HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It’s been ages but better late than never. Back at work now after 2 weeks of doing nothing but eat and spend time with my baby. I’m stopping breastfeeding now, after a year, sad but also think it’s the right time.

 

So, yup – definitely new changes for the new year! Now it’s time to start thinking again about work and my exciting new project, how to make my life more meaningful with hubby, with baby, with parents and sister and family in law. Perhaps think about nursery? Perhaps think about another baby? But definitely to contact my optometrist and tell her, my new contact lense don’t work! Hahahahahhaha…….

 

Have a good one friends and I will try to be a better person this year. I think the last year has seen me change so much, personally. For the better I think though anyone other than my baby may not think so cos my quota of patience is exhausted by him,  and everyone else seems to get the short end of the stick – so for that I apologise. But this year is a new year, I will pass the mid 30 mark this year and I can’t see how the years have flown. I really can’t.

Blowing Raspberries

I usually blow raspberries on Julian's tummy and guess WHAT!!! Today he blew them back on my thigh!!!!! OMG! It's amazing!

 

And he's got 2 wee teeth now (bottom ones) and we've started brushing his teeth morning and night.

 

I know it's been ages but work has been crazy and I've even started not going to the gym anymore cos there's just not enough hours in the day!!!

 

We also started co-sleeping with Julian in the bed so it's easier to breastfeed him at night. Yup! Still going at it! Exclusively is possible but I've been giving him a mixture of 1 ounce formula and 2.5oz expressed breast milk - just to get him used to the taste in case I run short again.......which seems to kinda be happening again now and the fenugreek and stinging nettle which worked a charm before, isn't quite so successful this time around. But I really really believe that the more water I take in, the more milk I can produce - so here's a 'yeah right!' to all those websites out there who told me, erroneously that drinking more liquids isn't going to help my milk production!!!! And expressing every 2 hours!

 

I have so far missed 1 night with Julian when I went on the office teambuilding event to the Mines Hotel - the night of Sept 10th.

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Remember that No Problem Lasts Forever

A couple of new pics

SWAMPED.AT.WORK

Yeah it's been crazy and I've been neglectful. So much has been happening, well more with the baby than with me per say cos I've been SWAMPED.AT.WORK but still for a first-time mum, what happens to the baby happens to me.

I've been really greedy too, eating nasi lemak for breakfast lots and not getting full with just one portion of lunch, I am sated of course but not stuffed full which I used to be before. Am still losing weight though.

The baby started turning back and forth with gusto in July, started being able to really sit up almost completely unsupported recently, tried fish and even chicken porridge now, also avocado, peach.I swear I heard him call me mama just yesterday!

Oh yeah, because he can sit up better now, easier to bathe in the bath cos ewer can her him to sit up so we can wash his back.

Still breastfeeding, even though he's started preferring solids over milk now these past two three weeks, which is the wrong timing, cos image just got my milk back in end June. Julian doesn't wanna lay down in our arms for a feed; somehow he is ok with laying on the bed to feed though, also a new phenomenon cos I've never really been comfortable doing that, except since the start of july cos he's bigger and that just makes it easier.

Ooh, he's also started sleeping on his side, seems of love doing that and is really comfortable doing that. Which is great cos it's much cooler for him, or else his head sweats SO MUCH!

His poo has changed so much too! Looks like adult poo now, coming out in strips, ha ha.He's definitely more regular now than in May or June when he went a few days without poo, longest being in May I believe with 6 days being the record.Even now I think he's got to learn how to push the poo out.

I've been so busy and tired that I haven't even really been recording stuff in my baby diary. Mum told me the other day that we can get started with no.2 when Julian's one cos then we'll new in time for a little dragon! Ha ha.

WOW!

I am super beautiful!

 

I drew on waterproof purple eye liner, curled my lashes, applied mascara with no mishaps and then added some smokey shadow (very littlelah cos I don’t really know how to do that). And oh yeah, I’m wearing grey coloured contacts.

 

Heheheeeeee

Congratulations and Happy Birthday!

To Szup and Coen David respectively!
One of my dearest friends just have birth on Tuesday to her second son. He is adorable and she is a trooper!
Love to both of them and cheers to the entire family!

No Poo

My son had not pooped in 5 days!

No Words....

 

I’m crying. I just read in The Star about the 2 year old little girl who fell into a tub of water and drowned in her nursery. I saw the photo of her mother carrying her out of the clinic, her little body covered by a cloth but I spy her arm, discoloured and blue. The paragraph where it says (and I paraphrase), “The mother, uncontrollably distraught, carries her child out of the clinic and rushes into a waiting van” sets me off. I do not see how any mother can recover something like that. The little arm, the picture of grief on the mother’s face, the way the child lies over her mother’s shoulder - the way she would have in the morning the last time her mother carried her, alive.

 

I can’t bring myself to say no one is at fault. Why is the tub filled with water anyway when no one was using it? Why did the nursery guardians not take adequate measures of care and attention when they know they are dealing with precocious, inquisitive children, children who are helpless and naïve ….and innocent. Dead. Dead means gone forever, never to be warm again and held lovingly over and over again in parents’ arms. Dead means no more laughing, no more giggling, the child has no future, no wedding, no children of her own.

 

Dead sometimes means the mother dies too.

Insightful and Necessary but Effective?

Just read Zainah Anwar's column in The Star today "Same actors, same old script". I love her writing and think her comments and ideas make a whole lot of sense although I do think the title should read "Different actors, same old script".

So many people have come and gone saying the same thing, Malays and otherwise, but these articles have always been the words of a minority who appear on page 19 of a paper once in a while, while insidious, incorrect, inflammatory gossip hog headlines any day of the week.It's come to a point where I'm sure hardworking honest Malaysians just read the news and go on with living their lives. I, for one feel that no real change will come about. I don't believe change will come anytime soon.The current ministers make a mockery of their position and the citizens who elected them into office. Same old, same old.

It will take a very brave man or woman leader or leaders, a courageous, unified populace, ready for change and willing to stand on their own two feet for a genuine, lasting paradigm shift.

I don't think it will happen in my lifetime which is why Talent Corporation or no, if there is a chance of a less selfish, more equal life for my son elsewhere, I'd try out in a second.

Hence the title of this post, all these mature thoughts are necessary and definitely insightful, but effective? I'm afraid not.

Too bad.

Bad Food Galore

Just recently, we tried out The Blue Cow Café at Plaza Damas which was highlighted in the papers for burgers that were out of this world. We also ventured into The Cookbook at Sunway Giza. Actually that one was a second visit. So here are our reviews of these two eateries.

 

The Blue Cow Café was a little below expectations. We couldn’t get past how the food and the décor and the waiters all didn’t seem to gel. There was just something off about the entire environment. The waiters weren’t very helpful or maybe they just didn’t know their food; I saw a girl in the kitchen (open to public viewing mind you) using her hands when building a burger, I later saw the same girl go off to the freezer and used the same pair of hands (yeah, she only had one pair!) to open and close the freezer door as well as handle all sorts of Tupperware containers. There was a giant refrigerator stuck all over with Tiger beer stickers whilst the wallpaper and wall treatments didn’t scream cheap coffeeshop. A simple visit to the place will have you wondering the same thing – did I wander into a meat house that is just using an-ex restaurant locale while it looks for its own home???

 

Foodwise, I did not enjoy my lamb burger. I like my lamb and this burger was most definitely a disappointment – it wasn’t lamby in the least. I could taste a mish mash of items but not really any lamb. Hubby had a bite and liked it but when he had to finish the rest of my burger, finally understood my disappointment. His dish was the Pork Platter – the bacon was wondrous but that’s about itlah.

 

Overall, the place left me wondering what the reviewer was talking about. We paid a lot of money for nothing much by way of good food. It’s a no no for me on a return visit – we don’t actually award it the Sakae Award for suckiness but it won’t get a Recommend that’s for sure.

 

And now, for The Cookbook. This was actually a second visit because my parents were visiting and my mum mentioned that the place had been reviewed in the papers. Ok, after our experience there that night, I should treat all reviews in the papers with high suspicion. In fact, perhaps the moment an establishment is reviewed in the paper, it should scream ‘AVOID AVOID AVOID’ to me!

 

The first time we visited The Cookbook, I didn’t like it. I have a genuine dislike for places selling coffeeshop hawker fare for high prices. And what’s worse is when they don’t even do it as well as the old men and women out there sloggin away in non-airconditioned kopitiams. The only thing this place was good for to me, was their novel way of decorating the café and presenting their food.

 

By the way, DO NOT have the Homemade Sour Plum drink – yowzers!

 

This second time around that we were there, out of 4 dishes ordered, only 1 was good – however, everything was too salty! The worst thing is that my poor mother struggled through her Dry Curry Noodles for so long telling everyone it was salty til we actually tried it. It was unbelievable! I mean there is salty and then there is The Cookbook’s salty! YIKES!

 

When we referred it to the manager, he took it back and brought back a new plate – but this time without the chicken rolls that come with the dish. Hmmmm….if you’re going to replace a dish, it’s only professional if you replace the entire dish, not half a dish! And he tried to offer a lame excuse that at the end of the day, the sediment of the curry was more salty. Ummm….a chef who valued his name and his job would never allow that to happen. If that was acceptable, that means if I go to Shangri-La’s Chinese Restaurant at the end of the day, I would have to accept bad food??

 

The manager further went on to say that he had had a lot of orders for the dish that night and we were the only ones who complained. THAT really got JH’s goat! It was error piled upon error – replacing the dish half-assed was bad enough, now it was compounded with a lame excuse for the poor quality of the food and then aggravated further by an employee telling the customer he was basically wrong. And to top it all off, the cherry on the shit cake – the new dish had mee as bland as dishwater.

 

Caveat emptor if you’re trying out The Cookbook at Sunway Giza – the wait staff is inefficient (don’t even get me started on how they didn’t know how to give us proper utensils etc), the food is mediocre at best, the manager is lousy and customer service is atrocious. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

 

We felt so badly about it that we were about to rename ‘The Sakae Award’ with ‘The Cookbook….NOT’ award!