Gong xi fa cai!

Wishing everyone a great gong xi fa cai! May the rabbit year brings lot of fun and playfulness into your life.

For those with young kids, spend more time with them in the growing years. Its the best rewards for parents. Enjoy the fulfilling responsibilities as parents.

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Paradise on Earth @ Haagen Dazs

What's your version of paradise? Mine? Simple... For spending time with my darlings Elly and Emmy and seeing them grow.

Haagen Dazs obviously a great hang out place to taste the Paradise. Its a ice cream dish, great for sampling different flavors of ice cream.

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Paradise @ Haagen Dazs

We brought the kids to an ice cream treat recently at Haagen Dazs. To allow that everyone can have a choice of their favorite flavour, we ordered the Paradise, consists of 6 scoops, layered with biscotti and topped with chocolate and strawberry sauce.

Emmy loved Mango, Elly selected Strawberry, coffee for daddy, rum raisin for mommy, and additional peach and belgian chocolate for all of us to share.

To taste the variety, Paradise is a great choice to taste on different flavors of ice creams. It is priced at RM29.00.

Haagen Dazs vs Baskin Robbins? Which is your preference?

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Universal Studio Singapore- Attraction for Kids

Check out Universal Studios in Singapore for the upcoming school holidays in March 2011. Bring your kids to the fun and entertaining theme park suitable for the whole family. Kids will love the cartoon city featuring Shrek, Madagascar while adults will love the Jurassic Park, Hollywood City and Ancient Egypt to name a few.

As the plan is to add on one new attraction every year, for 2011, the new addition is on Transofrmers. I would love to meet up with Bumblebee in Universal Studios. Cool!

Bunny/Rabbit Year - Filled with Love

See these adorable rabbits and the cute stares. These are available at Chinatown. Grab some to decorate your house and to give as presents to young little kids. Am sure they will love this cute bunnies.

The coming chinese new year is the year of rabbit. It is a pet animal thus, the compatibility to other animal zodiacs depends on the year that you are born in. Want to know whether you will have another great year? Check out the fengshui sites such as hosted by Joey Yap and Lillian Too.

My hope for the rabbit year? May my kids grow up healthily and listen to Mommy's words. Emmy will start nursery after Chinese New Year and hope that she could adapt to the new environment. Being shy and introversion as natural preference, she need time to 'warm up' and mix around with others.

Will be sending Emmy to Mayter kindergarten after some surveys and research to other available ones including Qdees, Midah Kindergarten, montessory or Smart Readers. As i am preparing the kids to Chinese based primary school, Mayter Kindergarten is more established in preparing the right foundation for the children to prepare for the chinese school.

If you are planning to send your kids to nursery or kindergarten, do a site visit and bring along the child so he/she is familiarise with the school environment.

Teaching Mother Tongue Languages - Fun and Creative Ways

Teaching mother tongue languages at schools in Singapore has been made more interesting with the creative and fun way that is created in ensuring that the students have better grasps of the languages.

Methods such as playing card games, singing opera, trips to supermarket and leveraging on the Ipads are some of the non-conventional ways to encourage students to have a better understanding of these languages. It is important to make the classes interesting and the absorption rate will be better.

That gives me some ideas in teaching my kids languages by using some of the above methods. It will sure be fun!

Helping Troubled Kids

I love to read Singapore Straits Times. Besides the core news and events that happened in the city and around the world, it has a lot of social issues being mentioned and actions available to curb it. In today's Mind Your Body section, the main topic is in 'Helping Troubled Kids'.

This issue is usually overlooked by parents, teachers and caretakers and dont take the issue seriously. It is estimated that 1 out of 10 prmary school kids have emotional and behavioural problems. I believe it is similar too in most parts of the world. What is more important is being able to identify the symptoms and then helping these kids to overcome the problems that they have.

Institute of Mental Health(IMH) manage and identify the minor mental provblems in children aged 6 to 18 years old. Counselling will be provided to these kids and help them to face and overcome their problems and not to runaway from it and have fear.

It is important that as parents to be more observant with the kids behaviour and do not wait until it had turned serious only it is realised. Lets play our part in creating a better world for our kids by giving them the support they need to grow up confidently.

Ejaan and Learning Tips for Kids

I recently attended a NLP training and the trainer shared on great learning methodology for young kids who have to go through 'Ejaan', spellings and other memory work. All you need to do is to write the letters big, say on A4 paper and hold it to the top left of your child so he/she can see the word on top of his head, left side.

Research has proved that this method works and allowed the kid to retain the memory better and able to recall where it is stored in the brain. Simply said, by letting the child to visualise the word in front of him allowed the brain works on its 'magic'.

NLP is Neuro Linguistic Programming and the skills and knowledge are so powerful that i could apply it to any area in my life, especially communications and parenting. There are many areas of focus for NLP and one of its application that awed me is in the treatment for ADD/ADHD child. Being a mom to a quite 'hyperactive' child, it was difficult initially understanding her unique behavior.

I am glad that i learnt about NLP and the ADD/ADHD symptoms. Some parents who do not know the background may have resorted to pills in order to curb the kids hyperactivity, which in actual fact, the pill has side effects. Observation of the personality and preferences of our kids will help us as parents to make better choices for our kids.

Do you have children yourself? Do check it out on the NLP and its applications to ADD/ADHD child, and learn to NOT label the kid. Understand him/her and you will discover the beauty that lies within.

Happy Parenting!

Amy Chua - Strict Parenting Style

This photo is courtesy from www.klue.com.my. Amy Chua, infamous Yale Law Professor is being critiqued when she openly shared her strict parenting style in a book and also published in Wall Street Journal recently. In today's Sunday Times Paper (Singapore), she and her strict parenting styles were discussed over a spread of few pages. She has 2 teenage daughters, Sophia and Louisa.

It also shown some Singapore parents residing in US disagree with her parenting style. Her article 'Why Chinese Mothers are Superior' in Wall Street Journal shocked a lot of parents, even myself. My 4 and 5 years old daughters are watching TV and playing computer games 'moderately'. I wont say with total freedom as control and balance has to be drawn down by the parents. Louisa and Sophia were prohibited from watching TV and playing computer games altogether!

Coming from her neighbouring country and a mother myself, i personally dont agree with her parenting style. Tracing history, no doubt that most Chinese parents are more strict when comes to academic excellence, this was proven also for the Gen X and late Baby Boomers whereby their parents were Baby Boomers who suffered a lot of hardships and given a choice, want the better lifestyle for their children. Do we need to take the extreme options as what Amy Chua has implemented?

Trying to see things from her point of view, her actions mostly is influenced by her own upbringing and perceptions to importance of education and music in life. But is that all to the lives of our most precious next generation? ONLY music and education matters?

What about teaching them moral and social values, basic living skills such as respect and humility? Does perfoming at Carnegie Hall really matters so much for a teenage girl? Or it is more to make her Mom/Dad happy and be done with it?

Parenting is not simple and is a complex skill altogether. As everyone has freedom and options to choose what is best to their children, it is important to strike a balance and 'ask' whether the kids are enjoying the 'masterpiece' drilling session ie music, art classes, sports and the list go on. But then, without parents to expose and provide the opportunity to the kids to experience the different skills and activities, the kids will never find their talent/passion, i mean most of them.

So, rather than criticising Amy Chua for her extreme parenting skills, please observe our own decisions, are we on right track as positive parenting? hmm.. it is tricky...

Amy Chua - Battle Hymns of A Tiger

If you are a parent yourself, i am sure you might have heard about Amy Chua and her book 'Battle Hymns of a Tiger'. Her book and article which appeared in Wall Street Journal recently created mixed responses amongst parents, especially Chinese and Asian parents.

She shared about her strict parenting skills and practices, i would say, in bringing up her two teenage daughters. They are not allowed to watch TV, must produce A grades, no computer games, no sleepovers. It is replaced with diligently spending time studying and practicing on piano and violin!

She is a Yale Law School Professor, hard work and diligence has proved that she can achieve it with sheer determination. But that was in her generation, and now is the generation of social media. Does banning our kids from all the above will turn them into genius?

Being a mommy myself to two girls, i can understand that as mother, we want only the best for our kids. But in planning all the steps for them, i even question myself, are we helping our kids or spoiling them to plan for themselves?

What is your view? Do you agree with Amy Chua? hmm...

Love Letter from Elly

Chinese New Year is approaching and we usually associate 'love letter' with the rolled biscuit with chocolate/other cream fillings. As I will be away from home, I told Elly that I will be missing her and what can she gave me so I will feel better everytime I think of her.

This lovely girl gave me a love letter, not the edible ones, but a sincere and cute physical love letter, which sounds ' Mom, I Love U, Love from Elly'. She even colored the Love image purple, knowing that Mommy loves this color.

She also made another 2 love letters to Daddy and lovely sis, Emmy. It was just so sweet! Thanks so much, Elly.

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Missing My Jewels

Will be away from homeland for work for one week. Will be missing my jewels.

Please stay healthy and happy when Mommy is not around.

This photo is taken at home, with Elly wearing a tiger images t-shirt which I bought for CNY this year.


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McDonalds - Food Business or Toy Business?

Mcdonald's is always associated with fast food business. However, its also famous for its Happy Meals for kids.

Why Happy Meal? Because it comes with toys and in kids bite size. Recent toys that comes with Happy Meal are the Marvel heroes for the boy version and Sanrio (Hello Kitty, My Melody, Cinnamons and Sugarbunnies).

The toys are also available for purchase at RM3, for adults who are also interested in such cute collectibles. This makes me wonder whether McD gets more revenue from food business or its side toy business?

As for this season, as a Mommy to girls, am tempted to buy the Sanrio toys. Shall I buy or resist temptation?

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'Peeled' Skin on Emmy's Toe

Emmy was trying to plucked away some dried skin hanging at the edge of her toe. She was so 'forceful' that the whole piece of skin covering the area around her toe came off! For the past 2 weeks, we put on the 'yellow solution' for her but the condition don't seem to get better.

Her toe became a little swollen, with some pus starting to come out from the toenail. So last nite, we finally brought her to Klinik Leong & Ho, our family clinic. Dr Leong was on duty and as usual, in order to build rapport with Emmy, the doc gave her some Sugus sweets. I wonder whether doc should 'bribe' kids with sweets.

Emmy was given some antibiotics and cream to be applied on her toe area. Its a relief that no jab is required. Hope this is a good lesson for poor Emmy. Admired her level of pain endurance since she could 'live' with the pain for sometime.

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Christmas Party @ Garden, IU

Thanks to MSD Malaysia for organising this wonderful xmas party for its staff. Elly and Emmy enjoyed themselves very much, with lots of goodies and entertainment.

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Memorable Xmas Celebration

We even have Santa Claus and Mr Clown to entertain us at the xmas party.

Photos are taken from Polaroid photos, complimentary of MSD Malaysia.

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China Dolls

My pretty China Dolls. Posing for fun while shopping on Xmas day. These cheongsams are from Grandma, she bought from China recently.

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