Keith 2nd Birthday

I am very sorry for not being able to update my blog as often as I like now. Life is indeed very hard especially when you have to work things out from scratch without much help and support. Luckily I found it lately with much understanding.

I know that I have been absent from my blog for over 2 months now. I am taking this opportunity to start writing again whenever I can find the time to. My sincerest apologies to all that have hopped over to my blog only to be disappointed with the same old posting.

It was Keith's birthday last week and I manage to spend almost the whole day with him. (Well, I am glad that I can almost see him almost on a weekly basis and he is still as attached to me)

That day was not really an eventful day but it has been a very tiring day for all of us, including the Birthday boy. Elaine wanted to get cupcakes from Cupcake Chic so they bought two to try and sadly they were not to our liking, with Keith being the only one wanting to eat one cupcake and smashing the sweeter one. Guess the cupcakes were not to our liking.

This is how Keith eats his cup cake




After the cupcake we decided to go into the Curve because it was raining heavily and I have parked my car in the basement parking of Ikea. While walking towards the entrance, Keith saw the candy shop and immediately he helped himself to pick the candy :P We can really see that he indeed enjoyed himself with his lollipop candy although he cannot finish it.


He even sat himself on a bench to enjoy his lollipop.


We allowed him to have 2 rides on the mini rides then we headed to Ikea and had a little walk. Keith would as usual play with all the toys there and also the slide


Right after that, we decided to go to Jelly Q to get a jelly instead. Everybody decided to go for the steamboat opposite of the confectionery shop because we were all so hungry.

So we also let Keith have his jelly cake there too


What gave me the scare is him touching the top of the candles right after he blew it


I bought him a balloon, which he had used to repeatedly hit my sister on the head with, as well along with the gifts he got from us. I gave him a Swarovski Crystal Pig (for keeping) with a fake W910 display phone, my mom gave him a small golden piggie pendant and he also received a Jumbo-size Barney from a very good friend of my sister and I.


That did not conclude the day, we went to the Food Foundry to get a Mille Crepe Cake for all the adults and headed to a small restaurant in Taman Desa for our dinner before sending Elaine and Keith home. As usual Keith would whine when he sees me leave but I am glad in a way that Elaine and I are trying to work things out in our own ways.

My hectic Tuesday

Tuesday was a rather hectic and tiring day for me. In the morning I have to run to the LHDN alone and also to meet up with my very good friend, DD. I am very thankful for the time that DD took to help me out on many things. The other person that I am grateful with is my sister who took leave that day to help me to assist Elaine so that I can go out in the morning. While Grandma has gone back to Penang the night before for her medical checkup that day itself. By noon I took Keith, Elaine and my sister out for lunch at Tony Roma's.

The food was ok and we ordered 3 sets. Keith was the one having the most fun because he seems to be enjoying himself with all the food we shared with him.

He is taking some bread. Does he looked shocked?


He even wanted to try it with the dressing the waitress gave him. The carrot and celery was a compliment for him :D but he don't seems to like it though.


The yummy look....


Recently he has also began giving different expressions when we put him in front of a mirror


All I can say is I was totally tired by the end of the day.

Another thing that I would like to add is Keith's Portable DVD player from Citibank has finally arrived. I am very happy about it because now I do not have to share my laptop with my boy anymore to watch his children songs.

Runaway Maids

Today is a horrible day to do this post..... Most who have my MSN would know that I am a late night bird. Last night, as usual I went to sleep at 5am But I only get to sleep until 8am. The reason for the short sleep was because my mom came rushing into our room telling us that the maids has gone missing (my sister's and mine)

Grandma has made the discovery when she was going to the bathroom. After looking thru our personal stuffs we found that we are missing quite a sum of money from Elaine's pouch (our own money and "loose change" money we keep for the cash register) We also found a half bottle of milk on the table in the hall along with our keys and their passports, which was taken from our pouch as well.

What really made us totally unprepared for this is because my sister's maid is due for home in October and mine is in December this year. my sister's maid even told my sister that she wanted to continue her employment and she requested that we send her back. We have promised her that we will allow her to go back for a month in January. We were really shock that they have decided to runaway and was even daring to steal money right under our nose. Elaine, Keith and I is sleeping in the room where the theft took place.

From my guess, she has used the opportunity to steal it when she came into our room at about 6 - 7am to feed Keith his morning milk. She only fed hin halfway thru because she did not want to force the whole bottle to Keith because he would normally starts to whine if he is given more than half a bottle. Since Elaine is a light sleeper, she is normally woken up by Keith's whining so I guess she took the caution ot that.

Despite a check with the guard house, they were unable to provide much information because ours is practically manned by foreigners too, my guess is probably Nepalese.

In my opinion, the reason for their daring act is probably due to the fact that they knew where I put their passports. Recently the government has required us, employers, to bring along their passport whenever we bring them out. It has really been an inconvenience, it would be better if we can have the immigration dept issued ID cards and have their passports kept in a safe place or even with the agency. According to the maid agency, the immigration dept has discontinued sending it out these recent years.

I have never liked the idea of having strangers, like maid, in my house because I have always felt uncomfortable with them and also thinks that there is a loss of privacy. FYI, I never spoke to my maids, they get their instructions from Elaine all the time. I am considered lucky because Keith is never attached to our maid and he never really quite liked her. Anyway the reason for us to get the maids is because we needed them to help Grandma to care for Keith (and Nicole, formerly) as well as Grandma herself too because she has been having problem with her legs and movement is rather limited lately and she had fainted once on us because of low blood pressure. Grandma herself is on High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol and Controlled Diabetes medication.

Sadly we don't have a big family so we have to resort to employing maids to help us out on out daily chores as well as taking care of our family so that we can spare more time on our business. The most depressing part of the day is losing the maid has sparked a few arguments in the family and I am being victimized all the time.

My thank for all the friends whom have given their advises, for all the concerns we have been given, for sharing with us their experiences and contacts for maid agencies, since most are closed on Sundays.

A day in Penang

On Tuesday morning we went back to Penang for quite a few reasons for the single trip. We went there in my sister's car and on the trip was Elaine, Grandma, my sister, Keith and I. Our main purpose there is to:

1. Take grandma for her checkup in GH.
2. To spend a day with Nicole.
3. To pay our respect to my stepfather.

We started the journey at 3 am with me driving all the way to Penang and we reached Juru at about 6.30 am. Problem is we have to spend almost 2 hours there waiting for Nicole despite my sister calling her dad at 5.30 am (he works the night shift)
We drove to Penang via the Penang Bridge which is really jammed up for no particular reason. I really wonder why the cars keep jamming up on a straight road!!! Upon reaching the GH, it took less than 2 hours for Grandma to complete her checkup, since she has my cousin, Melinda and her husband, Johnny to take her monthly medicine for her. my sister took over the driver's place from GH. Initilally Nicole was rather quiet, probably because she just woke up after a while she was her talkative self as soon as we were in GH.

Right after that we went for some Dim Sum for our breakfast, which we have to skip this morning because Grandma was supposed to fast as she has to have her blood sample taken on this visit of hers. Next stop was at my uncle's place in Penang Street, the place where I grew up. My aunt was very hospitable and she even gave us very tasty porridge for Keith and Nicole. Elaine and Grandma learnt from her how to make the porridge as well as how to keep it warm all day instead of having to reheat it up (avoiding the creation of wind (foong) in the process) She also gave us 2 laptop backpacks (just what I intended to buy) and a few Dry-Comfort T-Shirts.

After that we went for some sight-seeing and we couldn't really agree on where to go to for our next meal. In the end I decided to stop by the tea house in Pulau Tikus, with their very quiet ambiance, I took the opportunity to take some pictures.

Nicole while she was enjoying the "Tea Egg"


I guess she is beginning to feed herself now and she still likes soup a lot because she almost finished a whole bowl of it by herself.


I manage to have my hands on the camera because......


But someone was being a handful


Because she was starting to explore the place


Then we bought some Boon's aniseed water ("pak yeok sui") which was on offer RM17 for 2 bottles at the Boon's Pharmacy in Pulau Tikus. After buying some prayers stuffs we drove to the Berapit Cemetery to visit my stepfather. I guess we were really unprepared to carry out our Ching Ming this year because we have missed out on a lot of things due to lack of communication on what is needed. Lesson learnt here and I really need to prepare all those things personally. Anyway I took back the driver's seat from the cemetery onwards. Anyway to those needing to know, Nicole and Keith had stayed in the car with Grandma when we offered our prayers.

After that we drove around town a bit and drove to Melinda's office to drop my mum's medical card for her. We could not decide where to go to for our dinner and in the end we went to Alma for some Thai food.

Nicole insisted in sitting next to Keith and kept trying to pull his baby chair towards her to be keep the space between them to the minimum.


Keith was very happy to see his cousin, Nicole


Nicole seems to have turned very cool and posing with her peace sign too


After that we went to the McDonald's in AutoCity for my sister to meet up with Nicole's dad and we started our journey back to KL from there. We didn't say goodbye to Nicole but we promised to see her another time which we hope would be very soon.

I took a short nap while my sister drove to Sg Perak R&R for petrol, which I took the driver seat from there on. We were all being very quiet during the trip because I knew that we were all being very sadden having to leave Nicole in there. We were rather shocked because Nicole informed us of her misfortunate that her aunt ,whom babysits her, had hit her on the butt before for a few times and also her dad hardly takes her out. Despite the fact that they are officially divorced, we were all very grateful that he had earlier tended to my stepdad's grave a few days before our visit.


P/S- On purpose I have to leave the adults out of the pictures because we looked exactly like pandas that day!!!!

My Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday and I guess I just got a year older already :P Remember how anxious we all were to grow up when we were young and now I guess we are all trying to slow the aging process :D

This year was really special because of many reasons:

• Manwai's birthday fall on the same day as Keith's lunar birthday :D (so officially Keith is 2 years old, according to the Chinese Lunar la)
• Jasmine came over to our restaurant with her handsome son, Vyktore and her friend Cheryl and it was really kind of her to share her birthday cake with me. (Our birthdays was the reason we started chatting with each other via ICQ and ours are a day apart.)
• I got my very first birthday cake from my mum and sister.
  
  Surprisingly when we were all singing "Happy Birthday" song and chowing down the food prepared/ordered, someone was so tired that he slept thru the whole thing but he slept with his eyes partially opened.
  

Next on my list is preparing for Keith's birthday. We will just a small celebration among family members because we can only do it on Tuesday (our day off). I can only wish that I can invite a few friends and kids too to make it merrier but I guess we will do that a few more years from now when I can take time off on weekends :D

My sister is moving down soon

My sister came to KL yesterday night because she needed to attend a job interview this morning. Grandma will be following her back to Penang on Sunday so that they can pack up their stuffs and transport it to KL. My sister will be moving down to KL and stay with us. We are planning of partitioning a room for my sister and I'm thinking of doing it by myself, if only I could find the time because I would not want to let some contractor do it and make a big mess.

The paed also just called me up to pick up Nicole's insurance claim form. Most of you must wonder why am I doing this when it is supposed to be done by her father. Well, I'm doing the claim so that I can be able to get hold of the cheque when it is ready, only then I can negotiate to get back the money I have paid for Nicole admission. (Sigh! This is really a big headache for me)

According to my sister's friend, whom happened to stumble upon Nicole in the wet market, Nicole is doing fine and she is being very well taken care of. We just hope that her father would continue on being a good dad, no matter what happens.

As for Keith, he will have to go for a few more days without grandma again. He is getting whinier as ever because he would forever wanted to go out. He is still unable to crawl but he is definitely getting cheekier by the day.

He did this all by himself, putting the spoon into his mouth and biting on it while letting go of his hands.


From the side


And from the front

Not so familiar faces

Well in this matter, I think Keith is not faring as well as Nicole..... he is really very picky on who is carrying him.

This was what happened that day, we made sure that Keith saw me carrying and cuddling Nicole, and Grandma kept saying to him, "Look daddy sayang Nicole"

Keith wasn't so happy about me carrying Nicole, and even more uneasy with me cuddling Nicole. He kept whining for me to carry him as I put down Nicole and Elaine passed Keith to my sister...... This was what I managed to capture :D


Yup, he wasn't so attached to my sister and his maternal grandma too.... He is ok with the rest but just a few people only got this kind of uneasy treatment.

Nicole and her new hairbands

Last week my sister bought Nicole some hair bands to tie her hair up. I took some pictures of her because I know that it won't stay on too long, just like my sister when she was small :P

While taking this picture, suddenly Elaine came over and "sam pat" also wanted to snap a picture with Nicole. And look how cheeky Nicole was with her expression!!! I think she was happy that her mum was here, despite all the scolding she got from my sister.


True enough the band came right off after half an hour :D Sigh! Like mother, like daughter..... By the way, my sister have her hair permed that day so I guess that sort of made her buy those hair bands for Nicole.

In my opinion, their stubborness is both quite alike. my sister was really quite a handful when she was a toddler. I know this because I had my share taking care of her since I am 6 years older than her. By the way, my sister just went back to Penang on Sunday morning

After the CNY Holidays

I'd like to wish you all "Kong Hee Fatt Choy" and the past few days have been rather busy for me.
Today is the first opening day of my restaurant after CNY. And business is rather busy at first then everything slowed down when it started to pour heavily.
Well just wanna keep you all updated on some photoes we've taken during CNY.

Nicole on the high chair in the new Genki Sushi at the Curve Cathay Cineplex. She definitely liked their Steamed Egg "Chawan Mushi" a lot

This is Nicole and her dad

Then not missing her mother
Now even Elaine is encouraged to take a shot at the same boring background but the snapshot wasn't that good

In this shot we manage to include grandma (even the maid is calling her grandma)

Last but not least Elaine and I too

I have taken a few movie shots too but that will be updated on another post :P Finally Elaine is already on full term at 37 weeks. But we'll have to skip the doctor's visit today as we have to work today and one of the waitstaff have called in for a last minute extended leave. She's already starting to take coconut and thanks to all the coconut advise, she's saying that she find it easier to pass motion now and less bloated (Water Retention)

Once again Happy Chinese New Year to all.........