The West Wing.

When we were doing renovations to our house before moving in, I suggested to my husband that we break the wall between our room and the study so that we can have a bigger master bedroom. Well, he didn't take on the suggestion and instead we agreed that a smaller room would be less chances for me to clutter and easier to manage.

Fast forward 3 years later and we've got a problem. Our once "fit nicely for us" and matchy-matchy master bedroom has been invaded by little creatures forcing us to make some additions.We have a West Wing now... in addition to the East Wing and the South Wing in the one room. The west wing is where Alan sleeps, the east - where Mia sleeps most of the time. I say most of the time because she now has the tendency to trespass to our bed. The south wing - well, we had to put a mattress there just in case Mia falls onto the floor while she plays on our bed.

Now our room feels as tiny as a shoebox with new burst of colours.

I am just so tempted to break that wall. Either that, or move the kiddies out one by one. But when will we be ready for that?

Little Helper

Taking on Cinda's advice, (thanks Cin), we distracted our Mia with little chores to get her closer to Alan. At first I tried to get her put his diapers in the basket where we keep his diapers. That failed. She prefers to see diapers, and everything else, scattered all over the floor.

Then, we got her to keep Alan company while he's sleeping. She stared at him. Watching his every move,if any.

Mia likes to play with the baby cot, many times climbing into it when Alan's not inside. So the other day we let her rock Alan while he was lying in it. Well, we made progress. She likes doing this and is now coping with Alan a lot better.

But she still wants to dress like Superman!

What?!

Another hilarious piece of news.

Reminds of a time when a certain female minister of ours suggested that wives wear sexy lingerie so that husbands won't stray.

Like HELLO. If men (or women for that matter) want to stray, they'll stray. No amount (or lack of) of Victoria's Secrets will stop them.

Should I be a wife who finds out her husband went to "private places to satisfy his urges" and he then puts the blame on me for it... Well, I'm gonna cut his private to satisfy my urges. There.

MP: M'sian men have affairs as wives 'neglect' duty


Malaysian men have extramarital sex because of 'wives who neglect their responsibilities' to their husbands, a Malaysian lawmaker told Parliament on Thursday, reports AFP.

"Husbands driving home after work see things that are sexually arousing and go to their wives to ease their urges," said independent lawmaker Ibrahim Ali, as quoted by online portal Malaysiakini.

"But when they come home to their wives, they will say, 'wait, I'm cooking,' or 'wait, I'm getting ready to visit relatives'," Ali said.

"In Islam, wives are supposed to stop everything to fulfill their husband's demands."

Ali heads Perkasa, a right-wing Malay nationalist group seeking to protect ethnic Malay dominance in politics.

His strident comments came as he asked about plans by the government's religious development department to educate wives on their responsibilities.

Wives failing in their duties pushed men to go to "private places to satisfy their urges", he said.

Source: The Straits Times/ANN
Published April 7 2011

Miserable, no more I'll try.

Of late, I've been quite miserable... having to deal with "unsolicited advises", confinement taboos/rituals and what nots, a super-jealous toddler, a newborn, sleep deprivation and the list goes on and on.

I've survived mini-meltdowns one of which had me hiding and sobbing in our locked bedroom during the afternoons under the pretense of "taking an afternoon nap". When I thought that my super-jealous toddler was asleep, she got up and handed me her favourite towel to wipe my tears, which led me to cry even more.

But today, out of the blue... I received a call from an old friend and I felt more relieved and uplifted.

You know who you are. Thank you for listening without me having to say much. Thank you for acknowledging that I'm not an annoying nag. Thank you for the solicited advice given.

Pic thru Mr Google with thanks

Thursday Thought

I read somewhere that Malaysia is ranked number 9 in English Proficiency Index by Education First (EF). According to their website, EF was founded in 1965, and is "today the world’s largest privately held education company that specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degrees, and cultural exchange".

FYI, the Top Ten in the report are:

1. Norway
2. Netherlands
3. Denmark
4. Sweden
5. Finland
6. Austria
7. Belgium
8. Germany
9. Malaysia
10. Poland

Wow! Malaysia is No 9!

Which then makes me wonder about the blunders made below. The first 3 pictures were taken at the recent BIMP-EAGA Expo held at the Sabah Trade Centre. The other 3 photos were taken in my room at SMC while waiting to be discharged after delivering Alan.




If thousands (or in the case of SMC, millions) of ringgit can be spent on organising the event/purchasing the equipments, why can't they invest a little bit of money and time to make sure that correct spelling were used on the signboards/labels. At the very least, I'm sure that there is at least someone in their team who can help proofread (for free) before printing.

Just a thought.

Just because she wants to stand out

Having a new baby in the house has caused our Mia to display all sorts of weird behaviour. I know, she craves for even more attention than before but some things are just plain outrageous... yet funny. One of which:

Sudden weird fashion sense. She wants to wear her diaper outside... like Superman! Don't worry, she's wearing a diaper underneath too.

The single "aunties"

Thank you Flo & Rosie for visiting us last week! Its always great to hear of your tales and adventures.

To Rosie... hope you're having a blast on your trip. And woman, please update your blog!

Jealousy in the house

From the moment I found out that I was pregnant, I've been anticipating that Mia would become jealous of the little one. But I did not anticipate HOW jealous she'd get.

Up until recently, Mia was OK with having her brother around. Up until he moved into our bedroom that is. For the first 2 weeks, Alan was being fully cared for by the confinement lady and now that the confinement lady only comes over 6.30am - 7pm daily means that he would be sleeping with us in our room. This arrangement was my decision because I wanted Mia to slowly get used to the fact that there are 4 of us in the family now.

The first signs of Mia's jealousy and anger was the moment our domestic help and confinement lady moved his crib into our bedroom. Mia tried to push the crib out!

Then the following happened:

1. I carried Alan in the living room. Mia starts crying and tried to push Alan away from my arms.
2. Mia cried and pulled me to our domestic help. Mia then gestured that I hand Alan over to the domestic help.
3. Seeing Mia so depressed, I handed Alan to the domestic help, then Mia pulled my hand so that I'd be far from Alan.
4. Later I took both Mia and Alan to our room, laid Alan in his crib to sleep and let Mia watch her movie on the Ipod. She was ok and soon fell asleep.
5. When she woke up and saw me cradling Alan, she gave us the EVIL look. OMG! Then she started to cry again. By this time my husband was home already.
6. Then, she vomited on our bed. Luckily, my husband managed to grab a towel in time to "catch" the vomit before it hit the bed.
7. When I felt her forehead, she was really warm.
8. Jealousy fever in the house:

Another reason why this blog has been idle of late.

Everytime Mia sees me carrying Alan, she'd cry. Feeding time (for both both her and Alan) is a nightmare. She cries when I feed him. And when its time for her feeding, she insists that I carry her in my arms and hold her bottle for her. And get this, she wants be to "burp" her after feeding, just like I do to Alan!

Now I'm having a headache and heartache thinking how can we go about this.

Genesis 3:16

The stork was a bit late in delivery...
Nonetheless, here he is:

Say "Hi" to Alan. Our newest member of our family. Alan arrived PAST the Due Date (like Mia), at 40 weeks and 4 days. I thought I was going to be pregnant forever. Honestly, I was getting embarrassed whenever friends saw me STILL pregnant. I was even embarrassed when meeting my Dr.

My pregnancy may have been even longer if it weren't for my Dr who advised me to be induced on 16th March. Yes, that's Alan's birthday, just 1 day earlier than his Kung Kung (grandpa... different year of course).

And he looks like Mia when she was born:

See?!

So how was Alan's delivery you might ask? I'll tell you but I'm not going to sugar coat it. So if you're not into knowing the gory details, stop right here and tune in on another post. Just not this one.


In the Bible, in Genesis 3:16, it says: To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

God wasn't joking.

For those of you who never experienced childbirth and labor pains, imagine you need to make a humongous, gigantic poop.... a poop so big that when it finally pops out it cause your arse to tear. Well, that's what its like. Just replace the poop with a baby, and the arse with the va-jay-jay.

I went into induced labor (Dr forced my water to break) a little after 10am, and I had to wait for my contractions to begin. At the time, I already dilated 3 - 4 cm. Well, my contractions did begin shortly after that but they were bearable. By around 1pm, the contractions were getting stronger (but still bearable) so I was wheeled to the Delivery Room 6.

At 2.30pm, it was starting to become unbearable so I called the the nurse. Guess what, I only dilated to like 5 - 6cm. WTF?!!!! I asked for painkillers. Let me tell you. Painkillers DO NOT make the pain go away. It makes you drowsy after like 20 minutes. But as soon as the contractions come, your eyes pop wide open again. My contractions were 3 minutes apart lasting anywhere between 30 seconds to 40 seconds.

But the good thing using the so called painkillers was that it somehow helped to make me dilate faster. Within the hour, I dilated to 8-9cm and the Dr rushed to the delivery room.

The nurse kept on asking me "Do you have the urge to push? Like you need to poo?" I kept waiting for that feeling to poo, but I was waiting on the wrong end. It's suppose to be the urge to push from the front! Yikes, and I thought its from behind, like really poo! And I'm going through this the second time now? Some people never learn.

Well, when the urge to push came, I pushed. And in 3 pushes, at exactly 4.00pm, hello baby number 2! Bye bye painful labor.

Lets not get into the 2nd part of Genesis 3:16 just yet cos there are uses of pretty strong words in there that I'd need clarification.

Due Date

Oh dear. It has been a while that I've "abandoned" my blog. So much for exceeding the blog entries made last year!

As the due date of our bouncing baby boy draws near, husband and I watched "Due Date" very late DVD last night. Why late? Our Mia has control of the TV during her waking hours, and last night it was till 10.30pm or so. This week, its Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 week. I still can't understand how she still has that enthusiasm, excitement and joy watching the movies over and over again. The song "You've got a friend in me" remains stuck in my head. Its driving me up the wall.

Anyway, back to Due Date. Its about a highly stressed out father-to-be Peter Highman played by Robert Downey Jr who is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay played by Zach Galifianakis on a road trip in order to make it to his first child's birth on time. Annoying, yes. Sick, at times. Leave you in stitches, depends on your sense of humour! But I loved it. I needed this comedy break. If you wanna watch it.... DVD is here at home. Please drop by and collect... LOL!


And my Due Date: supposed to be 12 March. But we'll see!