Back to nature - KL Bird Park

On Sunday, we decided to do something different for a change. Instead of visiting shopping malls with air conditioners, we decided to go back to nature. My sister recommended bringing Hayley to the KL Bird Park located in Lake Gardens.

The park is open from 9am to 6pm daily (including public holidays) and the entrance fee for adult is RM15 (with Mykad) and you will get an additional RM5 discount if you have a Jusco card (each card gets RM5 discount). The entrance fee for kids from 3 - 12 years old is RM6 (with MyKid) and for toddlers below 3 years its free. Go to KL Bird Park for location map and other infor.

I have to say that I am not a fan of local tourist destinations but I found myself rather impressed with the bird park. I expect birds to be locked up in cages or sleeping or only a few birds were displayed but it was totally the opposite.

The moment we walked in we could see and touch birds (touch if you dare :-)). There were all sorts of birds being displayed, some in cages and some roamed free. Hayley enjoyed it as much as we did.

The bird park is pretty huge and for us to walk the entire park and only stopping to admire selective birds, it still took us almost 2 hours! If you are there at 12.30pm or 3.30pm, you can also catch some bird shows at the amphitheatre. There is also a playground nearby the amphitheatre for little kids to run about.

The place is quite fun for little kids and adults. If you're hungry, there is also a restaurant that you can visit and a couple of stalls selling drinks, ice creams and snacks along the way. There is also a booth where you can take photos with the birds but of course you have to pay for this separately.

I would say we all enjoyed ourselves very much that day. And if you do choose to go, I highly recommend that you wear comfortable clothes and shoes and bring lots of cold water :-).

My best friend joined the club

My best friend finally gave birth to her little girl yesterday, about 8 days late. She endured pretty long hours of labour pains, induced around 7am and gave birth around 8pm (do the maths!) and did it all without any epidural. And guess what she said to me after that 'there will be no second one, CONFIRMED'. Ha ha ha that made me laugh. It sounds so familiar. Didn't we all say that when we first have our babies and the next thing you know we're all planning for the second one.

Although I had mine via c-sec in the end, I also endured 2 hours of contraction pains. I too swore back then that I will NOT go through this again. It was just too painful...

15 months later, here I am thinking of when to plan for the second.. haha. I am sure she will say the same a few months down the road.. let's wait and see :-)

Updates: much faster than I thought. She told me today (her little girl was 2 weeks old) that she was thinking of having a 2nd one.. hahaha LOL.

Air-ro-plan

At 15 months, that was how my little girl pronounced aeroplane when she saw one in the sky. And you bet I was dead impressed. Yet another new word! :-)

A somewhat crappy weekend and Mother's Day

Papa and I have been planning to host a steamboat dinner at home for my family and we finally decided to host it on Saturday, the eve of Mother's Day. We were excited and got everything prepared the night before and were looking forward to have my mom, sisters and kids around.

Unfortunately, Hayley came down with fever on Saturday afternoon. She refused to finish her porridge during lunch, her first signal to me that something was wrong which I didn't pick up. I thought she was just being naughty. Then we went out for a while and she was quiet and sleepy in the car, her second signal to me which again I didn't pick up. I thought she was sleepy as it was close to her nap time.

When we got home, she vomitted. That was an obvious signal. Immediately I took her temperature (although her body didn't feel warm) and she had a fever! We quickly fed her some fever medicine. From then on she was very clingy, grouchy and lethargic. She wasn't like that when she had fever when she was younger. She would still play and eat although she was running a fever. Now it was different. She look sick with watery eyes, runny nose and red lips. The scariest part was that she only wants to be carried, will only sleep with me or the papa cuddling her and refused to drink her milk! She only had like 12 ounches throughout the whole day and vomitted twice. Thankfully she loves bread and we tried to give her as much bread as possible.

Despite her conditions we still went ahead with the steamboat dinner as we do not want to disappoint anyone. Mom arrived slightly early to help prepare while I concentrate on attending to Hayley. Thankfully she was slightly better in the evening when her cousins arrived. Although she wasn't being herself fully, she was able to play and interact with her cousins and papa and I managed to eat peacefully while she played.

After everyone left later in the night, we fed Hayley her medicine and put her to bed. Her fever ranges from 37.5 - 38.9 the whole day, the highest reading taken in the middle of the night. If it touches 39, I would have freaked out. She couldn't sleep properly and woke up a couple of times crying and had to be carried to our bed to sleep on my chest. She often asked for her 'kut kut' ie water which we were more than happy to give.

Her fever continued to Sunday with the reading going up and down. I had to sponge her a couple of times when it went pretty high. The fever medicine Bifen (orange in colour) wasn't working that well too. Usually her fever would subside 30 mins after taking fever medicine and would only return 4 - 6 hours later but this time it didn't subside. Then we tried to give her another fever medicine called Dhamol (pink in colour). She dislike Dhamol and vomitted the moment we gave her the first sip. We had no choice but to continue with Bifen. Papa and I decided that if she didn't get any better come evening, we will bring her to the hospital.

With the fever, we continued to feed her with milk, fruits, bread, steam sweet potatoes and lots of water. She vomitted once (when we gave her Dhamol) and was showing improvements in the evening. We were slightly relieved.

The fever finally subsided at night. We gave her the last dose of medicine before bedtime (just in case) and that was it. This morning although the fever gone, she still had teary eyes and looked tired and lethargic. We decided to bring her to the clinic just in case. The paeditrician said although no sign of fever her throat was slightly red and there were some very mild spots/rashes (not yet showing and honestly I can't even see it) on her body. She suspected it was some form of a viral fever. She gave us oranged flavoured Paracetamol and flu medicine just in case. The bill came up to RM59, for a peace of mind!

As I was writing this, happy to say that the fever didn't return and she was back to drinking her usual amount of milk. Although she still looked pretty tired, she played and was back to being her naughty self. That was a clear sign that she is recovering :-)

That was how I spent my Crappy Mother's Day :-(. At home the whole time, worried sick about my little girl and not getting enough sleep!

On a separate note, when we got to the clinic, the nurses weighed her and measured her height. To my biggest disappointment, she gained only 0.07kg and 4cm in 2 months! I am quite happy with the height but utterly disappointed with the weight. I do feed her a lot on weekends and the babysitter confirmed the same for weekdays so I don't know what happened to all the food she ate?!

Muruku v Hayley

To my shocking horror, when I picked up Hayley from the babysitter yesterday evening, she was holding on to a piece of muruku, biting and sucking it! My God! A 14 month old eating muruku!

I was so shocked I didn't know what to say or how to react. I have told the babysitter many times not to introduce junk food or anything unhealthy to Hayley, especially not at such tender age. I wouldn't mind introducing them when she was 18 months or better still 24 months but definitely not at 14 months!

And what about choking? Muruku is pretty hard and with only 4 incisors teeth, no way she can chew that piece of thing. I am so so so upset. I have said what I needed to say, I have instructed enough but yet she still prefers to do things her way. And her argument is that we need to introduce varieties to toddlers else they will be picky eater and she said whenever she gave her food, she will watch her eat and make sure she doesn't choke. Harlo, have you not heard of ACCIDENTS?! sigh..

At that moment in time, I wish I was a SAHM so I can look after my little girl by myself. Feed her with only the healthiest stuff.

Don't get me wrong, the babysitter is a great person and she loves Hayley to bits and Hayley is very attached to her. I feel safe when sending Hayley to her in the morning and that assurance is very important to me. Although I do not agree to some of her old fashion babysitting culture, I have to admit that she's doing a good job overall. I guess it will be hard to find someone perfect so I will just have to close one eye on this and continue to nicely tell her not to feed my baby with junk food and hopefully one day she will come to her senses!

Samseng Yew

My girl has a new nickname now, Samseng :-)

Photo 1: Mummy, look! (I forgot what she was pointing at)
Photo 2: Oh, I so have to get it
Photo 3: I have to get out of this chair, oh no my leg got stuck
Photo 4: Oh great, now my butt got stuck
Photo 5: Oh never mind, take a rest first, tired la...

~lol~

I just found out about Photoscape, a free online photo editing software that made the above possible. Just simply do a google search and you'll find it :-).

Another hair trim by our very own home stylist

My little girl's hair (although very little and very fine) is getting pretty long especially her fringe. With such hot weather, we decided to give her a little trim yesterday evening. And guess who did the trimming? The papa of course :-)

Hayley's very first official hair cut (exclude the one where we made her 'botak' after she turned 1 month old) was about 3 months ago right after CNY. We brought her to the neighbourhood salon, nothing fancy and it cost us RM3. She wasn't pleased with the towel around her shoulder and with a stranger touching her head and hair. Although she didn't cry back then, she fusses a lot. It made the simple process rather difficult. In the end we only managed to trim the back.

This time we decided to do it ourselves since we're only planning to trim the fringe. I carried her while the papa held the comb and the scissors. To our surprise, Hayley find the cutting sound funny. She kept giggling and laughing as we happily trim along. Although we're not professionals, we're pretty happy with the results and we have to agree that she looks pretty cute with the short and uneven fringe. :-)

At the request of my sister, this is how she looks now:

A weekend back in papa's kampung

Over the long weekend we decided to bring Hayley back to her papa's kampung (ie village, hometown) for the very first time. We normally would go back to papa's kampung for CNY but since I was about the deliver Hayley in 2008, we didn't make the trip back and in 2009 parents in law decided to visit us in KL instead. Read about it here.

The journey back to papa's kampung will take about 3 hours drive but since it was a long holiday there were more traffic on the highway than usual and the journey took an extra 40 mins :-(. Hayley napped for about 2 hours in the car and for the remaining hours she either stared out the window, played with her dog or played with her Elmo remote control. There were hardly any fuss.

When we got home, grandma greeted us at the door. She was thrilled to see Hayley again and Hayley was thrilled with the new house and environment. She wasn't afraid or shy. The moment she reached the house she started exploring. The first thing we showed her were chickens and rooster! We've got a couple of 'kampung chickens' in the backyard. I've heard of a joke where a mother asked her little boy to draw the picture of a chicken and the little boy drew a drumstick and I didn't want that to happen to Hayley! I guess we can't blame the kids nowadays as they hardly have the chance to see a real chicken. Chickens in the books are either represented with a drumstick or a headless chicken that looks like a turkey. I am glad we managed to expose Hayley with real chickens this time.

Hayley was excited to see them and she will often make her way to the backyard (on her own)whenever the door was left open.

We spent a night in grandma's house and grandpa came back from hunting in the evening to spend sometime with Hayley. Both grandma and grandpa commented that Hayley is very active and playful just like papa when he was a baby. Grandpa also adds that papa likes to pick up rubbish from the floor and put them into his mouth when he was a baby too just like Hayley. I guess I know who to blame yet again.. hehe

Grandma also added that she is not capable to look after such an active baby anymore at her age. I take that as an obvious hint.. haha. As grandma's house is not childproof, we have to pay more attention to Hayley. As grandpa manages plantations and hunts as a hobby, there were lots of dangerous stuff lying around the house which Hayley likes to touch :-(

Ah emr (papa's brother's wife) cooked delicious dinner for us that night. We even have bird's nest for supper :-)

While in grandma's house, Hayley slept with us on the mattress (on the floor) for the 1st time. The night were tough as she woke a couple of times and fell from the mattress once. I had to pat her gently to put her back to sleep each time. I guess we have to wait a few more months before we can transition her from the cot onto her own bed.

We also bathe Hayley for the first time using showers instead of a bath tub. Happy to say that she accepted this transition pretty well. She was fine when we washed her hair and showered the water directly onto her head. She did try to fend off the water running down her face but she didn't make any fuss :-).

We left papa's kampung the following day. We left around 4pm which coincides with Hayley's nap time. Again she napped for about 1.5 hours in the car on the way back. But this time we were not as lucky. Instead of staring out the window or playing with her dog, she demanded to be carried. She kept saying 'pau pau' (carry as in Mandarin). I tried to distract her with toys but failed. Then I ignored her and she cried softly for several minutes. We did not pick her up from the car seat until we got home. We decided to persevere to make sure she knows the rules.

We got home around 7pm and were dead tired. We all slept early that night inlcuding papa (which was rare). We were happy to make the journey back and to meet with grandma, grandpa, aunty, uncle and cousins.