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So, I got a new bag thanks to the husband. He had his bonus recently and wanted to treat his good wife to something nice :D  I have after all put up with a lot of crap for the past years so naturally I accepted his good gesture :)  Of course I’m not ashamed with the fact how I told him to transfer a certain amount of $ to my account so I could buy the bag myself!!

I first thought of this Prada bag.

But I did a double flip when I found out it cost more than RM4k, which was double the budget given! I’ve seen this bag on a few women at work and man, this is one classy baby! Of course I wont lie and say that somewhere along the lines of agreeing to how much he should give me I did push very hard for a Chanel bag :D  But to no avail

Anyhos, it was then that I decided to pick out another bag, something more affordable *looks at measly budget* Ok kidding, I am grateful.

Since I’m subscribed to the Coach newsletter , I knew instantly which bag I wanted!

We walked into Coach in Gardens and I fell in love with the Coach Madison Gathered Leather Lindsey bag in Bordeaux! Everything about it was perfect….leather bag, pleat like exterior (hey almosttt looks like the prada except this one’s leather!!) BIG and the color was a rich deep red that made it look very prestige. Did a mental check for existing red bags and nope, got none so a new red bag for me it is!

So next question, how much I asked? RM3.5k she quipped.

You are fucking kidding me I said and walked out after telling her I’ll ‘try’ to convince my husband to buy it for me coz I didn’t want her to fell like she wasted her time and energy on me.

I’m that much of a considerate shopper.

So I challenged myself to see how cheap I could source for this else where.

And guess what? Challenge accepted and completed!!

The queen of never pay retail strikes again! For she got it for 1/3 of the local selling price *does the jiggle dance*

It was a close call coz the seller initially didn’t want to ship it to my husband’s uncle’s house in the US due to the address being ‘different’ from pay pal. Had to literally beg and tell him I’ve done transactions like this before. Though I wasn’t so convinced of winning the bid but I did!!

Got it for……….wait for it………….USD440!!

This baby retails for USD598 in the US. And Rm3.5k in stores in Malaysia.

*jiggle jiggle jiggle*

Say hello to my new baby girl, Madison Lindsey!

These photos from the seller will have to suffice for now coz she’s still in the US. My uncle is only going there in May so I’ll need to wait for another month before I can embrace her in my arms!!! Just thought I’d blog about it first coz I”m so excited about adding Lindsey to my collection of bag

But I just can’t believe my luck I got her at such a steal!! Isn’t she such a beauty? Definitely need to thank my hubby big time for this.

Now I”m eyeing the Coach Kristin Woven Leather Round Satchel…..and secretly thinking of the Madison Quilted Chevron Nylon Sophia Satchel in Navy Blue….fingers crossed! Geez, I wish Coach wouldnt give their bags such lenghty names in the future.

P.s: I”m selling off my Coach Periwinkle since I hardly use it (less than 3 times only!), anyone keen, just email me as I’m letting it go for a steal! And yes, this is part of a fund raising effort to get another Coach so help – BAG SOLD!

A child falling sick on a holiday is ALWAYS a parent’s nightmare.

During our trip, we made sure we packed the common meds (panadol syrup, anti-histamine, baby balsam, med for constipation for Sairah), including some for us, thanks to my dad’s nagging

Now among all the things pack, never did I ever think Sairah would have a bad case of diarrhea on the day before our flight out!! And of all things, I forgot to pack meds needed for that!!

We woke up to her pooping A LOT and it was the wet kind and instantly my heart sank coz I knew what was coming next!

So every other hour, she was getting those wet ones onto the diaper. I thank god for having enough diapers for this but it wasn’t easy cleaning her up as and when diarrhea visited her. The smell was SO bad!

We were gonna meet my hubby’s friend who lives 20 minutes away from the city. And naturally Sairah just wasn’t in the mood. By the time we had lunch, her poor bum had turn sore and red. And she was experiencing pain and crying and fussing a lot at the restaurant. Hubby’s friend drove us to the pharmacy and we immediately got her some oral hydration salt.

Now having experienced her first BAD diarrhea a few months back, I instinctively knew what to do and I hope these tips will help other mommies out there.

1. First off, stop all milk feeds as the child is lactose-intolerant during this time. Some doctors might advice dilluting the milk but we’ve tried that before and it didn’t help at all.

2. Avoid juices/yogurt/fruits or anything sweet at all cost!

3. Give the child a simple meal of white bread (with a bit of jam) or perhaps rice. At this point, Sairah wasn’t even interested in eating. The few mouths of rice she took resulted in her letting out more wet ones. So naturally what goes into her mouth does come out so avoid heavy food.

4. Now this is the MOST important tip of all – go to the nearest pharmacy and get yourself those oral hydration salt packets!! Give a packet with 200ml water or 4oz every 1.5 hours or so! This will help keep the child hydrated and hopefully stop the dreaded diarrhea within 24 hours.

5. A MUST HAVE cream to have is Xylocaine Jelly to help numb the skin and Zinc Oxide which helps heal the sore skin. I just bloody wish we had these two creams with us during our trip. Can’t believe we had forgotten to pack that! Her bum was SOO red that my hubby said it reminded me of those red baboons. It was that bad. I felt soo bad for my baby girl.

6. Now if you don’t have these creams with you, don’t fret. Get yourself a bottle of SALINE!! Saline actually helps heal redness in private parts for toddlers, esp girls. Just pour lots of saline and it will give an instant relief to your child and should heal well withint 24 hours. Keep re-applying wheneven you can.

7. If diarrhea persist for more than 48 hours, please take your child to the nearest clinic.

Up until evening, she was still letting out those wet ones. And every time she had to pee, she would CRY because the pee was stinging her poor bum. She was so tired from the ordeal that she slept for 2 hours at my hubby’s friend’s house.

I guess in a way we were lucky that this happened a day before our flight out. I can’t imagine going through this during our first few days in Perth.

After a light dinner of fried rice at night  (she barely had 15 spoons), and a few more rounds of the oral hydration salt, things were starting to look much better for her.  I was so happy to know that there were no wet ones during her sleep. I prayed so hard that night!!

As we had an early morning flight out at 7.15 a.m, I was praying and hoping her diarrhea phase would be over. She was up by 4ish and we gave her another bottle of hydration salt with some bread. Waited it out to see if the dreaded poo would visit but it didnt….YAY

That was some serious relief!

On flight, I gave her some cocoa pops (without milk), though the ironic part of this is, I highly suspect the milk that we got from a café to go with her cocoa pops probably contributed to her damn diarrhea.

So that ladies and gents, is how you deal with a toddler with diarrhea. And no matter how careful you are sometimes, some of these things are just unavoidable. But its an experience to learn and of course share with the rest of y’all.

Key rule is to pack every single type of meds available for your child when you travel, just incase.

The end of the pooppy story and I never knew I’d see the day where I would BLOG about wet poo. Oh well

11/3/2012-18/3/2012

Perth is definitely an extremely child friendly destination for a holiday. If you take a close look at things you can do there, it always includes kiddie like activities. They are a very family oriented bunch! Everywhere you go, you can see the whole jing bang together in tow. They really are the epitome of people who believe in work-life balance

Besides the park visits (which was FREE), we made our way to the Perth Zoo and Aquarium. Though a little pricey for us Malaysians (each entry cost close to AUD50 for two of us), it was worth every AUD/RM I reckon.

This was the Perth Zoo. I should add that the zoo is located IN the city and took us less than 10 minutes to arrive. One can easily take an entire day here but we took a few hours because we were heading off that afternoon to Burns Beach. The weather was thankfully good to us.

African Painted Dog – never knew they existed! One can easily mistake them for a pack of hyennas.

Rhino, incase you didn’t know already.

Lion.

Father and daughter on the prowl…

This cutie pie was constantly posing for me!

BATS! Nanananana bat maaann.

Monkey checking out her species

Mmm iced coffee extra large size mmm….

BIG ASS TURTLE!

My brave brave lil girl…..

Visiting daddy’s side

Can you spot the orang utan up and above?

Snack time for the little one….

As we watch the honeybear have water melon for snack too. Both bears having their snack, LOL.

Off to meet some Oz animals.

A lazy kangaroo..

Yup this is how slowwwww these two walked in the zoo.

Little Red Indian Girl

Gen-2 spotted in Perth.

This was our rented car for 5 days. It was about AUD35 per day if I”m not mistaken. Couldn’t take a smaller cheaper car because we needed the boot space.

Just a rough idea how packed our boot was!! Her little potty made it from Malaysia to Perth. We naturally dumped it there on our last day.

We made a pit stop for a quick lunch before heading off to Burns Beach. Of course, the little one made a BIG poo in the restaurant. But one thing I love about OZ is the CLEAN toilets. They are hardly ever wet or smell bad which makes changing a soiled diaper not quite a chore

Poo done, let’s EAT!

This is Aqwa, which was a 20 minutes car ride from Burns Beach.  Just think of it as our Aquarium in KLCC, only better, but of course

And now for the blue photos….

Meh, our ONLY family photo of the trip. Hubby kept asking me if he should get someone to help take a photo of us but I’m very very possesive over my new camera *my preciousssss*

The little one enjoyed herself so much and was all eager to check em all out.

I would hate to fall into this tank, ouch.

Stone fish!! How gross looking is that?

Loving the gorgeous blue sky and ocean.

Aaah the beach…..my ultimate dream is to really live by the beach and raise a child there.

Oh mom me not digging having the sun on my face!

Lunch was at this cafe that served really good pizza and spaghetti. Mmm…..

The restaurant was located by the dock. Only thing missing was my own damn boat parked at the dock.

Another free place to visit is Fremantle. It’s about a 30 minute drive from Perth city.

It was a pretty hot day!

I was expecting the market to be HUGE, alas it was just a small one and we didn’t buy much. Shopping isn’t really a past time in Perth. I didn’t even shop much for myself!

Brunch time.

French style crepe with nutella, yummy to the core. I’m going to try to make this one day at home.

No one captures shitty photos of me like my husband does. I think the fork was about to fall off hence the look. Why do I even bother about things that aren’t mine.

Some crepe for the chocolate loving monster toddler.

Naturally when in Freemantle, fish and chips comes to mind. There are a few restaurants around here serving the same thing. So we stopped in an Indian store (of all places!!) to get some local suggestion and the indian dude behind the counter suggested us a restaurant. We were trying to find it when I told my hubby if he was damn sure it was a fish & chips shop and not an Indian restaurant Because you know how indians are…..always recommending Indian food only, esp to another Indian, LOL.

We finally found it and this is actually a single serve for ONE! Came with four slices of fish with lots of chips. How does ONE person gobble it all to themselves??? Good thing we shared. This meal alone came up to AUD30.

So that’s lunch for me? For the record, this baby doesn’t even like fish and I didn’t know what else to feed her so I got her a bowl of cereal. I suspect the milk we got from the cafe nearby probably caused her to have diarrhea…..more on that later.

Great, we’re in Dome for the hundred time again!!

Only because her mom had a super crush on their chai chiller, yummy to the core. Dome Malaysia, how come we don’t have this??!

The end of our trip! And I should also thank my hubby since this was an all expense paid trip. He was kind enough to pay for everything and right up until I boarded the plane I didnt have a single AUD with me!!  He gave me some cash once we landed there because his plan was an easy one…..to make me fall in love with Perth so this will be the chosen place we would move to and guess what? Freaking plan worked. I do have a soft spot for Perth, esp the way of family life here. And helps  that schooling is free for the brat.

What can I say, I’ m a sucker for free holidays And a sucker for a chilled out lifestyle.  But more on that later

Goodness, I have not cooked for a LONG time!!! You can tell by the lack of cooking post can’t you? :D  Bad wife…bad bad wife!

So for lunch yesterday I decided to whip up something easy and my all time favorite go-to dish when I crave for spaghetti: Spaghetti Chicken Bolognese. Admit it, it’s a favourite dish of yours too What’s not to like about this Italian dish.

Here’s the recipe:

One whole white onion, chopped

6 clove garlic, chopped

Half carrots, chopped

Quarter green capcisum, chopped

1 packet Maggi Spaghetti Bolognaise sauce mix

1 tray minced chicken

1 big tomato can (I used Hunts as I find it not sour)

2 tablespoon tomato paste (Hunts)

1 tablespoon tomato sauce

1 tomato, chopped

Parmesan Cheese

Monterey Jack Cheese

1 tablespoon sugar and a pinch of salt

Black Pepper / Basil / Oregano seasoning

Italian Parsley

Directions:

1. Boil spaghetti until soft, set aside

2. In a pan, fry onions and garlic in olive oil until slightly brown. Add in carrots and capsicum and fry for another 2 minutes. Add in minced chicken followed by the maggi spaghetti sauce mix powder (this is just for added flavor!) and fry until meat is cooked. Throw in a can of tomato sauce followed by half  can of water. Add in tomato,  tomato paste, tomato sauce, sugar, salt followed by all the herb seasoning.

3. Let the sauce thicken and add in more water, black pepper and herb seasoning if you like. Throw in Italian Parsely and let it boil for another 10 minutes. The thicker the sauce, the better. And the longer you leave it out on the pan (I made the sauce first then only boiled the spaghetti) the more tastier it becomes. Add in a little parmesan cheese to the sauce.

4. Arrange spaghetti on plate, throw in the awesome sauce, add more parmesan cheese and top it up with some monterey jack cheese cube (I found this single pack serve in Cold Storage in Parade for just RM3!!) and wala – a simple yet luxurious yummy meal! This tasted just like mom’s cooking which is a VERY good thing in my books.

Excuse the large cubes,  I told the husband to cut it smaller but he never listens….the monterey jack cheese went so well with the sauce.

Mmm all ready to dig in.

Yum yum let’s fatten me up!

Oh oh oh, and if you happen to pick up this months’ HER WORLD magazine, see if you can spot my lil review in the magazine I was hoping to score the spa package review that was featured two months ago in the magazine but got this instead, hmpf. I’m still thankful though coz I got to keep the product which I’ve since given it to my mom

Meanwhile you sooo gotta try my chicken spaghetti bolognese recipe, just saying

So this 8 day trip with Sairah has been our longest time being with her 24/7 granted both of us work and since I went back to work after a 2 months confinement.

Sad eh? But that’s the truth with working parents.

It’s been one heck of a ride, chasing after our 18 month old where ever she goes. She’s in a phase where she absolutely won’t sit in her stroller, refuses to be carried for a long period of time and wants to walk on her OWN. She won’t even want to hold your hands sometimes and when we’re in the supermarket, she walks off on her own and can’t be arsed even if you call her a million times to follow you. That is why one of us would have to do the shopping (usually me of course) while the hubby guards and watches over her with his life!

That little one has a mind of her own.

During our trip, she even had a fight with her father on two occasions. I know, at 18 months! It was our first time witnessing this and we’re not sure if it was funny or something we should worry about.

One of the occasion occurred when we were getting out from the car. I had put her down on the road to walk. But then her father picked her up coz it was getting chilly and in a flash she pinched his cheek!

Naturally I was the one who shouted at her (coz I’m the disciplinarian between the both of us, ahem) to stop that behavior telling her it was unacceptable and she was to hug her father to apologize to him.

Instead of being mad at me, she continued to wriggle her way out of him and cried for me to carry her instead. She didn’t want to look at her father or let him carry her. She clung on to me for the longest time!

In a way it was pretty hilarious.

Her father had to coax her to let him carry her and she just refused!! She clung on to me like a lil Koala Bear and I thought it was rather funny since I was the one who shouted at her.

She probably felt betrayed by her dad since mommy shouted at her coz she doesn’t like being yelled it. Everytime I scold her, she’ll cry her head off. Of course, she’ll eventually rectifiy whatever mistake she made while crying but she hates to be yelled at.

She did eventually go up to him and hug him when we got back into our room And all was fine and dandy again.

No doubt she finds way to bully that man. Because she knows he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Her mother on the other hand has no qualms in hitting her hands when a mistake is commited.

Infact, I got scolded by my husband when she kept touching the dustbin in the hotel room. I had warned her many times, and she continuously defied me so I ended up giving her one light smack on her hand! The hubby of course reprimanded me for smacking his precious kid.  

Ah well, we all can’t be the ‘good’ parent now can we?  

But with all that drama, it tickles me funny to see these photos of baby and daddy cuddled up.

She was watching a cartoon and was afraid of something and quickly went up to him for a cuddle.  

There is love among these two no doubt.  And based on my own previous experience with my father, father-daughter arguements will ALWAYS be there. It is how we eventually make up/ammends is what matters the most.

She also bullies her dad into giving her a massage…..something her mother also makes him do when we’re watching tv late at night

How that’s for having someone wrapped around her lil fingers.

 Baby-Daddy love in the park. I super heart these photos.

I can tell what she’s thinking: Hah, like mom I have him wrapped around my fingers!

And to think these two had a ‘fight’ a few days ago, haha.