Finally we got to go to Spice Garden with my family. It was the haze, wedding dinner and rainy weather that keep us from going. The Spice Garden is located somewhere in between Batu Ferringhi and Teluk Bahang of Penang. It was not what I expected. No doubt the scenery was very beautiful with lot of greens and water falls. The place has alot of hiking trails that you need to climb. Lots of stair way up and of course no place for stroller. I had to carry Emily to hike up. My children had fun and so did I (exhausted), to enjoy God’s creation again and always remind me there is someone out there who created the world perfect.

The above picture shows that Emily actually was holding a big giant spice called the Kayu Manis (Cinnamon).

My son was detected with acute bronchitis when he was 7-8 months old. He was admitted to the hospital. Doctor told us the cause is probably due to allergy. Being the first time parent, obviously we do not know what to do and was over worried. He didn’t want his milk for consecutively 3 days. All he drank was water. I tried to give him Ribena, doc allowed it but he didn’t want. I stayed with him in the hospital. At end of the 3rd day, I forced him to drink. He screamed and screamed, but when he sucked, he found that he was hungry and drank it all up. It was a real relief.

After that incident, every other month he gets runny nose and wheezing. I am not sure whether it is the environment and pollution that make him sensitive to dust. Before he was born, I shifted to a new house in a new area. After he was born, the surrounding neighbourhood was doing renovation.

Whenever he wheezes, we have to take him to the clinic or the hospital to nebulise. If you do not know what is the word nebulise, take a look at the picture. Anyway, it is a way to turn medicine liquid into vapour for someone to breathe to clear the lung airways that could be congested by mucus.

It was a real hassle to do that as I need to take him to the clinic like every 3-4 hours. Although where I work is near the clinic and babysitter place, I have to get permission to come out of my office to bring him there. Nighttime is the worst, because the clinic will be close and I have to bring him into the hospital (5 mins away from my house). The hospital will have its lengthy procedure and on top of it, it is very costly.

In the end, we bought the machine that only cost RM300 and we can administer it on our own. By the way, the clinic charges 10 per course, also depending on the prescribed medicine. It saves us a lot of money long term, and time too. On normal days, he had to take prolong medication called sykofen. He was not allowed to have any cold drinks, ice cream or watermelon. Poor boy deprived of ICE CREAM.

When he was 2, I tried something different. I bought something called Lampe Berger. It is similar to aromatherapy. The oil I bought is Eucalyptus that helps relieve the respiratory. I burned for him every night for 15 minutes. It also kills dust mites. By the way, he is still taking his daily medication. I can see a lot of improvement. On top of that, he takes multivitamin and cod liver oil.

The essential oil relieves asthmatic symptoms and respiratory canal infection, alleviates bronchitis and flu, cooling, stimulating to the nervous system, improves respiratory circulation, refreshing, reviving, stimulates mental activity and alertness, reduces pain and aching and sore muscles, disinfectant, repels insects.

When he was 3, he is totally taken off his medication. He only wheezes once a blue moon. Oh well, it could be that he outgrew it, lungs stronger and immune system is better. It could be that Lampe Berger, by the way, now I only burned it once every other week, sometimes once every month.

Now he can enjoyed his ice cream….

My hubby bought my son to the barber to cut his hair. As compare to the last incident of my hubby attempt haircut, it looks better this time round. I dare not cut anyone hairs, I always have nightmares of making mistakes in a haircut and the person is left with no hair.

Previous hair cut:
http://mybabybay.com/blog/index.php/2005/06/15/hair-cut/

Barber Style:

Last week, my son won first in writing competition in his pre-school cum nursery. I didn’t know that he can write that well. When he was 2, my MIL said that he can write well because of the way he holds the pencil. My jaw dropped when the principal told me the news. The funny thing is my hubby and my writing is not that good. At least mine is readable, my hubby’s writing is like the doctor’s.

I bought quite a few boxes of color pencils for my son. He loves coloring and joining dots. He also love painting, actually playing with water. There is this color pencils from Faber Castell which you color and put water over it, it becomes paint. He loves doing that. I also have a doodle board for him to draw and learn. I draw something and he guesses what it is.

I have developed my own recipe for cooking herbal chicken and like to share it with you.

Herbs:
3-4 pcs Dang Shen
2-3 pcs Dang Qui
2 pcs Shan Yao
2 pcs Huang Qi
1 handful Gou Qi
1 handful Longan
Note: You can also get the packet herbs will all the above in it, Eu Yang Sang may have it.

Others:
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoon of oil
1 cup of water
Salt to taste

1. Wash the whole chicken thoroughly and dry it.
2. Wash all the herbs thoroughly and dry it.
3. Take 2 big piece of aluminum foil, place it like a “+” and place it on a glassware/Corningware dish with cover. Place the chicken on it.
4. Remove the garlic skin and chop the garlic till very fine.
5. Heat up the pot with 2 tablespoon of oil and pour the garlic in to stir fry.
6. Pour all the herbs into the pot and stir it a bit
7. Pour the 1 cup of water and wait for it to boil.
8. Add salt to taste.
9. Once boil, switch off the fire.
10. Use a tablespoon to stuff the chicken with herbs and soup.
11. Wrap the chicken nicely with the aluminum foil.
12. Place the glasssware into a big pot for double boil.
13. After 4-5 hours, it is ready to be served.

Wow, blogging this makes me hungry….

This is a cool website to show you, the real time traffic in Penang Bridge via camera. Don’t do any hanky panky on the bridge…

Source: http://www.penangbridge.blogspot.com/

Turn left or turn right? Go here or go there? Whole weekend, my mind is worked up by where to go. I cannot really decide. One side, it’s a comfort zone with no potential growth. On the other side it’s very attractive, high risk and out of comfort zone. I hate making decision like this. I cannot see the light yet.

I used to make decision based on certain happenings, not sure whether that is good or bad. For example, I will say to myself, if it rain today, I will pick A otherwise I will pick B. I know I am not supposed to do that. I am to rely on God. I do believe God also uses nature sometimes to direct me. I did pray about the direction that I should go.

Now, I can toss a coin, throw a dice or draw lots….

Please help me out here, pick for me, just state in my comment box, choose A or S? I will do the rest.

I will blog the whole story when I have decided, probably in October.

Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Happy National Day Malaysia!

A picture paints a thousand words. I will have lots of it here on this post. My children had fun with their grandparents and uncle. They got acquainted to them very fast. My brother loves children and managed to get my son to talk to him. My son doesn’t usually open to any strangers. He can zip his lips for a whole day and not a word comes out of his mouth. That is in school.

Sunday morning, I took my children to Kizsports. What’s that, you may ask? See for yourself. I met up with some mothers there too. We had fun! Hehehe…come to think of it, I am having more fun than my children. By the way, on weekends, it is best to go when it opened like I went there at 10am. No queue for parking and not many children. We had 2 full hours of fun. A child under 2 pays RM8 and above 2 pays RM20. First time, adult do not have to pay anything. Remember to bring socks for children and adult. If not, you have to pay extra to purchase socks.

Welcome to Kizsports:

Rules before having fun..

Park your stroller here:

Let the fun begins:

Time to go for more challenging sports:

The place:

At 12 pm, there was a rush of children overflowing the place. That’s because the parents woken up and wanted to shop, so they left their kids there. Well it was time for us to go for lunch.

Next fun place we went to, after hearing so much about it. It was also in Today’s Star papers. It was AQUARIA. Their official website: http://www.klaquaria.com/

Adult: RM20 (merdeka promo) and children below 3 no need to pay. The actual admission fees, please refer to the website.

My impression of it, it was ok, not many species of fish there, the usual common ones. Maybe it is still new. A weird specie swimming around, it was the scuba diver cleaning the place. Anyway nothing can beat the Monterey and Sydney Aquarium.

Here are RM20 worth of pictures, judge for yourself.

Iguana welcomes us:

Next the shark came:

That’s all the fun we had. I didn’t manage to do much shopping. Sharks! Maybe, next time around. Anyway, got a few nice albums for my hubby’s photography side business.

Kor Kor, let me drive you back to Penang….

I am sure you all are very excited to hear about my trip back to KL. There were the unhappy and the fun moments of the trip. First let’s share the Unhappy Moments.

On Friday afternoon, I received a call from my hubby. He said my son’s nursery called and the teacher said my son turn pale and vomited. There goes our travel plans. My hubby fetched him to the nearby clinic, as his usual paed’s clinic was not opened. My hubby returned and told me that the doc examined his heartbeat for over 10 minutes but she could not hear anything. My jaw dropped. Oh, no medicine was prescribed to him but a referral letter to see a cardiologist for further examination. What?? A Cardiologist? What For? This got me worried!!

By the way, every time we planed for a trip, sure one of the children of mine will come up with something like this. They will be sick. I am very afraid to plan for a trip because with children, it is very unpredictable. Anyway, I took my son to the nearest hospital, 5 minutes drive from my home. He vomited again and he looked really pale. I took him to the emergency ward as the paed’s clinic was off duty. I asked the nurse to call in the paed. This paed was the one who look after my son after my delivery. He is very experience. We seldom see him because his clinic always has a long queue. He is also a friend of my son’s usual paed. The doctors around my area are pretty connected, which is good.

My son was still looking pale when he was at the ward. Later, my hubby got him a ribena drink. He drank and he returned to normal. He was active again, dancing and chatting.

The doctor arrived. He did a thorough check on him. He even took blood test. I wanted to do an additional test on allergy since the doc was taking his blood but no chance of that. My son didn’t cry but he struggle until the needle slipped out. Fortunately there was enough blood for the test but not enough for the allergy test.

Did your doc ever give you his handphone number? I was surprised. He gave me his handphone number and asked me to call him after 1 hour for the blood test result. I did tell him that we would be travelling outstation. He was very understanding. He said there is nothing to worry about. After 1 hour, I called and he said the blood test was normal. Thank God for protecting him.

As we were travelling down to KL, my son vomited in the car. Phewwww…the car stinks. I clean up the car and spray some glass cleaner at the cushion. I had the plastic bag ready but miss the timing. He had motion sickness before while travelling. Lesson learnt, never over feed your child with motion sickness if you are travelling. Do not give him heavy breakfast. Travelling back, I didn’t give him milk at all. Just gave him a few slices of biscuits. No vomit on the way back.

However throughout the trip, my son came up with a fever. It went up and down like roller coaster. It is wise to take children’s medicine (fever, cough, runny nose and constipation) whenever you travelled. First night his fever went up to as high as 38.5°C. I didn’t sleep much because I was monitoring him and sponging him. After he took the fever medicine, the fever went down. His fever went on throughout the trip and he had no appetite. I try to give him whatever he likes to eat. By the way, his fever ended today when we return home. Sigh…

Second unhappy moments of the trip was “Getting the children to NAP”. It is nearly impossible. They were pretty smart, they sleep in the car trip but would not want to sleep at home. My hubby and I were deprived of sleep. We took turns to nap to boost up our energy level. We try not to do so much this time around.

Let’s do away with all these unhappy moments and go to the happy moments!!!