[Anecdotes from our Chinese New Year holiday in Malaysia] So we come to my favourite photo from our entire holiday. This was taken at the backseat of my parents’ car during our little day trip to Kundasang. I have many fond memories of family trips up to Kundasang, sitting in the backseat of car just like this. Except this time, it was sans the company of my two brothers, and in their place were my own two children with my hubs. There were a few changes to the landscape since the last time I visited, and some new upgrades and additions to the facilities. Apart from that, the air and the atmosphere smelt and felt exactly the same. The featured itinerary for this trip was a visit to the Desa Cattle and dairy farm . Some people call it the little ‘New Zealand’ of Sabah. We got up close to some calves and goats to feed them some grass and milk. (the grass cost RM1.00 per bunch and milk cost RM1.50 per bottle) Both the children and the animals simply couldn’t get enough of it. ...

[Anecdotes from our Chinese New Year holiday in Malaysia] One of my favourite childhood ‘playgrounds’ was the local state museum of Sabah. When I was a child, entry was free for everyone. So every now and then we’d beg our mum…. “please, pleeeeease, can we go to the museum today?” . By some adult mysterious reasoning we could never guess or fathom, every now and then she would say okay. I can remember the exact flow of almost every single display area almost by heart. From anthropology and natural history, to the ceramics display, all the way down to the local indigenous section. I enjoyed listening to my mum talk about the different artefacts on display. Then afterwards our favourite final stop was the heritage village with actual models of traditional longhouses where my brothers and I would revel in climbing up and down the ladders and running across the bamboo floors of all the different indigenous houses. I was determined that my kids would share the same joy. But as it ofte...

[Anecdotes from our Chinese New Year holiday in Malaysia] First item on the agenda of our Malaysia holiday: a trip to an old school barbershop to get trimmed up for the upcoming Chinese New Year festivities. I have very vivid childhood memories of visiting an old school Chinese barbershop like this. Sitting up on those black leather chairs that go up and down--on one of those small wooden planks propped up between the armrests. Breathing in the distinct barbershop smell of wet hair, shaving cream, talcum powder and aftershave. One barbershop. Two very different reactions to the experience. Grace thoroughly enjoyed the entire ceremony. She took it very seriously and sat very importantly up on the seat, following the cues of the lady barber to angle her head this way and that. Nathan’s was a nightmare experience. He told me afterwards that he was terrified that the lady barber would accidently snip his skin with the scissors and draw blood. Afterwards, the lady barber kindly rewa...

[Anecdotes from our Chinese New Year holiday in Malaysia] This year’s trip back to Malaysia had been planned years ahead. Chinese New Year this year happens to fall in January just at the tail end of the summer school holidays in Australia. We had booked our plane tickets way ahead so we could look forward to enjoying the big festivities back in Malaysia for the first time in several years. We made sure that the kids got a first hand taste of Chinese New Year in Malaysia. Colourful lion dances Firecrackers Night markets Chinese New Year cookies Yeos packet drinks Lou sang dinners Dressing up in new clothes Playing with lots of cousins Visiting friends and relatives houses. Loads and loads of ang pow A real classic festive Chinese New Year every Chinese kid must experience at least once in their lifetime.

After that dejecting end to last year’s affairs , I picked myself up and look forward to kicking off the new year with a long awaited holiday in Malaysia. Nathan was bursting with excitement over the adventure of flying on an airplane. Grace was just excited that she could pack ‘real stuff’ in her very own backpack to carry. We borrowed this book which we read umpteen times in anticipation of the trip. I have to confess I am not a big fan myself of airports and airplanes myself. Not that I suffer from any kind of phobia or travel sickness. I just find the long waits and upright seating uncomfortable. But the delight and enthusiasm of my two little animated travellers is highly contagious. I couldn’t help having the buzz of their excitement rub off me a bit. I must say travelling with the kids now is so much easier than before , now that I no longer have lug around a monster-sized bag of nappies, wipes and assortment of baby paraphernalia. No more worrying over fighting for a bass...

Looking past the not so fantastic moments from last year , one definitely VERY fantastic thing that happened was kicking-off our reading of chapter books together. So far we’ve finished reading Enid Blyton’s ‘ The Wishing Chair ’ and ‘ The Wishing Chair Again ’, and a little bit of ‘ The Magic Faraway Tree ’… Roald Dahl’s ‘ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ’ and ‘ The BFG ’… and we are about halfway through C.S. Lewis’s ‘ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ’. I managed to score some extra time off over the school holidays. So I decided to indulge in a bit of bookish fun by bringing some the books we read to life. We set up our own ‘Willy Wonka Factory’ making our own Wonka bars, everlasting gobstoppers, non-melting ice creams and other confectionery creations. I made some gingerbread ‘bars’ for the kids to decorate and create their own versions of wonka bars, edible play dough for them to mould and shape into various sweet treats, and handfuls of mini M&Ms, Nerds candy and...

It seems every year we always need to take one really hard knock before we can move on to the next year. This year’s share of hard knocks was probably more than others. It was kind of a year of just buckling down and weathering through the storm… We were down to a single income family this year (me being the primary breadwinner). I dropped my phone, cracking the screen and had to pay out my existing phone contract to get a new one. With the current bleak economic situation looming over everything, we got stuck between a rock and hard place with a number of our investments. Hubs and I had to weather through a lot of ‘tough’ discussions throughout the year. Then someone rear-ended me in my car and we had to navigate through the whole insurance game. Towards the end of the year we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Right after Christmas I finally thought we were over the worst of it and could breathe easy. We were home free! And then tragedy struck. While...

So dear Mister Six has entered the scene. You might wonder, what has the space between five and six been like? Well, to sum up, it’s been all about… LEGO . Transformers. Star Wars. Elephant and Piggie books. Books about LEGO. Reading Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton books together. Learning sight words. Toe holes in socks. Knee holes on pants. Second (sometimes third) helpings at dinner. Writing and drawing pictures about LEGO. Sweaty hugs after school. First visits from the tooth fairy. Holdings hands to cross the road (most of the time, still). Silly jokes at little sister’s expense. Hugs and sorry to little sister afterwards. I want to play by myself. I want to play with sister . I want to play by myself again. You listen to me because I am bigger. Okay, I’ll read you a story, little sister. Yes, I’ll help you mummy. No problem, I’ll take care of it , mummy. Can I do it later, mummy? More LEGO. I love babies. I like to play with babies. I like to play with big boys. I played tha...

And so finally we come to the last installment of my monthly play roundup series for the year. I’ve decided to combine November and December into one post as the second half of December usually runs into the holiday season with things starting to wind down. But I’ll do a separate post on some of the end-of-year celebrations and holiday highlights. But for now, here’s a roundup of the activities we’ve been busy with over these last couple of months… ‘I Need a Hug’ A recent favourite book we picked up from the library last month that we’ve read together umpteen times is ‘I Need a Hug’ by Aaron Blabey . The story is about a sad (and cute) little porcupine who really needs a hug. But then who would be willing to hug a porcupine. We made good use of our leftover playdough with some toothpicks and googly eyes to make our own little porcupines. The children adored their little porcupines and hugged them (gently) all day. We also gathered a few other animal toys to play out the story together...

So loving the warmer weather we’ve been enjoying this past month! It took some time to warm up but we’re definitely enjoying more and more of a springy-summery vibe in the weather. We’ve been heading outdoors a lot more over the past few weeks with lots more free play to shake off the winter chill in our bones. But we still manage to squeeze in plenty of semi-structured activities in between. Here’s a peek at some of them… ~ I Can Spell My Name ~ With a couple of the kids transitioning to kindy next year, I’ve started incorporating more literacy and numeracy activities into our programme. This is the ‘I Can Spell My Name’ activity tray magnetic letters and printed laminated cards of the children’s names. They’ve caught on pretty quickly. I usually leave the tray out in a common area so they can visit it whenever they like throughout the day to have a go at spelling their name. ~ Jonathan & Martha ~ We revisited one of my favourite children’s books , which I featured in this post...