Meet Diego #2

Last time I blogged about our first pet (Julian's 3rd birthday), I said Diego, the fish's days are numbered. That was at the end of September. Less than four months later, Diego died. I don't want to talk about the details, but let's just say I killed it. I felt so bad, I kept apologising to Julian. He didn't understand why I caused his fish to die. He does understand death - something dies then it's gone. The fish was a present from my brother. When he saw my brother, Julian said to him, "My Mommy do to my fish". He meant to say, mommy killed my fish. So sweet of him to not use the word kill.

I packed away the fish tank cos I dont want to be reminded of what I've done, and especially didn't want the kids to remind me when they see an empty tank. But everywhere I looked, I see reminders of Diego. Poor fish.

Today we went to the pet shop and got a new fish. We purposely didn't choose a blue one. It wouldn't be right to replace Diego and forget all about him. We got an orange Siamese fighting fish instead and some toys for him. He eats flakes & blood worms. Not a fussy eater.

The kids couldn't decide on a name for him. Long live Diego #2. Hayley named the fish Boy, after her brother!

Confidence in reading

In the past, I've tried to get Hayley to read from the many children's books that we have. It was hard to hold her attention for more than 5 seconds and when she struggles to read, I get frustrated, and when I get frustrated, NO ONE is having fun anymore.

SIL lent us the Peter and Jane Ladybird book series maybe half a year or more ago. At the time, I did try to get Hayley to read but she wasn't interested at all. It was also disheartening for both of us when she isn't able to read so she would rather not attempt and I gave up trying as well.

Tonight, she was reading the first book in the series. As she recognised most of the words, I could see she was getting great satisfaction out of being able to show me that she can read the book fluently from cover to cover. She was amazed with her own capability, that she could read out each page.

Weight recording

I don't keep track of the kids' milestones. Every day comes & goes and I don't remember most of their achievements. For today, I will just record their weight.

Hayley today (4 years 9 months 2 weeks) in the morning weighed 19.7 kg. In the evening, she weighed 20.2 kg. I reckon the weight gain is 500g of poop in her! Still a struggle to get her to do her daily business. It's a struggle because we have to coax, bribe, negotiate, reward her for just sitting on the toilet. She never asks to sit. She has no sensation in the bowels it seems. Yet, her weight is above average. Eats a lot, but not much out.

Julian today (3 years 3 months 1 week) weighs 14.7 kg. His weight is on the lower percentile. Fussy eater. If he wasn't on the bottle, he'd be skinnier. He still takes full-cream cow's milk - one in the morning, one before daytime nap, one before nighttime sleep, and one/two in the middle of the night! About 200-250 ml each time. Yes, I still have a baby who doesn't sleep through the night! Hubs does the feeding, no different from when they were newborns. Hehehe.... lucky me, not so lucky Hubs. Julian doesn't drink milk when we're away from home. The only two places he has his milk are home and parents in law's home. He never asks for milk when we go away for holidays.

How do you like your eggs?

Julian loves his eggs, but only hard-boiled - not scrambled, poached or fried. He could eat 1.5 for breakfast. Sometimes with a bit of soy sauce, but he doesn't mind if it's plain. Everytime he goes to MIL's place, he asks for egg. Even if he's already eaten egg at home.

Hayley doesn't like to eat eggs that much, only hard-boiled stewed grandma's style. My MIL makes this dish where she stews (I think that's what it's called) pork neck meat with hard-boiled egg. The sauce gets absorbed into the eggs giving it a flavour. That's the only time Hayley eats egg. She says, I only eat Ma's brown egg. Brown from the sauce.

Hong Kong 2011

Hellooooooo 2012 !!! Where did 2011 go to ? I haven't blogged for a while so really wanted to catch up on blogging before going back to work. Here's a happy snap of us in Hong Kong, travel dates 14-Oct to 25-Oct 2011. We had a "challenging" start to the trip but it all ended well.

Hubs planned our HK holiday - he booked travel & accomodation, did all the planning on getting around. All I did was put in leave for October & next thing I knew, the holiday was just days away. Exactly four days from our departure date, I started being concerned about my passport expiry date. It was current, but with less than 6 months validity, I might not be allowed to travel. I said to Hubs let's risk it, the worse is, he goes to HK with the kids on his own. And I was secretly imagining freedom, home alone for 10 days! Yipee!! But no, the MOTH (Man of the House) says NO WAY. So I renewed my passport quickly by paying priority processing fee of $100 in addition to the normal fee. The next saga was Qantas baggage handlers going on strike the week we were travelling resulting in flights being cancelled. Everyday I was checking their website to see if our flight was affected.

Once we arrived in HK & settled down in the hotel, I emailed my parents this:

We arrived in HK already. I am NOT enjoying this trip so far. The flight was delayed 30 mins, that's nothing. During the flight, Julian's temperature increased. We gave him Neurofen at 5pm before we went to the airport bcos he was showing signs of sickness after childcare. During the flight, we have no Neurofen cos it was checked in. Mama will be saying, "I told you so". (My mum reminded me numerous times to bring the kids' medicine on hand luggage). Qantas only had Panadol for adults, so we broke it into smaller pieces and fed it to Julian with chocolate. During the 9 hr flight, now and again he would throw a tantrum, crying & be unreasonable (eg I want to go home). He couldn't sleep & can't get into a comfortable position to sleep. Passengers were all sleeping, and one stupid passenger behind shushed us. STUPID, u think i like to have an unsettled kid ? Hayley ALSO developed a fever during the flight!! (can you imagine having two kids with fever on an overseas night flight without medicine on hand?!!). Hayley was not as difficult to settle down. She didn't cry loudly or yell out unreasonable things. Julian was just so hard to control. Vincent & I hardly slept. I swear no more overseas holidays until they're 18, they can travel on their own.

The flight arrived HK 6am, and we couldn't check in the hotel till 12pm. So we sat in the hotel foyer for a looooooooong time with two sick kids. We fed them Neurofen after we collected the baggage at the airport but when the medicine started to wear out, they get grumpy and fever returns. They keep complaining. I am so fed up. We haven't done a thing except deal with the kids' sickness. Julian's behaviour is hard to control. Cannot reason with him. Very annoying. Right now he's throwing another tantrum. We are better off staying at home.

That's a snippet of the initial part of our trip. Things did improve. We all slept for 12 hours as soon as we hit the beds. The kids were only sick to torture us on the plane. The next morning, both woke up with no fever. They were laughing & playing like normal! Our first destination is Disneyland. We toured Disneyland over 2 days. The park isn't very big at all, most adults I reckon will see & do everything in a day but it's suitable for kids under five.

Besides Disneyland, we went to Ocean Park, lunched with my high school friends, breakfast with Disney characters. Lots of eating & shopping, every night was Fa Yuen Market for me as it's closest from the hotel that we were staying. A hundred photos were taken, and really need to go through them to remind myself what else we did.

Diplomatic 3 yo

Hayley likes to compare fairness of her skin with mine. Often she would place her arm or leg, or face next to mine and ask whose is fairer - mine or hers. And often I would say I'm fairer cos I don't go out in the sun as much as her. And often she would disagree with me because she wants to be the fairer one.

Today we had the same conversation, this time with Julian sitting nearby. As usual, we disagreed on who's the fairer one, so I got Julian involved.

Mommy: Julian, you're the mirror mirror on the wall ok? Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all. Me or Hayley?

Hayley looked at Julian, and pointed at herself expecting him to say Hayley.

There was a pause, brief silence. You can see Julian was thinking. You'd think he'll answer either Hayley or Mommy but no.... he said...

FROSTY!! (and pointed to the Frosty figurine standing next to the Xmas tree in the house)

What a diplomatic answer!!!!! At 3 yrs old he already knows how to answer women's trick questions. Next time he gets a question Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat, he'll have the "right" answer.

Daycare Xmas Party 2011

This is Hayley's last Christmas Party at daycare before she goes to Kindy next year. These are her "favourite friends". I wouldn't call them best friends because I don't think they are quite best friends. She likes to play with them and she tells me she likes them so that makes them her favourite friends. All three are starting at different schools.

Julian performing Jingle Bells with his classmates. This summer must be the coolest summer that I can recall. Julian is wearing long-sleeve with a vest! He is likely to be doing Jingle Bells three years in a row if we keep him in the same daycare. Because he's born in Sept, he can't start school until 2014. I worry about him being bored. The school system in NSW has a cut off of July. Your child can start Kindergarten at the beginning of the school year if they turn five on or before 31 July in that year. Julian turns five in Sep 2013 so he's missed the cut off for 2013.

Poor Julian. I have been telling him that in the new year, Hayley won't be going to childcare. She's going to big school. And he's staying in the baby class (non-preschoolers) whilst his cousins are moving up to the pre-schoolers class. He asked me, "But why Mommy?", with a sad pitiful face.

11.11.11 Wedding

11.11.11 ... what an easy date to remember. It was a relative's wedding and it was a Friday. Wonder if 12.12.12 will be just as popular.

Here is a picture of Julian with Cousin Bailey at the wedding reception. The third musketeer, Cousin Toby is hiding somewhere. They were all dressed up for the occasion. I bought the formal suit for Julian from our last HK trip. It was only AUD 20 for three-piece suit - vest, trousers & jacket. Fully-lined, immaculate workmanship, design, cut & fabric were top standards. Even if he wears it once only, it's worth the 20 bucks!

Hayley's dress was also from HK - AUD25. I bought this without bringing her along. Hayley has a lot of opinion on what she wears nowadays. She doesn't like dull colours - definitely no black. She loves dresses that flares out - the more it flares, the better. It has to be girly-looking. If something looks like a boyish design or colour, she doesn't want it. When I saw this dress, I loved the material & it was perfect for a summer wedding. It came in an adult version as well. The sales girl tried to convince me to buy a mother-daughter set! No, I didn't get sucked in.

Cousin Edwin

Hi Cousin Edwin, I wonder if you follow my blog?!!

Everyone, meet my cousin from the US on a visit to Australia last Oct. The last time I saw him, he was learning to walk. That was something like 25 years ago!! Timing of his trip was perfect. We'd just returned from HK and I'm glad my kiddies get to meet my cousin. Photo here was the farewell dinner for him.

Julian's 3rd - the presents

First of all, thank you to everyone who came and celebrated Julian's 3rd birthday with us (and those who cant make it but sent their well-wishes). The kids had so much fun and the fun continued on for more than a week, because everyday there was a new present to open. I didn't want them to open all the presents in one go. Julian didn't mind not opening them, he would walk past his nicely wrapped presents & not ask to open. It's big sister Hayley who gets excited. It's become her birthday presents, she'd insist she gets to play with a toy first.

Creativity toy, building zoo buddies

Stereo sound animal book

Julian's first remote control dinosaur. I like to make it chase after him. This one goes slow, and still he gets scared


Lego - Julian's favourite piece in this set is.... the SHARK that came with it


ABC Phonics - this one forms 3 letter words, excellent for Hayley. Hayley's quite good with spelling (in my opinion, not sure what level her age should be). She can spell "apple" because it's the first word on the ABC learning chart that's on the toilet wall, where she spends a LOT of her evenings in. Can spell "mum", "dad", "Julian", "dog", "God" (cos I said it's the reverse of dog hehee) and of course "lolly". I recently realised that I'd forgotten to teach Julian how to spell his name. Hayley could spell hers at 33months.



"Sheriff on Duty" shirt. Julian loves it because of the cow patches

The RC dinosaur was opened first (purple one). And the kids complained why they didn't get the triceratops that appeared on the back of the box. They fought over playing with the purple one until the next day, they opened another dinosaur, and it was a triceratops (blue one) !! Look at the excitement on Hayley's face

Julian's first pet. Also became MY first pet. It's a Siamese fighting fish and it hasn't eaten since the day we got it. The set came with flakes as its food, but it refuses to eat. I even went to the garden to look for mosquito larvae. I don't know what else I can do. Every time I check on it, I am paranoid that it'll be floating belly up. Julian named him, "Diego". I think Diego's days are numbered.

Lego set - his favourite is the car that I built. I find that Julian doesn't play with this set himself, I think because it's too hard for him. But he's happy to play with it if I sat down with him & gave him directions. His teacher's observation was the same, that he's a perfectionist. If he knows he can't do something well, he just won't do it

Different sort of construction toy, it's an easy click-clack piece

An easel, with blackboard & magnetic board on the other side