the boy, the girl.. and me!

when you lower your expectations..

2008-11-18T15:38:00.004+08:00

.. or you're just plain delusional heh.

mak: dahlia.. say i-bu!
anak: aaaa-aaaah!
mak: eeeee-buuuuu..
anak: aaaa-aaaaaah!
mak: dahlia, say eeee-buuuu!
anak: aaaaaaa-bu!
mak: *joget monyet* yeayyy close enough!!!

an apple a day..

2008-11-17T22:30:00.002+08:00

fau, and the apple of her eye :)

we ventured out to hort park yesterday, the boy's major aim was to shoot a bit of dahlia but silly fella forgot his cf cards!

RIP yaccs

2008-11-13T10:34:00.002+08:00

been using the yaccs commenting system since forever, a good 7 yrs has gone by and now i'll be switching to the custom blogger one. will miss it, most definitely.

jeremy's sock

2008-11-12T12:18:00.002+08:00

13.30 bucks out of the window, but that single line calms me down *phew* though now i should go check on something else, eh? anyway, makcik kerja at watsons didn't need to look at me like that when i purchased it lah, so uncalled far kan.

stock mart

2008-11-11T20:00:00.002+08:00

now that D's rejecting porridge and will only take rice, i've started to prepare stock/broth beforehand, simmered for a good 2 hrs before left to cool, and then poured into plastic bags and kept in the freezer.

her mee sua + soup lunch yesterday

ingredients for the chicken stock

reFresh

2008-11-10T22:39:00.004+08:00

the laplips were getting dusty :)

in other news, D's been blurbing out her porridge for a few days now, poor girl's upper set of teeth is slowly but surely popping out so appetite's gone down for a bit. today i had to resort to mee sua and soup for lunch. halfway she started to spit out the mee sua too (!!) so for dinner she had normal rice and soup.. macam betul ajer budak ni.. gigi baru dua dah nak makan nasi!

saturday since pa was away for a roadtrip with his hommies (ha!) and the boy was working, we decided to bring ma and D out for late lunch at the airport.. and someone had fun literally running around T3! shows that my love for the airport was never a mistake.. hopefully she loves the place as much as i do :)

self entertaining while the adults devour popeye's

first time at the playground!

running..

running away from monsterbibik

running after monsterbibik!

baby D conquered T3!

her latest pout

a mickey and friends coincidence!

her cheesy impersonation of mickey mouse

lovers in japan

2008-11-07T16:44:00.001+08:00

hoping they announce a down under tour soon, then they might stop by spore eh?

tateh to ibu..

2008-10-30T22:56:00.003+08:00

dearest dahlia,

was it just last week that we had that private conversation about taking time growing up so fast?

home alone three days ago, we were tumbling in bed and when i had to have a pee break you held on to my leg and let out the softest mews unwilling me to leave you alone just for a bit. so i tied an imaginary knot in my bladder and continued tumbling around with you, playing peekaboo and tickledoodledoo. not 5 minutes later i REALLY had to go so we held hands and i placed you in the bathtub while you watch heh. then we held hands again out to the living room just in time for your favourite mickey mouse show on 34.

i sat on the floor while you stood, still holding my hand. when the hotdog song came along i slowly let go of your little finger and you amazingly stood still the entire hotdog song! so i inched backwards and let you stand by yourself till you realised, and you shot me the "ibu i'm falling!" look. and that's when i pointed both my index fingers up and said "ok dahlia.. wait.. wait..."

and you waited! you pointed your own index fingers, then took a few steps in front.. your very first confident steps! three days later, a few minutes ago ayah beamed with price looking at you toddling all over the room at Lola's :)

and ibu? ibu had to take a moment and wipe her own tears coz she can't believe her baby's all grown up. we love you Baby D :)

check out her professional u-turning lol. dont mind my ghastly outlook, i had my Peserta-peserta Mencari Teman dari Variapop 1993 garb on for the night heh.

yeah-furt

2008-10-30T16:56:00.000+08:00

was talking to a friend a while ago on effort..

after having many different groups of friends throughout my adolescent years, i've realised something. it takes a lot of effort to keep the fire burning for a group of friends to stay connected and updated with the happenings on each others' lives. especially with added responsibility like family, overbearing boyfriends, overpossessive girlfriends, your high-end carreer, that very important meeting, the other die-die-cannot-change appointment or even something totally mindblowing and totally awesome out of this world like .... your own moodswings. -_-

and in each group of friends i have usually there'll be a nice bunch who takes super extra effort to keep the fire burning, to plan meetups, to check with everyone when they're available, to sometimes even keep a schedule (self made and self deciphered, of course.. coz you're too busy to provide them your own work schedule), which shift you're on at this date and that, how big a bus to rent for this outing and that, how much food to cater in case those who didnt rsvp suddenly turns up.. that kinda thing. it's tiring to upkeep everyone's wants and needs especially if sometimes they don't voice out their wants and needs only until they're asked..

ok i'm rambling. point is, i think i've tired myself out being Ms Effort with some groups of friends. i say 'some' ah, not all. so jangan eksyen merajuk.

many times i'll grumble and whine to theBoy and he'll simply just say, "jangan buang masa, nanti tahu2 last minit tak jadi" which is so so true in soooo many instances :) so now i shall sit back. coz iPenat. me and my Dahlia will wait for you, or you, or you.. or even you to call us and check OUR schedule to see if we can fit you in.. itu pun if you take the effort to picit our number. heh.

going green?

2008-10-28T16:42:00.003+08:00

still on the topic of baby food, i've lost count as to how many times i cracked my head to think of things to include in her porridge. here's a new addi(c)tion, she wipes the bowl clean with this one!

1 frozen cube of steamed and pureed spinach & asparagus mix, diced carrots, wolfberries and white bait!

isn't really appeasing for the eyes but hey, it's filled with rich goodness hokay!

syiok makan?

2008-10-25T17:02:00.002+08:00

training a baby to self feed is never a no-mess event, so get ready your wipeclothes! here's D with her vanilla yoghurt :)

2008-10-10T18:44:00.002+08:00

eh i called home earlier to check on D's cough and mak excitedly said she gibbered "Boh! Boh!" which happened to be Ball. bestnya! and i wasn't at home to hear it, urgh! ma even said she said 'ejjehh.. ejjehh..' just now which is something new, so i cant wait to figure out what 'ejjehh' means.

oh and that 'mumma' she was muttering about, we get it now. she's actually referring to her elmo plush. coz past few days when i ask "where's elmo?" she'd point to the darn elmo plush and go "melmah.. llmah, llmoh.." so yeay, ibu still stands a chance :)

you CAN have your cake and eat it too!

2008-10-06T19:44:00.003+08:00

almost everyone around me should know by now at how anal i get with what she eats, so imagine how hard i yelped and pleaded 'nooooooo, enough!!!' when i saw this!

nom, nom, nom...

cake monster running away from momster

she must be wondering "why'd you buy me a cake if you wont let me taste eh?" -_-

mumma vs iBu

2008-10-06T12:11:00.003+08:00

green on saturday

tateh with ayah

she ran a temperature on sunday night, eeks!

over the week i saw her 1) taking any random remote control and point it to the aircon/fan/tv/radio like how we adults do and 2) take her stacking cups and feed her elmo and barney plushies! i have to get them on video coz it's just uber-cute!

we've been sayng ayah and ibu ever since she was born and even with her limited vocabulary, i can tell which 'aaaaaah!' means ayah, but i can never tell which 'aaaaahhhh!!' is ibu. howeverrrr, a few days ago she started saying mama without anyone ever teaching her.. so i guess mama is kinda natural for babies lah eh? i'm sitting on the ibu vs mama fence now, i really want her to call me ibu but her soft mama mews are very tempting!

what's my age again?

2008-10-03T13:08:00.002+08:00

guess i better change my age on the right, eh? 2 more years to the big 3. and when i turned a year older last week i told the boy the next time i'm gonna see the number 7 is when i'm 37! *faint* anyway, thanks for the smses/emails and birthday wishes! and sayang, thanks for the twingtwingtwing ;)

don't want!!

2008-10-02T17:28:00.003+08:00

she's been doing this a lot! when she feels that she's had enough porridge she'd flail her arms around and refuse anymore feeds. flailing her arms like that also means she's unhappy about something (like when ibu bullies and takes away her toys heh) or when she doesn't want to be carried. point is, how did a 1yr old girl learn that flailing her arms = refusing something?! sheesh.

No more No more!! from shotbyfau on Vimeo.

a shotbyred raya

2008-10-02T11:43:00.001+08:00

the laplips are up!

2008-09-30T08:28:00.002+08:00

so much for my project run-away heh, it really did runaway! if you remember a post with two pieces of japanese cotton a while ago, yes i was trying my darnest to sew D baju kurungs for raya but errr.. inspiration ran away? :)

so on saturday after my obligatory Chat Masala belated birthday dinner treat from the boy, we decided to head to geylang and promised ourselves we queue for that darn vadai together with other oily bazaar go-ers. heh. banyak punya promise. even though we got a nice parking lot at joochiat complex, we couldnt bring ourselves to step out of that place. aircon dorang macam makin sejuk. lighting pun dah up sikit. tiles pun dah cantik. we spent an hour going round and round the backalleys of joochiat complex to look for D's baju kurungs. we got one, luckily for the first day of raya. but by then the boy had sweat out his whole Chat Masala Lychee Lassi away and said "Home, now!" ok lor.

nasib baik monday kerja. me and nurul managed to drag ourselves out during lunch and trudge all the way to joochiat complex again under the sweltering heat and nasib baik lah dapat D's red baju kurung. nurul cant find what she wanted sooooo... we decided to break fast at geylang! hehe. at the end of the day, everyone's happy and sated. we got our vadai, i got lampu laplips (but the wire's too short, urgh!), sujithingamajigs from rajakuih for mak and most importantly D has two bajus ready for raya :)

my two pieces of japanese cotton? err, tangguh tahun depan can? hehe.

Selamat Hari Raya!

pink and white

2008-09-26T23:51:00.003+08:00

surprised myself quite a bit this ramadhan as i didnt even think of baking any cookies, but this morning at work i suffered from a major baking withdrawal symptom so since work was half day and tkc is just a traffic light away i ran to the quaint little bake supply shop and stocked up on a few stuff. i must say this tempted me even more to trudge home and carry the oven out from the store (yes my mom stores her oven in the err, store. don't ask).

the first batch was a failure! i was too lazy to take out the weighing scale so i thought the measuring cup would work when the recipe calls for 8oz of icing sugar... which apparently is a huge mistake! twas a super what-was-fau-thinking moment when i whipped the mixture and it looked as hideous as agar-agar goodil. i love agar-agar goodil, no worries but one look and i knew it wasnt ok.

this was the result after the 2nd batch was whipped up :) happy in pink!

exactly the same recipe as all my other times making it, only when i saw the pink ones by is i had to do the same! :) oh and also i found strawberry-flavored chips so that went perfectly fine with the white colored ones.

tsk!

2008-09-26T23:04:00.002+08:00

tsk tsk shame on you, yes YOU from bandar s/e/l.a.n/g/o/r who googled what's written on the image above(click to enlarge) to come to my site tsk tsk tsk!!

anyway i'm always wondering.. who reads me from York, UK? and tasmania.. is that you jibby? and who reads me from california, coz i always always have you on my counter :) i'm kepo like that, so leave me a note yah! heh.

earwax - sudirman :: dari jauh ku pohon maaf

2008-09-25T13:21:00.003+08:00

you know how sometimes radio stations do a 'special' on raya where people staying overseas can call up and then the dj will call their families here in sg? now the current dj is doing something similar for people who 'dah bertahun tak balik rumah for whatever reasons' and omg i'm tearing nonstop!! kesian makcik ni anak dia tak balik merajuk ngan mak dia.. so sad i think even the dj is crying!

plus 4

2008-09-23T23:33:00.002+08:00

dearest dahlia,

see how kooky your parents were 4 years ago :)

(tv)talk is cheap

2008-09-22T18:45:00.002+08:00

HIMYM is starting tonight in the US and i'm super psyched! the boy and i finished watching season 3 for the second time last night and we cant wait to find out if robin and barney will end up in a relationship hehehehe. i'm yakking away like a smitten kitten but barney stinson is damn hot.

oooh also looking forward to the start of DH and GA. can't wait!

365 part IV

2008-09-21T17:13:00.003+08:00

more photos from D's birthday outing..

365 part III

2008-09-19T00:07:00.002+08:00

a bit of splashing at vivo's waterplay area, breaking of fast at marche and a single candle atop a huge slice of mango cheesecake :)

Happy birthday, sayang :)