air is cleaner

we collected our air purifier yesterday and tested it for the night. we placed one inside our room and one in yu xi's room. i'm not sure if the air purifier is really that good or its just a mental thingy. darling wakes up and tell me its good. he is not coughing as badly. he is very happy with it. hahaha..... as long as he is happy, can liao.

air purifier

with the haze situation getting from bad to worst, i decided that we need an air purifier at home. not so much for the kids but for my big baby, darling. he has been coughing for a long time. with the haze, his cough get worse. i hope the air purifier will help to improve the air and make him feel better.

everybody was out all the air purifier that they can get hold of. i went to all stores that i can think of and its out of stock and the waiting list goes as long as 23 A4 pages long. of course, i didn't put myself on the list. when its my turn to get the air purifier, the haze would have been long gone.

next possible move is to ship it back to Singapore. looking through amazon website, i found some air purifier that looks good and reliable. however, the voltage doesn't work here. we need to get a transformer to step up/down the voltage for it to work. i'm not comfortable with the idea of having a transformer attached to the air purifier and i have to use it and let it work round the night. there goes my plan of shipping it in.

 

since air purifier is a hot topic at the moment, everyone is looking out for each other on where we can get it. connie recommend that i get from honeybay.com. the air purifier is from Korea and seems to be quite good and its not very expensive. immediately, we placed order for 3; 2 for us and 1 for ah gong. i informed jiali about it too. she placed order for 2 too.

 

now we just have to hope that the situation will get better. we just have to close all windows and on the air-con till it gets better while waiting for the air purifier to reach.

bye bye 2214, hello 5140

 

bye bye, 2214. we collected the new car today. we picked up the kids from childcare then proceed to exchange for the new car. on the way there, we told the kids that we are going to give papa's car away for another car. yu ze was making noise, saying he don't want the red car. he wants the white vroom vroom car. the red car is not a vroom vroom car. yu xi says she she don't want, she want this car. she wants papa car and started crying badly. sigh.... can faint right? have new car still wants to make so much noise.

 

they are still a bit unhappy when we reach. however, they changed immediately when they saw the new car. as the car approach us by reversing in, I realize that there is only one reverse light. I ask the dealer why? light spoilt. he told us could be fuse blow and suggest we change at their nearby workshop when we drive out.

 

the kids were super excited over the new car. touching almost everything inside the car. while we transfer our things out from our vios to golf then we realized we have lots of rubbish in the car.

 

its time to get use to the new car and re-learn all about the different functions and buttons.

workshop checks

the car dealer make arrangement to send the car in for checks today. results come back as good. nothing wrong with it. so we are going ahead with loan processing.

 

i also check with the workshop if maintainence for the car. they say now its easier, 80-90% of the part are available as more and more people buying volkswagon. if general servicing, it will cost around $150 which is not much of a difference compare to our current car. we are more 安心 upon hearing that.

 

hopefully, this is a real good buy.  

on second thought

darling wake up this morning and give me a shocking new. on second thought, he decided to call off the deal for the car and forfiet the deposit. he said we can't afford the car loan, we will be in very tight very tight financial. therefore, he decided to call off the deal. he rather waste the $3k now then be in deep trouble later. without thinking much, i just leave it as it is.

 

while waiting for them to finish their berries class, darling still keep thinking about it. i told him not to call the dealer to cancel the order first. it doesn't make a difference for him to cancel it today or tomorrow. i also suggested him to talk to jiali and ying ying then decide what is the best. to me, having a car is not important. there is always public transport and i have survived so many years without one too.

 

its during lunch time that it strikes me that we do need a car. 2 year down in 2015, yu ze will be starting primary one. however, he will be in the afternoon session which means i need to send mei mei to childcare and him to student care before i go to work. both only take in students at 7am and both are at different direction from our place. if i were to send them, i might end up reaching office at 9. in this case, i will have to get a further pay cut for this. if i don't have a car and have to take cab every morning, cab fare alone may work out to be $40-$50. on raining days, i might have problem getting one too. make provision of me spending $100 (2 ways) a day on cab fare, it works out to be $36.5k. with that, we might as well get the car for convenience.

 

after much discussions, we decide to bite the bullet and go ahead to get a car. then another bad new come along, his colleague who is driving the volkswagon golf feedback that its after sales service and maintainence of the car sucks. upon hearing that, darling decides not to buy it again. call up the dealer to request to change to another model. i also check with marion on her car and see her response to it. end up, we have 2 different extreme feedback on volkswagon.

 

we went to the dealer again and had another round of chat. not sure if its the sales tactic or what, darling is again being convince to buy that car. well, i just hope no more drama coming up with regards to buying car. next step is to make arrangement for workshop check then talk further bah.

car shopping

we were out car shopping after yu ze's violin lesson. our first and only stop, ubi car mart. we went round and check with most car dealers that we came across, they either have zero or left with big 100% loan cars. in this case, we don't have much choices left. we change our plan and view all cars that was available.

 

in the end, we saw a volkswagon golf. its a red colour, 3 years+ car. looks and smells very new but its very expensive. asking price was $93k which work out to be around $1.3k for monthly installment. this was definitely way out of our budget. as we talked, darling decided to buy it. we managed to bring down the price to $89k and a montly installment of around $1.1k which is also out of our budget of $900.

 

however, we still went ahead to confirm the car. make a deposit for it and get them to make arrangement to send the car in for checks at mengkuan's workshop. we are changing our car to a real vroom vroom car. its still a bit unbelievable that we are buying it.

genting & kuala lumpur

our long awaited short getaway is over. 5 days 4 nights trip to genting and kuala lumpur with jiali and family. this trip was booked way back in feb when air asia was having promotion. we bought our tickets at $50 each all in.

 

jiali don't want to travel down from genting in the night, so we decided to stay 2 nights in genting and 2 nights in kl itself. we booked our hotels on our own and got leelian to help book a mini van for our transfer.

 

queue for rides

genting seems to be pretty cold this year compare to last year. we checked our luggage in at the hotel and left for our lunch while waiting for our rooms to be ready. the kids goes crazy when they saw all the rides available at the indoor theme park. we bought 2 days, all park pass for all. jiali being preggy get a discounted adult pass.

 

bumper car

we covered all the available and suitable rides in the indoor theme park except for the reindeer ride (which we took last year). some of the rides, the kids went more than once. due to the cold weather, we covered some of the rides at the outdoor theme park. most of the rides at the outdoor theme park were not really suitable for them. they are either too young or too short for it.

 

yu xi developed fever in the late afternoon on the day of arrival. she was grouchy the moment the medication effect was over. her fever lasted for 2 days till we left genting. overall, she had enjoyed herself too despite the fever.

twin towers

as usual, we check our luggage in the hotel and left for lunch while waiting for the room to be ready. we spend our day shopping at mid valley megamall and the gardens. we went on the hop on hop off bus ride the next day. we took the train from mid valley station to kl sentral to take the bus. we went to twin towers, kl tower, bukit bintang and chinatown. we couldn't catch the last bus ride at 730pm so we took a cab back to hotel on our own.



kl tower

we checked out early on our last day for the driver to bring us to have local breakfast. he brought us to chocolate factory too though no production line to show. next, we went to batu cave. the 17 X ?? (don't know how many) steps were a killer. there were many monkeys along the stairs too. one of them give jiali a big fright that she screamed. then, we went to kidszania. however, we had to miss it cos they were fully booked for the morning session by 13 schools. :(  we had our lunch nearby and shopped a bit before the driver came back to pick us up for berjaya times square, which was our last stop.

overall, it was a fun and nice trip. though, i don't seems to have done any shopping. everyone did come back with something.  

lego land, here we come....

lego land, here we come......

 

weather is good today and we are making our trip up north to the long await lego land. meet up jiali and family for breakfast before we drive up. traffic is not too bad at the checkpoint too. we missed the turn to lego land and make a big round back before we hit lego land.

 

lego express

the kids are so excited about the trip. we took all the rides that was available for their age and cover the whole of lego land (appropriate for their age). the queue for the rides range from 15 mins to 45 mins as stated on the sign at each ride. we didn't really time to check if the queue timing is as what is stated but its doesn't seems to long a wait though. for a school holiday fri, i think the wait is pretty reasonable. the park is not overly packed too. you will also notice that the crowd sort of die off by around 4pm.

 

driving at the junior driving school

we took some of the rides twice as requested by the kids. rides and activities suitable for young children of 2 and 4 years old includes:

• lego city airport
• junior driving school
• boating school
• lego rescue academy
• lego express
• duplo express
• observation tower
• duplo playtown
• musical fountain
• beetle bounce
• the shipyard
• miniland

we had upgraded our day pass to annual pass at the end of the day. we were there from 11am to 7pm. the kids were dead tired. fall asleep immediately when they were in the car. we will definitely come back for more fun.

hello kitty town & the little big club



in JB



we went to hello kitty town & the little big club!!! its so so fun for everyone of us except maybe darling (he enjoyed but not as much as we do).

 

i love kitty

i'm so so so in love with hello kitty town and turn into a little girl who is excited over all the things in there. hahaha..... i just want to take photo of everything in there. yu ze and yu xi had fun too. both of them were scared at the 'black wonder'. yu ze said that is for the bad kitty, he is scare. i didn't get to do anything from the 'wishful studio', must make sure i visit them the next trip.

 

the fat controller

there were two levels for the little big club, one level for thomas and another for barney, angelina ballerina, bob the builder and pingu. of course, we had lots of fun at thomas area. however, there are 2 rides that we were turn away due to height and age. yu ze was so sad that he cried. i had to comfort him and get to play at other stations. 

 

at the other level, we had skip angelina ballerina. they are not interested in her. her play area is simply a dress up area where you get to wear the tutu and dance like a ballerina. we just walked in and out of the place. they spent most of the time at bob the builder and barney. yu xi was a bit sad cos bj and baby bop didn't appear and bj was not feature there. she didn't even want to take pic with the barney mascot.

 

overall, it was a good trip and a place for everyone in the family (at least for mine). travelling time for one way was about 1.5 hours.  

gardens by the bay

the 2 friends meet

we meet up with kat and her family for a cool evening walk at gardens by the bay. it has been a long since we meet up. we had planned to take the ocbc skyway walk. however, the queue is so long that we have to give it a miss. we end up walking around by the gardens, enjoying the cool breeze.

 

sitting on the big pebble

yu ze spotted the spider web by the side lamp. they spotted a few small frogs and a beetle along the walk. these are things that we adults will missed. i guess we are not observant for such things. 

spider web

its nice catching up with each other. small group meeting are good as well since its fuss free and less logistic to handle. as the kids grow, its harder for us to meet up. everyone is busy with their own activities or enrichment classes for the kids. hopefully, we can do more meet up in future.  

present?

i was in a packing mood and was clearing up the house. i saw this soo kee box lying around. i thought it was my surprise gift. it was indeed a surprise gift when i opened it up. it was not a diamond ring, it was a minnie mouse plastic ring. yu xi saw me opening it, she came to me and said, 'its mine!'. and she walked away with the box.

 

gift for girlfriend not wife

 

i walked out of the room to look for darling.

 

me: darling, why you buy present for your girlfriend? i don't have any.

darling: (lost and shock) huh??? what present?

me: mei mei, can you show papa what you have?

 

yu xi walked over and show papa her soo kee's 'ring'. i gave darling a sulking face and walked off. hahaha.....

fun, exciting and busy dec

i didn't notice that we will be having an exciting dec till i listed them down.

dec

1 - a walk at the gardens with kat and family

4 - yu ze's camp in cc (eric carle's programme at science centre)
5 - yu ze's camp in cc (mad sciene at serangoon branch)
6 - babies prom concert
9 - fantastic fox
10 - yu ze's camp in cc (making an angry bird robot)
12 - yu ze's camp in cc (super hero dress up christmas party at serangoon branch)
13 - genting

14 - genting

15 - genting & mid valley

16 - kl

17 - kl & back to singapore
26 - darling must go back to school

27 - darling must go back to school

28 - darling must go back to school

i have 3 annual reports to submit to cpe by 28 dec. i can only work on them from 10 dec.

how to squeeze a hello kitty land and the litte big club trip in?

if possible, still need to squeeze another lego land trip. this can delay a bit since most of the rides have a min height requirement of 100cm. yu ze still a long way to that so we can hold this back a little more.

this dec is going to be fun, exciting and busy for all of us.

thomas and the hidden treasures

thomas show

advertisement for the 'thomas and the hidden treasures' had been going on and on on okto. each time, yu ze will ask me if thomas is here. my one and only answer will be not yet. after seeing 2 thomas shows at shopping centre and in japan thomas land, i'm very reluntant to pay for this thomas show. i didn't manage to escape from this and we finally bought the cheapest tickets for it. 



t-shirt of the show

i'm so glad that we didn't miss this show. it was like a musical with the singing and dancing. its actually pretty good, better than our expectations. we had enjoyed it.

booster jab

today is our anniversary. we didn't have any plan for it. we going to bring the 2 for their booster jab for pneumococcal at kk in the afternoon. pick them up from school and head down to kk. 

yu xi is ‎23 months old, 10.8kg and 80.9cm at her 25-50 percentile range. yu ze is 43 months old, 12.4kg and 90cm. he is still growing at his usual 3 percentile rate. pd says both are well and ok. as long as they are active, eating well, i shouldn't be bother by their size. most important is their health which i agree 100%. ok. if i want to 'fatten' yu ze up then give more proteins and fats. his output could be higher than input so not putting on weight.

yu ze cry when jab and keep whining pain pain after that. took a while to stop and we bought him 'duck' (thomas's friend) to compensate his 'pain'.

yu xi also cry but stop almost immediately cos the nurse give her a pack of biscuit. this is how she works, immediately forget about the pain once there is food.

puzzle

yesterday, he wants to play puzzle train. i have this abc long puzzle train. so i get him to fix it up himself. I help him by starting with the train head and letter a. .

me: yu ze, help mommy find the balloon, where is b for balloon. (pic for that piece is balloon).
yu ze: here and pick up the piece
me: ok, clever boy. yu ze fix it here (pointing to the part).

then he fix it up and i continue in this way all the z. some alphabet, i name them by the alphabet name, some I go by the pic that represent it.

he is having so much fun. he wants to continue with the next train which is on numbers. he did that half way and wants to give up cos i ask darling to help him with that train while i settle yu xi. darling make him count and count till yu ze give up. hahahaha....

flash cards

yu ze caught me by surprise with his recognising skills today. as usual, fil came over to see his grandchildren. suddenly, darling bring out a stack of baby einstein flash cards bought by sil. these flash cards had been sitting on the rack of yu ze's bookshelves for the longest time. once in a while, yu ze will take them out to 'throw'. darling show yu ze the cards and he is able to recognise the animals on it and name them loh. he really caught me by surprise cos i never knew he can do that.

i think darling had put in effort in teaching yu ze all that. every night when he put yu ze to bed, they will either be 'reading' (flipping) story book or naming things. naming things by pointing at it and tell yu ze what they are. sometimes, yu ze will repeat with him. more common ones, yu ze will name them like car, call, truck, etc.

well done my baobei. hopefully, you can recognise more of the other things from other stacks of flash cards soon.

father's day gift

yu ze came back home with his father's day gift today. i was working late so didn't get to see so no photo of it. all i saw was an empty plastic container with the cupcake wrapper inside. i still scold darling for not throwing that container away and leave it lying around. it was then i know that container was actually a father's day gift. according to darling, it was a little cupcake inside a small plastic container. on top of that container was a heart shape thing with happy father's day wordings.

however, darling didn't get to eat that little cupcake. yu ze came back and show darling that the cupcake. he said to darling, 'o-pen'. once darling open up the container, yu ze quickly took the cupcake and happily eating away. though it was meant as a father's day gift, it ended up inside yu ze's tummy. hahaha.....

darling say that cupcake wouldn't be made by yu ze. it should be the works of his teachers. i told him yu ze will sure have some share in the making. be it helping to put the ingredients or stirring them together or even putting it in the container. any small part is better than nothing. he should be happy with it. afterall, its his first father's day gift from yu ze.

angry

i had a whole day training from 9-5.30pm so yu xi was at home with hubby. as usual, we send yu ze to cc before hubby send me to course. since yu xi is under his care, i didn't pack her bag (diaper, fm) in the morning loh. i only pack my breast pump, yu ze's bag and off we go. after dropping yu ze, hubby say yu xi cry cos she wants milk and ask why i didn't bring her bag. i buay song liao, told him off. since she is under his care for the day, he is responsible to pack her bag not me. i wouldn't know his plan for the day and how much to pack. so we went home to get her bag but my girl hoh, not hungry lah. she just sleep all the way loh. so going home is a wasted trip. then he send me for course and make it just in time. got my colleague to buy me breakfast and drink to eat during course as i'm super hungry loh.

i planned to stay out late and be home after 8pm, let hubby handle the 2 babies. want hubby to know its not easy to handle 2 babies alone and don't think i super relax at home. however, the course ended by 3pm. so i got more time for shopping. in the end, i still reach home around 620pm as its heavy to carry my breast pump and walk around.

i saw that yu ze had bathe when i reach home, thinking that he had dinner liao. no loh, no dinner at all. i ask why no dinner, why didn't tabao? he say he can't bring 2 out to buy. he can't carry yu ze and push stroller with yu xi at the same time. stupid loh. why i can do that and he can't? i'm stronger than him meh? since i'm back, he wants to bring yu ze down to buy dinner but yu ze want me to go. end up all 4 of us went out to eat dinner. i think hormones play a part too, i start tearing as i walk out of the house.

after dinner, i just stay in room to pump for the longest time. i'm so engorge cos last pump was about 7/8 hours ago. i leave him to make the 2 babies sleep. yu xi cry in the room and yu ze is still walking around at 815pm. finally he decides to make milk for yu ze and get him to sleep. so i just pretend to continue pumping loh that's why can't help mah. he just walk in and out of yu xi and yu ze's room. into yu xi's room whenever she cry cos pacifier drop. in this way, he can never get yu ze to sleep. so yu ze continue to walk around and finally fuss cos hubby keep going to yu xi.

yu ze say he wants something that darling don't understand, so he become cranky. i have to stop pretending and handle yu ze. actually, i also don't know what he say but best thing to do when he is like that is to carry him then he will stop. i carry him for a while then put him in bed to read books, drink milk and sleep by 9pm. darling continue to stay with yu xi.

why can't he handle the 2 of them for a few hours? if he can't handle, what makes him think that i can? i'm not a super mummy leh.

maternity photoshoot

i have finally took my maternity photoshoot. i had wanted to do it since i was preggy with yu ze. however, didn't get to do it cos darling disagree to it and i feel that its not so nice if all the shoots were just me instead of us. so i give up the idea then and tell myself i can always do it again next time. 

for this pregnancy, preparation work had been real real slow. i only started to look out for ps packages not long ago. had make some enquiries but never confirm due to pricing. then i saw a promotion by www.f8angels.com in forum on wednesday, its looks very attractive. again i email them to make some enquiries but this time, i really act fast on it and confirm everything within 2 days. 

i keep quiet about this whole ps arrangement. it was on fri then inform darling that we are going for ps today. darling again give me a disapproving look and commented that i very hiao, why must take maternity shots. don't wish to argue or fight with him, i simply told him this, if you don't want to take then don't go with me. i will still go ahead and take it. his reply was he also want to take. :P 

 

why must show tummy?

i started preparing and packed our bag for today's ps. though the package is an hour shoot but we took slightly more than an hour. i would say this is a very different ps from the rest that i have taken so far. i believe the numbers of photo taken this round is also the least among the rest. as i need to really pose for the shots and the photographer is busy testing the lighting, flash lights. there are also some daring shots that i never thought that i would do it. 





the photographer locks ourselves up in the studio so nobody can come in to see what's going on. it does help me to feel more relax to take certain shots. yu ze had also been quite a good boy. though he does run around a bit in the studio but in general he didn't disrupt the whole shooting. saw some of the photos from the camera after the ps, looks quite ok. now is waiting for her to do some editing and send them off to me. 

kangaroo ride

bring yu ze out shopping at united square, he saw this 'kangaroo' ride and gets super excited. so hubby decide to let him have some fun. :)

i didn't get to ride on it cos hubby say i can't drive, so cannot play :(

 

kangaroo ride

driving kangaroo