"I Feed You, But You Don't Need to Feed Me!"

This is really an outdated post, thanks to Mommy's crazily busy schedule for the past weeks. It happened almost 2 weeks ago. Juan Or's cousin sister, Juan Juan who is about 8 months older than Juan Or, was around in Grandma's house for quite some time already. Later on, when Mommy came back from work, Mommy picked Juan Or from babysitter's house as well. Juan Or, upon seeing Juan Juan enjoying a small plate of muruku (actually, this muruku was given by one of Mommy's chemistry class student in conjunction with Deepavali), came to join her as well. He sat directly opposite her and started taking the muruku, piece by piece, and fed muruku into her mouth! Don't know whether Juan Or was being generous, or he was simply finding it fun to feed food into other's mouth (but Mommy thinks it's probably the latter because Juan Or likes to shove leftover food that he can't finish into Mommy's mouth)! Juan Juan was also very sporting to eat what was fed to her, and seeing her enthusiasm to eat whatever he fed her, Juan Or kept on putting muruku into her mouth! Here are a series of snapshots of the feeding action.

After Juan Or was done with feeding Juan Juan, Juan Or climbed onto a sofa to relax and watch television. And Mommy can't help snapping more photos of this little boy concentrating on watching the television.

A Seminar on Child Nutrition and Health

Mommy got this interesting announcement from a colleague yesterday. She got the invitation to this talk because she is in the field of Health and Nutrition (she is one of the lecturers in the Food Science and Nutrition programme). According to her (and the invitation card), this talk is free-of-charge and anybody can attend it. And the topics sound very interesting to Mommy. Here are the details:

Theme: Updates on Child Nutrition and Health

Date: 10th November 2009

Venue: Main Lecture Hall, Dewan Kuliah Utama, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University Putra Malaysia.

Time: 8.30 am - 5.30 pm

Deadline to RSVP: 30th October 2009

Who to RSVP to: Chin Yit Siew (chinys@medic.upm.edu.my)

Yap Su Ling (suling.yap@mjn.com)

Organizers: UPM and Mead Johnson Nutrition

Topics that will be covered:

• Child Nutrition and Immunity


• Socioeconomic Disparities in Childhood Malnutrition


• Parental Feeding Practices and Nutritional Status - What Do We Know?


• Micronutrients and Cognitive Development in Young Children


• Fatty Acids and Children's Health


• WHO Growth Standards 2006: What Does It Measure?


• Assessing Physical Activity of Children: What's New?


• A Practical Approach in Managing Childhoon Obesity


• Cow Milk Protein Allergy: A Clinician's Perspective


• Nutrition Interventions for Young Children: The Way Forward

By the way, Mommy only RSVPed on 2nd November 2009, which is already past the RSVP deadline, but luckily they still accepted because Mommy received a confirmation email from Ms. Yap Su Ling. So if you are interested to attend, you can still try to RSVP.

Yay! Juan Or's Videoblog Won Something!

Yay! The DiGi's "Pimp My Broadband" Contest results are out! And much to Mommy's surprise, it is the videoblog that won something rather than the photoblog. In Mommy's opinion, the content of the photoblog is better and funnier than the videoblog.....but, ah, never mind, at least something is won - a free 3-month DiGi's broadband subscription - better than nothing at all! However, Mommy suspects DiGi probably made sure that no one participant gets two prizes. So considering that the number of photoblog entries way exceeds that of the videoblogs, and putting into consideration some participants who gave good photoblog entries, but never submitted a videoblog, so DiGi must have done some justice to all the deserving ones so that all gets to enjoy the free 3-month broadband. Thanks to DiGi and thanks to all of Mommy's blog readers who painstakingly spent some time to give thumbs-up to vote for Mommy's entries. Mommy knows that Mommy had been quite 'irritating' by bombarding the Facebook almost everyday with Mommy's microblog by asking friends to vote. Sorry about that, no choice, but Mommy really want to win something. So a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who have contributed in some way or other to make this winning a reality!

Juan Or and the Shape-sorting Toy (Part 2)

(Juan Or is picking a shape out.)

(Juan Or is happily fitting a shape in.)

(Juan Or is making another try on another shape.)



("Eh....why cannot go in one!?")

Remember how Mommy wrote before about how Juan Or would always pick out only the round and oval shapes to be put into their respective holes? Well, this time (actually about 2 weeks ago!) Juan Or is already able to comprehend more variety of shapes and how they fit in into their respective hole shapes. Of course, once in a while, Juan Or did get one or two shapes fitted into the wrong hole, but most of them were correctly put. But one thing sure for sure about Juan Or is that he is impatient in orientating the shape until it fits into the hole! With just one or two turning steps and if the shape still can't get into the hole (the shape is already correctly befitting the hole!), Juan Or will start fretting! What an impatient boy!

The Consequence of Looking Cute

Let's say, one day, Mommy is posed with this question:


If a baby is cute, which of these consequences is applicable? The baby:

A. gets more smiles from everyone
B. gets more pinches on the cheeks
C. gets more pats on the head
D. gets free food!




Well, for Juan Or's case....you can probably guess by now by looking at the photos below. Yes, that's right, the answer is 'D' - Juan Or gets free food!





It was one of those short night trips to the nearest supermarket - The Store Sri Petaling. When Juan Or and Mommy passed by the kuih bauhulu man, the man signalled to Mommy and handed out a piece of kuih bauhulu to Juan Or. Juan Or took it and Mommy asked Juan Or to say thank you to the man, but Juan Or merely kept silent.



After that, we went on with Juan Or still having the kuih in his hand, Mommy saw a small book fair section. Most of the books are bilingual cookbooks and either bilingual or fully Chinese children books. All cookbooks are subjected to 20% discount. As Mommy was browsing through the cookbooks, this was what Juan Or was up to (with his kuih bauhulu, of course!).......

Instead of concentrating on eating the kuih (well, he only managed a few bites at first), he took the kuih and banged it onto the shopping cart's handle bar!


Next, Juan Or gave Mommy the surprised look for Mommy to photograph as if he hadn't been doing anything funny with the kuih!

In the end, it was Mommy who finished up the kuih for him! Actually Juan Or doesn't really know how to eat this kuih. If Mommy continued to let him hold the kuih, he would evetually throw it onto the floor and end up wasting it! And by the way, in previous trips to The Store Sri Petaling, one sweeper lady (The Store's employee) saw Juan Or, then started calling him. Then she disappeared and later appeared again, this time with a kuih bauhulu in her hand to give to Juan Or. (She must have asked for one from the kuih bauhulu man!). However, for this case, after Juan Or took the kuih from her, and after Mommy pushed the shopping cart till we were gone from the lady's sight, Mommy had no choice but to take the kuih away from Juan Or and throw it away (Mommy hates to throw food away but there's no choice). Reason? Because the lady was also holding the broom and dustpan in her other hand!



Anyway, just a sidetrack, at The Store bookfair just now, Mommy ended up buying something for Juan Or: 4 bilingual picture books for RM4.90 each. Each book (about 30 cm x 30 cm in size) has waterproof, sufficiently stiff but bendable cardboard pages, and the colors of the background and pictures are very vivid and attractive. The pictures are large-sized and pleasing to the eyes. And surprisingly though, the publisher of these books is Novum Organum - the publisher known for publishing bilingual recipe cookbooks. And the kiddy books come in 5 themes: fruits, transportation, shapes, actions and colours. Mommy bought all themes except for the colour theme because the colour one only has pages with the different colours (and the words) but no pictures at all.

Trip to Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) - Part 2

After Mommy bought some plantlets from Unit of Planting Material, Seeds and Farm Breed Production, Mommy drove to this part called "Laman Sayur-sayuran" (Vegetable Front) which is just a short distance away. Juan Or and Mommy were greeted by two banners hung at a shade-like structure of the vegetable park. The banners wrote "Edible Landscape". Mommy thought this is a good idea if you have some land in your own home - planting vegetable plants both for food and decoration for the outside of your home.

(The edible landscape.)

Now Mommy and Juan Or walked under the shade structure. You can see many vegetable fruits hanging down and the creeping veegetable plants providing shade as well. What a beautiful sight! Now Mommy knows - vegetables plants can be just as good for landscaping purpose. The only thing is that if you plant the creeping type, you need to built a substantial structure for it if your other aim is for landscaping purpose, and of course building such structure requires money!

(Many loofahs and snake gourds can be seen hanging down like Christmas ornaments! What a delicious and beautiful sight!)

(The garden pathway with more of these vegetable fruits hanging like Christmas ornaments.)

(Another angle of the garden pathway.)







(A closer look of some of the snake gourds among the foliage.)





(Net structures plus rafia strings at the side parts of the shade structure as means for the creeping plants to do the initial climbing. Seen here are bitter gourds hanging among the foliage.)






(Juan Or, all wet and sweaty, was looking around under the vegetable shade.)


("Yikes, a dead vegetable flower on the floor! That's mine!")





(Juan Or was so happy to walk under the vegetable shade.)




(After passing through the vegetable shade, we arrive at the lakeside landscape. Seen here is Juan Or running towards an orange garden hose on the floor.)

(Juan Or seems to be more intrigued about the orange garden hose than the vegetables.)



("Mama won't let me touch the garden hose because it's dirty, but I touch it already! What can Mama do!?" Look at Juan Or's cheeky laugh!)

(Mommy was attracted to this bottle gourd. Would you believe it if Mommy tells you this gourd is humongous?)




(Taa-dah! Mommy's hand is put here....now see for yourself how humongous it is!)




(This is another big bottle gourd but not as big as the one just now, only thing is that it is nearer to the floor. So Mommy asked Juan Or to go and touch it while Mommy snapped a photo. Too bad, Mommy's handphone camera is not fast enough - shown here is Juan Or already done with touching the gourd!)




After this edible landscape, Mommy and Juan Or headed out of MARDI because the day was becoming too hot already - it was afternoon by then. So Mommy sent Juan Or straight to the babysitter's house because Mommy had other things to do after that.

Trip to Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) - Part 1

One weekday, Mommy found the opportunity to pick Juan Or up from the babysitter's house to take him for a short outing to MARDI Headquarters at Serdang. But why a place like MARDI, you must be wondering? That's because MARDI has nice agricultural landscapes, plus some recreational landscapes as well. Because Papa was working that day, so this was considered Mommy's first solo outing with Juan Or.


To reach MARDI without using the toll way, Mommy used the Sri Kembangan way which passes by South City Plaza and then kept right (the left is Mines Wonderland) to lead to a highway (SILK highway, perhaps? Not sure!) which leads into UPM area and from there headed into MARDI. Upon reaching the main entrance of MARDI, Mommy told the security guards that Mommy wanted to go buy vegetable seeds from Unit Pengeluaran Bahan Tanaman, Biji Benih dan Baka Ternakan (Unit of Planting Material, Seeds and Farm Breed Production), so Mommy got the visitor's pass after giving the guard the driving license.


Upon reaching the unit, Juan Or was already fast asleep, but luckily it wasnt' too difficult for Mommy to wake Juan Or up without making him fretful - Juan Or happily woke up, much to Mommy's surprise!


Mommy went to see what seeds were on sale that day - turned out that only cucumber, chilli padi, round brinjal and long bean seeds were available. So Mommy didn't buy any of those seeds because Mommy has them already. So off Mommy went to see what fruit tree plantlets were on sale this time. The last time Mommy went to MARDI looking for pisang berangan plantlet, there was no stock. However, this time, they had pisang emas and pisang nangka only (pisang berangan was still out of stock but is available at the Jalan Kebun branch of MARDI), each plantlet sold for RM2. During Mommy's tour round the plantlets-for-sale nursery, Juan Or had a good time too with those fruit tree plantlets in polybags that are about as tall as him!






(Juan Or was playing hide-and-seek with Mommy. "Juan Or, you think Mama cannot see where you are hiding meh?")






(Juan Or seems to enjoy stepping on those tiny pebbles covering the floor of the nursery.)







(Mommy managed to capture closer view of Juan Or walking around happily.)

("Juan Or, you are still not done with stepping on those pebbles?")



(Juan Or was so happy to be here.)





("Juan Or, cannot pluck those leaves ah! Mommy is not buying those plantlets.")







(An ever-so-curious Juan Or walking to and fro, in and out of the maze of fruit plantlets in-polybags.)

In the end, after browsing through the nursery, Mommy bought a pisang emas (RM2), 2 round brinjal (RM1 each) and 2 chilli padi (RM1 each) plantlets - all in all RM6. Shown here are the plantlets which Mommy has already transferred from the polybags to the garden soil.

(Left is round brinjal and right is chilli padi.)






(The pisang emas plantlet.)

After Mommy was done with buying plantlets, Mommy took Juan Or (by some short driving distance) to the "Edible Landscape" - so stay tuned for the next blogpost!

Buffalo Power (Part 3)

Remember how Juan Or came up with his buffalo power or 'kuasa kerbau' (i.e., a sudden gush of physical energy) to hammer using his squeky toy hammer and how finally the hammer broke into two because it could no longer withstand his buffalo power? Well, this time, Juan Or took his buffalo power a step further by pushing the clothes-drying frame to and fro. See how Juan Or's little body churns up the buffalo power needed to do the pushing job!

Handphone Crazy!

Juan Or used to be intrigued (even till now!) to see and touch real handphones. Even the babysitter sometimes has to use her handphone as 'bait' to get him into the mood to drink milk from the bottle. Even Mommy's handphone is not spared. Whenever Juan Or notices Mommy using the handphone to capture his photos or videos, Juan Or will want to have a hand in that. For that matter, Mommy will make sure to shift Juan Or to be seated on a mattress while Juan Or is holding Mommy's handphone - just in case Juan Or drops or throws the handphone, then at least the handphone gets to land on soft surface! And yet giving Juan Or to play with spoilt handphones (or rather liveless handphones!) or even toy handphones does not seem to satisfy his craze for the real thing. Now Juan Or has gone one step further as in using Mommy's computer mouse as his handphone instead! See how this toddler acts with his imagination!

By the way, Juan Or also demanded (but was refused) to hold the conventional telephone's receiver to his ears. He even used an oblong-shaped empty stationery kit to put at his ears as if it was the receiver of the telephone!

Crescent News Book Warehouse Sale (13th-22nd October 2009)

Oooohhh yes, it's the book warehouse sale again! This time, Crescent News is doing it for the second time. The first time was a good warehouse sale with nice, colourful, hard-covered and glossy-page children books at bargain prices (RM3/book)! So finally, Mommy found time to go visit this sale yesterday.

(Not much people going to this sale.)

This time round, the warehouse sale is held at the Kompleks Sukan Kelana Jaya. How is the sale like this time? Well, not much people (Mommy went on the 3rd day of the sale) and on the whole, majority of the books are more expensive than that of the previous one, though there are certain books (but limited) still sold at the same price as the previous one. In terms of variety of books (children books especially!), if you talk about books at bargain prices, then there's not as much variety compared to the previous one. Mommy can NO LONGER find those nice, glossy pages, hard covered, and colourfully illustrated children books at RM3 anymore! :-( Even funnier, some children books here are sold at a way more expensive price compared to MPH Bookstore's normal price. Hhmmm.......Mommy wonders whether Crescent News did any market survey first before price tagging their books for the warehouse sale? Some snippets for you to see:

(These are Brown and Watson books in large print sold at RM19 each. Mommy recall seeing MPH Bookstores selling them cheaper at RM14.90 and at normal price some more!)

(Mommy bought these range of books before in the previous sale. In the previous sale, each was priced at RM5, but now it's RM9!)

(These books are sold at RM79 each, but MPH Bookstore is selling them at RM29.90 and RM39.90 at normal price.)

(This time, Crescent News sells all their Ladybird books at RM6.90 each. But in the previous sale, some Ladybird titles went to as low as RM3 each!)


(If Mommy didn't remember wrongly, the board books to the left side are priced at RM15 each, the right side RM10. The publisher is Dreamland, a publishing company from India, but the photos/pictures of objects are of high quality.)



What about Mommy's purchases? This time, Mommy bought only very little because Juan Or already has lots of books at home. But this time, Mommy bought herself a book. All in all, Mommy spent RM39 only. Here are the bargains books that Mommy bought for Juan Or:





(Two colouring books with word-learning aspect and a paper model book where you tear out the animal parts and shapes in cardboard to build animals, each at RM3.)

(Origami book with step-by-step colour illustrations for RM11, and a large print, hard-covered animal story book for RM6.)

(Dr. Spock's baby and childcare bible, still in plastic wrapper, selling for RM5 only! But sorry, this is the only book left among the disorderly pile of books. The other one is a board story book where children can wipe clean whatever they have coloured with the crayon, for RM5.)

There were certain other things too that went up in price, for example, a PhP Publishing dot-to-dot activity book (with good quality paper pages) sold at RM3 previously, but now at RM5. So the lesson here is if you know this is the first time a company does warehouse sale, then better grab the good deals because chances are, when they do it the subsequent time, the price won't be as good as the first anymore.