German Law to Protect Kids Rights to Noise

As i was flashing the newspapers recently, this news caught my attention. German, a country known for many rules would soon have a law that protect kids rights to noise. It would soon be perfectly legal to make noise for German kids. The German government is desperate to encourage citizens to have more kids that they are proposing a bill for kids under the age of six to play, laugh and shout at any volume that they want.

This move came about when recently there have been numerous lawsuits regarding kids and noise level and a recent call of the senior citizens unit of a conservatives group which sought to ban kindergarten from residential areas just because they are too loud.

I am glad to hear about the Government moves on this issue, because it is natural for kids to play and laugh, its their growing years and the best times for them to explore the nature and things around them. Banning kindergartens from residential areas will make it a challenge for parents to send their children to kindergartens, and the travelling times would tire the kids.

On the other hand, i do respect the senior citizens rights for peace and serenity, but it is too extreme when it seems that they want to 'ban' the kids from making noise. Hope German government is serious on imposing this law and have the kids welfare protected. However, what the kindergarten teachers can do is to come up with interesting activities that would keep these kids active and not left idle around on their own and this is when fights might occur and the shouting come into the picture.

MBG Photo Contest

MBG fruit shop is having Washington apple photo contest. All that is required is to be a fan of MBG Facebook. Take a photo when you are enjoying Washington Apple with your loved ones.
The grand prize is RM1000 cash, certificate and fruits hamper and 10 consolation prizes of fruits hamper worth RM100. There is also the Most Creative and Most Colorful that comes with RM500 and RM250 cash respectively.

Grab some Washington apples and be on your way to earn more apples and cash money!

I will get my girls to pose too for the fun.
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Hand-Painted Children Shoes

Look at these cute shoes for children! Entrepreneurs are getting more creative, especially for children products.

These hand made shoes are available at RM40 per pair. I will definitely bring Elly and Emmy look at these cute and colorful shoes the next time we are buying shoes for them.

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Happy Birthday, Mei Ling 姐姐

Mei Ling is my bro's wife and supposedly, my kids have to call her 'Aunty Mei Ling' after she got married to my brother. However, the girls got used to call her Mei Ling 姐姐, which means sister, and the name sticks till now.

Personally, I am not that particular when come to adsressing the elders. I take a more western approach, elderly, just call uncle or aunty and younger ones call sister or brother. In chinese language, there is different name to call father's bro, mother's bro, father's sister or mother's sister. The list get more complicated upon marriage, in addressing my own relatives or my husband's relatives.

Anyway, as Mei Ling 姐姐 birthday is approaching, we celebrated her birthday and Elly and Emmy sang her a birthday song and some Chinese New Year songs. May all your wishes come true!

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Ultraman-Elly's New Hero

Elly told me lately that she has a new boyfriend. I thought that she meant she has a close friendship with some of her classmates. Earlier last year when she started kindergarten, she confessed that she liked her 'boyfriend' classmate who sat next to him. However, towards the end of the year, she expressed that she did not like him anymore as he has shaved 'botak'(shaved head bald).

Now, her hero is Ultraman, and Elly likes her stationery to be Ultraman-themed. She woukd even imagining talking to Ultraman on the phone.

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Pumpkin Beancurd

This is one of the favorite dish of Elly and Emmy. This dish is made of beancurd, korean mushroom and blended pumpkin sauce.

Emmy especially loves the korean mushroom with long stems. The pumpkin sauce is sweet and the girls love to mix the sauce with rice.

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Emmy Is Going To Kindergarten

We brought Emmy to kindergarten for registration to start in March. We purposely not register her in Jan as we felt that the first two months has a lot of drama of toddlers crying and not adapt to school yet. It will also influence Emmy to behave in same way.

With the registration, Emmy got her uniforms, sports wear and childcare bag. Time really flies, dear Emmy is soon going to be a Mayter student next month.

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Swatch Valentine's Day Promotion

Swatch has been successfully create beautiful limited edition timepiece to celebrate the Valentine's Day.

This year, the collection consists of two beautiful watch of pink and blue color, both with a cute girl on top of the ladder which to me symbolise the effort both party have to work on in making the relationship great.

This collection is available at all Swatch shops, selling price is RM465 for 2 watches.

And it will be great gifts for the children too, as the design and theme this year is more universal and I am sure the kids will love them.

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Babies are Natural Swimmers

In UK, parents are sending their babies, as early as 3 months old to swimming lessons. It is interesting to watch these babies being 'thrown' in the water and naturally they will float and start to swim! Some are relaxing while lying on their back.

Swimming is one of the exercise that use the most muscles. You need whole body coordination in order to balance yourself in the water. Thus, babies will develop their muscles and coordination better with swimming.

So, do consider to send your babies to swimming class and have some water fun with them!
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Ideal Sleeping Time for Kids

What time does your kids sleep at night? Do they follow you and stay till late nights? Young children are encouraged to sleep early. The ideal time for them to sleep is at 9pm.

For most of us, working parents, that is a bit impossible to put into practise. Coming home from work, dinner, take bath, by the time can comfortably sit down and spend some time with the kids is already past 9pm.

For myself, its just take a lot of effort from me and my kids, in order to put them sleep so early. They usually follow us and stay till 11pm before sleep. By the time they really doze off is in another 20-30 minutes, after some cuddling and story telling.

The plan is to change some lifestyle and put them to sleep at 10pm, though an hour later than ideal time, this works best for us. There are many best practise or ideal ways of doing things, what's more important, in my view is to find our own best fit.
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Preschool Hours Extended to Four Hours

Effective 1st Jan, preschool hours are extended to 4 hours from 3 hours in Malaysia. With the changes, it made some impact to those who have childcare also after the classes.

Personally, I do not agree to have the extension. Afterall kids are kids and at the tender age of 3-6 years old, they need more play and rest time. Does the extra one hour will make the kids smarter and more emotionally stable?

At the end, the kindergartens are the ones reaping the benefits with extra charges for the extended one hour. Let's hope that the one hour will be well spent by Malaysian kids, and learn good foundation to prepare them for Primary One.

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Registration for Primary One

For parents with kids aged 5 year olds this year, please prepare their birth certs and your IC for registration for Primary One which will be Year 2013.

The registration will start effective 1st March 2011, so plese do think over where you want to send your kids, is it national school, chinese school or private school.

For those plan to send kids to chinese school, please register early as seats are usually limited. It will be a hassle if do not get the best option, and need travel far.

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Tug of Love for Low Bi-Anne

Children are the best gift for family. However, when the husband and wife decided to split, the poor children will be torn in-between.

I don't comment on other family's matters thus it is hard to say who is right or wrong in this dilemma. However, I empathize for Bi-Anne, the daughter of a married couple from local who decided to go on their own ways. The eleven year old girl is torn between her mom and dad, both want to claim custody over her.

As the matter is a emotional turmoil for the 3 of them, as outsider, can only pray and hope they settle the issue peacefully with the best in mind for Bi-Anne. As she is already a 'tween', the term called for someone between children and teenage age, it is important to take consideration of her own preference.

Wish Bi-Anne a closure to her emotional sufferings and she could focus on her studies.

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Parenting and Facebook

Facebook is one of the social media commonly used by the new generation to stay in touch with friends. Parents are also catching up to open a Facebook account to keep up to date.

The number one reason is to 'track' and monitor their children whereabouts, know the circle of friends and their hanging out activities, beside understand the new generation lingo and thoughts.

During CNY, gatherings with family and friends made me realised that as new generation parenting style that works is to work with the kids, not work against them. If you know that your kid will not share much with you, but only to his friends, get to know them and be a sporting parent.

There are still a lot of parents who used abstinence as the key parenting philosophy. But with the rising of social media, we can't 'lock' the kids from getting the source of information from the social media.

It is so common that their searches for information includes wikis, online dictionaries, tweets, blogs and more. Thus, it is important to spend time with the kids and chat more with them.

Do not belittle the maturity of the young. You will be impressed sometimes with their 'out of the box' reply and answers.

Do you have a facebook account? Get one now and don't be surprised to see that your kid have 500 friends in his Facebook!

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Kids Acrobatic Performance Part 4

Flexible boy in a barrel acts as I called it, this cute boy cuddled himself in and out of the small barrel and perform various stunts around the barrel.

He is around 6-7 years old and very cute looking! At another stunt, the barrel is standing so this cute boy sat on the barrel and slowly pushed his butt and body into the barrel and then performed multiple rounds of rolling on the stage!

Won't he get dizzy? Impressed and worry at same time for the small boy...

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Kids Acrobatic Performance Part 3

These 2 girls performing Giant chinese yoyo acts. They will throw the yoyo and cross-catching them, perform somersaults and skipping as some of the stunts when throwing and catching back the yoyo.

Looks easy, actually difficult to balance and catch the yoyo!

Kids acrobatics rocks!
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Kids Acrobatic Performance Part 2

This boy did a marvellous balancing acts on Milo tins, as you can see, 5 layers of them. He jumped on the board with some assistance and then balanced himself on the moving Milo tins.

Do you notice his cute hair style?

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Kids Acrobatic Show @ Jusco Malacca

We were lucky to watch the kids acrobatic show when we were at Jusco Malacca this evening. Elly and Emmy were excited to watch the stunning performance put up by the kid performers. I guessed the older of them is about 10-11 years old.

The show lasted for half an hour and performed by 4 groups, including flexible movement by girls, balancing on milo tins by boys, giant chinese yoyo performance by girls and movement around the barrel performance by boys.

Was really impressed by the kids performance. Makes me wonder that talent is not so much inborn, but through sheer determination and resilience for success.

Chinese kids in China send their kids to these acrobatic camps from a tender age, as young as one year old! So that the practise starts early, when the bone is still very young and flexible.

While I was impressed by their performance, it makes me wonder into their practising schedules and lifestyle when they are not performing. These young kids are trained to perform in public since young age, building on their confidence and courage.

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Finance Lessons for Kids during CNY

During this festive season, it is also timely to give the kids especially the pre-school some finance lessons. Kids will get lots of angpows and pocket money during CNY. For my kids, i involved them in the filling in the money into the angpows and take the opportunity to teach them the different currency notes.

Counting is also possible by letting them to count the angpow packets that they received throughout chinese new year. Open savings accounts for the kids in terms of bank accounts, gold savings account or unit trusts.

We should teach our kids financial knowledge from early age so that they know to take care of own financial and reach financial freedom as earlier as possible. However, as kids nowadays are privilege lot with a lot of wants have become their needs, making them to understand the financial IQ is important.

Cheongsam from China

With globalizations, merchandise are easily available throughout the world. Take this cheongsam that Elly is wearing, her grandma bought for her from China for RMB 20, approximate RM10. I saw the same cheongsam at NiuZeSui(Chinatown, Singapore) being sold at SGD20, approximate RM24. It is more than double the price!

China products are available locally, but at a much higher price. Like the lucky hair clip that I purchased earlier at SGD5, my friend bought the same item at RMB5 back in China. China products are really gaining much popularity here.

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Doraemon Mosquito Repellent Spray

We use this Doraemon mosquito repellent everytime we are back in Malacca. This spray is handy and useful to get rid of the mosquitoes especially when we want to let the girls to play in the outdoor.

They are available at Guardian pharmacy. Do get one, the bottle is attractive too to kids by featuring cute Doraemon.

Mosquito repellent are available in few options. Beside this spray, it is also available (different brands) in gel, cream, patch, wristlet etc.

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Elly's Wishes for CNY

It is a tradition we go to the temple on the first day of CNY. Elly prayed and wished for 'Elly will be a good girl, listen to Mommy's words'.

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Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - featured in The Star

In the parenting section of The Star, the ever controversial book 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' written by Amy Chua, is debated again.

The author did share views from western and Chinese parenting, her opinion on strict parenting style and high expectations on children.

The East meets West approach, the extreme in upbringing methods do create different preferences in the child. Parents play the most important role in shaping the child, and of course the innate type and talent, environment influece, cultural background do play their roles.

In my opinion, a blended approach, combining the east and west approach would be great. Western kids are more courageous and confident on speaking up and challenge ideas in constructive way. Chinese generally, due to Confucius teachings and some others are generally obedient and have high regards for the elderly.

Seldom we see the Chinese graciously accept compliments from others especially in my generation. The new generation at least are more receptive to compliments. When some other parents compliment the kid, more often than not the Chinese parent will deny the compliment and 'belittle' the kid in front of others. 'No, he is not smart. He is a lazy bum, always watching TV and play games'. Remarks like this is so common for the Chinese.

What is important is to strike a balance and give the child a conducive environment to grow up. Challenge the children's thinking skills and get them to generate options in making decisions.
It is never too early to engage the children in adults activities and events. Take time to explain to them when we do something or make a decision. Never belittle their maturity, especially now the kids have DHA in their milk, so their brain connectivity are even better than us, since we adults do not have this in our milk in old times.

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Baby Bites

Elly and Emmy cousin, Jingren is nine months old. He has the Baby Bites as snacks in between meals.

A few years back, Elly and Emmy also snacked on these Baby Bites. The taste is mild, although its carrot flavoured. Once put in the mouth, within seconds, it melts.

If you have babies around one year old, you can consider giving them these baby bites. These biscuits are available in major supermarkets.

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Petronas CNY Commercial Message

Petronas always have great commercials with wonderful take away message. For this year, its CNY TV commercial focus on parents.

'It is easy to make them happy' is the take away message. Elderly are lonely people and the companion of children and grandchildren(if any) are what they longed for.

Being a parent myself, I can understand what makes parents happy. It is not the children's wealth(although it is important to certain extent), but the quality time that the children spend with them.

Recently Singapore ran an interesting survey and found that the Singaporeans youth spend an average of 10 hours a week with their parents. I think this is a good sign that Singaporeans are looking for more work life balance.

Are you going back to your hometown and spend some time with your parents? Have a good reunion dinner with them and make them happy!

You can watch the Petronas CNY TV commercial in Facebook, check it out!

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Megakids @ Midvalley

Megakids is a one stop center for kids to spend their time while parents go for shopping. They are art class, music class, glass painting, sand painting and fun in the park filled with games and activities.

It is on 3rd floor of Midvalley Megamall, next to Celebrity Fitness, previously known as Jackie Chan Sports Club.

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Seaching for Kampung Chickens

Everytime we came back to Malacca, the girls would love to take a stroll along the street in the village. Kampung chickens freely walk around the village too.

Elly will lead the way and search for the kampung chickens. She will then act like one with arms flapping at sides and sais 'prep prep prep prep ...'

Its a wonderful past time during the evenings. Refering to Amy Chua's strict parenting where children are supposed to have strict timetables, practising on music and study diligently, I take a 'middle road' approach, letting my children to play and study when they are 'ready'.

Do not know whether my way is right, my logic is only to give them the best childhood and enjoy this best time of their life, free of troubles that a student or adults faced.

What is your view?

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JPops Baby Donuts

Had lunch with high school friends at Pavilion Food Republic. On the way back, grab 2 boxes of JPops Baby Donuts.

They are in bite size and simply delicious. Once you grab one, you will want more. They are priced at RM18 for a box of 24 pieces baby donuts.

JCo originates from Indonesia and they really produce nice donuts. Minus the calories, there isn't any reason not to pop a few JCo baby donuts into my mouth.

Elly and Emmy loved them very much too.

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