Being Mom

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Repeat daily, for the rest of our lives. How do our stomach manage to do so much work? I wonder. But above all, how much effort we spend each day in preparing those meals that took us minutes to finish? Hmmm... Based on what I mentioned above, I asked myself if I could reduce cooking time. I mean, the entire process, so I could have more time to do other things. I have experimented with a few different methods. Here, I would like to share one of them. USE ONE MAIN INGREDIENT FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK'S MEALS Let me introduce you to the ALL CAPABLE... GROUND MEAT! If you want variety, you could buy different kinds of ground meat - chicken, beef, mutton, pork. Buy as much as you need for a week's meal. Marinate all at once. Ingredients: Minced garlic and shallots, soy sauce, tapioca or corn starch, sesame oil (optional), grated ginger (for beef and mutton only), egg (optional) Pla...

One evening during dinner... when my son was four. He was eating and looking at a vase of flowers on the table. The flowers were withering. Son: Mummy. Why do the flowers look like that? Are they sick? Me: That's called withering. Something like dying. Son: Oh, Mummy! You have to take them to the doctor! I laughed before I explained to him that doctors cannot heal withering flowers. I just couldn't help it. I regretted not taking a photo of the withering flowers so I could use them for this post but anyway... At that time, we were doing an experiment on absorption. We let the flowers "drink" coloured water so we could clearly see changes in the petals that would explain absorption. **Hubby saw what we did and commented that we were abusing the flowers. 😓😭😭     I have no comment on this remark.*** It was an interesting experiment though, for the children. Here are some pictures of what we did. We got some chrysanthemum from a florist. ...

The Chinese Plum blossom, or the Prunus mume, is a flower that blossoms around the Chinese New Year. It symbolises prosperity, courage, hope, beauty and purity. It is a common decoration item for the celebration.  It is also a common subject in the Chinese art such as paintings and poetry. This Chinese New Year, my son's art teacher at school taught them a simple yet interesting way to draw the Chinese Plum blossom. After he described to us how it was done, his sister got very interested and requested to do it. So, here's what we did. First, we squeezed some black paint on a piece of drawing paper. Diluted it with some water and using a straw, blew the black paint to create the branches and twigs. Next, we mixed red and white paint to make some pink paint and painted the flowers.  It's done!  Just like what my daughter said: Easy peasy lemon squeezy!  Took us about 20 minutes from gathering the materials to the completion of the pai...

Now, as I typed on my laptop, my 5 year-old daughter sits in front of me, doing her own work. She is doing something on her own. Something that no one tells her to do. It is 100% at her own will. She is copying from a storybook. It is a Malay storybook she borrowed from school. And she is trying to read as she copies.  She is smiling as she tries to read the words and although she still struggles with many of the words, she is smiling while she tries. Once in a while, she would ask me how to pronounce a certain syllable.  And now, she is singing out the words she copies.  _________________________________________________ This scene, right in front of me, is the result of an important lesson I learnt a year ago.  I learnt that, for effective learning to take place, the learner should be in a "stress free mode".  And for them to be in that mode, it most probably has to be something they find interesting or rather, something they w...

Lego again??! Yes. Lego is a big part of our everyday lives and there is a reason for that. FAMILIARITY. Because Lego has been part of our lives since my first child was one year old and it was being played almost everyday. And it is still being played everyday. Familiarity makes learning easier. It also makes teaching easier. Well, in this case, it is not so much about teaching but about a little variation in our bedtime routine. Big Lego and Small Lego: Based on my son's imagination We have been reading bedtime stories to the children since my first child was about 8 months old. And a few years down the road, I thought it was time for some changes. Instead of reading them stories, I started telling them stories and the main characters were Big Lego and Small Lego. They knew that I was referring to both of them, and they were always very attentive, eager to know how I would describe them in the stories. If they would be the kind, the mischief or the brave one....

Food, food and more food!!! As I promised, here is Part Two of our trip to Seoul, and it's all about FOOD! 1. This is one of the first Korean food we ate. We were at Guro-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul, looking for the car rental company. It was lunch time so we had lunch at a random restaurant here. We had fried and boiled dumplings, with vegetables and meat fillings. I couldn't remember the price though. We also had two bowls of noodles, one was quiet interesting for us because we didn't expect to find sliced rice cakes in the soup instead of the long and thin shaped noodles that we were familiar with! I did not take any pictures of the noodles but you could refer to the menu in the picture below. We ordered a bowl of noodles (second row, first from the left) and a set of noodles + meat patty (last row, second from left). 2.  This is our lunch at the National Museum of Korea at Yongsan-gu.  My son ordered shrimp fried rice (no picture available) ...

A HOME AWAY FROM HOME Last December, we, as a family, took on a new experience. For about two weeks, we "lived" in a different country, ate food not common to us and experienced a different season. We had a getaway in Seoul. To be precise, we chose a home at Gangseo-gu. It was a narrow yet interesting seven-level home called Mangosteen. For convenience sake (because we have two children with us), we rented a car. Prior to our trip, we did some research on driving in Seoul and while most of the information we gathered did not really recommend tourists to drive there, surprisingly, we had a very pleasant experience. Except that the parking fees were way higher than how we charge here in Malaysia. Unlike the usual tourists who would have a long list of places to go and to do list to check off on a daily basis, we visited only one attraction per day. We wanted to be as relaxed as possible so we could enjoy each day to the maximum. THE ATTRACTIONS NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ...