Cheeks to Cheeks

One of Belle’s all time favorite song is Wheels on the Bus. Whenever we sing that song together, she will follow the lyrics with actions. Whenever I pick her up from the daycare (every Wednesday) I will sing the song with her when we see a bus on the road. Here’s the lyrics to that song:

The wheels on the bus go round and round,
round and round,
round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
all through the town.

The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish;
Swish, swish, swish;
Swish, swish, swish.
The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish,
all through the town.

The horn on the bus goes Beep, beep, beep;
Beep, beep, beep;
Beep, beep, beep.
The horn on the bus goes Beep, beep, beep,
all through the town..

The money on the bus goes, Clink, clink, clink;
Clink, clink, clink;
Clink, clink, clink.
The money on the bus goes, Clink, clink, clink,
all through the town.

The Driver on the bus says “Move on back,
move on back, move on back;”
The Driver on the bus says “Move on back”,
all through the town.

The baby on the bus says “Wah, wah, wah;
Wah, wah, wah;
Wah, wah, wah”.
The baby on the bus says “Wah, wah, wah”,
all through the town.

The mommy on the bus says “Shush, shush, shush;
Shush, shush, shush;
Shush, shush, shush.”
The mommy on the bus says “Shush, shush, shush”
all through the town.

There are other versions where these lyrics were included:

The doors on the bus go open and shut.
The bell on the bus goes ding-ding-ding.
The lady on the bus says, “Get off my feet”…
The people on the bus say, “We had a nice ride”…
The people on the bus goes bumpety bump.
“Your name” on the bus says Let Me Off!

The local newspaper wrote about lesser school bus for the coming year due to the high gas price. Oh, I can hear all the bus drivers singing…

The driver on the bus shouts, “Bus for sale…bus for sale!”

Two weekends ago we went to the Huis for a barbeque pot luck. We try to meet up at least once a quarter, just so the kids can play together. The Emmerts and Ka-Chievs were there too. All in total there were 8 kids and 8 adults. The Saturday was extremely hot and the kids (not the babies) were lucky. They cool off by playing with the front lawn sprinklers. We love to meet up with these parents ‘cos we could yak and yak about kids, family and work. Another set of parents, the Lees, couldn’t make it this time and volunteered to host the next get-together.

Here are some pictures taken that day. It isn’t much ‘cos I was busy cooling down Cassie with a make-shift paper fan. Her eczema flared up that day and it was all due to the heat and sweat. I wonder how she will survive in Malaysia’s weather if we plan to go back next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Our roof is 95% done and we’re waiting for the roofers to change the gutters, solar fans and retrofit the skylights. Once this project is done, I am thinking of changing the faucets and shower head in the guest bathroom. We have look everywhere from Home Depot to Lowes and the best faucets are still found online. Now I just hope the roofers can finish the project by next week. *Big hint to the hubby to call the roofer guy today.

My folks are complaining. They kept saying, “Haiyah! Where are Cassie’s photos??” So, to appease them, here are some photos taken a month back. I’ll probably just bombard them with her photos through Shutterfly later today.

During bath…

After bath…

Here’s one with both girls.

I have ranted about recent high prices from gas to rice and thank goodness we didn’t have to buy formula milk for Cassie. As I know, formula milk does not come cheap. Thank goodness she is still on nutritious and FREE moo juice from Mummy. Do you know there is a way to help save you a little money when purchasing necessities like gas, grocery and food?

All you need to do is get a cash back credit card. Most of the time this type of credit card will give you from 1% to 5% cash back on the things you spend on. It is like instant rebate on the things you purchase. Nowadays, a lot of credit card companies offer 5% cash back for gas. We would go to Costco to get gas for our cars (Costco has one of the cheapest gases) and not only do we get the gas at a lower price, we have additional 5% cash back on it whenever we use the assigned credit card.

If you are new to this type of credit card, feel free to hop over to Credit Cards Club for beneficial information. Be like me and start saving money while spending money.

Nowadays Belle will refer to me as Babami. She will call me that when she’s excited to tell me something. Sometimes, she call me Papa and I would ask her, “Am I Papa?” She will correct herself and call me Mummy again. With all these constant corrections, she came up with Babami. It is Baba + Mummy together.

I’m not too worried about her speech. I’m sure she will still calls me Mummy. Last week, she started to call me Mom. I asked her who is Mom and she replied, “Mummy!”

This is the first time I have to write a product review middle of the night because it is the only time I can flip through the personalized learning products from See Me Read. If I do that while my daughter is awake, she will never let go of the books and reading cards. This shows how much she loves reading now.

When I was younger I was an avid reader. My parents even special made a bookcase for my ever growing volume of books. I could read for hours and my relatives used to made fun of me and called me an unopenable durian (fig: someone who is unwilling to talk). My interest in books was instilled by my mom since young. Now that I am a mother, I have been trying to rub off a little bit of my reading enthuasiasm to my first born. Sadly, it was not easy because my girl tends to have short attention span. That used to be a problem but not until the day we got See Me Read products in the mail.

The See Me Read Early Childhood Literacy Program is a whole-word learning product line that associates words with a child’s familiar possessions and family members. The whole-word approach introduces familiar words in whole units. Children learn to sight-read words, pronouncing the entire word in a single unit. By repetitive exposure to words that are important to them, children will be eager to learn to read these words, beginning the development of a whole-word vocabulary.

-excerpt from SEE ME READ Parent Guide

When Parent Reviewers gave me a choice creating my own kit or use the premade kit sample, I opted for the whole nine-yard. I went for the See Me read Kit–Complete that includes all five products: See Me Read Labels, see Me Read Reading Cards, the See Me Read Book–Level One, the See me Read Book–Level Two, and the See Me Read Writing Pad.

See Me Read Labels:

It is suggested to place these labels on or near the physical item itself. I did that and Belle absolutely loves pointing at the objects now and read the labels out loud.  Now that the labels are on the item itself I don’t have to supervise her. This will come in handy when Cassie is at the learning age.

See Me Read Reading Cards:

This is by far the BEST flash cards we have at home. Belle could relate to the words in the flash cards and it is all because it has her photos in it! Belle is familiar with majority of the objects in the reading cards. Now I just need her to recognize the words. The Parent Guide gave plenty of tips on how to do it and they are very good advices. Do you want to know? Get a set.

See Me Read Book–Level One:

This book is great for kids who are at the early learning stage. It uses simple repetitive sentences where it emphasized on the word with bold prints. I have been reading each page to Belle by placing my finger under each word. She loves to copy me and hopefully, in time, she will grasp the reading skill.

See Me Read Book–Level Two:

This is an extension of the Level One Book. The sentences are longer and more complex. I will progress to this book once Belle has master the Level 1 Book.

See Me Read Writing Pad:

This Writing Pad is absolutely handy when the child has some what master drawing and writing. This writing pad is useful for children to express their thoughts. At this moment, Belle need it but I’m safe keeping it for her future learning use. In my opinion, if the writing pad is printed on durable glossy material, that could be written, erase and re-write; it will be better.

My take:

I wish there were more words to choose from. For the Level 2 Book, I was hoping for more flexibility in the sentences. All in all I still think this is the best reading assistance I have ever come across with. The kit may seem like a lot of work but it isn’t. I had so much fun sorting through my daughter’s old photos and uploading it onto my See Me Read account. When I didn’t have the appropriate photo for a certain word, all I needed to do was have my daughter pose according to what was needed. When doing something fun, time isn’t a matter any more. Best of all, I was creating something educational for my daughters.  

On the side note: The customer support is world class best! I was stuck with an issue while completing my kit and wrote in to the customer support email. In less than an hour I got a reply from them. Elena Blanco got back to me right away with the fix and even wrote to me (again) when she didn’t see my order in the system. She was worried that I may still have problem completing the kit. This shows the people from See Me Read are genuine and willing to go an extra mile for their customers. I had another problem related to shipping and Lori Luke ironed out everything for me. What can I say? This is what I call A+ customer service and definitely has my two thumbs up!

If you are interested in the See Me Read Complete Kit, Parent Reviewers have a 20% promotional discount code in their site for it. Don’t forget to swing by there to get your promotional code.  

~Big thanks to See Me Read and Parent Reviewers for this opportunity~

New interesting words we caught her saying:

Guys – Com’n guys! Hey guys! Guuuys!

Cool – I caught her saying that when she was eating something new. She sound like a surfer dude saying, “Coool!”

Malaysia – She told me she wants to go to Maa-lay-shia. If she tells that to Gong Gong and Popo, heavens, they will buy a ticket here right away and kidnap her for few months.

Friend – She likes to string the words “my friend” with the name of the person she likes. It can be Abby, my friend. My Mommy, my friend. My Papa, My Mommy, My Cassie, my friend.

Stinky – She uses this a lot whenever Mei-mei farted. She will say, “Ewww, stinky! Mei-mei farted!” And, yea, she also knows how to say fart too. *eyes rolled* Thank goodness she hasn’t embarrass us (yet) by saying it out loud in the public.

Big girl – She likes to tell us she is a big girl and big girls get bigger portion of everything. *sigh* Yes, this girl is already very good at negotiating. I always use this to teach her to share. I will always tell her she’s a big girl and big girl takes care of her little sister. Big girl also shares with her mei-mei. What did my big girl do? She smiles and nods willingly. I also praises her, “Wow, Belle! You went to the potty all by yourself! You’re such a big girl!” She likes to be praised.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Testing our Limits

Monkey Queen was caught standing on the dining table and refused to listen to Ya-ya when was asked to get down. Daddy was away doing last minute grocery. So, I intervened by giving her a verbal warning while keeping my eyes on the laptop (busy checking email from work). She thought it was fun and tried to stay at the center of the table just so Ya-ya could not get her. There was a little push-pull action and she accidently kicked the bowl of peaches on the floor. I was so mad, I just grabbed her from the table and carried her to another room.

I told her to stand at the main entrance door. Then she kept bawling, “Papa..Papa…” I told her, “Fine. If you want Papa, you just stand there till Papa gets home.” Stood she did (not quietly tho’). I went back into to the family room and after 3 minutes I crept out to check on her. Long story short, she stopped crying after I went to her (after letting her cry and vent for another 5 minutes). We did a whole lot of “Are you going to do this again?” and “If you do this again, time out for you” talk.

After that scene, she went straight to her granparents and sat on the sofa with them. Grandparents reminded her to listen to Mommy otherwise Mommy will scold her. All these were spoken in Shanghaiese.

I assume little girl will forget all about it. After all she tends to have selective hearing. This morning when Nai-nai sat her down for breakfast, she kept saying “Mommy moo, Mommy moo.” No, she didn’t mean Mommy moo’ed like a cow. She was telling Nai-nai Mommy will scold her. The word Scold in Shanghaiese sounds like moo. So, she did remember the little lecture I gave her last night. I guess she was telling Nai-nai she will not climb on the table, or else Mommy will scold her. *snicker*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mommy’s little helper

Despite the incidents (mentioned above), Belle is quite a sweet girl. She is always a willing helper whenever I have to take care of Cassie. She will always say…

I help you, Mommy.
I got that.
Here you go, Mommy.

Sometimes when mei-mei starts to cry and I was busy (like washing the bottles, dishes, etc.), Belle will turn on the music for her mei-mei. She will also tell her mei-mei not to cry. When I see that, I know somewhere along the road we did something right to have raised a sweet and affectionate girl.

Continuation from this.

Last Sunday Daddy went to the city with his co-workers and I was stuck with both kids. We need breakfast and I was too lazy to cook. I thought and I thought and I thought real hard. An American breakfast house? Nah, that will only mean disaster. A Chinese restaurant? It was 9am and nothing was open yet. So, scrap that. In the end I could only think of one place: McDonald’s. It has breakfast menu and most importantly it has HAPPY MEAL! That means it comes with a toy = distraction for Monkey Queen.

So, at 9am I brought the kids to McD but before I did that I had to swing by the bank to get cash. Thank goodness one of the banks have drive-thru ATM. That means I don’t have to get down from the car and lug both kids with me to the ATM. *Thank you, drive-thru creator!*

I got Belle a breakfast Happy Meal and I had the hot cake breakfast thingy (can’t remember now). It was cheap and decent. For less than 10 bucks I get to eat in peace for 5 minutes and the kid will sit and have her meal. Oh, if you wanna know what toy Belle got, it was the Master Monkey from Kungfu Panda (how appropriate!).

I didn’t want to lug the car seat with me, so I had Cassie strapped into the Baby Bjorn carrier. Just as I was starting to enjoy my pancakes, Ms. Cranky-oh-I-wanna-Sleep started to act up. I had to undo her from the carrier and cradle her with my left arm. Ms. Cranky didn’t want that. She wanted to be propped up. I croke my arm at 45 degree angle and let her lie her head on it. Did I get to eat with my other free hand? Heck no. Ms. I’m Full now-but-don’t-Wanna-Sit-Down started to climb over the seat. I had to pull her down a few times and kept threatening her to sit otherwise she will not step into McD ever again.

I gobbled down the food in Guinness Record time, fed the older kid, clean up the table (oh yea, I even had time to do that) and lugged a reluctant toddler and a sleepy infant home. When we got home, I was SO happy to see my FIL’s car parked outside our house. That means my rescuers are here!

They took Belle to their house for 2 hours and I managed to get Cassie to sleep without disturbance from her sister. What did I do after that? I crashed. I took a nap with Cassie until Belle got home around 1.15pm. Did she wanna nap? Noooo…she wanted to play more. *smack forehead* Cassie woke up by then and I had a crying infant looking for me while I tried to get Belle to sleep in her room. That, was unsuccessful. In the end I brought Belle into my room and lulled her to sleep by carrying and singing to her. As for Cassie, she was just happy to see me in the same room.

So, yeah, that was quite an interesting Sunday. Will I ever do that again? Probably, but then again I hate having my kids eat fast-food. So the chance of stepping into a fast-food chain will be slim.

Oh my gosh!

6.5-oz! Now, that’s a record high for me (at least for this 2nd time around). The secret to it is a wholesome breakfast. Daddy went grocery shopping last night and brought back this:

(And, yeah, my darling very sayang me)

I’ve notice that whenever I eat a hearty breakfast, I will produce more milk for the next session. Currently, I’m getting at least 5-oz of milk during each pump session. Never have I gone over the 5.5-oz mark (unless I’ve prolong the interval time from 4 to 5 hrs).

I will have to try this cereal again tomorrow morning to see if it does help boosting the moo juice. Will keep y’all posted.