Juan Or's Potty Training Updates

It has been a long time since Mommy last wrote updates about Juan Or's potty training. This is a flashback of Juan Or's past chronological history of his potty training:

• 9-10 months old: Knows how to instinctively urinate or pass motion when seated on the potty.
• 12-13 months old: Goes nappy-less during daytime only (but at the babysitter's house only!) and periodically put on potty to urinate to which he did. 

Now Mommy is reporting his updates starting from where Mommy last stopped:

• 13-23 months old: No progress on Mommy's effort to potty train Juan Or as we were still staying in the in-laws' house because in his paternal grandparents' presence, he would refuse to do many essential things such as drink milk, eat solid food and conform to routine schedule. Also if Mommy was to bring the potty training effort to higher levels, Mommy could foresee a lot of reprimanding/scolding on Juan Or which will 100% lead to quarrels with the in-laws as they always go all out to comment or criticize Mommy for going hard on Juan Or. We moved out of the in-laws' house when Juan Or was 23 months old.
• 24-27 months old: Still no progress on Mommy's part to potty train Juan Or as Mommy was still getting used to the routine of staying on our own and at the same time juggling with the most stressful part of Mommy's job, i.e., preparing the documents for programme accreditation renewal from the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).The only insignificant effort that Mommy made was to put him to sit on the toilet bowl (with the kiddy adaptor) when he said he wanted to pass motion, but he was too terrified to sit on the adaptor!
• 28-29 months old: Mommy started to bring potty-training to a higher level whereby Juan Or went diaperless in the daytime when at home. Generally he won't have accidents but he tends to have accidents when Mommy scolded him for something unrelated to potty training. So probably in times of stress, he lost control of the muscles that control urination.By then, Juan Or is also no longer terrified at sitting on the kiddy adaptor on the toilet bowl when passing motion.
• 30-33 months old: Juan Or is already capable of going diaperless without accidents when at home, regardless of whether it's daytime or night, but Mommy dared not let him go diaperless when sleeping through the night. Also when Mommy disciplined him by scolding (and beating), he no longer has accidents. However, when we go for outings, Mommy still put on the diaper for convenience. And just because he had the diaper on (even when at home), he won't bother to tell Mommy that he wants to urinate or pass motion - he would just let it all go into the diaper!
• 33-34 months old (at present): Just because Juan Or had the diaper on, he would just let go without telling. One day, just after changing into a fresh diaper to prepare to sleep, he 'shitted' into the fresh diaper which made Mommy very angry! So Mommy punished him by making him sleep through the night in standing position (but upper part of body was leaning on the side of the bed) and with him still wearing the soiled diaper! Sure enough, the lesson taught him well and from that day onwards, he told Mommy that he wanted to pass motion even though he had the diaper on. Yippy! ^_^
• 34 months old (at present): Mommy decided that it's high time to train him to go diaperless throughout the night. So on the night of 27th March 2011, Juan Or went diaperless. Mommy asked him to go urinate first before sleeping to which he said he had no urine. Mommy remembered checking whether his shorts was wet or not at about 2am, it was not wet, so Mommy went back to sleep. Another check done at 4am and his shorts and the mattress were all wet! Mommy was furious and scolded (and lectured) him repeatedly! Mommy even threatened that should he wet his shorts and mattress again, Mommy would impose the sleep-standing-up punishment on him again. Sure enough, the scolding and threat worked and he didn't wet himself nor the mattress on the nights of 28th and 29th March. He even obliged to go urinate at the toilet bowl when Mommy asked him to. Anyway, on Mommy's part, Mommy also woke him up at approriate intervals to go urinate to which he did, sometimes with fuss, sometimes without fuss. Anyway, Mommy's objective is reached already! Yippy! :-D

 Photo of Juan Or sleeping soundly, diaperless and without any accidents for the first time ever taken on 28th March 2011 at 6.22 am. 





What about his leftover unused diapers? Mommy will now reserve them for outings only (for convenience sake) and also leave some at the in-laws' house since they still have not successfully potty-trained him in their own house.

Snowalk at i-City, Shah Alam

Yesterday, Papa took us to the newly-opened Snowalk at i-City, Shah Alam. Snowalk is a place for visitors to experience snow albeit in a 'synthetic' way. Papa first knew about this from a blog he read and then saw it featured in The Star newspaper in the Metro section.

The moment Juan Or saw the Snowalk building, this was his reaction - fretful and almost crying. By the way, we had not even entered the building, he already reacted like that. Don't know why! *Slap forehead*

The normal price for adult ticket is RM25 and children (from 3 to 12 years) is RM15 inclusive of winter jacket rental, but since this is still the promotional period, the adult ticket costs RM15 and children RM10. Since Juan Or is still under 3 years old, he gets to enter for free and still gets to borrow the winter jacket for free!

Papa tried putting on the winter jacket for Juan Or before we entered, but don't know for what reason, Juan Or refused to put it on! So we thought never mind, let him feel the consequence of his own decision, thus Juan Or entered the snow area in his plain clothes!

The snow place is icy and freezing cold. There are lots of typical Christmas deco structures to see along the way such as snowman, dinosaur, miniature castles and igloo structures made of large  ice blocks, and also pathways for you to ride on a sleigh to slide down the ice. Or if you do not fancy riding on a sleigh, you can merely slide on your buttocks in those miniature castle structures. So how does snow feel like? To Mommy, the synthetic snow felt just like those icy powder sediments you find in a freezer! So for a cheap feel of snow, just open your home freezer and ta-dah!

And as mentioned in previous blogposts before, this boy loves to play with and suck or eat ice cubes. But when he was already face-to-face with ice and snow everywhere, he somehow refused to see or touch anything! Instead he chose to stand there and fret and fret and cry! He even kept on pointing towards the door where we entered to say he wanted to go out!

Papa even went to pull one Spiderman sleigh for him to try but he refused to try it! After that, Papa tried again to put the winter jacket onto him and he still refused so we had no choice but to force it on him with scolding and slapping.

By the way, if you intend to visit this place, Mommy's advice is to make sure you are sufficiently 'equipped' in that preferably you wear socks and shoes rather than slippers and wear whatever cheap gloves you can get hold of such as the gardener's cotton gloves. You know why? Because if you intend to do some sliding on ice, then you can't help having some snow trapped between your feet and the slipper and that's going to give freezing sensation to your feet! Or just in case you need to use your bare hands to help break the fall or slide, your bare hands will have to touch snow or the 'ice powder', that's why it's better to have at least the gardener's gloves over your hands if you don't want to end up spending so much money.....

Anyway, very soon we were out already because Juan Or was fretting so much. He was even terrified by just looking at the life-sized snowman! Once out of the snow place and back at the tropical temperature, he was all smiles again!

Then, neighbouring to the Snowalk, there is a new indoor amusement park. So we went in to have a look. Judging from the look of the amusement play items, we reckoned that probably the amusement park is not yet open for business.

Juan Or saw big horsey arcade games, but don't know why he didn't seem keen to ride on the horse.

There was the basketball type of game....

and guns!

Then there's the machine gun type like Rambo!

There were also very nice, clean and big kiddy rides too, but too bad, that day Juan Or didn't seem to be keen with kiddy rides like these......

.....because there's something even better - something fast and furious! Vroom! Vroom!

Then there were more guns - black gun....

....red gun, ......

....and blue gun! Piang! Piang! Juan Or even went on to point the gun at Mommy and said "Shoot Mama!" and then pointed to Papa and said "Shoot Papa!" *Slap forehead*

Here he was putting the gun back after he was done playing.

Juan Or also enjoyed crossing the 'bridge' that connects the Snowalk and amusement park.

Now he was all smiles walking back to Snowalk!

Now it was time to go back to the car park. See how hot it was outside!

Back to the carpark now, which is just next to the Snowalk building. By the way, parking was free!

Plain Jealousy or Possessiveness?

See this? The leg belongs to Mommy, the big hand on the left belongs to Papa and the small hand on the right belongs to Juan Or.

Sometimes when watching television together at night, Papa shows his affection for Mommy by placing his hand on Mommy's leg (sometimes shoulders). And if Juan Or sees Papa putting his hand on Mommy, Juan Or will angrily push or pull Papa's hand away as if Mommy solely belongs to Juan Or! See this series of photos. Everything happened quickly, so the photos are blurred.

Looks like nobody else can touch Mommy except for Juan Or, not even Papa! ^_^

Call it plain jealousy or possessiveness?

Price News

There are many kinds of news out there - local news, foreign news, sports news, community news, fashion news, celebrity news, entertainment news, you name it! But Mommy is only passionate about one kind of news - price news. Everyday (or almost everyday) except Fridays, Mommy will settle for only The Sun newspaper. Why? Because The Sun is free and is readily available from Mommy's workplace.

However, when it comes to Friday, although The Sun is still available for free, Mommy would rather pay some money to buy The Star newspaper. Why? Because that's the day when all the major hypermarkets have their price news advertised! ^_^ Oh yes, Mommy indeed loves knowing what's going cheap for the weekend! Hehehehe.....call Mommy a hypermarket freak! And if something's going cheap and is useful for us, then Mommy will make every effort to stop by and grab it! ^_^

Same goes for price news booklets that hypermarkets produce, especially by Tesco, Giant and Carrefour,  and occasionally Central, Econsave and Hero. Whenever Mommy stops by any of these, Mommy is sure to take one to browse if still available.

Lately, someone else has also inherited Mommy's passion for price news.

Of course Mommy's price news revolves around groceries, but for a little person like Juan Or? It's TOYS! Yes, Juan Or loves browsing the Toys R'Us price news! ^_^

Juan Or at the Norwegian Food Fair

Yesterday, Papa decided to go and see one Norwegian Food Fair after reading one food blog about it. Guess where is the fair? It's at Empire Shopping Gallery, roughly neighbouring Subang Parade!

We parked at Carrefour Subang (otherwise where else has free parking!?), took a walk in front of Subang Parade and crossed some major corssroads before reaching Empire. Still it was pretty early when we reached there because most of the tenants were not opened yet - still another 10 to 15 minutes' wait before 10am, so we loitered at a bench first while Juan Or played hide-and-seek of sorts with Mommy at one F&B tenant's chairs and table.

Along the way, Mommy caught sight of this interesting tube structure - turned out to the longest indoor slide. But of course to slide in it, you need to reach a certain minimum height, plus pay for the ticket. One notice indicated that the ticket fee is half-price on the 1st of every month, however there's no indication at the ground floor on how much is the ticket price.

When the clock striked 10, we walked over to the Norwegian Food Fair's booth. First and foremost, we were greeted by the hole-in-the-face life-sized picture of a Norwegian couple in traditional costume. So Juan Or and Mommy tried it. Looks funny and odd, huh!

We also posed in front of the Norwegian flag and 'house'.

Then along the way, Juan Or seemed keen to run away to other neighbouring tenants, so Mommy had to chase and bring him back again. Unbeknown to Mommy, Papa had taken a shot of us coming back to the 'true path'.  This shot really made Juan Or and Mommy look like shopping kakis (hats)! ^_^

At the food fair section, the main attraction was the selling of Norwegian frozen seafood such as salmon, cod, blue mackeral, shrimp and crab. Some of these seafood were sold in vacuum-packed marinated form. Mommy remember reading about this Norwegian food fair at The Star Metro section on Saturday (19th March 2011) and the article did mention about the frozen seafood sold at bargain prices. So are they really a bargain? In Mommy's opinion, they are definitely not! For example, a 200g vacuum-packed frozen salmon fillet (non-marinated) costs RM12, i.e., RM60 per kg - that's exorbitant! In comparison, a salmon slice in Tesco costs RM24.90 per kg during promotion and in one TC Boy Warehouse Sale last year, a 700g to 800g piece of imported salmon fillet (frozen, vacuum-packed) costs RM27 only. Other than frozen seafood on sale, there were Norwegian breads and bread premixes for sale too but Mommy didn't take a close look. In one section of the booth, you can see one staff cutting the bread into small pieces. You think they are preparing free samples of the bread for people to try? Nah, you have to buy them to try! Cheh!


Putting aside the food fair, there was also a section in the booth where photos of places, people, scenes and scenaries of Norway are displayed - something like a "To know Norway is to Love Norway" expo kind of thing.

These are some of Juan Or's favourite things....

.....the waterfall     and.....

.....the  choo-choo train!


Before leaving the Norwegian food fair booth, Mommy managed to take some free recipe booklets and leaflets for cooking salmon fish. Yippy, even if Mommy had nothing to buy from the booth, at least there's still something to take and keep for future reference!

Since we still had a lot of time left before lunch time, Papa and Mommy took Juan Or to his favourite place - Toys R'Us! Mommy then took the opportunity to enquire from the customer service counter how much points were collected thus far and to Mommy's delight, it was 814 points and that entitled Mommy to have RM30 worth of vouchers to redeem (RM10 voucher for 250 points)! Woo-hoo!  You may then be thinking that Mommy had spent RM814 previously to buy toys, right? Wrong, Mommy had only spent RM254.50 so far buying toys from Toys R'Us. So how did Mommy do it? Actually Mommy made use of windows of opportunities. One was when Mommy made use of Standard Chartered's credit card cash rebate promotion that gives RM188 rebate upon first swipe of any amount transaction. Second was when Mommy got 3X points when purchasing something from a new Toys R'Us outlet in IOI Mall. The best part was that Mommy made use of those windows of opportunities simultaneously to reap the maximum benefit possible! ^_^

Juan Or had a jolly good time at Toys R'Us. Mommy asked him to pose next to this life-sized Ben10 hero (his current favourite cartoon character), but don't know why, he refused. *Shake head*

Then there's also this Lego corner for children to play.

When we came out from the toy store, Juan Or did not fret to want to stay on unlike in other toy departments in Jusco previously. What does this mean? It simply means he had seen and played to his heart's content already! ^_^


You may then be wondering what Mommy bought using the RM30 voucher? Here it is - the 65th Anniversary celebration edition Thomas train set selling for retail price of RM89.90. Mommy knows this set is pretty expensive and no discounts are given even during Jusco sales. Also, Mommy has never seen this set on sale before in Litt Tak's Warehouse Sale all these years. So this is good opportunity to make use of the vouchers to get it for a cheaper price! Anyway, it's to add to Mommy's collection as well! ^_^

Once back home, this was how Juan Or played with it.....crash, boom, bang.....fall down! If you have watched Thomas and Friends in Mistry Island Rescue before, Juan Or actually wanted to simulate one scene where Diesel unintentionally pushed the jovi logs to the edge of an unfinished track and they all fell into the river.

If you are a train model enthusiast, this 65th Anniversary edition features an interesting passenger coach.....

.....that can be opened up to fit in Sir Topham Hat!

Hehehehe.....another addition to Juan Or and Mommy's choo-choo train collection! ^_^