Boyfriends

I couldn't imagine that my girls would start talking about boyfriends at the age as young as four! Gosh, I thought to myself, I couldn't remember having any crush when in primary school, and my small one has not even enter primary yet. What's happening to the kids nowadays?!

She even had the gall to tell the boy to marry her when they are bigger next time! LOL! And then, the boy no longer studying in the same school now. She asked me, "Mommy, how am I going to marry HP next time, because he's not coming to school anymore?" I told her, "Maybe next time you'll meet him again?" But then I quickly added, "Lets find another guy, ok?" And she did! So fast!

The elder one is not that bold, at least she kept her feelings to herself. She shared it with me, of course, but she didn't go and tell the boy, thank goodness. Gosh, gosh, gosh, I still haven't recover from such shock yet. Someone please tell me, is this normal, or only my kids are experiencing this?

A Feisty Fowl Four Celebration!

What's better than this to start off the day?

Birthday messages from Jie Jie

The birthday cake, special request from the birthday girl. She wanted a blue one, but didn't want a 'boy' angry bird. So Mommy requested for the ribbon to make it like a 'girl' angry bird :) It turned out rather nice, don't you think so?

See how happy the birthday girl looked? 

 Singing of birthday songs in 3 different versions 

 1,2,3, blow! Can you see the angry bird's tail? 

 Cutting of birthday cake with Jie Jie

 Class photo, with the birthday girl flanked by her two best friends

 Family photo with her classmates

After that, it's the moment everyone was waiting for! Nearly every kid had more than one helping of cake, until the teacher had to stop them in case they were too full for lunch later. The cake came in two flavours, the angry bird being longan lychee flavour while the base was chocolate cake. For the first time in many years, I was rather satisfied with the cake in appearance and taste (even though it was slightly smeared). Yes, we ordered the cake from the same shop every year :)

 Distribution of party packs after everyone cleaned up

 They're angry bird puzzles!

Attending her birthday party helped me get to know more about her classmates. According to her teacher, some of her friends dropped out because one of the uncle who used to transport them to school moved away to another state. One mommy even had to take the bus to fetch her child everyday. There's a girl from an orphanage nearby who could not talk since birth, because she was tied and left there by her mother. What a pitiful story, our hearts went out to her immediately. Lucky thing she was a bright student and she had a brother in the same school too. And luckily they were provided transportation and education. Such real-life situations made me felt grateful that there were still such good people around to take care of the more unfortunate.  

It's half day for her today, because Daddy and Mommy planned to spend some time with her.

Wearing her birthday present from Aunty HP, which came in her favourite color! 

She loved it very much!

When asked what did she want for lunch, she chose wanton noodles. So we took her to a nice Sarawak noodles restaurant which offered mee kolok, and looked rather similar to wanton noodles :)

Yummy, yummy!

 And then it's off to her favourite place, Youth Park! Looks like they just installed a new see-saw!

Happily galloping away!

And finally, opening her presents! One from Auntie SL, the other from her classmate. 

She loved them to bits!

Happy birthday Sze Juin. Hopefully you'll slowly get rid of your angry bird temper and grow up to be a happy girl :)

Cards Making Month

May is here again, and I've been really really busy! See what we've been up to....

Mommy wondered how I got the time to do this, 

since I did it in school (not during Art lesson), on the last day of my exam! 

Card for Mommy - continuing from above which was the cover page,
here's the inside and back page

Bookmark made by Juin Juin in school

Cards made by Juin Juin and me for our teachers

Card for Mei Mei

Hmmm... Mommy forgot to take a picture of the birthday card I made for Cousin Samantha. If you noticed, most of my cards are not properly coloured. That's because, I just love to draw, but I hate to colour :) 

Our first homemade playdough

Last weekend, I suddenly felt like making use of my cream of tartar which had been sitting on the shelf unopened, for years! It was given to me by a friend because she knew I wanted to make some playdough, but I only got to use it recently.. Oops! Luckily there's no expiration date ;P

Actually I've been keeping a few recipes on homemade playdough when I came across them, but unfortunately, I didn't get to try them. It happened that I recently I came across GT's proven recipe, so I just follow that as it's the freshest in my mind. 

I mixed the ingredients in this sequence (though I'm sure the sequence doesn't matter). 

1 cup water

1/4 cup salt

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup flour

1 Tbs. vegetable oil

Food colouring (I piped down thru a straw, 4 times to make an estimates of 4 drops)

Steps: 

Mix them well in a pot and cook over medium heat on the stove, stirring constantly, until it forms into a ball. As soon as it joins into one big glob, take it off the heat and put on a plate to let it cool down. After about 5-10 minutes, knead it a few times until it is nice and soft.

The end result? Taa--da! 

MIL's  figurine creation :)

My girls love it! Even MIL claimed it remained soft after exposed for a long time, unlike those commercial type playdough.  

And I didn't need to worry if they cleaned their hands thoroughly after playing. After all, it's edible!

Lesson learnt: 

The first batch that I made, I forgot to add in the vegetable oil, so I got them all sticky and couldn't really form into a ball, as it stuck to my cooking pot and also my hands. Imagine my amazement after I added the vegetable oil to the mixture, it's like being transformed instantly. To be safe, I boiled it again after that, as I'm not sure what would be the side-effects of using uncooked oil. They still turned out all-right, luckily. 

4 or 5?

It's my lunar birthday today. Amah said I'm 5! Wow, what a big jump. Jie Jie was so confused and kept asking Amah, "If Juin Juin is 5 today according to the Chinese calendar, then when her English birthday comes, she'll be going back to 4? How can that be?" Confusing!

I have my own question though. If I'm 5 today, that means I no longer go to Nursery Blue? I should go to K1 or 5-year old class instead?

Mommy had a tough time explaining that Chinese Calendar counts things differently. It's always 1 year older. But in school, we always follow the English one. It also happened that this year, the Chinese one comes earlier than the English one. Sigh, why do they want to make things so complicated?

Terrible or Terrific Three?

I used to mention that SJ was very easy to handle, and I could bring her anywhere with me. In church, she hardly disturbed me. During friends' get-together, she's an angel and behaved very well. In a shopping trip, she helped me pick the stuffs that I needed and didn't make a fuss at all. She even gave comments on which dress was nice on me ;P What I loved her the most was she didn't ask me to buy 'this and that' for her,  unlike her Jie Jie. She's not greedy at all, and would decline anything that we offered to buy her just because she's got one already. When she was asked to choose anything, she'll pick the smaller ones and gave the bigger ones to Jie Jie. Or, she'll leave the pink ones for Jie Jie, because she knew that's Jie Jie's favourite colour. Isn't she sweet?

Well, everything changed not too long ago, or when she reached the Terrible Three stage. She had terrible temper tantrums. She made loud noises in church. She wanted me to carry her all the time. She demanded for things when I took her for a shopping spree. Her mood swings were dramatic. She could be smiling at one time, and switched to an angry bird the next. None of us knew how to handle her. She got very attached to me, until when Daddy picked her from school, she refused to follow him back! She wanted me to come immediately! Gosh, such a difficult child.

Still, she can be an angel when she's in the right mood. She's our 'coffee controller'. Nobody can drink coffee when she's around. She used my conscience to make me put back the coffee when I did grocery shopping with her. That's because long long time ago, Daddy told her and Jie Jie that coffee is a No-No. So she used back our words on us. She remembered every single word we said, and will remind us when we least expected it. She would question us on our actions if it contradicted with our words. So, we had to be very very careful when she's around... Can you believe it that we're actually afraid of her!

Terrible or terrific, I hope it's just a stage that she's going thru. I can't believe time flies so fast. In another day, she'll be four soon, according to the lunar calendar. I silently prayed that Four would be a fantastic time for us all.