Sparkles the Bear

When I picked Eunice up from her kinder one day, she was pulling a huge furry red trolley bag and shouting at me excited, "Mummy! I have Sparkles today! Ava chose me! I am SO HAPPY..!"

And all I can say is, "Wow, nice..."
And she kept repeating, "I am so happy! I am so excited..!"
And I just kept smiling and said, "Oh nice..." and turned to the teacher, "What is this all about?"

:P

So, Sparkles is a Bear that follows a child home everyday. The children will rotate among themselves to see who's bringing Sparkles home, and there's a journal for the child to take picture, write and draw what he/she did with Sparkles. Just something simple like - had dinner together, cycle together, went shopping, slept, played, etc.

I don't know what so exciting about Sparkles but I'll just join in the fun with my girl. This is the first time we actually had a "homework" from the kinder so far. Of course it's a homework for mummy. And Eunice chose another girl to bring Sparkles home the next day and the excitement goes on.

Sparkles Travelling Journal :D

Introduction

My excited little girl and Sparkles and his travelling bag!

Mummy had to join in the fun too

Introduction to all the soft toys!

Swing time!

Cycling time!

The homework

I got Eunice to tell me what she wanna write and I write for her :)
Quite a good experience with Sparkles!

Hope Sparkles continues to have fun with other kids! :)

Natalie's Growing Diary

Finally, I found time to sort out Nat's growing diary. Blame it on smart phones now. So easy to take pictures but so hard to download or sort them. :)

Can't imagine how fast my baby grows. She's a toddler now. Looking back her baby pictures give me fuzzy feeling inside me. Time is going too fast. I am pretty sure I'll be the no.1 reader for this page, just like what I did for Eunice's growing diary.

Nat's 2nd Birthday

So.. It was Nat's 2nd birthday exactly a month ago. :)

In her first year, she was such an easy and contented baby. Many have told me that she has a cheeky face and asked me to watch out. True enough, Nat is a total opposite girl with her sister Eunice. She's much more active, more independent, and naughtier! She kept me really really busy as she just couldn't stop playing, running, throwing things, etc. I don't really dare to leave my eyes from her for long, not knowing what she's up to. And we realised, she can't walk - she runs! And she can't talk properly - she SHOUTS! :P

There's once she was really quiet while I was working. And when I realised something wasn't very right, and when I went to check on her, she has scribbled her whole hand with the ink pens. Great! Sometimes, she scribbled Eunice's books. Very often EG said, those books used by Eunice for 4-5 years and are still in superb condition but when Nat touches it, in less than a day it'll be all gone. She has torn many books, scribbled many pages, and spoilt some of the toys too.

For solid, she's eating REALLY REALLY well.. I don't really have problem having her not eating (except if she's not well). HOWEVER, (the sigh part...) she doens't like to eat vegetable. She hates carrots especially. I think those vegetables that she'd eat probably is only broccoli, peas, cauliflowers, and corn (is it considered vegetable?).... Can't think of anything else. However, she's great in eating fruits. So many times I just comfort myself that it's ok, she's still getting the fibre from the fruits.

My family has always been wanting to visit me and they took the opportunity to come and visit us just before Nat's birthday - indeed very sweet of them. We had a small birthday party for Nat at home with my parents, sister and my brother-in-law, and my sister's bestie and her husband, whom my girls love to play with.

My mum cooked some mee sua, insisted on some eggs (didn't dye red though), I made shepherd's pie, and my sister's friend made yummy chinese meat rolls. I know the combination sounded weird HAHA! And I baked the chocolate muffins again since it's a hit for everyone and decorated with some toppers which I downloaded.

So Nat is now 2 years old. She's talking a lot a lot and we do think she talks much better than her sister. She could even argue with us at times! However, because of her dazzling big eyes I supposed?, everyone loves her. We brought her out and everyone - including strangers - said that she's cute, she's a doll, she's so adorable and etc. Childcare carers love her to bits though she's active, and Eunice's kinder's teachers love her too to allow her to play with the kinder students for 15-20 mins everyday when we fetch Eunice to school. Eunice's kinder friends like to cuddle her and play with her everytime they see her.

My cutie girl posing with the balloons with her fav Elmo character

Simple Birthday Lunch

The 2yo Birthday Cake

Birthday Muffins with rabbit toppers....

With grandparents all the way from Sarawak

Four of us!

Singing Birthday Song. Look at the happy little girl!

Blow Candles! Happy Birthday my little Natalie!

All the pretty girls (Eunice didn't want to join :P)

All the birthday presents from cousins & aunties

Posing the Lego Duplo

She's surely a darling to everyone. My prayer is she'll continue to grow up healthily, beautifully and happily.
:)

Eunice's 4th Birthday

Gonna do this in chronological order....

Eunice is now 4.5yo. We let her have her birthday parties cum farewell with her friends in Penang before we left. She's too young to understand what does migration mean, and she will be sad if we keep telling her that she's not going to see her friends anymore or etc. So, we tell her the happy things - we're going to Australia (she loves Australia as she had a wonderful experience here when we came for holiday in April last year), and we're going to have a new home, and she's going to a new school, and etc.

Many times we receive the feedback from teachers that Eunice is very mature. Even in the kinder and the childcare here, many told us that Eunice is a very obedient and very mature girl. I don't know if that's good or bad. But so far, she has been a darling to us. Even though there're times when she whines and shows her moody temperament (got from her daddy!!), but she's still overall a very gentle, careful, obedient and helpful girl. There are times when we're really glad that she really behaves herself well so we can get our things done. Now she's 4yo+, she understands she needs to listen to us to help us. But also I thought, maybe because she's mature, she probably understands more. Many times we'll hug her and praise her so she continues her good behavior.

A simple minion cake for the celebration in school

Montessori Birthday Walk. Eunice carried a globe (earth) and walk around the sun for 4 times to indicate that she's 4yo already. A teacher narrating at the side on her growth from baby to 4yo. Very meaningful.

Eunice & her classmates in Kidiland. It's not easy to take pics of a bunch of active children!

Got a surprise from Eunice after the celebration. A very kind gesture from her (guided by the teacher of course :))

Yeap, it's her hand writing

And yeap, she wrote her own name

A farewell card for Eunice

All the well wishes from teachers and friends

When we went back to Taiping for CNY 2014, we celebrated Eunice's chinese lunar birhtday. Yea she's born on the 1st day of CNY in 2010. It's just a simple candle blowing, cake cutting celebration - but that's all it matters for the birthday girl since she just LOVES to blow candles. :)

Blowing her 2nd birthday cake in Taiping

On 14th February, her real birthday, that's also the day when we're leaving Penang. Before we left Penang, just right before we left to airport, we had another birthday celebration for her together with her grandparents who were there to send us off. 

3rd birthday cake

All of us before bidding goodbye to our home

 And finally, after we reached Melbourne, my kind aunt bought a simple cake for her and let her blow the candle again! She's such a lucky girl!!

4th birthday cake in Melbourne!

I sometimes can't believe that the baby who was so small, and kept crying and needed to be cuddled, is now 4yo already. She's going to prep in primary school here next year. How time flies! At times, I hope she'll stay as a baby forever so I can cuddle her all the time.

We love you Eunice. You're such a good girl and daddy and mummy are so so proud of you. :)

Nat's 1st Birthday Celebration...... LAST YEAR!

I just realized I didn't blog about Nat's first birthday. Gosh! Blame it on the moving that kept my mind so busy to write. :P...

So the next few entries will all be my girl's birthday celebrations (bear with me!). I need to be fair to both my girls. :)

Natalie is a total different girl from Eunice. She was an angel when she's a baby. She slept through the night when she was as young as 3.5mo! I remember I freaked out and picked her up to latch but she refused to drink, and cried out loudly until I put her back to her cot, and she continued sleeping. Even though she slept through the night, I still woke up once a while to check on her to make sure she's breathing. Well, can't blame me, Eunice woke up to direct latch until she's 14mo! In my mind, all babies need to take their late supper or early breakfast in the mid night or early morning! And the best thing is, she slept as early as 830pm all the way until 630am or 7am. What a blessing! :)

Besides, when it comes to her solid feeding, it's easy. She eats everything that I prepared. No fuss. No matter how bad it tastes. I remember giving her a bowl of porridge with blended spinach, and I thought maybe there's too much spinach and it tasted too "green", but she still finished it! It's so easy to feed her, unlike Eunice who could be a disaster when it comes to feeding. We were all prepared for all the sleepless nights and all the feeding nightmares when planning for 2nd baby but to our surprise, Natalie is such an easy baby. :)..

I started to look around a nice venue for her birthday party when her 1st birthday was approaching. EG is a very fussy man, and said that we need to have one as good as Eunice's, and with nicer food. After looking around, we decided to have it in Irrawaddy Fine Food. We looked at the menu, went and tried the food, and had a chat with the person in charge. EG was happy with the food and the cosy environment. So we decided to have it there.

This round, we couldn't afford the famous With Love for video like what we had for Eunice's first birthday, so we decided to engage our good friend Daniel Yap for nice photos! Having 2 kids really keep our hands full. I have no time to take out my camera at all as I need to mind two children. So I could only count on Daniel for the photos.

For the cake, all my usual cake bakers are either not baking anymore, or they went outstation. So I had to look for new one. After asking around, I decided to ask TweetHomeMade to bake me a simple fondant cake with lady bug design. I wanted to have a bumble bee theme birthday but the table cloth in Irrawaddy was red & white checked, so I decided to change to lady bug instead.

We kept the celebration easy and simple. Friends love the food. The place is a little small hence we kept the guest group small, we only invited like 6 families with kids, and we have the whole restaurant to ourselves. Staff in Irrawaddy Fine Food are exceptionally helpful and accommodating in decorating and arranging the place for us. And all our friends love the food. So, Nat turned one in a blink of eye - literally! I couldn't believe she's ONE so fast. And next, I'm going to blog about her 2nd birthday!

The cheeky looking super birthday girl

Creative shot by photographer

Pizza

Simple food label done by me :)

These sausages are surely a big hit!

Same decor on the high chair as Eunice

Food table

Kids admiring the food

My favorite shot! :)

Lady bug birthday cake

The lovely birthday cake

Another view of the food table

Gee..! I feel like such a lousy mom. Tell me I'm not! :)

Sisterhood

We believe Nat has reached her terrible two at 23mo. She’ll scream and shout if she doesn’t get things that she wants. So, she wanted to have her book on her highchair while we’re having dinner. Knowing her, she’ll be either tearing up the book, or dirty the book while eating so I gave her a stern “No”. She started to wail and scream as she wanted the book.

EG, whom came back from a long day from work, lost his patience and told her to stop crying and eat her dinner. But she refused to open her mouth even I was feeding her and just kept pointing said she wanted the book. We know in all “disciplining-children” theory, we should stand firm on our rule and insisted on “no-book-during-dinner”.

And Eunice said,”You don’t force me to take out the cane ah….!”
I was heartbroken when I heard her saying that.

And Nat continued to throw tantrum and EG took her away to a corner for a timeout, and told her to stop crying and settle down before coming back to the dining table for dinner. So we continued our dinner, me and EG were chit chatting as usual, while a small little girl stood at one corner wailing and crying out loud.

I saw Eunice kept looking at her crying sister at the far corner.

Suddenly, she pat on me,”Mummy, can you go and bring her back?”
I said, “No.. I can’t. She’s naughty. Daddy punished her. She has to stop crying then only I can bring her back..”
Eunice: “No, she very poor thing. Can you please go and bring her back?”
EG: “No, cannot. She’s still crying. She doesn’t want to listen to daddy & mummy so she is not eating dinner tonight.”
And Eunice raised her voice a little bit, “No, she’s very poor thing!”
And the lousy me started to give in: “When she stops crying I’ll bring her back”
Finally Eunice nodded, and said: “Okay.. After you bring her back please pak pak her also.” And she continued her dinner.

Well, it didn’t take very long for Nat to come over to me for some cuddle. I asked her to stop crying and she stopped, and joined us back on our dinner table happily again. :)

I posted this on my facebook and many ppl gave the “Awwww” response. I think I should write down the moments in my blog (with more details) to remember all these cute moments. :)
 :)

The two sisters :)

Breastmilk Bath

It has been a long time since I blogged about our girls. :).. They're surely keeping us very very busy. I thank God that they are growing up healthily and beautifully. 

While breastfeeding Nat, my breastmilk supply was abundant, thankfully. I pumped double of what Nat needed. I even bought a chest freezer to store all my breastmilk. Before we left Penang to Australia, we were taking care of our girls by ourselves after CNY. Since I had about 80 bottles of milk to clear, and I can't possibly bring all the frozen milk to Australia with us, I had to think how to clear them. I gave a lot of my breastmilk to friends to make soap, but I still have like 20-30 bottles to clear at home.

So, I decided to give my two girls milk bath. And it was a great fun time for my girls. 

EG dreaded it as the breastmilk was oily and it's really hard to wash them off the basin, so we did it in the car porch. :D.. The girls LOVED it. When I told them it's BATHING TIME OUTSIDE, they SHOUTED in excitement.

We took a few pictures but it's all 18SX. Only a few are more decent, hence posting it in this blog to remember their great times in their old house in Penang. :)

Excited girls in a small bath tub

Enjoying themselves

Love the expressions on their faces