Dutch Lady's Disney Hoopla! Roadshow at Jusco 1 Utama Shopping Centre

The centre stage of the Dutch Lady's Disney Hoopla! Roadshow

Of late, Mommy noticed that Dutch Lady has been advertising her Disney Hoopla! Roadshow in The Star newspaper, mentioning that the event is held from 21st November to 6th December 2009 in Jusco 1 Utama Shopping Centre (of course the roadshow was or will be held in AEON Seberang Prai, AEON Tebrau City and AEON Bukit Tinggi Klang). Dutch Lady also promises games and fun, plus a chance to win exciting prizes. Mommy, as usual, became curious about this event, so urged Papa to take us there on the Sunday that has just passed.

Turned out the main objective is to sell Dutch Lady 123 and 456 growing up milk powder plus other Disney Playhouse merchandise such as toys, school bags, feeding sets and stuff like that. The Dutch Lady 123 and 456 milk powder was sold at RM19.50 per pack of 1 kg - not the cheapest though! And to encourage people to buy something from the roadshow, Dutch Lady came up with this so-called interactive game(s) where you will have to purchase at least RM20 of Dutch Lady products in order to earn a 'Game Card' to qualify you to participate in their interactive game (Mommy saw some labyrinth-like structure which is most likely the setting for the interactive game). And if you purchase RM30 of Dutch Lady products, then you will earn a 'Game Card' plus a free photography shoot. One 'Game Card' only allows a one time participation in the interactive game. At the time Papa, Juan Or and Mommy were there, no game nor activity was going on yet.

While hanging around the roadshow area, Papa and Mommy managed to snap some photos of Juan Or together with his favourite Disney character, Mickey Mouse and then with a host of other decorative characters. However, Juan Or just couldn't keep still, so some photos turned out blur.

This levelling machine kiddy ride is just outside the borders of the roadshow. Juan Or managed to sneak some fun still-rides in it and later refused to come out!

Shortly after seeing the roadshow, we went window shopping with Juan Or sitting on the shopping cart. Not long after that (in less than just 30 minutes!), Juan Or already showed signs of tiredness, but luckily he wasn't fretting. Luckily Juan Or knew how to adapt himself by resting his head on the shopping cart's bar and enjoying the bumpy feeling as Mommy pushed the cart on the tile flooring!

This sideview photo was captured on Papa's handphone camera.

This top view was captured on Mommy's handphone camera.

So, in the end, did Mommy buy anything from the roadshow? Answer is no, main reason is because Mommy has already stocked up 12 packets of Dutch Lady 123 bought earlier (about 1 month plus ago) for RM17.99 per pack from Carrefour. And because of some hoo-haa issues later on by Juan Or's grandparents about wanting him to fully drink Pediasure instead of Dutch Lady 123, so the Dutch Lady stock is now left untouched in the storeroom. Anyone to help Mommy clear the stock? Hehehehe. The expiry date is in February 2011.

Buying Books for Juan Or (Again!) at the Big Bad Wolf Books Warehouse Sale

Today, Mommy made a trip to the Big Bad Wolf Books Warehouse Sale at the Amcorp Mall, Petaling Jaya. This was Mommy's first trip there on the 5th day of the sale. Why only go on the 5th day? Because Mommy has heard stories about the extremely big turnout (and crowd!) on the first day itself (and the subsequent days throughout the long weekend), and Mommy no longer has the energy to be one among the crowd.

Although Big Bad Wolf had just opened for the day, there were quite a large number of people there already, but not crowded though. This time, book arrangement was organized into categories such as children, self-help, novels and business (unlike last time where there was no such indication). The magazine section was sort of independent (even though it is still under Big Bad Wolf's jurisdiction) where you will have to pay for it first before taking it with you as you continue to browse the book section. Magazines of Year 2009 are sold at RM5 and Year 2008 at RM3. Paperback novels are sold at RM8, some hardcover ones even at RM5!



As for children section, Mommy guessed most of the good baby/toddler/young children books were all taken up already. What was left were mostly books for older children (ages 8-16) sold for RM8 per book. The only baby/toddler books left were some tab board books sold at RM5 per book, but Mommy didn't buy them because Juan Or already has lots of board books at home. There was also a set of bilingual (English-Chinese) picture dictionary/vocabulary books for young children (ages 4-8) sold for RM3 per book (very cheap!), to which Mommy bought everything in that series. Mommy also saw two books sold at RM2 each which are more like social studies text books for Singaporean school children. Mommy was very tempted to buy them because of the nice presentation, beautiful and sharp photographs, the level of English is very suitable for upper primary school children and the contents serve as good general knowledge about Singapore, but Mommy finally decided against buying them as they are not too relevant for Juan Or now or even in the future because the facts in them may be obsolete by the time Juan Or is ready to read them!



Now, what's missing this time? Mommy can't see any cheap colouring books on sale this time. The only colouring book (coupled with an activity pad) sold was Uncle Horton's (those Dr. Seuss type of series) at RM10, which is not very cheap. Last time, Mommy saw Open Season colouring book sold for RM2, Open Season full colour story book for very young children sold at RM2 and some cartoon/movie character annual book (hardcover) sold at RM5. But this time, the Pokemon annual book which Mommy saw also in last time's sale is sold at RM8 instead! This time, Mommy also can't see any parenting books on sale, but Mommy could be wrong because Mommy didn't have much time to browse thoroughly. As for children's hardcover books, Big Bad Wolf is selling them for RM8 each - reasonably cheap, though not the cheapest Mommy has ever encountered (the cheapest was Crescent Warehouse Sale at RM3 per book).



Here's what Mommy bought for Juan Or (purchases are in view of usage in another 8 to 10 years ahead...hehehehe!):

Mickey and Minnie Mouse vibrating plush toys-cum-cloth books, each for RM8. These are the last units that Mommy managed to grab.

Each at RM3.

These 8 thin books are sold in a set for RM8 (in other words, RM1 per book). The contents are simple stories in large print for very young readers.





Each at RM8, all are hardcover books except for 'Good English'. The 'Anita Cooking With Love' title is for Mommy, all others are for Juan Or.




'The Scientist' and 'Scientific American' imported magazines (left side top and bottom) for Mommy's reading, each at RM5, books at right side are for Juan Or. Top right is RM5, and bottom right are RM1 each.

Updates on Child Nutrition and Health Seminar (Part 4)

This is a continuation from the previous parts: Parts 1, 2 and 3.

3. 3rd speaker - Associate Professor Dr. Zalilah Mohd. Shariff (Head of the Dept. of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia) on "Parental Feeding Styles and Child Nutritional Status - What Do We Know?" Dr. Zalilah shared about how the development of young children's eating behaviour is mostly influenced by parents because parents are children's most immediate environment. And it is this environment provided by parents (i.e., the parental feeding styles) that may impact children's energy, nutrient intakes and consequently their weight. Research on parental feeding styles and their relation to children nutritional status can help in developing appropriate strategies to modify ineffective parental feeding styles and to promote more adaptive feeding styles. Some interesting points mentioned during her talk:

• How do parents influence their children's diet? They are through (i) availability and access to food; (ii) own eating style; (iii) food modelling; (iv) mealtime behaviour; (v) meal structure; (vi) nutrition knowledge; (vii) food socialization behaviour; and (viii) feeding practices.
• The 5 main classes of parental feeding practices are: (i) restriction i.e., limit child's intake or access to the food; (ii) pressure i.e., increase child's food intake; (iii) monitoring i.e., keep track of food consumed by child; (iv) emotional i.e., food given to comfort child; and (v) instrumental i.e., food given as reward.
• Parenting styles, however, can be classified into 5 types, according to Baumrind (1967, 1971): (i) authoritative (high in both control and warmth); (ii) authoritarian (high in control but low in warmth); (iii) permissive (low in control but high in warmth); (iv) indulgent (low in control but high in warmth); and (v) neglect (low in both control and warmth).
• Parenting actually has no direct correlation to children's weight. It is only through the genes that it is directly correlated.
• Galloway et al. (2006) found that children who received less pressure to eat would eat more when they are pressured, and that children tend to give negative responses when pressured to eat.
• Another study found that the more you restrict snack food, the more likely the child will eat it behind your back!
• Higher parental pressure to eat is more likely to result in food pickiness.
• Parental pressure to eat is inversely associated with child's weight (so does that explain why the more Mommy wants Juan Or to drink milk, the more underweight he becomes!?)
• Restrictive feeding is positively linked to child's weight.
• An observation on cultural difference in feeding practices: Aussie parents tend to be more restrictive than Hispanic and African American parents.
• There is no known differential feeding practices between boys and girls.
• Dr. Zalilah urged parents to not to focus on 'WHAT' to feed children, instead they should focus on 'HOW' to feed children.
• Although parents do their responsibilities by selecting and buying food , preparing and presenting food for their children in the best way possible and doing things like that, however, at the end of the day, it is still the child's responsibility to decide how much to eat and whether to eat or not! (Hint: so we as parents should not feel too disheartened or guilty when we have tried all we can to get our children to eat, yet in the end, they didn't eat! ^ ^)

Stay tuned for Part 5!

Juan Or's Home-made Baby Walker

Actually, Mommy never thought about this before but after seeing Juan Or doing it, then only did it strike Mommy's mind about this baby product:

(picture courtesy of Pram Centre)

Mommy has never really thought of this baby product to be useful. To Mommy, the main thing is for the baby or toddler to push the toy as he/she walks. And of course to add more functionality to the product, the manufacturer adds buttons and levers and keys to spice things up for the baby/toddler. Of late, Mommy noticed Juan Or making use of chairs to push here and there. That was how Mommy realized that such product is made to imitate such typical toddler actions. The only difference is that the product makes the whole thing look more baby-friendly and nice whereas the 'home-made' version doesn't look nice and can even appear to be 'dangerous' in the eyes of super-protective parents/care-givers.

Here's Juan Or's home-made version of baby walker:

Juan Or has also come up with the 'terbalik' (opposite) version as well!

So, Mommy's conclusion is: Children's imagination is limitless. Anything can be made into a toy (which can be dangerous sometimes!) and adults often make use of children's imaginative ideas to come up with new baby products/toys and make money from them! ^ ^

Trip to Seremban Lake Garden

On the Sunday that has just passed, Juan Or's sleeping and waking time-table became a little different, so by 8am plus, Juan Or was all set to go for outing (the norm is that Juan Or is only ready by near 10am). Because the time was still early (which is rare nowadays), Papa and Mommy decided to take a joyride trip to Seremban (so that the trip is sufficiently long without stopping to enable Juan Or to have a good nap in the car). So along the way, Juan Or slept for 50 minutes, then woke up and by then, we had reached Mantin (we took the old road). Actually, the thought of going to Seremban Lake Garden was Mommy's spontaneous idea upon reaching Seremban. Originally we didn't plan to stop anywhere in Seremban except for lunch in a restaurant! So finally, we reached the Seremban Lake Garden and Mommy found the garden to be more beautiful than the park at Bukit Jalil (except for one dilapidated spectator sitting place) . Here are some snapshots capturing Juan Or enjoying himself there:

A portion of the garden leading to the fountain.

Juan Or at the fountain area and Papa was busy taking photos of Juan Or (while Mommy was doing the same also.)

This naughty little Juan Or loves to play with water!

Walking with Papa.

Juan Or was caught rubbing his hands onto the wet and dirty concrete garden bench. "Juan Or, are you trying to help the Seremban town council do some clean-up job!?"




The more Mommy said no to Juan Or for rubbing his hands on the dirty surface, the more Juan Or wanted to do on purpose! Mommy's teaser boy!






Another scene of the garden.



Father and son.



Another scene of the garden, this time with a shaded bridge going across the lake.




Juan Or was caught in the act of trying to pluck the leaves of the decorative plants alongside the bridge.



Another father and son scene. Juan Or was seen walking around happily on the bridge.





Juan Or was looking up at Mommy as Mommy was snapping this photo.

After spending about 40 minutes at the garden, Papa and Mommy decided to go to the restaurant for lunch (although it was only about 11.20 am), about just in time before Juan Or was expected to become sleepy again. So we headed to Sikamat (a mukim in Seremban) for Restaurant Min San (this restaurant has been frequented ages ago by Papa's side of family whenever visiting relatives in Seremban).

Min San Restaurant

This was how Juan Or occupied himself while waiting for food - by biting on the sauce plate!

Here's what Papa ordered:

Pork in don't-know-what sauce

Prawn (medium-sized) in curry with lemony taste.

Sweet potato leaves in sambal belacan (has pieces of pork lard in it).


How about the price? Very cheap, only RM29.10! Prawn dish was RM12, pork was RM8, vegetable was RM5, the rest were 2 plates of rice and a teapot of Chinese tea. No tax or service charge involved. Taste-wise? Moderate to good.