She's Learning Ballet

Sharlene has been badgering me to let her learn ballet. Whenever she sees her piao cheh goes for ballet class, she'll start pestering me again. Mummy, can I go ballet? Please mummy, I want to go....and she can go on and on until I say, ok, ok we shall go next time. Just to placate her...heheh. Sometimes, she would even cry and ask why I didn't want to let her go.

Her wish of wanting to learn ballet finally came true last Tuesday. I brought her to the center for a trial class before enrolling her. We waited for a while before the teacher brought her to the dancing room. Both hubby and I stayed outside the room but we secretly watched her from a glass window. At the beginning, I noticed she was a tad shy and reserve but after a while, she began to follow what the teacher does and I can see she’s really happy and enjoying her lesson very much. 45 minutes later, she walked out from the room smiling from ear to ear. At that moment, I was quite certain that she likes ballet. We'd wanted to enrol her on that day but the teacher told us to do it next week as she's going to have her next class soon.

So, we went there again this week, which was 3 days ago to enroll her in the class. She should be getting her ballet leotard, tutu, shoes and other stuff next week. Wahh, all these really cost quite a lot leh. I really hope she will not come and tell me one day that she doesn't wish to learn ballet anymore. Anyway, I can’t wait to see my little ballerina and the way she looks in her ballet costume :D Now I begin to ponder whether should I keep her hair long as I notice most of the students there have long hair?? Hrmmm...perhaps I should let her decide.

Cantonese Style Noodles

This is one of my all-time-favourite noodles. I cooked this for lunch one Saturday. Instead of flat rice noodles (kuey teow), I used yee mein (a type of dried noodles). I prefer to buy those thinner kind of yee mein (have no idea what noodle they call it though?). It’s pretty easy, all that need to be done is to cook the gravy which consists of the following ingredients:-

Chicken meat, sliced (lightly season with a pinch of salt, pepper, corn flour and oil)
Prawns, shelled
Fish cake, sliced
Crabsticks
Choy sum (sawi)
Wong ngah pak (Chinese cabbage)
Chopped garlic
Eggs, lightly beaten
Seasoning – oyster sauce, light soya sauce, sugar, salt, fresh chicken stock.

1. Heat oil in a wok and fry garlic until lightly golden.

2. Add in marinated chicken meat and prawns. Fry well then add in fish cake, crabsticks and seasoning and bring to a boil. Put in sawi and cabbage. Then add thickening (corn flour + water). Turn off the heat and stir in eggs.

3. Give it a quick stir and pour the gravy onto the noodles.

New Story Books

The other day I went to the bookstore nearby my house to get a roll of plastic wrapper. As I was searching for the wrapper, I saw a few racks of books on sale. So I went over to check out those books. It’s Ladybird range of story books going for RM5.90 each. The usual price is RM9.90 per book.

I can’t resist the markdown and grabbed 6 of Ladybird fairytales books for Sharlene.

~ Classic fairytales books ~

She’s attracted to her new books as soon as I shown it to her. I guess it’s the illustrations that captivate her. After reading to her a few times, she began to show interest in the stories as well. At the moment, her favorites are Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood :D She always requests these 2 books to be read first, and then follow by the rest.

She’s very into pretend play (or role-playing) these days. Sometimes during the reading session, she acts as Sleeping Beauty, pretending to fall into a deep slumber and waiting for the prince to give her a kiss :D Then she said mummy will pretend to be the prince and give her a muakss on the cheeks. That makes her giggles and opens her eyes. At one time, she wore her red jacket with a hood and pretends to be Little Red Riding Hood and haih…she asked me to be the crafty wolf! ! But she got scared when I act like a wicked wolf wor....hehe. So, we didn’t proceed further after that. Really not easy huh, have to read and act some more.

It’s the weekend again. I wonder which character she wants me to act when I read to her tomorrow? :)

My First No Bake Cheesecake

2 weeks ago I made a chilled cheesecake for hubby’s birthday. It was also my first time baking him a birthday cake. Without much thought, Oreo chilled cheesecake came to my mind....I started to search for recipes online and also flipped through my collection of cookbooks. As I was searching online one day, I stumbled upon Doreen’s blog. Her Irresistible Oreo Cheese Cake caught my attention and I decided to use the recipe posted by her.

I bought all the necessary ingredients including a 20cm springform cake pan and started my project on Thursday night after Sharlene has gone to bed at around 9.45pm. The steps are really simple and I only modified slightly by reducing sugar to 70gm and adding 10ml of lemon juice. The whole thing was done in less than an hour. After that, I just left the cake in the fridge to chill overnight. The next day, we were all ready to celebrate hubby’s birthday. Initially, I wanted to give him a surprise but naughty Sharlene spoiled my plan….haha. She opened the fridge, saw the cake and announced to everyone that there is a cake in the fridge! Hubby was standing nearby so he heard what the little girl said.

~ My 1st cheesecake ~

I’m glad that my 1st attempt was a success. The cake turned out really good and tasted very nice. Everyone liked it and gave a thumbs-up for this cheesecake :) However, the appearance wasn’t up to the standard. It would look nicer if I had used an 18cm cake pan. I’m planning to make another type of cheesecake soon and hope it will turn out well.

Father's Day Card And Chocolate Marble Cupcakes

Quite a number of photos were uploaded last night by hubby including the ones taken on Father’s Day. As mentioned in my earlier post that was exactly one month ago, Sharlene did a card for her dearest daddy and in place of a cake from the bakery, I baked some cupcakes on the eve of Father’s Day.

Here's pix of the Father’s Day card by Sharlene...
She loves to draw stars….lots of them! That’s the first thing she thought of when I told her to decorate her card :-)

I wrote down the message on a piece of paper for her to copy it on the card.

And last but not least, the simple yet delicious chocolate marble cupcakes.

From Tiny Red Spots To Painful Ulcers

I checked her throat last night and saw a few ulcers sitting inside her throat. The tiny red spots that she got 2 days ago have now turned into painful ulcers. I noticed there’s another tiny blister on her lower lips. Gosh, don’t tell me it’s really HFM!! But there aren’t any blisters on other parts of her body yet, in particular the palms and soles of the feet.

She’s still on Augmentin and her fever hasn’t fully subsided yet, obviously due to the ulcers in her throat. Even drinking water and eating porridge are causing her excruciating pain. Looking back, she has never had any mouth ulcers before. Last night, I found out from one of the health websites that there’s no specific treatment for HFM disease, and antibiotics aren’t effective as it’s a viral infection. The infection simply must run its course. The only help is to lessen the discomfort by taking plenty of fluids and rest more. The signs and symptoms usually clear up in 7 to 10 days.

Looking at her present condition, I will continue to keep her out of school until her fever is gone and mouth ulcers have healed. I am thinking of getting her a tub of vanilla ice cream to soothe her aching throat later. Her face will definitely light up upon seeing her favorite ice cream :D

All 3 Down With Fever

Sharlene’s piao cheh was not well last Saturday and her fever bug passed on to her brother last night. He was still running high temperature this afternoon, so sis-in-law rushed back from office to take him to the doctor. This afternoon just before lunch time, Aunty YK called to inform me that Sharlene was not feeling too good since she got back from school. Oh dear, now it’s her turn to catch the bug :( Her temperature was at 38 degree Celsius this afternoon. I told Aunty YK to give her paracetamol syrup in the fridge and to monitor her temperature from time to time. I called home a few times to check on her condition. She’s feeling better after the medicines but her temperature was up again when I got home around 6.30pm. Immediately took her to the paed’s office. She looked so sickly and was whining away in the car. The paed took her temperature and it was 39.5 degree Celsius. She gave her a suppository on the spot. She also checked her throat and noticed there were 3 tiny red spots inside there. She told me to watch out for signs and symptoms of HFM disease like red blisters or lesions on the tongue, mouth, palms and soles of her feet.

I will quarantine her for the next few days. Hopefully her fever will soon subside and there will be no symptoms of HFM disease on her. Ok, got to go and check on her now. She’s due for another insertion of suppository at about 1 am. Will hit the sack only after putting the suppository for her. Goodnite, everyone!

Ice-Cream Treat

Whenever we make a trip to shopping mall, Sharlene will definitely request for ice-cream when we walk pass McD or any ice-cream outlets. She loves ice-cream to bits. Well, who doesn’t like ice-cream rite, especially kids? I’m an ice-cream lover myself...haha.

My sis-in-law gave us a treat of gelato fruity ice cream when we brought the kids to Mid Valley Megamall during the last school holidays.

Here’s our selection of ice-cream - Strawberry yogurt for Sharlene, chocolate flavor for Jasmine, Soursop for Simon and Rum and raisin for me!

We were so tired of walking and decided to just sit down and enjoy our delightful treat :D

Finally, I've Acquired The Skill Of....

...wrapping bak chang (chinese glutinous dumplings) after numerous attempts of getting it right :D I was just so happy and satisfied that my dumplings look like this...

Thanks to my mum who patiently taught me the proper way to fold and wrap the bamboo leaves when I was in JB last month. Both my sis and I learn from her the same time but my sis mastered the skill way faster than me. At first, I was really lousy at it and I thought I would never have got it right. But with a never want to give up attitude, I finally succeeded!, a skill that I wish to learn for a long time. Hopefully, my memory won’t fail me when it comes to wrapping dumplings next year since we only do it once in a year.

Filling up the leaves with good stuff – the easiest part of all.


As to the fillings of the dumplings, here’s what we’d put in. This pix was taken by hubby when we were about to finish our wrapping session, hence he gathered all the individual ingredients into a bowl and snapped a photo of it.

My Girl Wants To Get Married?!!

One night just before bedtime, Sharlene was standing on our bed, she's admiring our wedding portrait hung on the wall and she told me that when she gets married next time, she wants to hang her wedding portrait next to ours (as she said that her finger was pointing to the empty space beside the portrait). Gosh, I burst into laughter straight away...muahahahah...

Who do you want to get married to? I asked
Sharlene: Piao ker loh…(referring to her cousin brother)

A few days after our conversation, I caught her playing dress-up and role playing with her piao cheh. She put on an oversized dress, which she took from her piao cheh’s wardrobe and guess what... she turned a towel into a bridal veil! :D

Here's her beautician helping her to doll up

And ta daaa.....

She's all ready for the role of a bride.

Fully dressed up with a white bouquet on her hands and a ring on her petite finger :D

Hahah...I like this pix of my little girl. So solemn looking.

Will you marry me, piao ker?

No, no, no yelled piao ker and he ran away.