A mission for a mummy with a multicultural child

Since Oliver has been on solids my mission is to read both Japanese and English baby food books and somehow come up with good menus everyday. Now that Japanese food is widely eaten everywhere (even in Brunei!) I guess it is easy to imagine what sort of food I am talking about here. I would like Oliver to be able to eat any of the Japanese and European foods that I prepare at home.



Many of you might know that Japanese cooking is often done based on 3+1 items per meal. Main dish (cooked with meat, fish or tofu), side dish (mainly vegetable) and some soup + rice (or noodles or bread). According to the book no difference in baby food preparation.

Well I am not cooking so many items per meal everyday (sometimes I try tho). But I am feeding Oliver Japanese at least 3days a week. So far my mission has been a success. Oliver eats anything very happily.

As he is going into more advanced baby foods (9-12 months) my mission will get harder and harder --- especially the Japanese side.
I hope I can keep up my cooking :)
Don't worry I don't feed Oliver any sushi (yet!)

(✈ Singapore)

Baby Gym

Oliver was lucky to receive this IKEA baby gym from Merryn and Dennis when he was only three weeks old. Like the picture suggests it is suitable for babies from 3-6 months old.


(Picture borrowed from IKEA online catalog)

!!Caution to all parents!!

When babies get older than 6 months, it turns into a Real Baby Gym .



(✈ Brunei - KK - Brunei - Singapore for three days)

Finally sinking in

My friends with kids always told me "kids are very expensive". Even though I have had Oliver for almost 9months, until today it didn't really sink in to my mind.

At Supa Save (our local supermarket), they are having lucky draws (the grand prize is a Land Rover!). Every time you shop there, you get your receipt stapled onto an entry form. The closing date for this is in two days time so today I got a pen and filled in all the forms I have saved up. There were so many receipts and more importantly some of them were over $100!

The reason why we have so many receipts is that unlike New Zealand we go to the supermarket twice a week or sometimes three times a week. Mainly because most of the vegetables, fruits, and milk products are imported from overseas and there are certain days particular products are put on the shelves. For example bananas and milk are normally available on Wednesdays. Plus we shop in the so called an adult section of the supermarket = non halal section and pay separately, therefore extra receipts and an entry form (I don't believe we can win a car in Brunei purchasing 10 strips of bacon tho...).

So why there are so many receipts over $100??? (we used to spend $40-50 each time we shopped) - I looked into my receipts and found out more than 3/4 of the stuff I bought was for Oliver. Baby stuff is expensive!! For example a very small packet of baby breakfast cereals is $6.70! (almost the same price as a big box of adults cereals...) I guess it wasn't too bad when he was only eating pureed vegetables once a day. But now he is eating three times a day like an adult, our grocery bills are getting so high!

I start to understand why having kids are expensive... This must be just the start of it.

Another singing session

Linnea came to help feed Oliver again last night. Now she is very confident and Oliver loves having her around so he ate very well. At one stage she got so excited and almost ate Oliver's food by mistake!



After the feeding we decided we could play for 15 min or so before she had to go home. We had another singing session for Oliver. We put all the animal soft toys in a basket and sang ♪ Old McDonald had a farm ....♪ and on that farm he had a (then we picked one of the animals)... you can see we had to sing for quite a while to get all the animals out of the basket.



All the animals are finally out!

Linnea was very confused because the animals we had weren't on old McDonald's farm. Elephant, crocodile, polar bear, kiwi, pukeko, koala, turtle and proboscis monkey....
and of course lots of them we didn't really know what sort of sounds they make.

(✈ Off)

It was worth it

Matthew was flying from early morning till 5ish today (like normal business hours!) so I decided to take Oliver to Geckos at JIS. As I blogged about it earlier this year, it has fantastic facilities and just perfect for toddlers and mums like us.

Unfortunately when we were getting ready, it started to rain heavily (I just wish we can control the amount of rain we get here...). But I was very optimistic and thought in Jerudong it won't be raining as heavy as here... WRONG! It was worse!! I couldn't even see the cars in front of me for a while.

When I got there and parked my car it was raining the heaviest but I really wanted to take Oliver to the singing, and it was starting in 3 min time.
It was quite a mission as I need to carry my bag (full of Oliver's nappies, clothes, food and drinks) and an umbrella plus Oliver, and open and close the car doors without getting super wet.

I managed to get him out without much rain on him, just my jeans soaking wet. Luckily we were just on time for singing !!!

Oliver just loved singing, so it was worth the effort.

(✈ Brunei - KK - Brunei - KL - Brunei)

Happy Birthday Brunei!!

It is Brunei's 26th birthday today. Brunei regained it's independence from the United Kingdom in 1984. Sounds very recent...

What did the National Day bring to Brunei??
HUGE RAIN FALL!! We haven't had rain for a long long time and everything was getting so super dry.

It looks like someone just flicked the rain switch on full and forgot to turn it off... Always one extreme to the other!

If you would like to read about what else happens on the National Day, you can visit The Brunei Times - our local newspaper.

Afternoon at Pantai Muara

Yesterday we drove to Pantai Muara. It is a very nice beach with a recreational park. The first time we went there they were still working on finishing up the gardening, putting in the BBQ pits and cleaning the whole area. Now it's all done and available to everyone. It is very popular for Bruneian families especially on the weekends, so we expected to see some crowds but we were surprised to see the car park sooooo full!! (It was like being in the city center after pay day!).

Matthew went in his running gear and ran about 7km (there is a running path and a biking path) while I put Oliver in the pushchair and walked around the park.



There is also a very nice play area for kids. I wanted Oliver to try one of the swings but unfortunately all of them were taken... maybe next time.




It has been so super hot during the day so it was just fantastic to be in the trees and feel the sea breeze. You can see Oliver loved it too from this photo!
(his hair got messed up a bit by the breeze...).



(✈ Off)

BBQ

We talked about getting a new BBQ for over a year. We had such nice meals cooked on the BBQ (thank you M&D) when were back in New Zealand, so we were determined to buy one as soon as we got back. Unfortunately there weren't many to choose from, but we think we chose the best one for us. We already used it twice this week, we cooked some sausages and chicken satay for dinner. We are very happy with it!!
I also would like to use it for breakfast like M&D do. Pancakes, bacon, tomato and eggs etc etc. Yuuuummmmmmmyyyyy!!
Would you like to join us !?



My personal BBQ master

It is back !!

Yesterday I told our amah Rosie about the Monitor Lizard I saw in the garden. She told me "maam we can eat them, some people just catch them and eat, they say they taste like a chicken"... yeah everything tastes like chicken. Well I think the Monitor heard Rosie say that. This afternoon when I was having a nap (thanks to my lovely husband looking after Oliver), he came back!!!

He was in front of Rosie's door so that she could not get out. She was totally trapped. Matthew said the Monitor got a shock and threw up in our car park and took off again. From the photo the Monitor looks a bit smaller than the one I saw yesterday. Maybe the younger brother? Hopefully the whole family won't come back and attack us.



(✈ Off)

Mushrooms

Guess what these mushrooms are for!?



They are part of this!



Is it a play gym? No! no! no! It's Oliver's new mushroom pool!!!
I bought this when I went back to Japan in August. At that time Oliver was not supporting himself fully, now he can sit by himself and knows how to splash water etc I thought it's time for me to pump it up and let him play in it.
Here is Oliver trying out his new pool.



Posing for mummy



Wooooow mushroom....



This is fun!!



Nice and cool...

The big mushroom is there to give him shade and three mushrooms and butterflies come off so he could play with them. He was not sure what those funny looking mushrooms were but didn't take too long before he started to have fun with them.

After being in the pool Oliver had a big lunch and had a good nap. I think we will get lots of use out of this!!

(✈ Brunei - Bangkok - Brunei)

A visitor in a bare garden

When I was blogging about our bare garden, I heard a strange noise and saw this stranger in our garden! (can you see?)



I have seen Monitor Lizards at our old house (our old place was by a jungle and a little stream from a pond) but haven't seen any since we moved here (except for the ones unfortunately squashed on the road). I think all sorts of animals are coming out of jungle looking for water as it has been just so so dry!!

I wanted to take a closer look so went outside on my tip toes and took this photo. He was about 50-60cm long (I think it is still a baby one). As soon as he heard me coming closer, he took off and ran away to the neighbours (I hope those dogs will scare him away from their garden).

Bare garden

The saying "The grass is always greener on the other side (of the fence)" is true. Our garden looks awful at the moment. Our neighbours is looking great. Why!?

Just before we left to New Zealand, the house maintenance people trimmed our trees. It was wonderful as we got more light coming into our house and less animals can get into our roof/ceilings. But the problem was they didn't collect the branches for a long time (they told us they only had one truck and it was not available straight away). Well as a result of them not picking up the branches our garden went completely brown. All the grass underneath the dead branches didn't get any sun....

Plus last week our lawn mower guy came and cut the grass super short (or I should say cut it off completely...) I am not sure what part of "Can you please DO NOT cut the grass too short, we are trying to grow it" he couldn't understand...

This is how sad our garden is looking right now.



We (yes you are right, mostly our amah Rosie) have been taking extra care of the grass for the last three months. Watering everyday, putting new soil and seeds down etc etc. I am so sad looking at our bare garden...
Now Rosie's mission is watering the grass three times a day and making our garden look better than the ones on the other side of the fences. It will be a difficult assignment as we are now in the dry season and it has not rained since we got back.

Oliver vs Linnea

I am so lucky to have lots of help bringing up Oliver. My wonderful husband Matthew is almost always home (hhhmmmmmmm...), I have Rosie our amah to help me with all the housework AND I have wonderful babysitters (?) Lucas (6) and Linnea (4) from next door.

Today Linnea helped me with feeding Oliver dinner. Oliver has been having trouble concentrating while he is eating (just trying to escape from the chair etc) so I wasn't sure how much fun Linnea would have as she insisted on feeding Oliver all by herself.

Well the battle began.



"Open your mouth like me and eat nicely Oliver"



"Yes!! He is eating so well!!"



"Mummy I think Linnea is winning today"

It took Oliver only 15 min or so to complete his dinner (including dessert). Linnea knew its important for Oliver to have good amount of water afterwards too.

Thank you Linnea! Oliver is so lucky to have you !

(✈ Off)

A message from Oliver

Oliver is almost 9 months old. But as you know he cannot speak yet. So we always guess why he is making a certain noise or crying in a particular way.

Today the message was clear.

This morning we were ready to get in the car to go to Gecko baby/toddler class but Oliver was screaming and screaming - message conveyed - I don't want to sit in the car seat mummy. When we left Gecko, same thing happened - Mummy I don't want to sit in the car seat, I told you before.

From JIS we went to our friend Anna's place to see some of her new tunic range (she makes beautiful tunics!). He was so happy until he realised I was trying to put him in the car seat again - scream! scream! scream! - What part of No don't you understand mummy, I don't want to sit in the car seat.

By the time I got home I was confident what he was telling me - I don't like the car seat. But I realised I misread the message a little bit. I thought the problem was sitting in the car seat but sitting was the problem. He usually loves sitting in the IKEA high chair as he knows yummy foods are coming his way but not today. He arched his back and screamed and protested for so long (for both feedings).

So the rest of the afternoon he spend his play time mostly standing up against his toy box.



Finally mummy understood what I wanted...

(✈ Brunei - KK - Brunei)

Chinese New Year continues...

As I promised yesterday, here are some photos of Oliver dressed in the Chinese outfit. I might be biased but he is sooo cute!!





We had a fairly busy day today, in the afternoon we visited another open house and then to the yacht club to see more of the lion dancing and nice outdoor dinner.

There was a long wait until the lions came but all the kids were so excited! And this time we saw red, white, and pink lions!



(✈ Restday)

Gong Xi Fa Cai !!

The year of the Tiger is here!!
Today we were invited to a Chinese New Year celebration at Mayumi & Hao's house. Oliver's costumes (HW pumpkin, Santa, Superbaby) have been very popular so I went out and got him a Chinese outfit yesterday. But our friend suggested to wear something "red" as it is associated with extreme luck (the outfit I got for Oliver is golden yellow...shame).



Three of us in Red

It was similar to Hari Raya open house, we were asked to have lunch and have lots of snacks. We met up with two other Japanese families and had a great time catching up. While we were enjoying yummy sweets, we heard someone saying "Lions are here!!" Yes! we were lucky to see the traditional lion dancing. Two lions appeared with the loud music and ran into the house, into the kitchen and upstairs.



We were encouraged to touch the fur as it will bring good luck. The host gave the lion some oranges and a can of beer. The lion drank the beer, then peeled the oranges and presented them beautifully in front of us. To conclude the performance the lion jumped up and ate the lettuce hanging from the ceiling (I didn't know lions eat lettuce...). It was just fantastic!!



Trying to get Oliver to touch the lion but he was a bit scared



Thirsty lion drank the beer (and squashed the empty can for recycling!)



Eating the lettuce

In Japan we have the same tradition of giving "new year money" to kids. Oliver was extra lucky and received two new year money. - The red outfit already brought luck!



New Year money in cute Tiger envelopes

We will be visiting another friend's open home tomorrow and this time Oliver will be dressed in the cool Chinese outfit. I will post the photos tomorrow :)

(✈ Brunei - Singapore - Brunei)

Five elements

Some of you might know we share the same Chinese zodiac signs in our Japanese culture (we call it Eto).



Here are all the animals

I am very familiar with which animal year we are in and which year I was born etc etc. But today I decided to look up on Wikipedia about "The year of Tiger" just to see if there is anything interesting. Guess what? I found something I didn't know.

According to Wikipedia, within each zodiac signs there are five elements; water, wood, earth, fire and metal. This year it's the year of "Metal Tiger". The people who are born in the Year of Tiger are said to be unpredictable, rebellious, powerful and passionate. On top of those characteristics, people who are born in the Year of Metal are controlling, ambitious, forceful and they are self-reliant and prefer to handle their problems alone.

So I looked up what element year I was born in (I am a dragon) and found out I am a "Fire Dragon". Here is an equation describing me according to this analysis; Fire characteristics + Dragon characteristics = Me!?
(dynamic, strong, persistent) + (strong, self-assured, demanding) = Misuzu
Yeah you are right, the Fire characteristics is just reinforcing the Dragon characteristics and making me a "Super Strong Dragon"! ha ha ha!!

I also looked up what my boys elements are - Matthew is an "Earth Goat" and Oliver is also an "Earth Ox". The main characteristics of "Earth" are patience, thoughtfulness, practicality, hard work and stability. Lucky I have those two boys to harmonise my strong characteristics!!

Confused child

I have been up at 12:00am, 2am, 3am, 4am, and either Matthew or I need to get up at 5am for the day. Unfortunately Oliver is still jet lagged... This is our 3rd day back in Brunei but he is still very confused with the time and with us.

The first day back here he was determined he had enough sleep at 2am (that is NZ 7am). Last night he did a little bit better, went back to sleep after being up at 2am but was still so cheerful and no intention of going back to sleep after 5am... He is confused, why are his parents annoyed when he is smiling at them (at 5am in the morning) - very confused.
His meal time is juggled around too, when he thinks its meal time (he has 2 solids a day now) he only gets some water and a piece of rusk - very confused.
When he is ready to go to bed his parents still want him to stay awake (two weeks ago they were happy to give him a bath and put him in bed straight away...) - very confused.

I feel sorry for him being so little and being jet lagged. I am also sorry for myself and Matthew for not getting a good nights sleep for a while. I guess we had such a great time in NZ so we shouldn't complain too much.

Tonight he went to bed at 7pm very peacefully. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Times Square

Today we went out to have Dim Sum lunch at the Hua Ho (Chinese department store near the airport). When we got out of the elevator we found an info board.
I took this photo with my iphone so not good resolution sorry...



We knew something was under construction near the airport roundabout but until today we didn't know what exactly they were building. "Times Square" it is.

Here is some info from the notice board.

-A new Escapade sushi restaurant ! (yeah!! more Japanese food!!)
-A 200 seat food court
-The biggest? indoor playground in Brunei (Oliver will love this, they also mentioned there will be bumpercars!! )
-A transit hotel with more than 100 rooms
-A spa (maybe Zen spa???)

I was disappointed to see that there won't be any movie theaters in the complex. I thought it would be the best thing for the transit passengers at the airport. Oh well it's nice to hear something is happening in Brunei.

It is to be completed by July 2010 in conjunction with various very important dates in Brunei, such as Celebration of Sultan's birthday and Hari Raya (YES this year)

Things don't often happen as scheduled by, I will be positive and look forward to this opening. You can read a bit more about it here.

Christmas continues

When we got back from NZ we received a notice letter from the post office - A parcel from London has finally arrived. All the expats here experience Super Slow Post (unlike the Fast Post, you pay more and get there quicker, you pay for air post but takes 3 times longer than it should take to get here... . The annoying part was that the parcel left London, got here in a week and a half but took almost 2 months to get to our house. Oh well TIB (This Is Brunei) at least it didn't go back to London.

Here is Oliver opening more Christmas presents.



Oliver reading the book to Matthew





Thank you very much for the wonderful books English Roses! I will add these books to his book collection.

Very HOT!!

After spending the last 12 days in NZ's wonderful summery weather, the 3 of us are finding it very difficult to cope with Brunei weather (already!). It is just so HOT! Oliver is sweating even in the aircon. I am having trouble being in the aircon all day as my eyes and throat get sore. Everything is so dry...

Perfect blue sky but I hope it will rain soon...

Safely home

Our NZ holiday came to the end today. My packing skill is steadily improving. I managed to pack all our clothes and new goodies except for 2 items (we are coming back next month so it was an easy decision to leave them behind). The day of departure is always running around and rushing for us but this time it was a bit different. I think leaving at 10am was much better than leaving at 1 am in the morning for all of us. I think we will stick with this for the future. We had time to have a lovely cooked breakfast in the courtyard and nice coffee with everyone at the airport.



Oliver with Merryn



Corin, Rory and Devon enjoying the fluffy

The boys helped us checking in, we had so much luggage that we needed help from Corin and Rory to blow the suitcases to make them move on the luggage checkin carousel.



We also had a fragile item. Corin and Rory put the stickers on for us and carried it to the special room so that they can put it on the plane separately. We were so pleased that the check in lady was such a lovely person and kid friendly. You don't want to start your 10 hour travel with grumpy one.





Oliver slept almost all the way to Brisbane and behaved really well on the second leg too. It was nice to see some of our friends as operating pilots.
Note: I was impressed by the meal they served us today, usually I don't eat much of plane food but today they all looked very nice and tasted really good!! Maybe something is improving in RBA !



We had such a lovely holiday (it was a bit short though).
Thank you M&D for letting us stay and looking after Oliver lots and lots. Thank you C&R for a wonderful day out and yummy yummy pizza, thank you so much K&L and Fenwick boys for the harbour cruise and for making lots of time available for Oliver to see his cousins :)

We will be back at the end of next month. See you all very soon!!
Merryn and Dennis, we are looking forward to seeing you here in Brunei in 5 weeks time.

Our last day in NZ

We had such a busy day yesterday (I always regret I should have done more in the first week...) in the morning Oliver, Merryn and I had a computer session on how to set up a blog, while Matthew was running errands.

In the afternoon we were booked to play golf with Dennis and Richard. We were quite brave to play on a real course after not playing golf for such a long time. We used to play occasionally in Japan but since we moved to Brunei we found it too difficult to play in the hot weather. I was worried I would be hitting so many to get through the 18 holes and just feel exhausted afterwards but the more I played the better I got! In the last hole I got par!!!! So so happy about it :)

All of us had great fun and I am sure that when we go back in March for the run we will be playing more golf.



Golfer Misuzu

When we returned to M&D's place the Fenwick boys were swimming in the pool so we got changed and jumped in! I had a good time teaching Corin how to swim. Hopefully the weather stays warm so that we can have more swimming sessions next month.



We finished off the day with beer and BBQ + bit of golf talk.

Shoulder ride

The other day Dennis gave Oliver a shoulder ride and he loved it!!



I can see so far away!!

Golly meter (8th month)

One of my friend introduced me to this "place a doll next to your baby and take photos on the birthday of every month". Well as you can see in my old post we use a special gollywog to measure Oliver's growth. Oliver was so lucky to have aunty Brenda to make him a nice gollywog.
This month we were so busy packing to come to NZ we missed out on Oliver's 8th measurement. Well lucky he has some cousins here in Auckland. They kindly let Oliver use their gollies :)



Look how much he has grown!!



He can interact with them now