Road Trip to Cameron Day 2

For breakfast of day 2, we walked to a nearby eatery outside of the hotel.

Day 2 Breakfast

I shared my Hakka noodle with the kids, while Chubby had Nasi Lemak. The noodle is a little saltish but Nasi Lemak is good. Just, the chilli was a little too spicy for me. After breakfast its time to join the land tour!

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The first stop, was at the top of the tea plantation. The driver let us take some photos before we move on to the actual itinerary.

Top of Tea Plantation

The boy is a little grouchy and refuses to look at the camera.

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Our official first stop is Boh Tea plantation.

Boh Tea

We visited the factory, to look at the processing of tea leaves. Unlike Junior E, Zai has no interest in machinery. So he wasn’t really interested in the factory tour.

Tea Break @ Boh Tea

He had more fun running around at the display area and enjoying his puff at the cafe of Boh Tea. The food was decent and they served their own tea. So we can actually try it out and decide if we want to buy some back.

Loi @ Boh Tea Cafe

The girl had a strawberry cake. She enjoyed it very much and finished the whole piece before she runs off with her bro and junior E to jump near the railing at the end of the cafe overseeing the plantation.

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The next stop is the rose farm.

The flowers were really pretty. But if that is not enough to attract the kids, the old school playground (don’t ask me what is it doing inside the farm) certainly does!

Loi on Old School Swing

Kids on Old School Slide

Look at the smiles on their face when they come zooming down the very smooth old school metal slide. The girl was a little scared so we asked the bro to take care of her and slide down with her. Erm… well, the boy tried to help. But I think the girl got strangled by him somewhere. Nonetheless, it was good fun that the kids enjoyed and the boy was really reluctant to leave.

At the end of the farm, there is a small area where we saw some chickens, turkey and peacocks in cages. I was quite surprise that the boy manage to identify all of them and named that correctly. He was also very excited to see an egg inside the hen’s cage. Although he sees eggs all the time, this is probably the first time he saw an egg so “close to nature”.

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The next stop is the butterfly park. But we didn’t go in as the boy says he is scared of butterflies. I realise later that its not true, but he was just eager to go to the strawberry farm. So he thought by not going to the butterfly park, he can reach the strawberry farm earlier. Oh well, my bro did bring Loi in and I heard there was some other insects inside which he showed Loi.

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The next stop. Bee Farm.

Loi @ Bee Farm

Well, we were with the kids, so we dare not venture too deep into the farm. We just went to the start of the farm area, took some photo and leave. However, they did have a very small display at the higher floor near the merchandise area but I was too disgusted by it to bring the kids there and explain to them.

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The final stop, strawberry farm! When we were trapped in the car the day before, we told him we are going to the strawberry farm to pick some strawberries. He has been asking about the strawberry farm the whole morning when we were touring other places.

Zai Picking Strawberries

Zai Counting his harvest

We paid an amount of money to pick our own strawberry. But we don’t get to keep them all, we only get to keep like 1 kg of our harvest. We were given scissors to cut the strawberries from the stems. As the boy is too young to handle the scissors, my MIL helped him while he chooses the strawberries that he liked.

He was really happy to see his harvest. I think it reminds him of how Maisy (Mouse) does her harvesting in the farm. Although he can’t really do the picking he was still all smiles. Well, kids find happiness easily, don’t they?

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The strawberry farm was the last stop of the day tour. It was just nice as we ended around 12:30pm. We had lunch near the hotel and the kids  manage to catch their nap.

Kids Napping

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For dinner, we ventured further down and there is a small market area. Nothing too fantastic about the food as there is only one restaurant there. But I did grab some souvenirs and a barbecue corn while on the way back. Their corn is really yummy.

Activity after dinner? The kids got their kiddy ride.

Kiddy Ride

As there were only 2 rides around we rotated the vehicles among the 3 kids. The girl had lots of fun pushing her bro and junior E. But the Daddies suffered from backaches trying to help the kids steer to the correct direction. Haha.

Well, this marks the end of day 2 and our highlight of the trip.

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Read more about day 1 here.

Loi @ 18 Months

I’m late again! What’s new?

Mastered Skills

• Will “read” board books on her own
  Yes. She loves flipping through the books. In fact, nowadays when she refuses to sleep, she will go to the book shelve and start taking out the books to flip (sometimes in the dark).
• Can pedal when put on trike
  Not really. She couldn’t really reach the pedal of the trikes that we have, so she didn’t really have a chance to try it out yet. I’m really tempted to get her a trike of her own where she can pedal, but I know space is an issue and she will out grow it pretty soon.
• Scribbles well
  If we compare to her bro, yes she is doing well in this area. She can hold the pen quite well and her fine motor skills seems to be even better then her bro.

Emerging Skills

• Strings words together in phrases
  Nope. She is still into her single words usage. Although I think her vocab in understanding is improving leaps and bounds.
• Brushes teeth with help
  She loves to “brush” her teeth. And wouldn’t allow us to help hold her hand and do it. However, I have seen her mimicking our actions of “brushing”. Nonetheless I will say a no for this, since we can’t really see what she is doing inside her mouth.
• Builds a tower of four cubes
  Yes. But she doesn’t really like building though.

Advanced Skills

• Throws ball overhand
  Not really. She does throw but not properly overhand.
• Takes toys apart and puts them back together
  She only takes apart, she haven’t figured out how to put them together.
• Shows signs of toilet training readiness
  There was once she told my mum she wants to go poo poo and indeed she pooed. But only that once. We are not sure if she really knows or its a pure luck. Course subsequently, she told us many times she wants to wee / poo, its all attempts to play in the toilet. However, we do notice that she does tell us when she had pooed on her diaper. Is that considered a sign of toilet training readiness?

Source: Baby Center

Road Trip to Cameron Day 1

After our road trip about a year ago to KL, I didn’t imagine we will go on a road trip again. Cause the journey keeping the kids occupied is such a killer. Nonetheless, we went for a road trip again over the Easter period and this time even further to Cameron Highlands. Well, we survived the trip and had an enjoyable time.

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We started the day really early. We met up with E, C and their boy junior E and my bro at around 7am near the Jurong Bird Park. So we can pass them the walkie talkie and make the trip together to Tuas 2nd Link. We plan to reach Cameron in noon so we set off early to avoid any jams. But plans never work, do they? We were caught in the jam the moment we pass Tuas 2nd link going towards the Malaysia customs. I think we were there for about 1 hour+.

The road trip was nothing exciting. We basically just make a stop for breakfast and a stop for lunch. So the rest of the time we were cooped up in the car. For entertainment sake, I brought along some books for the kids, snacks, stickers and of course electronic gadgets. We manage half the trip without the gadgets, but the trip was way too long. So I had to resort to the gadgets for the 2nd half of the trip. And it doesn’t help that my motion sickness kicks in when we were making our way up the mountain.

Setting off at 7 am, we only manage to reach Cameron highlands at about 5pm. So that is a good 10 hours cooped in the car. It was so long that the first thing the boy exclaimed was “Oh… we are in the carpark!”. It was so funny. But it tells you how bored the boy is already. Even the electronic gadget is losing its charm.

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We stayed in Equatorial Hotel Cameron. While Chubby was busy with our check-in the kids were busy too.

Arcade @ Equtorial Hotel Cameron Lobby

The boy was pressing the buttons and turning the joystick as if he is really playing the game. I guess after the 10 hours car ride, this is really fun.

We proceed to our room to take a quick shower before we meet again for dinner.

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After discussion, we decide to settle our dinner at the restaurant within the hotel. Reason because we are all tired and we didn’t have time to explore if there is any where else for dinner. So that is the easy way out. Plus they are serving Hotpot Buffet at a really decent price, so why not.

Hotpot Buffet Dinner Spread

Look at the spread, its pretty decent. They had a teppanyaki counter too. You can choose the meat from the buffet spread and just bring to them. Or you can choose to cook your meat in the hot pot. There is also some appetizer to fill the stomach while you wait for the water to boil in the hot pot. A dessert corner that serves fruits, a small selection of puddings and jellos and ice-kachang is also available.

I will say its value for money with the only down side being some of the frozen food are going ‘bad’. I think I ate a fish cake or something that wasn’t fresh. So I skipped the rest of them and only go for fresh vegetables and meat.

When the stomach is filled, the boy starts to mis-behave.

Zai Playing with Cup

They gave the kids a paper cup with straw for them to drink normal drinking water. Maybe because of the novelty, the boy drank everything that was in the cup and had a refill. When he finishes the 2nd cup, he started playing with it. Well, no harm done since we need the peace to eat.

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After dinner, we loitered around the lobby area to find out where we can go the next day. We decide to just sign up with their half day land tour as both Chubby and my bro are not confident in driving around the bendy mountain road. With the next day planned, the kids had some free time to play!

How the kids play table hockey

That was how the kids played table hockey. Sitting on it. And they were rather gentle such that the score was 1-0 at the end. Well, the result is not crucial, most importantly the kids had fun.

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Well, this mark the end of our day 1.

Zai Terrific 3 Birthday – Part 3

As mention, we visited the SEA aquarium the next day. The day didn’t start well, we ran late for everything. By the time we were outside the aquarium it was near to Zai’s nap time. So he was a little grouchy and sleepy. It doesn’t help that there is a huge queue at the ticket counter. Luckily, I got 2 tickets with me friendly from a colleague who got it from some credit card promo. So I decide to bring the boy in while Chubby stays behind to queue for the rest of the tickets.

Once inside SEA, the boy is less sleepy and is ‘mesmerize’ by all the different sea creatures.

Creatures from SEA Aquarium

It helped that he was watching ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Little Mermaid’. So he is able to identify some of the sea creatures.

Kids @ SEA Aquarium

Look at how happy he is. But alas, tiredness caught over him. So I found a spot right in front of the biggest fish tank (can’t remember what is that area called), plop down and let him take a nap. He fell asleep looking at the fishes. Ah~ such a bliss. I told Chubby that I will wait for him there and they can slowly explore the area. When he reach, the girl has also fallen asleep. We continued on after they woke up.

Seriously, I didn’t think that the SEA Aquarium is fantastic. I thought the Hong Kong Ocean Park is much better, with more sea creatures. So I doubt we will go back to SEA anytime soon, would rather save the money for other attractions.

Wordless Wednesday: Fashion Statement

Fashion Statement?

Parenting is thinking that your kids can make the next fashion statement (more like fashion disaster).

This cost you 5 Yalkut…

Last Friday it was a little chaotic at home. Chubby has to work late and Zai’s cousins were over at our place. So at a certain point of time I have to take care of 4 kids at one go.

Zai was in his usual self, finding things to do. First it was painting then it was stickers. He wanted me to play with him his favourite sticker book. Which is to paste the different animal stickers into the backgrounds to be with their “parents”. He loves the book so much that we have taken out the stickers a couple of time that it no longer stick properly. So he accidentally tore off the head of one of the animals that day. He showed it to me but I was busy with the girls that I told him to wait.

When I’m finally free (which is like 5 minutes later), I turn to him and he happily showed me his hand fill with “crushed” stickers. I was upset and I asked him why did he crush the stickers? He told me cause they were torn. I then took the stickers from his hand and open them up one by one. True enough some of them were torn but there were also some that was not. So I asked him again “Why did you crush them? You can’t play with them now.”.

The reply from the boy shocked me. He said “MeeMee buy new one”. I said “No. Cause the sticker book isn’t broken, but you purposely ‘spoil’ it”. And I also don’t want the boy to have the thinking that money comes easily and he could just go ahead break his toys or stuff and Mommy will buy a new one.

At this point of time, something came to my mind. I remembered I read previously in Young Parents about how to teach the concept of ‘money’ to pre-schoolers. So I adopted the same technique. I told the boy “If you want a new book, that will cause you about 5 Yalkuts.” The boy couldn’t understand and just say “Ok”. I tried to explain further and said “That means, after MeiMei finish 5 bottles of Yalkuts then you can get to drink.” He still couldn’t quite understand. I explain further “I will keep the bottles MeiMei drink. After I collected 5 bottles, then you can join MeiMei to drink Yalkut the next time. And I will use that money to buy the new sticker book for you.”

He seems to get it after this. He claims that he doesn’t want the sticker book anymore. I told him even so, I still have to buy for MeiMei to play, so he still have to give up 5 bottles of Yalkut. He was really upset with this. I gave him a chance and told him that for this time I will let him go. But if I find him “spoiling” toys on purpose, I will charge him accordingly. He agrees and seems to get it.

On Sunday when he was over at my parents place, he was sitting on the plastic cover my Mom use to cover food. I told him, you can sit, but if you break it, it will cause you about 10 bottles of Yalkut. He understood immediately but give me a sheepish smile and slowly get out of it (ego and ‘face’ issue). I was really glad that my boy seems to understand some form of ‘money’.

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I really like this tactic. To use something tangible that the kids can understand to teach them the concept of ‘money’. I think after this, the boy has a better understanding. And I have to remind myself to stop getting toys for the kids. The reply from the boy shows that he thinks that Mommy has lots of money to buy anything and everything that he wants.

What about you? How do you teach a 3 year old or even younger the concept of ‘money’?

Zai @ 36 Months

This post is long overdue. Zai is already 37 months approaching 38 months now. But I still want to blog about it, as this marks the end of his milestone charting as well as his “toddler-hood”.

I still recall when he was first born, I started charting his progress mainly to keep track of the little things that happened along the way. And also to keep this blog alive. Time zoomed pass and now is time for the “graduation” charting post.

Mastered Skills

• Can describe how two objects are used.
  Well, I think he can. But sometimes he will get so excited that he rushes into his words and the order of things become jumble up.
• Uses four to five words in a sentence.
  Since he started school, we have no worries about his language skills. He has been improving leaps and bounds.
• Names two actions (e.g. skipping, jumping).
  Jumping definitely he can. Not so sure if he understands “skipping” yet. But others like “walking”, “rolling”, “swinging”, etc he knows and uses them frequently.

Emerging Skills

• Balances on each foot for three seconds.
  Oh, these days he love to stand on one foot and exclaim happily to me that he can “balance”. Most time I sees him holding onto a pillar or something. I’m not sure if he can balance without support.
• Can follow a two- or three-component command.
  Two definitely no issues. Three sometimes possible sometimes not. We also learn from his teachers that most time he can follow a two component command.
• Separates fairly easily from parents.
  Depend on who, where and what is the scenario. Give him a playground, he can happily jump into it. Ask him to follow his GuGu is not an issue. But sometimes he will still stick with the parents. Chubby also mention to me that in the morning when he brings him to school, sometimes he will “stick” to him and refuses to join his friends. This continues until the teacher he prefers come out to start some activity. So, I’m not too sure about this.

Advanced Skills

• Hops and skips
  Not yet. He just mastered the skills to “run” more properly now.
• Draws a circle
  If it is not really round is it considered? I have seen him drawing circles, but its really not that round. I mean its not really even oval. His fine motor skills really need lots of improvement. This is also something the teacher mention.
  Just yesterday he got a sticker stucked to his palm. He tries flinging his hand to get ride of the sticker (which is quite big). I reminded him that he can use his “fingers”. And so he uses his fingers to peel it off. But he sticks it onto my Tee instead. I told him I’m sad, because I helped him but he decides to stick onto me. So he tried taking it off me, but the sticker got stuck onto his palm again. “Sadly”, he tries flinging his hand again and forgot about his fingers. I reminded him, but he didn’t want to use but continue flinging. Finally, the sticker dropped off from his palm. I think I should do more of such excercises to remind him the use of fingers.
• Gets dressed without help
  Thanks to school’s training, he can do this but with condition. Sometimes you see that his pants is the wrong way round. And when he is at home, he always asks us to do it for him. Trying to make use of us where possible, that “lazy” boy.

So that marks the end of the charting. I will still try to chart some of his progress after this on an ad-hoc basis. Oh, how I will miss doing this kind of charting. Writing and recalling what had happened. But my boy has grown up. He can now safely play most of the toys out in the market.