Super virus

Sick...

It started with Solomon, he got a fever for a couple of days, then got better for a day, then got sick again for another 2 days!

Then Annie started complaining of a headache and this was followed by a high temperature. She was complaining about body aches and pains, and initially I thought it was from her PE and Tae Kwon Doe and ballet...

Well, Annie is back in school today, while the virus has passed on to me, starting yesterday! Now I understand the pain they were in! It started with an awful, splitting headache, then the fever and aches came. All my joints were aching, even my finger joints! Even my butt was sore!!

Now Sidekick has it too and is sleeping away as I write... I don't blame her, it's no fun at all. It's a pretty strong virus, but luckily passes fast. At least I'm better today. I just totally crashed yesterday and let the kids skip their extra classes, as I could no longer function!

I think it was because of the fact that I wasn't feeling well, that I forgot to pick up Solomon yesterday! Annie was with me, since she was on MC, so maybe that made me feel that nothing was missing? As Solomon is usually the one tagging along with me!

Anyway, I went to pick up Claire and Eva and only then did I realize Solomon was still at school!! I usually pick him up first, but he hadn't been to school the past few days on account of him being sick, so I totally forgot!!!

I felt like such an awful mum and quickly called the school to let them know I would be late. I asked them if he was okay and the teacher said he was fine, just sitting there with his bag!

In the end, I got there almost an hour later than the usual time! But he was happy and oblivious to the fact that his mum was a scatterbrain! I was the one feeling so bad!!

This reminds me of the time I told the kids about how my mum and dad forgot me when I was in kindy. I was only 3 or 4 and just started school I think. I can't recall this incident, but my parents told me about it.

Well, anyway, mum and dad both thought the other was going to pick me up after school I think. Dad was playing golf and mum was at the salon. In the end the principal, Mrs. Ong (I'll always remember her playing the piano while we sang, with her long nails clickety-clacking away...) sent me home! Did I give her directions? I'm not sure...

The part of the story which caught the kids' attention most, was the part where I told them that there were no hand phones then, so we couldn't contact my mum or dad!! They were shocked! :)

Now I'm wondering what happened to my sister. She's 3 years older than me and was at the same school... So how come she wasn't with me then?

Hmmm.... will have to interrogate dad...

Kindy Concert 2011

Ready for action

Claire and Eva had their annual kindy concert a couple of weeks ago. They had been practicing forever for this big event!

Other than the initial microphone trouble, it was an excellent production. Instead of individual presentations by every class, there was a major storyline. The theme was "Save the Earth", and each class performed a piece which tied into the main storyline. It was about children from a future where Earth had already died and humans were living on another planet. These children came back to the past to teach us how to save our earth. :)

Claire came on first... we couldn't get decent pics from where we were seated

Eva also had some lines and a song to sing

All the little boys and girls were very brave and put up a marvelous show! They were all very proud of themselves I'm sure! I know we parents were! :)

The finale; Michael Jackson's "Heal the World"

Solomon is 3!

Solomon celebrating his birthday at school for the first time!

My littlest, Solomon, turned 3 on Saturday! For Claire's birthday, she chose to go to Sugarbun for lunch, for Eva, she chose to have Taiwanese noodles at Spring, followed by sand art and clay figurine painting. Solomon also wanted to go to Spring on the night of his birthday. He wanted to buy toys!

Well, Claire, Eva and Solomon had amassed quite a fortune in ang pows for their birthdays, so we decided they could spend some of it on a toy of their choice. I kept all their ang pow money in my handbag. Before leaving for Spring, Claire and Eva remembered to bring their wallets which had some odd change which they received from the 'Tooth Fairy' and such.

Suddenly someone exclaimed that Eva had a hundred dollar note in her wallet! She quickly surrendered it to me and we interrogated her as to where she got the money from! She said it was her ang pow money, and I knew she had been exploring my handbag! I told her off for rummaging my bag without permission and thought that was that, when hers sisters screamed, "She's got a lot more!"

I told her to hand me her wallet and she refused to show anyone and started crying! In the end we found out that she had a total of RM280 in her wallet!! She had kept track of her ang pow collection and retrieved it herself!!

*Goodness* 

I don't think she realized the value of all those pieces of notes! I told her that it was dangerous for children to carry around so much money and remind her not to do that again! I think she decided to take matters into her own hands as their ang pows always seem to vanish once passed to mummy!! heheheh  :)

So anyway, Claire chose a Twister game set (it's really fun!) while Eva picked out a battery operated toy microwave set. Solomon (with Daddy's persuasion.. *ahem*) bought a Nerf dart gun!

Then we over ate as usual at Kenny Rogers. It was a fun and tiring night.

Happy Birthday Solomon darling!

A hilarious game of Twister in progress..

Eva and Solomon's birthday celebrations!

So this year, Eva and Solomon got to share their birthday celebration. It was on a Sunday, 7th August, which was in between both their actual birthdays and also happened to be Ah Lek E E's actual birthday! So it was a triple celebration!

Anyway, first, the week before, Eva celebrated her actual birthday at school with her classmates. During recess, I went to her class with the packets of junk food to be handed out to her classmates, and also her birthday cake. She requested for a ladybird cake again! She brought a ladybird cake to school already last year, but it seems she likes it a lot! :)

Claire did not want to come over from her class to join in the fun, so her classmates and teachers serenaded her with the birthday song in three languages!

Well, last Sunday, we celebrated at home. There was supposed to be swimming first. The first batch of kids got to swim for a while before it started to pour and the lifeguard shooed them all away! The second batch of kids (after art class) never got to swim at all! Luckily I had already planned to have the party upstairs, instead of by the poolside, because I was worried about the heat! It has been really hot and hazy these days, so I figured upstairs we could party in air-conditioned comfort. Instead, it poured cats and dogs and the wind was crazy, like a typhoon!

Anyway, this celebration was, like I said, for Eva, Solomon and Lek E E's birthday. Besides immediate family, my Aunty also brought my cousin who was visiting from Canada, and another cousin's son who was visiting from Taiwan! It was nice to catch up. The kids also had their fun with all the indoor gadgets like the iPad, computer and tv!

So Eva is now 5 and Solomon will be 3 next week! Happy Birthday Eva and Solomon! Mummy and Daddy love you! :) 

A song of Ice and Fire

I've been waiting for ages for this book! I think 6 years! It's the 5th book of a series of 7 books called "A song of Ice and Fire". The author, George R.R. Martin kept postponing book launches and made all his fans go crazy!

I kept going to his website to check on the progress. Fans were bugging him to get the book done and he released some chapters to tide us over for a while. Then there were two false alarms, where dates were already set and I had even pre-booked the book on Amazon! After a few years, I just kind of lost hope and forgot about the book!

Then I heard the news that HBO had made the first book, "A Game of Thrones" into a series! I found in online and watched episodes on end and got hooked again! The show was excellent and I can't wait till the next series.

Anyway, the 5th book finally came out for real this month. If you go to George R. R. Martin's website, there is just a huge "DONE!" on it! :) Well, I called my local bookstore and made sure they would call me when the stock arrived and to reserve one for me just in case!

I've just begun reading it, and I find there are a lot of details I have forgotten from the previous books. But I'm too excited to find out what will happen next, so I won't be revising the old books just yet. George R. R. Martin, is amazing, his book is so extremely complex that I have to keep referring to the appendixes; the family trees and maps! It's almost like studying history! The history of a mind-blowing fantasy realm, filled with Kings & Queens and knights & dragons!

Well, I have a cake order and also Eva and Solomon's birthday cakes to do in the next few days, so I'll have to try and put the books aside for the meantime! Can't wait to dive back into Westeros!

Housemaid dramas

So where am I currently at my 'Housemaid Drama'?? I'm now trying out a new Indonesian maid. Today is her 8th day with us, and so far so good. I never dare to say much about a maid, because, through first-hand experience, I know that they can live with you for 2 years or more and never show their true colours. No matter how 'good' they seem and how highly you regard them, you don't ever really know them, truly.

So anyway, here's to recap. Our maid of almost 2 years left us with promises of returning. I paid her full 2 years salary, even though she had another 2 months to go and even bought her return air tickets. Well, surprise, surprise, she never boarded the plane back here. We trusted her and she went home with lots of clothes and toys and ang pows. Now, in hindsight, we suspect that she had been stealing cash, and we never even bothered to check her luggage.

I don't mind so much these petty crimes, but the fact that she did not have the responsibility to just let me know that she did not want to come back really irks me. Instead, I had to wait for 2 crazy, 'maidless' weeks to realize that she was not returning, and that was smack in the middle of a ban on visa approval for all Indonesian housemaids!

So in the end, we managed to find ourselves a Filipino maid, through a Filipino lady who is married to a local Chinese. These are 'nightclub' people, and really hard to deal with, as she was pushy and not very honest, nor polite/refined! I let Hubby deal with them, as I found it very frustrating!

This Flipino maid was 46 yrs old and I have to give it to her, that she was very clean, to a point of obsessiveness! When she first got here, she had already been rejected by 2 families, so she worked really hard to make a good first impression. Boy, my house had never been that clean before! She was the kind who would clean behind and under cupboards! Even plastic bags were neatly folded and stacked in crisp even rows!!

I thought I had struck gold!!

After a while, she seemed to be sitting on her a$$ and on her phone more than anything else, constantly texting and sometimes talking with that loud voice of hers which she seems unable to control! The worst part was that she did not seem interested in the children. She did not even bother to talk to the kids and did not seem to care where they were or what they were doing.

I explained what I wanted from her, that taking care of the kids was the higher priority and housework came second. She was very defensive and would always have something to say when you confronted her. She claimed that in the Philippines, she did not interact much with her child and would just leave her in a corner while she went about her work! I told her that we did not do things like that here and I just asked her if she still wanted to try and since she said yes, I gave her another chance.

You see, she has a little daughter, of around 5yrs who is mentally handicapped. That was the reason she came to work in the first place. So I pitied her as well, and thought if I could train her to be a good helper, it would be a win win situation for the both of us!

Well, I can't say I didn't try. In the end I blew my lid when she shouted at Claire unreasonably. I shouted at her and asked  her once more if she wanted to work, because if she didn't, then I would not fork out the RM2000+ for her visa. Up till then (only 2 months), I had already paid RM1400 for her salary and RM300 to her agent, not to mention RM800 for a temporary pass and insurance and medical etc...

So anyway, she began crying and complaining that she didn't know what to do with my kids, implying that my children were a handful!! That really pissed me off, because we had been nothing but kind and patient with her. So she said she no longer wanted to work and I was happy to finally get rid of her!

As soon as we secured the new Indonesian maid, Hubby sent her back to her agent. She claimed that she wanted to go back to the Philippines and we encouraged her, as she obviously was not suited to work for people. Then she started crying about not having any money to go home etc... and we being the suckers we are (esp. Hubby the bigger sucker... which I love him for!) bought her air tickets. Hubby even gave her a RM200 ang pow, though she owed us money!

So here we are now, one week in with the new Indonesian maid. She seems okay, but like I said, I don't want to speak too soon. She's not as clean as the Filipino, but she does get the job done. She also seems more motherly and loves to cook. (Oh yes, the Filipino couldn't really cook, claims her husband is the one who cooks!)

So anyway, we'll see what happens... will keep you updated if more drama enfolds!! ;)