Bryan and his story books and T-Rex impersonation

Every evening, after dinner, Bryan would "read to Mummy" and this is what he'd do. As routine is his symptom, it's not a bad thing, it kinda assures that he won't get lazy.... even when there are days which I most certainly am. This happens every evening: He'll start by reading his school book, then his sight words related to the book which he just read, then his story book (from the Speech Therapist), followed by his Barrier Games which isn't just the one... after that, it's another game to improve his listening skills. These are his must-dos every night. I downloaded a lot of material from the internet and laminated them (Yes! I bought an A3 laminator just for him!) ... like "extra" fun stuff to do but beneficial for him. His brain is like a sponge and his memory is incredible.

Can't seem to get that darn video in... anyway, here's Bryan pretending to be T-Rex.... his left leg is his "tail"... you con't see his face from this angle but he is doing his "grrrrrrr"..... oh well... I'll try to get him to do his "triceratops" after school... time to recharge the batteries now...

Weird Garlic

Firstly, I've never come across single clove garlic before... and today I found a garlic within a garlic whicle I was preparing for dinner. Here it is.

Second week of Term 2 now and one more week for daily swimming. Very siong having to wash Cait's swimmers everyday and depending on the heater to dry them.

Bryan's getting better in his reading. I've recorded him reading his daily readings but haven't posted it yet. Will do it later. Now want to watch NCIS first and then go to bed. Just came back from Choir prac. So damn cold outside!

Destined Not To Have Good Night's Sleep

During the week, I sleep almost badly. I tend to wake up ever so often esp between 4 am to 7am checking to see I would oversleep (I have to wake up at 7, you see). So since the weekend is upon us, and I didn't have to wake up at 7am, naturally, mentally, I would KO usually earlier than usual, to make up for lost hours.... and what happens? Hubby wants to gym till larut malam usually past midnight and then come in to the room, turn on the bathroom lights and leave the door open which is hardly 2 feet away from my face, and then decide to take his baju, which by the way, has lights in the closet and then slowly make his way to shower. Then after shower what happens? He decides to leave the room door ajar to watch TV out in the living room, which is adjascent to the bedroom... with the lights on... Come one man, so old already, turn the damn lights OFF! So you see, usually when I wake, I make sure I disturb no one. But he, damn boey tze toong. And he doesn't want to install a door to our bathroom in the new house wor... chee sin. WAIT... not finished,... then snoring leh? Again, he snored. So you see, I woke up at from the time he showered UNTIL the time he finished watching his bloody show, then before I could blardy fall asleep, he woke me up with his snoring. I shoved him la.. usually it works. By then already 6.30. How to sleep some more... Need to wake up at 7am to go to Church ma.
He thinks just becuase I don't work anymore, I don't deserve sleep. Of course, he chooses not to think about what I go through during the week... no noon naps.. so when I wanted to take nap yesterday, he really objected, saying I didn't want to go out with the kids... oh come on. I run this family man from start to finish. I DESERVE REST WHENEVER I SEE FIT!

Haaaaa, lega rasanya.. have to ventilate before going to church.. if not very kang kor.. carrying burden there.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."-Randy Pausch

I have been keeping up to date with Randy's condition via his webpage at http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html but I guess the page must be really busy today, especially after the announcement of his death from complications of pancreatic cancer yesterday.
I stumbled upon his "Last Lecture" literally, by accident, many many moons ago and watched the lecture online. Since then, I have read about him in Readers Digest and would check on his webpage everyday to see how he was doing. His last lecture was amazing. For those who haven't seen it, I strongly recommend watching it. His last lecture made me change how I look at life. I get to The only word I can describe it is "powerful". You can look him up at Youtube or you can click on the link at the bottom of http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml I won't spoil it by revealing what the "Last Lecture" is about so, go ahead, click and watch.. You'll be in awe...

Parent Meeting Today

Attended a parent meeting today at the State Child Dev Center and only 1 other parent attended. I'm glad we attended it cos now I have an understanding of where to go get help for Bryan. There will be another 2 hour session next Wednesday. Hope we meet more parents then. Anyway, after that, we had to rush Bryan to school and poor boy didn't have a chance to eat his lunch at the Center, so he ate his lunch in school!

A dear friend came over after the kids came home from school and gave me some Bamboo clams... this is my first time seeing it up close, let alone cook it. The texture is a little tougher than mussels but not as ngun as squid. I cooked it with lots of garlic, onions and chilli... and gravied it. See? Not bad la.... a bit "seng" though. Caitlyn was very surprised to see shells did that didn't look like the usual clam nor sea shells.

Pekak also tak kesah

Hari ini, I frus kerana Caitlyn nak ceritakan pasal sekolah untuk ayahnya, tapi, ayah tak hiraukan. Then Caitlyn pun dah sian already kerana ceritanya panjang and akhirnya, ayah pun tak dengar. So I tegur ayah la, katanya memang pekak, kenapa tak nak tengok dr? Dari situla, start bertengkar kita. Selalu macam itu..... dah berapa tahun dah, getting pekaker and pekaker.. pun tak nak tengok dr. A lot of times, it's because of this, kita salah faham antara satu sama lain, until bergaduh... I told him la, kenapa tak nak cari jalan untuk memperbaiki the situasi, but blame the dunia for the problem. Sigh. Sepuluh tahun already...

First School Swimming Day

Right smack in the heart of winter and poor Caitlyn has swimming lessons in the morning, everyday for 2 weeks. They dress in their bathers and slippers and takes the school bus to the swimming center and after swimming, they just towel off and put on their track suit WITH their bathers still on! Aiyo. Hope she doesn't catch a chill. Compulsory wor, this swimming, so boh pien, have to let her do it. Luckily she is enjoying it. She was so lor sor on Monday, kept reminding me to "label all my clothing... including my undies!" Which was exactly what I did...and then what happened when she came home today? She lost her hat. She has lost 2 hats this year alone. One, last year. And it costs me $30 for each hat! Wa... I told her off man.
Anyway, you can imagine, I have to quickly wash her bathers after school and you guessed it.... how to dry in time for tomoro? So I had to go out to Carousel to buy her another set. Almost seratus dollar man, for her new set. Damn mahal.

Hooray! It's Monday!

I'm crazy, I know. While the ordinary ol' Joe may groan at the arrival of today, I actually am happy. Too happy to sleep at this time of the morning? Actually no. Hubby's sinuses acting up and it sounded like the lawn mower starting up in the room... at 2 in the blardy morning! So THAT woke me up and for those who knows me, I HAVE to eat after I wake up. So here I am, at my "office" table, chomping away on my pork-floss on bread and my cuppa. Nice and hot on this freezing morning. Anyway, back to earlier topic...... Term 3 starts today! Caitlyn's looking forward to going back to school. Her enthusiasm is infectious. I'm happy she loves school. Then again, schooling here IS fun! Look at their work... lots of pictures, cartoons, fun, hands-on stuff. I compare it with the workbooks from ... ahem... you know where ha.... no competition, the latter ones all words, numbers, black and white... one word to describe it.... boring. But she still cannot escape it. I still set homework for her everyday, despite the school term. Don't worry, she still gets to play with her Wii game and practice her piano everyday.

Last Chilli

Cooked bak kut teh yesterday and I cut up my last giant chilli from my old garden. Can't wait for my new house to be ready, then I will have my little veggie patch again.... back to getting down and dirty in the garden again!

Sunday already, so I will be planning my weekly meal planner today. Planning to have ex-neighbours come over for dinner on Fri or Sat evening. Hmmm... now what shall I cook....

Wasted half the blardy day today

Acheived nothing for the first half of the day today. I told hubby that Bryan will not be able to sit still for us to choose tiles and suggested we went tile hunting on a weekday but did he listen? Of course not. He never does. And what happened... poor boy was bored. So he decided to roam about the store... after all who wouldn't? We most certainly were. People were streaming in the store and soon, he was in quite a lot of people's way. Too stressful for me to concentrate on choosing tiles, keeping one eye on him and Caitlyn and writing and looking at floor plans. I totally lost it..... I packed everyone up and ordered hubby to drive all of us back back. And then on the way back home, we tapau-ed KFC... usually we have a habit of checking out order before we leave the store. Since hubby couldn't manage Bryan, so I had to load Bry into the car. Hubby didn't even check order... and what happened? The popcorn chicken was left out of the order... and when did we notice this? When we were already at the makan table... AT HOME of course. So lan lan, he had to drive out to KFC to get the missing order lor... You see la... angry or not? Of course, during the course of these events happening, we were bertengkar-ing in the car. Boey tahan man.

Trying this out

A dear friend has just introduced this new website for me to try out as well.. here goes nothing!

See what happens next

I've just submitted my first blog and hopefully Sam is able to give me some tips on how to finetune it. It was a lot of traila-and-error for me. I hope to get this off the ground soon.
Time for Bryan's nap now.

I Signed Up For PPP!

Yippee! Just got accepted by PPP and will be blogging away while I’m at home. As most of you know, after discovering Bryan’s diagnosis, we made a firm decision of me quitting my job doing permanent night as an RN. So since I’m home most of the time, why not try blogging on a more serious basis. Sam, you are a gem, you introduced me to blogging and PPP and hopefully, I will be able to do maybe half of how well you do. As far as I know, PPP allows me choose the topics available out there, depending which level I’m on, and then allows me the opportunity to write up a blog about it whatever the time of day it is. I’ll probably be a little hazy at first, as this is my first entry, so hopefully, I know I will be able to blog more. And who can say no to some extra stash of cash, eh? Most of the money will probably go to either Bryan’s therapy or paying off mortgage. I hope to be able to make more new friends in that cyber world of blogging. My younger sister is eyeing on me right now, since mine took off, she’s started he own BlogSpot to start qualification soon. Looks as though I AM spreading the love!

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So excited

Today marks my first time blogging for PPP. Let me first get this over with. You'll see why later.
Anyway, 3 more days till school starts for Caitlyn, Bryan has student free day on Monday, so he gets another day holiday. Ah.. the life.........

Bryan's Dinotopia

Bryan's make believe Dinotopia. Well, at least he has SOME imaginary play in him still. I suspect

Caitlyn had hand in it. There weren't any trees, so he used his plastic sea weed as trees.

Apparently we are expecting hale tomorrow http://uk.weather.com/weather/today-Perth-ASXX0089

Fuel prices at Canning Vale http://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/fuelWatchRSS.cfm?Product=1&Suburb=Canning%20Vale&Day=today

No escaping Homework During Hols

If my kids thought they they can just wile their time away during the school holiday, boy are they WRONG! Maybe on Sundays, they can sloth about and not do anything constructive... but then there's just only 1 more Sunday to do that. Otherwise, it's back to worksheets and work books. Even Bryan has to go through his reading, story telling and games every evening. What to do? For him, routine works. In a way, it's good because then he doesn't resist learning. The good part about ASD, I suppose.

This is how Caitlyn's 'To-do' booklet looks like inside. I set the task, and pages, she will tick them off after doing them....

Her books are, just to show you a few.. Alamak how come terbalik, my photo? It was right side up just now. Anyway, this will do la.... just tilt your head to the right.
Bryan's work looks like this... he has others, I haven't had the time to upload the photos yet. This one's called Barrier Game-Ocean. His homework is set by his Speech Pathologist. It was just his first 30min session last Tuesday and he loved it. Paid full attention. I'll try 1 hr session a fortnight later. Pricey.. but if it's good for him, why not, hor? Hope I can earn a fraction of what you do, Sam! Here's hoping staying at home pays off... or at least pays of Speech Therapy!

Today's wacky weather http://uk.weather.com/weather/today-Perth-ASXX0089

Fuel prices at Canning Vale area: http://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/fuelWatchRSS.cfm?Product=1&Suburb=Canning%20Vale&Day=today

Rainy days and Wednesdays

Rain.. Stop... Then rain some more... then stop... you see la, how to plan to go out? No sun in between, so it's always cold. I guess it's nature's way of stopping me from shopping all year round. It's given me winters so that my credit cards have take a breather. Just kidding, I haven't been shopping ... i mean REALLY SHOPPING for more than a year. Somehow the more I earn, I seem to spend less.. I guess most of the time I sleep when it's time to shop. So much so now, the thought of driving all the way out just to jalan and shop, doesn't interest me anymore, unless I really need that something from THAT particular place, then I'll make a trip.
Poor kids are surprisingly not complaining about staying at home. Caitlyn's got her Wii games to play with, Bryan's playing a lot either with the sister or me. But there's always homework to do... either I set them or from work books I got from good ol' Popular bookstore in Singapore. Singapore Math standard high ma conpared to over here, so have to keep Caitlyn up with her Singapore peers. Kiasu hor, I still?
See la my son, go and rummage through my make up drawer and applied lipstick! Dare to tell me to show me and smile for photo some more!

Today's fuel prices around Canning Vale: http://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/fuelWatchRSS.cfm?Product=1&Suburb=Canning%20Vale&Day=today and today's crappy weather can be seen at http://uk.weather.com/weather/today-Perth-ASXX0089

Egg-Citing!

I've not seen an egg this big before. For one, I pity the chicken which laid this egg. It's huge compared to the Extra Large eggs we find in the supermarket. It looks larger in Caitlyn's hands! It even looks huge in MY hand! And they're cheap too! only AUD5 for 18 of those double-yolked big mamas. So we're getting double the cholesterol, cheaply!

Speech Therapy

Bryan's first home based speech therapy today, I'm so nervous because I have no idea how he would behave having therapy at home environment. I can't be there cos he'll be all over me and won't participate. Lisa's wonderful, she is so much fun. They are within earshot, so I can pretty much hear what's going on.
Check out today's weather around Perth at: http://uk.weather.com/weather/today-Perth-ASXX0089 Crappy... with rainy days like this, I don't want to take the kids out while they're still unwell. Bryan's ear is clearing up, so here's hoping the antibiotic is doing its job.
Today's fuel prices around Canning Vale suburb: http://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/fuelWatchRSS.cfm?Product=1&Suburb=Canning%20Vale&Day=today

Catching Up With Buddies

Recently Stephanie visited me during a working trip to Perth and we had a few hours to catch up and it was wonderful. It's great to have friends who still keep in contact after .... 20 (gasp!) years! Here's to many more years of friendship! She was able to "say goodbye" to the old house. That's me looking all hagard on the left and Steph, youthful as ever.
Will have Adrienne come over on the 30th as well.. I'm so EXCITED!

Perth's weather today: http://uk.weather.com/weather/today-Perth-ASXX0089
Fuel watch for Canning Vale:http://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/fuelWatchRSS.cfm?Product=1&Suburb=Canning%20Vale&Surrounding=no

Caitlyn's Turn!

Caitlyn's wondering why she wasn't "in the news", so here she is, enjoying the snake and lizard. I wonder if I was that brave when I was her age. Funny thing is, I don't mind holding this huge lizard but if you gave me a cicak (gecko), I'd have a heart attack. My kids have a knack with animals. Bryan will literally play with spiders.... I'd be the one yelling for him to stop.. cos you'll never know when he'll decide to kacau a red back.

Snakes Alive!

Every year, this bloke will hold a snake and lizard exhibition at Forest Lakes Shopping Center and my kids love him! There'll be different types of snakes on display: Venomous ones in glass cupboards and he'll pass the harmless ones as well as the Blue Tongue Lizard around for the kids to have their pictures taken with them. Here's Bryan carrying the lizard... Cute, eh? THat lucky lizard had a hat on!

Here's Bryan with the snake around his neck. He can handle both snake and lizard very well but he tends to want to touch the tongue la, touch the eyes la... Sigh. So far, I have brought him to the exhibition twice and he has had 4 turns carrying the reptiles, so can you imagine the amount of laundry I have to do after that?
Caitlyn's brave too. Both of them will KISS the reptiles before leaving too!

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Guess who's back! Finally, after almost 2 weeks, everything's running smoothly. I'm thinking about starting another blog about Bryan's development. Well, just a little update... Quit my job as of yesterday, will be returning office equipment on Monday (courier services supplied, not bad huh?) and now, full time housewife, mother, chauffeur, cook, Minister of Home Affairs and Finance, basically.
Have taken many photos of old house, and will take some new photos of this rental one too later. My office table is still not really setup, so stay tuned!