GB Pockit stroller throughout our stay in Foshan.  In fact, I saw a couple of Vovo strollers, the imitation of Babyzen Yoyo+.  And it was supposed to be autumn now in Foshan but the weather has gotten all wrong and it was still burning hot, like 30C everyday.  So, a lot of the strollers will have a bamboo mat on it as it is cooler to li...

We just came back from China.  We flew with AirAsia and my girl was the youngest on the flight, both ways.  I am happy to announce that she was in her best behaviour throughout the flight, both ways and the other passengers were happy as well. First of, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the 2 lady passengers on our flight, AK108 and AK116.  The lady on AK108 is a PRC while the one on AK116 is a Malaysian.  To the lady on seat 18A on AK108, I apologised for taking your window seat.  I was not aware that I took your seat and I am normally not this careless.  Thank you for offering the seat to me and you took another seat behind, sitting next to your friend.  I really appreciate this kind gesture.  That leaves us with a whole row to our family, with my girl having a seat although we didn't pay for it.  So, I am simply thankful. As to the lady on seat 16C on AK116, I didn't take your seat, phew.  I got the window seat t...