Sunday, July 15, 2012

The third fun weekend - The Lake Garden is bigger than our house and she loves it

The 17mo toddler was restless - she had been cooped up in the house for most of the day and because the house is just a 900sqf box, she couldn't run as much as she wants.

So guess where we brought her for a run? Yup, none other than the lovely Lake Garden :)

Yeay! The field is bigger than my house!

Sometimes I wonder whether I was in the right frame of mind when I decided to go ahead with the MBA when I knew I was pregnant - if I could go back, I would tell my child-less self that I would suck as a mother. Good mothers bring their children for swimming, shopping, playing at the playground, not cooped up at home finishing homework and assignments, and dragging their toddler to group assignment meetings. I may excel with flying colors in studies, but I fail miserably at being a mom :(

This semester break? I made it up, and score countless brownie points in Khayla's book. We brought her to the Aquaria a couple of weeks ago, then last week we brought her to play at the indoor play area at Paradigm Mall and watch her first movie (Ice Age 4, and 10 minutes later she dozed off because the cinema was dark and cold).

How little Khayla must have enjoyed her weekends because she always wakes up earlier than usual.

So back to Lake Garden story. We were fortunate to find a parking space to park our not so compact car anymore. The moment Khayla got off the car, she was already heading towards the playground and pointing at the swings! Oooh... how she loves the baby swing!

Giggling excitedly, she rocked back and forth as we pushed the swing higher and higher. Her eyes lit up with happiness - watching her adoring her swing moments made me feel, 'That ugly scar from the C-sec, sore nipples, and 10kg gain from the pregnancy? Oh yeah, totally worth it!'

We also took her to play the baby slides, and she was an expert at pushing herself down the slide, then scrambling up to climb the slide again.

Tired of the playground, we wandered off to the park and the baby-Daddy team started to run down the jogging track while I pushed the stroller. This girl puzzled me. She ate maybe 2 spoonfuls of rice, which she ate one grain at a time but heck, the way she sprinted off like an Energizer bunny, where did that extra energy came from???

I think we must have walked for a half a kilometer, before both Daddy and baby plonked themselves on the curb for a short while - then she spotted the fountain. Shrieking excitedly, she was up and running towards the fountain! Another baby copied her action - wow, babies must have love fountains.

We reached an open field, and since the day was nice and not too hot, we decided to bring along a mat which we spread on the ground under a tree. Then I went off to buy some ice creams, snacks and a drink for both of us while Khayla was already sipping on her Dutch Lady chocolate drink.

It was a joy sitting there having our tea while watching other families playing soccer, badminton and frisbee. After a while, Khayla decided to explore the field and the two love of my life went to explore the bridge across the field.

We spent about an hour at the field, and Khayla had fun wandering the field and even playing a balloon which a kind lady had given to her. At one time, she was picking up the balloon when she fell on it belly down and for one second, I was filled with horror that the balloon will explode. Instead, she rolled off the balloon onto the ground on her back - looking stunned, like, 'What just happened?!'

But eventually she did burst the balloon and then the picnic was over.

I am looking forward to plan the next weekend. Btw, Khayla added more to her nonsense vocab this week - and she was endlessly babbling in her own language.

It goes like this - AMIAMIAMICHIWOWO!CHIWOWO!AMIAMIIIIII! So Internet, AMIAMIAMI! (I sure hope she doesn't mean she wants to go to Miami).

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Cloth Diaper Story

Khayla is now 18 months old. She drinks a lot of milk. She pees a lot. Suddenly, I find that the cloth diaper is leaking!

o_O

But I like being the super Earth-friendly mommy! I don't mind washing her cloth diapers, because it just needs rinsing and then thrown into the washing machine for the rest. And we save 2 diapers (disposable ones) a day, minimum.

Plus, she doesn't have red rashes on her private area due to prolonged exposure to her urine whenever she wears the cloth diaper.

So for a few months my not-so-Earth-friendly hubby refused to put on cloth diapers on Khayla. Instead, it's only reserved for swimming activity. But for wearing in the house, especially at the prospect of accidents as Khayla likes to sit in his lap, he's not so keen on that.

So I look and look for the solution.

And I found it.

Turns out I just need to put an extra insert in the diaper. Wearing two inserts means she can play, run, waddle, climb and sit in our lap without the danger of leaking cloth diaper.

\O/

Success!

So for the second baby, I am aiming to have at least 20 cloth diapers and 10 extra inserts so we can save a lot on disposable diapers not just for the second one, but also for Khayla.

Last week, I tried out their online store to order two CDs and biodegradable diaper liner (because a newborn does not wet the diaper that much, but they pee and poo frequently). The service is quite fast. Within 2 days, I received my order.

I'm also wearing Lunatots Suri Pantyliner, which is their cloth pantyliners during my pregnancy due to leukorrhea. Not only it makes me more comfortable, I don't have to worry about running out of stock of pantyliners as I did last time. And it dries fast! :) I have four of them yet I don't run out of it even though I wear it daily.

Two thumbs up to Lunatots!

Not in the best of health...

*snott... snooottttt*

*cough cough*

*SNOOTTTTTTTTTTT....*

My body is under invasion. This sly creature called virus have sneakily entered my body and take over my immune system. All my white cells have abandoned their posts and rush to the most important part of my body - my baby. So, that leaves me all alone - vulnerable to the ambush attack launched by the virus.

*more groans and coughing*

So off I went to a clinic after work. I almost peed coughing while waiting for my turn to see the doctor.

The result - 2 days sick leave!

Have been spending the two days at home recuperating (sleeping). And since I felt bored yesterday, I requested that Khayla spent her time today at home with me.

Excuse me, time for our afternoon nap.

Sunday, July 01, 2012

Almost 4 months later and I'm BACK!

First of all, I didn't mean to abandon my blog for so long. I have several good reasons, see. In no particular order at all:

1. I'm busy with work-study-family. When I'm not attending evening classes, I'm looking after my little tot who is growing more and more precocious by the day.

2. I'm hit by writer's block - my writing skill has been reduced to 'BORING' that in the midst of writing a sentence, I yawned and then immediately clicked 'Save draft', and never opened it again.

3. My Samsung netbook monitor went kaput when it tumbled along the very rough terrain of a remote area in Sarawak while I was on a working trip there. The only way I could use the netbook is to hook it up to the big monitor in the study room. So it's not mobile anymore which then cramped my writing mood even more.

4. I got pregnant again.

Eh? You must be wondering. Why I always use same excuse 'I'm pregnant'? First of all. That part about being pregnant is 100% true, Alhamdulillah. It happened almost 4 months ago, which coincides with the last entry I posted on this blog.

In between March and July, I was so crazy sick with nausea and non-stop vomiting that I could not even get up, let alone think of what to write on my blog. It was a miracle that I managed to finish my semester and scored an A- in one of my paper.

Ahem. Enough excuses. Let's now move forward.

We are currently enjoying our semester break - hubby has dropped his intention to take the short semester because the subject he wanted to take turned out to be boring and full of assignments. So suddenly we found ourselves with a lot of time to occupy during the weekends (yes!).

This weekend kicked off with swimming activity in the morning. You see, my boss' daughter-in-law recently gave birth and her labour was really fast and easy. My boss told us that she was an avid swimmer during her pregnancy. That made me thought, why don't I start now as well so that I could also have an easy birth experience?

So off we went for an enjoyable session of playing in the pool (since nobody swim in the morning because the water is cold). I managed to complete 3 laps, much to my satisfaction. Our precious tot has learnt to float on her own but when she realized that, she became panicky and started to gasp for air and thrash about in the water. Still, it was a very good accomplishment for her :)

The thing I like about swimming is how it made my body feels light and more energetic. Also, when I float on my back, listening to my own breathing and the far away sound of my heartbeats, I feel totally relaxed. I imagine that is how my little baby hear and feel in my womb.

In the evening, we went out for jalan-jalan. I wanted to watch movie - Madagascar 3. Sadly, there were only front seats left when we tried online booking so we abandoned the idea. Hubby suggested that we bring Khayla to the Aquaria because she loves to watch fishes swimming in aquarium.

What can I say more, we had a lovely time of course. Khayla ran about laughing and pointing at those huge catfishes and waving bye-bye to the swimming sharks, turtles, stingrays and various ocean creatures swimming above us. It was an endearing sight to see her having so much fun.

Later we had dinner in KLCC and then had a bit of a shopping *wink* Can't tell what it is, but it made me very very happy that I finally can lay my hands on one!

All in all, this was the best weekend we had in weeks, where we don't have to worry about assignment discussions, beating the deadline, attending replacement classes or doing exam revisions.

Hope you guys also have a great weekend. Toodles!

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Being Kind to the Environment - a Mom's Way :)

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession to make.

I love the environment *ceh, pengumuman yang agak poyo*

Well I do! Seriously. I try to bring my own bag to shop on Saturday, I travel by bike to reduce my carbon prints (and fuel expenses), I refuse plastic bag when I only purchase few items, I like to patron environmental-friendly retail like The Body Shop and recently I started buying Lunatots cloth diaper for Khayla.

I stumbled upon Lunatots booth which was one of the popular booth in the Motherhood & Baby Expo at KL Convention Centre. I've always been interested to try their products especially the cloth diaper, but I did not because:

1. Friends tell me that it's not really practical for busy working mom like me. Especially since I'm working and studying at the same time so I will not have the time to wash the diapers.

2. It's expensive (during the expo, I bought 3 pieces for RM60+/each), and certainly buying 2-3 is not enough to make economic sense of it.

So for a few months I live with the guilty conscience that I'd opted for convenience rather than being kind to the environment *thinking of how many acres of landfills that are being filled with Khayla's used diapers*

But somehow my colleague managed to persuade me to give it a try. Plus, they have a new model of cloth diaper where the insert is clipped to the outer layer. So when the insert is soiled, all we need to do is to change the insert and not have to wash the whole thing.

Eh, so easy meh?

Yup, it is:

Just pin the insert onto the outer layer and when it's time to change (roughly 4 hours later, if baby didn't poo), un-pin the insert and change with new one!

Senang kan? ^_^

But then, some of you may argue - kena cuci la, dah la insert warna putih mesti susah nak tanggal kotoran najis especially poo baby!

I also thought along the same line but when I tried it, the stains came off easily! Even when Khayla poo in the diaper, I just have spray off the hard stools into the toilet bowl, then put the whole thing in the washing machine. When it's done, tadah, as good as new!

The inconvenience part is actually not that bad, and furthermore I can save 2 diapers per day (coz I only have 3 inserts right now, but I can probably save a lot more if I have more reusable inserts).

That means I only put on disposable diapers on Khayla before bedtime and when we are going out (to be fair, the disposable diapers have better absorbency so it can last the whole night so I am still not doing away with it yet).

Suami Terchenta however is still not impressed with the cloth diaper idea because it sometimes leaks. So I read up the facts on diyaluna.com website (the genius who came up with Lunatots brand and also a user of Msjbox) and found out that new inserts need to be washed several times prior to use as new clothes still repel water. I only washed it once, and that explains the leaking. Problem solved!

Here's the 3 cloth diapers that I bought and they came in gorgeous colours, especially the purple one :P

Doesn't it look just like regular diaper, only more chic and stylo?

Since I love style, comfort and convenience, this is one purchase that I'm not regretting an highly recommended. Seriously, sangat la senang memakai lampin kain moden jenama Lunatots ni.

Kan Diyaluna kan? :)

Khayla wearing the purple cloth diaper macam takde apa2 yang baru berlaku