The Wrong Way To Protect Your House

DH decided to net up the gate so we could let our rabbit roam free. When I looked out to see what the rabbit was doing, I saw her at the gate, looking out very intently. I thought, "Wow, we have a guard rabbit."

But then DH told me to take a closer look. Actually, she was keeping an eye on the cat outside. I wonder what the cat was thinking? And I wonder what the rabbit was thinking?

Cat: What long ears you have? And where's your tail? Can you meow? You walk funny.
Rabbit: Have you never seen a rabbit before? And no you can't come in. This is my territory.

The Size Of Farts

Poooot.

D2: (Looking at D1) Ewwww
D1: Not me-lah. It's baby. I don't fart small-small.
Me: Then? You fart big-big?
D1: No, I fart medium. You think I fart like "kerbau" ah?
Me: Wakakakaka.

Why he used the word "kerbau"? Because his teacher told the class not to "mandi kerbau".

Translation:
kerbau = buffalo
mandi kerbau = To bath like a buffalo meaning to not bath properly.

Baby is 5 Months Old

Baby is now 5 months old and weigh 7kg. She was a very good traveler when we "balik kampung" for the Chinese New Year celebration. Slept in the car almost the whole time.

So, what is baby up to at 5 months?

• Loves to grab things. I just love to see how she concentrates, trying to improve her hand-eye coordination. The baby gym has come in handy. Play time now is mostly dangling something in front of her to grab.
  
• She can turn onto her stomach and then back again easily. So, we have to be more careful where we put her down. Don't want her falling off the bed or sofa. Usually we just put her down on a mattress that's on the floor.
• Everything she grabs goes into her mouth.
  
• Loves to play peek-a-boo. She will laugh.
• Beginning to recognize people. Just this past week, she started to cry when other people carried her. She didn't do that before. I guess the "glue" is beginning to form :)
• Doesn't sleep much during the day. Her naps are fantastically short; sometimes it is only for 10 minutes. But she sleeps well at night.
• She's starting to wear "bigger" clothes. I had to go through my "storage" of old clothes to see which ones she can fit now. Found some nice dresses. It is more fun to dress a baby girl than to dress baby boys. Hahahahah.
  
• Likes to stand. Grandma keeps complaining that she'll grow up to be bow legged.
  
• Likes us to stand when we carry her. She'll sound her "siren" if we sit down too long.

When we went back home for CNY, both grandmas complained how baby's hair was too long and was making her hot. So, out came the scissors and snip-snip. Daddy was the hairdesser. I had to convince him not to shave her head like what he does with the boys. Take a look at the "before" and "after" photos.

BEFORE

Her hair doesn't stand up so much anymore.

Hair only stands up in the morning. Talk about bad morning hair. Hahahah.

"Messy long hair makes me hot mama."

AFTER

Gone are the cute curls.

Daddy's boy style hair cut.

But the front still very long. We didn't cut the front. Will have to eventually coz' it's getting into her eyes. Baby says "Don't I look nice now?"

Need To Shrink Your Phone Bill?

Save money, save money, save money! That's what everyone is trying to do these days. One way to achieve that is by being a smarter shopper. Unfortunately, it can be quite confusing when trying to compare and choose certain services like credit cards, savings accounts and cell phone plans. All the different companies bombard you with enticing offers left, right and center. Which one to choose?

Life is busy enough... yes, even for us stay at home moms. The last thing I want to do is sit down and maul over which is the cheapest cell phone plans. Bad enough I have to think what to cook everyday. Well, if you want a personalized recommendation for credit cards, savings accounts and CDs, cell phone service and even gas stations, you should take a look at BillShrink.com. They have made it easy for you to choose the best deal. They have you answer a few questions to learn about your situation and needs and then offer recommendations that will save you money.

Now, the website also features an area for business owners. You can go there and have them recommend business credit cards options that will improve your bottom line.

Just in case you are wondering, their recommendations are independent and unbiased. So, to my American friends out there, if you are looking to save a little money, have a look here and see if this is a good resource.

*Brought to you by your friends at Billshrink.com

Scrapping My Lil' Chomper

I used My Memories Suite to do this scrapbook page. Click here to see my step-by-step tutorial on how I did this layout: How To Digital Scrapbook With My Memories Suite

BabyK is my first baby to suck her thumb. Well, sometimes it's more chewing than sucking. The 2 questions I always get when people see her gnawing away are:

• Is she hungry?
• Is she teething?

Neither. She's just at that stage ya'know. I've tried teething rings but she can't hold them properly yet. Her favorite are either her fingers or ours. Anyway, I caught this picture of her so cutely chomping away. I hope it's not going to be a habit that is hard to break.

Securing Your Memories Online

Last time, in the days of our parents and grandparents, when you wanted to walk down memory lane, you opened up the photo albums. Unfortunately, photos don't say much about the memory being captured. I remember always asking my mother "who is this?" and "who is that?" when looking at photos of my ancestors. Sometimes she would answer "I don't know".

Nowadays, we parents are blessed with technology that make record keeping a breeze. We can do digital scrapbooks and write blogs to note down those special family moments.

My Heart Will has taken record keeping one step further. Using their services, you can store your journals, photographs, audio and video recordings, and scrapbooks securely for 10 years. What you upload there is not open for everyone to see. It's an online safe box and only those whom you give visitor status can view the information.

You can use it as a Time Capsule. That means you can write personal messages for your children, husband, grandchildren and have that message delivered at a certain time in the future like their graduation, birthday, wedding day etc.... Pretty cool. So, in a way, you can still live on even when you're already dead. Reminds me of a show where the father died (from illness) when his son was just a baby. So he left video recordings for his son and the mother would play them during his birthdays.

Many of us parents are blogging about our children's milestones. It is scary to think what might happen if our blogs were suddenly wiped out one day. Have you been doing backups? Plus, sometimes it is not so nice (and not very safe) to blog about too personal things. This online safe box is an interesting concept. If this sounds interesting, click here to read more about My Heart Will Store Memories.

* Brought to your by your friends at myheartwill.com

Baby Gym

Mom's got me working out too hard. This is what you call "play-till-you-drop" concept.

Steps To Making Homemade Bread With Breadmaker

Ok, I promised I would put up the steps to making plain white bread with my bread maker. Here it is:

This is what the whole unit looks like.

It comes with a measuring cup and measuring spoon. You just take the bread pan out to put all the ingredients in.

First to go in is 1 1/3 cups of water and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil.

Next is 1 tsp salt, 3 1/3 cups of bread flour, 1 tsp sugar and top it off with 2 tsp of yeast.

Put the bread pan back into the bread maker.

These are all the buttons for different selections. The first button on the right is for you to select the bread's crust color: Light, Medium, Dark. This time round I chose to make a "light" crust. Next is "menu". By default it is set to "basic" setting which is what you use for plain white bread. Other settings are like "french bread", "wholewheat bread" etc.... You have 12 settings. If you want to make buns or pizza dough, you can have the bread maker knead the dough for you and then you put the dough in the oven.
You can also set the timer on. For example, you can put all the ingredients in the night before and have the bread ready in the morning. So, let's say you put all the stuff in at 10pm and you want to eat it at 7am. You just set the timer to 9 hours. Once your press the start button, you can see the timer counting down.

There is a window at the top so you can see what is happening.

Simple white bread will take 3 hours to be ready. The bread maker will beep to let you know it's done. Then it will keep the bread warm another 60 minutes if you don't take it out yet. Oh, forgot to mention that the machine will beep at 2 different times. The first time is to let you know that you can add extra ingredients if you want such as nuts or whatever you fancy. So, don't panic if you hear it beep the first time and see that it's not ready yet :)

Okay, so here is the finished product: nice warm bread. You take the bread pan out and let it cool down for like 5 minutes. Then you turn it upside down to "dunk" the bread out to cool on a rack. If you leave it inside the bread pan or on the table, the bottom will be wet from the steam. So remember, you have to let the bread cool on a cooling rack.

Ok gals, hope that is what you were looking for. Very simple.

Funny Conversation With Kids

On the way to "pasar malam" yesterday, this is a conversation we had in the car. Don't even know how we got to that topic.

D1: Mommy, a teacher died in the toilet
Me: Huh? Who told you that?
D1: Another teacher. He said a teacher died in the toilet because of the smell.
Me: What? Died because of the smell?
D1: Yeah, we cannot go to the toilet so many times. One teacher, one time only. For example, if I go to the toilet when teacher xxx is there, then if I want to go again cannot. But if it's another teacher, then can.
Daddy: You all don't flush the toilets izzit? Nobody wash the toilets ah?
JiejieK: Ya, nobody wash. The toilet "memang" smelly. Every time I go I have to hold my breath.
D1: Oh, I don't do that. I just smell.
Me and daddy: Wakakakakakakaka

And D1 innocently asked, why you all laughing?

The Aroma Of Homemade Bread

For the longest time I've wanted to get a breadmaker. Well, I finally got one. Tesco came out with their own brand and it only costs RM199. That's real cheap compared to other brands, and there's not much choice here in Malaysia.

So, how did my bread turn out? Take a look.

So far I've only done simple white bread. Turns out quite nice. I want to do whole wheat bread because it's healthier. Unfortunately stupid me bought the wrong thing when I went to the baking shop. I was suppose to get whole wheat flour, I got whole wheat instead. Anybody knows what I can do with whole wheat?

Just in case you're wondering how to make bread with a breadmaker, here's basically what you do: Throw in the ingredients in the recommended order (read the instruction manual). Mine says to put liquids first (water, oil, milk), then the dry stuff (flour, salt, sugar) and last of all, yeast on top. Press a few buttons to select the mode and color of crust. Then, press start. Walla! 3 hours later, you have nice, warm bread to eat.

I am going to enjoy my breadmaking the next few weeks. Anybody have a nice breadmaker recipe, please share.

Chinese New Year Decorations

My Chinese New Year decorations every year is very minimal. I usually take 3 angpows, clip them together then string them up. Well, this year I'm inspired by Mumsgather. She wrote a post about how she and the kids spent some time doing angpow crafts. So this year, I taught the kids how to make fish angpows. You can get the instructions here. Here they are hanging on my wall:

When they were done, my girl counted and proudly declared they had made 44. Mommy immediately said "choi, choi, not a good number, make some more." KokoD also made some. But in the end I had to "repair" a lot of his work. I also tried making an angpow lantern. Here is how it turned out:

Mamas Parenting Tip:
Fish angpows are very easy to do. I would say suitable for children 6 years and up. Must be able to handle scissors well and avoid stapling their own fingers :)

Need To Catch Some Lizards?

The other day my daughter walked into the kitchen to get a snack and then came quickly running out while giving the most fearful scream "AAaaaaaaaaargh". This is what she saw:

Sorry, this picture may not be for the squeemish.

This was a box of chocolate almond cookies given to me as a birthday present. I believe my little son had some the night before and may not have closed the lid properly. Anyway, I can understand if there was only one lizard inside. Maybe it got caught by accident. But THREE lizards???? I don't think this was an accident. I think they were after my cookies! And here I thought that lizards only ate insects.

Anyway, I closed the lid tight and left them in there to die (Ewww, no way I was going to let them out). These hardy creatures lived several more days. KokoD observed them like a science experiment those few days. He noticed the cookies were getting less and less. Which confirms the fact that THEY EAT COOKIES!

Anyway, if you are looking for a lizard trap, this could be a solution. This is probably the most bizarre way to catch lizards. Actually, it's not even proven to be successful. Maybe this is just a one time thing or maybe it's just the lizards in my house. I'm definitely not trying again to see if it works.

My first thoughts when I saw those lizards.... "Thank goodness I already ate most of those cookies".