Looking for furniture

So I blithely announced in the morning, Today we are going to look for furniture!

Reaction from SE:  Mummy! Why you make today so... BAD?!

Then went to complain to the Papa: Mummy naughty!  Don't want us go to 1u or Tesco.  Only want to go look for... fee-niture.  Mummy go and make today so BAD!

Well what to do?  We need furniture for our new apartment, which would be a resting place close to my parents' house, the kids' schools.

We started our trek to various furniture shops, and... I couldn't keep up with those two!  They were everywhere, they tested everything, they kept wanting to go upstairs, they basically had a WHALE of a time.

THIS one is pretty nice

Wheeeeee!  This one is a YES!

Hmm? Fruit?

Ooohh... the table of my dreams

Yeah we really should get this

I need to check this one also

There's more upstairs, come on! Let's go see! 

Looks like SE enjoys "fee-niture" shopping very much after all.

Sayings of SE

SE speaks her mind.  No sugar-coating.

1. On our maid not doing something she wanted:
SE:  Why you not listen?!  Is it you have no ear??

Yep this one is quite fierce.


2. On me taking her to see some kittens at her request:
SE:  Mummy!! What for you take me to see ug-ger-ly (ugly) kittens?!

And kept complaining. She can be such an old lady.


3. On JE being still in bed in the morning:
SE:  Jo Ern is like her doggy. Not moving

Jo Ern's is 'Seal Seal', Mummy's is 'Sealy' and mine is 'Sealyface'

4. On me telling her I don't know where my toy seal is (actually lazy to look for it):
SE:  What for you have a seal when all you do is lost (lose) it

Heh. Indeed.


5. Talking to the toy seals about 'feeding' them:
SE:  You will always have food. Until I die.

What?? Haha.

6. Another time, when talking about death:
SE:  I don't want people to die! *pause*  Except the people I don't like.


I try to record what she says as she can be so amusing.

Temper temper

SE has a temper.  She gets VERY angry, looks like she is about to explode and sometimes attacks.  Even JE gets scared of her when she's like that. 

This one time, she apparently asked the clown for a cupcake.  And got a bear (which I thought was nice actually!).  She threw it to the floor.  I picked it up to take photos.

I said I wanted CUPCAKE!!

MMmMMMM! Angry!!

MMmMMMM!

MMMMMMMM!!!!

She doesn't snap out of it that fast either.  It doesn't happen THAT often, luckily.

JE's birthday

JE got to celebrate part 2 of her birthday with the cousins.  It was somewhere the kids had asked frequently to go to - Starship Galactica in 1u!  The answer had always been NO... I don't want to be waiting hours for them to finish.  But it was perfect for a birthday!

It was a joint celebration with cousin Elyssa.  JE wanted her cake the previous week so none on this day.

Happy birthday to us!

Tickets cost RM35 per kid and RM5 for an accompanying adult.  Asked our maid Jane to go in and passed her a camera.  Then off we went shopping haha.

Some scenes from the inside:

Balls!

Steps!

Giant Slide!

With Koko and Jensen

Ball pit!

We hauled them out after 1.5 hours to cut the cake and have lunch. The initial plan was to go somewhere for fast food, but this place doesn't allow re-entry after you leave (clever huh).  So we ordered lunch from them.  Food was all right lah.

Have to eat before Mummy will let us play

The kids had a blast and spent 4.5 hours playing, excluding lunch time.  Value for money haha. 

Bahasa for SE

This is SE crying over her schoolwork.  At almost 6 years old, she is struggling to read.  My mom focuses on Mandarin - I managed to change her over to the Mandarin stream at her kindy this year, which is great but still means she only has one year to get ready for P1 at a Chinese school.

I don't know how to read...

A couple of months back, I started with her on Dr Seuss for English.  Well luckily she didn't turn out to be as bad as I feared.  And by now she does recognise some basic words.  We only do reading on weekends.

I thought I'd leave BM (Bahasa) for later.  But recently her kindy teachers took it upon themselves to impose a new rule: Students are only allowed to go swimming when they can read the allocated number of pages in the BM book!  Poor SE... she so looks forward to swimming day and now she can only watch her classmates swim.  I believe she was fibbing initially on why her swimsuit was dry that day - teacher was sick, teacher was not there, she was waiting for a friend who was slow and who borrowed her pencil.

I didn't catch on for a few weeks until another parent mentioned the rule to me.  Hmmmm.  I'm not in favour of this punishment - what happened to letting kids develop at their own pace?  I went to talk to the teacher and she confirmed it.  She kept saying that since homework was recently abolished, if not for this rule then kids will just go home and play.  At least they didn't plan to apply the rule every single week and SE got to swim that week.

Still, what to do.  Gotta get her up to speed on BM now.

"Marilah berkenalan dengan ahli keluarga saya.
Setiap hujung minggu, keluarga saya kumpul bersama-sama."

Come-lah get to know the members of my family.
Every weekend, my family gathers together.

Why oh why can't the words be kept to 2 or 3 syllables??  The tears are real.  :(

Cannot! WAaaAAA!!!

Jo Ern is 8!

And now that she's 8, she had her own ideas on how to celebrate her birthday.  She revised the plan a few times before the final version.

So first, she wanted to go to Toys r Us to pick her present.  Then, to the bakery to choose a cake.  Then, to have lunch at Chilli's.  And finally, to blow the candles on the cake at home.

I am 8!

Make a wish? OK

A funny thing happened after she blew out the candles and made her wish.  SE asked what it was.  I said the wish is secret, no need to tell.  Also that don't know if it will come true - Mama protective instincts to prepare JE in case it doesn't hehe. 

JE: That depends on Su Ern.  (Hmm? Haha)

SE: I know! Your wish is that I will disappear.

Err, WHAT??  This little girl... don't know what goes on in her mind sometimes.

Happy birthday to JE!

Part 2 of the birthday celebration, together with the cousins, will be next weekend.

Jumpstreet

The kids had a treat for cousin Jensen's birthday... a visit to a trampoline park!  It was about RM25 for one hour.

One trampoline per person, no sharing

There's a 'foam pit' too

JE wanted to go to the bouncy castle, but only kids below 110cm were allowed.

I can be here, Jojo cannot. Heheheee

Well she could play at this one...

Dodgeball!

The kids enjoyed themselves and were all sweaty from all the jumping.  There were a few other styles of trampolines but not all were suitable for beginners. 

The jumpers

Big buffalo at the end was jumping too

Overall, to me this is an interesting way to make money... the things people think of haha.  A good way to exercise for sure.  My sis joined too, others had various problems with knee/back/neck etc etc and opted out.

Pizza making

Just to record this... it's the second time I made pizza with the kids.  The first time, I burnt the one that SE made and she kept bringing up that fact.  SE can be such a naggy old lady!

Prepared the dough first as it required an hour to rise plus 24 hours sitting in the fridge.  Then the usual toppings - ham, bacon, sausage, cheese (how to go wrong with these, right?), mushroom, pineapple, onion, garlic, broccoli for the colour (nobody likes capsicum).  For the sauce it was tomato paste together with McD BBQ sauce and some leftover sweet sauce from a roast duck.

The kids had a blast.

Let's make pizza!

No yucky onions for us. Or pineapple. Or garlic.

All done! 

I watched the oven like a hawk this time and didn't burn anything.  The adults had a pizza each for lunch, the kids had half and ate the other half the next day.

Can eat. Job done  :)