Korean Chocolate Cake

A friend of mine gave me a box of Korean Chocolate Cake last month, which my sister and I instantly fell in love with it! It's similar to Hostess Cupcake, but we like the Korean version better because it is more chocolatey and not as sweet as Hostess.' My sister bought me a box from KL, but I think you can also buy it at Korean grocery stores in Jakarta.

Hmm... yummy!!

My Little Buddha

Nick spots a new hairdo!

Hellen Keller

One of my Grade 2-3 students, Dea, recently read the biography of Hellen Keller. She was so taken by Ms. Keller's life that she shared it with her classmates and class teacher, Ms. Vivid. Soon everyone wanted to know more about Ms. Keller's life. Once they learned more about Hellen and her teacher Annie, they decided to perform a skit based on Ms. Keller's life in front of the school.

Reading is contagious... and great reading materials are the germs :).

Haiku

Today I introduced Haiku poems to my Grade 2-3 students. First, I showed them a few haikus that I made:

Good morning sunshine!
What a bright and beautiful
day you bring to me.

My fair ladybird,
watch out, watch out! The spider
is coming to you!

Then, I asked them to calculate the number of syllables in each line. After that, I asked them to spot the similarities between the two haikus and came up with the rules for haiku (3 lines, 5/7/5 syllables). Finally, they were given some time to write their own haikus.

Here are some of the haikus written by my students (age 7-8):

Good bye, Salma. See
you tomorrow in the school
bus. I'll wait for you.
-by Mazaya

Ferrari car is
my favorite racing car in
the world's greatest race.
-by Alvin

Iron man is a
person that wears a hard cloth
and can make gun.
-by Pras

Sushi is yummy.
In the sushi there are rice,
seaweed and salmon.
-by Intan

Synchronized Yawning - Olympic 2012

Mama's Fave Kidz

Mama meets lots of kidz everyday, but it's no secret that her favorites are Nick and his cousins Marco and Grace!

Shopping Mama

I can't resist these cute pairs of pants when I stopped by the GAP at Grand Indonesia. They were 60% off and with BCA card we got a 10% additional discount! Mama *heart* GREAT bargain.

One Hectic Morning...

... before Mommy left for work ^_^!

Lunch Date

Henny and Lulu came over to our house with their little ones in tow. It was hectic, but Super FUN. Here are a few pics of us... three hot mamas and four cheeky monkeys!

My Cheeky Monkey

Nick's Reading Corner

We want Nick to grow up entertained and, hopefully, enlightened by books. So we create a reading corner (a.k.a. the bottom shelf of his changing table!) for him.

Loving It! The New “Times” bookstore in UPH Campus - Lippo Karawaci

I read an ad in Kompas a few days ago that there’s a new bookstore in town. And it’s not just any bookstore… it’s the biggest one around! So I HAD to go there yesterday! And it lived up to my expectation! In addition to the large numbers of books available there (yeah, no surprise here!), this is the nicest and coziest bookstore in Jakarta! I love the carpeted reading areas next to the glass walls and the nice café run by Imperial Cakery. This is definitely a perfect Sunday afternoon hangout place for our family.

Also, they have a decent selection of children’s books. I say decent because they stocked mostly popular flash cards, baby’s vocabulary books, and teenage series and didn’t have the classics that I was hoping they’d carry, such as The Tales of Peter Rabbits, etc… Then again, I did find one children book, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson that I really loved and ended up buying.

On the downside, yes, 90% of the books on my list were not available, but to be fair, I couldn’t find any on my list elsewhere in Jakarta. They were a bit flustered when I asked them the possibility of ordering the books from their Singapore branches so I decided not to pursue it further. While browsing the literature section (yeah, right!), I stumbled upon Momzillas by Jill Kargman and decided that I HAD to buy it (otherwise I'd end up thinking about it at 9:00 PM every night during my nightly reading hours). I had a blast reading it well into the wee hour yesterday. It's not something that would go on my recommended list, but it was entertaining. At least now I am so thankful that in my 1.5 years as a mom, I haven’t met any serious-case momzillas hee hee hee…

Pictures from Taman Safari

A Trip to Taman Safari Cisarua

Last Saturday we went to Taman Safari Cisarua. We left the house at 8:00 AM and got there around 10:30 AM. The traffic was quite bad, and it was a challenge to keep Nick and Grace (Nick’s cousin) entertained throughout the journey. However, once we got there both of them couldn’t take their eyes off the animals! We bought some carrots and the kids took turns feeding them to the the animals (we weren’t supposed to, but since everyone was doing it and the guards didn’t seem to mind… hee hee hee…).

It took us 2 hours to see all the animals. By the time we hit the parking lot, everyone, except the kids who had eaten in the car, was starving! We went to the food court and ate fried chicken from SFC (Safari Fried Chicken) - there used to be a KFC outlet there, but apparently the owner of Taman Safari decided to serve their own brand hehehe...

Once we’re done with lunch, we hopped on the ferris wheel… looking back, it was probably one of my bravest acts in the past years. The thing was small, dirty, and didn’t look safe at all. But because Grace wanted to be on it, we took her. Next, she wanted to ride the cable car, but after the ferris wheel experience we had to decline her request. Instead, we took her on a few other rides that looked safer and didn’t require us to be hundreds of feet off the ground. After spending some time in the mini amusement park, we went to take pictures with the baby tiger. Grace was a bit scared, but she finally agreed to be on the pictures after we told her that a baby tiger was as harmless as a big cat hee hee hee…

Right before we left, we went to the mini bird park and saw many kinds of birds from owls to the flamingos. As we exited the bird park, we saw two white tigers in a cage. They looked very graceful and tame. Next, there was a baby orangutan in a glass cage. He was very cute. Nick must have thought that the orangutan was a little boy like him because he started chattering and “high-fiving” the orangutan. It was a pretty hilarious scene! Some strangers even laughed with us! Hee hee hee…

On our way home, we stopped by a small marketplace and bought some corns, sweet potatoes and other veggies. They were so cheap! The sweet potatoes was sooo yummy! Oh, we also stopped by Cimory, Cisarua Mountain Creamery, and bought milk, yoghurt, sausages and lots of snacks. The place was really crowded and the food looked tempting, but we refrained from sitting down at the café because it was getting late the kids looked very tired already.

Overall, it was a great trip! Despite the horrible traffic that we had to sit through on the way there and on our way home, it was well worth it when you saw the sparkles in the children’s eyes throughout the trip.

Who says you can’t dress up a little boy?

I have to admit that I don’t buy a lot of fancy clothes for Nicklaus. Most of his nice clothes are courtesy of his shopaholic auntie, “metro” uncle (who recently bought him a super cute T-shirt from Small Paul by Paul Frank!), my thoughtful students and my friends. But… fancy clothes aside… you can’t help but to dress up your little boy if he’s this cute! Hehehe…

A Trip to Sea World Indonesia

Nick went to Sea World in Ancol with Mama, Ie2x, and Nanny last Tuesday. We left very early in the morning because we had to drop Papa off at his office and then picked Ie2x up at Omi’s house. Thankfully the traffic wasn’t so bad and we managed to arrive at Ancol around 10.30 AM. We went around to a few fish tanks and saw the baby crocodile before we headed toward the main aquarium to see the fish getting their breakfast (hmm… shouldn’t it be brunch?). After the show, which lasted about 15 minutes, we went into the glass tunnel and saw thousands of fish swimming back and forth. Nick was still too young to tell us which was his favorite one, but Mama loves the stingrays!

We were glad to go early on a weekday because the place wasn’t too crowded and the entrance ticket is half of the weekend price. Too bad the place was a bit dark so we didn’t get any nice pictures there.

Nick and Marco

Craving Sour Sally

I am officially addicted to frozen yoghurt from Sour Sally. They opened their first store in Senayan City a few weeks ago and I've been going there every weekend to get their yummy (and super sour!) yoghurt. They come in two flavors, green tea and plain. I love the plain fro yo with almond and strawberry toppings. The green tea isn't as good IMHO, it doesn't have the bitter green tea taste, instead it's kind of milky and it reminds me of Nick's baby formula.

Welcoming the Dry (or Hot?) Season

The rainy season has come to an end! Here is Nick playin' ball in our front yard!

SLIDES

Finally, after much procastinating, I assembled Nick's Little Tikes slide set yesterday. He played with it all afternoon yesterday and this morning he figured out how to use the slide properly (he was sliding down head first yesterday!).

SPLASH!

Fun Playdates

We had the perfect weather for outdoor swimming today so we went to Emma's apartment today and spent a few hours there. Nick went swimming with Mama (Mama even did a few laps on her own - way to go Mama ^_^) and then played with Emma for a while. They also ate their dinner together (yummy fried rice made by Mbak Mul - no chilli and MSG, a bit plain for mama, but perfect for Nick and Emma).

We haven't met Auntie Lulu and Emma for a few weeks and Auntie Lulu said that Nick's face has changed a bit. She seems to think that Nick's face is getting longer... moving toward a more oval and less square-ish shape. Also, he's taller (which is true because Nick has grown 2 cm in the past month). But then, the other day Omi and Ie-Ie Mei2x said that Nick was getting "rounder" (both face and body). Mama is a bit confused now... hee hee hee...

Happy 16th Months!

Nick is 16 months today! Mama took Nick to High Scope Book Celebration Day where he met some of Mama's students and fellow teachers. Nick was very shy so he refused to shake hands with them. He saw half of the show and played for a while in the playground. Here is a pic of Nick at HS playground.

Storytelling and Puppet Show at HSAI

We went to High Scope Alfa Indah Book Celebration Day. To end their book celebration month the students put up various performances based on the books that they read this month. Parents and teachers were invited to come and they also held a book fair in the school compound. The students did a very good job and put up a very nice performance (oh, they made all the props, too!).

When Momma was away...

Nanny put Nick in a cupboard!

Lunch @ Sushi Tei

Nick loves the Japanese sticky rice, grilled fish, and chawan mushi at Sushi Tei. Here is a pic of Nick on our last trip there. Last week I also took him to my fave restaurant, Beautika, and confidently ordered Tinutuan for Nick. Unfortunately, he didn't like it. I was a bit surprised and a teeny bit disappointed coz' I craved for it during my pregnancy (so I thought he would love it!). There were times when I HAD to stop and get it every time I passed by the restaurant. I would eat the porridge in the car and regretted that I didn't get two portions instead of one. Hee hee hee...

Book Review... Again!

Here are two cute books that are currently available at Aksara:

Let's Pretend Rose's Doll's House (Let's Pretend) (Board book)
by Roger Priddy (author)

I saw the cutest book that popped up into a dollhouse at Aksara. It comes with little cardboard dolls and I think it was for Rp. 279k (Amazon price: $11.21). It's a GREAT prop for a little girl's pretend play. Too bad I don't have a daughter… still it took tremendous amount of self-control to walk out of Aksara without that super adorable book.

Clackers: BEE (Clackers) (Board book)
by Luana Rinaldo (author)

My friend gave rave reviews on this one (she even remembered the lines by heart ^_^ ^_^). The book is shaped like a bee and makes clacking sounds that babies love and the story is very cute. I think this is a great baby book and they still have a few copies at Aksara. So hot mama, hurry hurry… go get ‘em! Price: Rp. 55k (Amazon price: $4.99). Oh, they have another title called FISH.

One Fine Day

Cute Baby Snapshots – Anyone?

Motherhood brings me a new interest… photography! I love love love taking pictures of Nick, especially during the first few months of his life (it’s harder to take his pics nowadays since he always tries to grab the camera from me). I have to admit that I was not really big on taking pictures and I didn’t even own a camera until a week before Nick was born.

To my own surprise, I was really really proud of my early snaps. I guess my expectation was pretty low because I was just using a low-end digital pocket camera (it never came across my mind that skills and equipments are secondary when you have a mega cute object like Baby Nick. Ha ha ha!). However, I’ve been noticing more and more “flaws” on my shots lately. I mean, no one really comments on my photo taking techniques when they see my work, but I feel something is missing (aha! I even claim photography as a productive hobby now! – you should really see my husband’s face when I refer to the pics as “my work.”).

So, anyway, I went back and reviewed my snapshots, went online to lots of baby photographers’ websites and came up with a few good tips and tricks and ideas for better results.

First and foremost, planning is everything and these are the things that you may have to think about ahead of time:

• Lighting. Natural light a.k.a. sunlight is best according to one photographer. Another photographer thinkst that the best time to take pics are in the morning before 10AM and in the late afternoon around 4-5 PM on a sunny day. I totally agree with this because the best pics I’ve taken are taken during sunny mornings and/or late afternoons under lots of sunlight.

• Background. Don’t forget to remove the mess: bottles, burp clothes, piles of laundry, etc… Place your baby on a clean blanket… for a contrasting look, you can dress your baby in solid bright colors and put him/her on a white blanket and vice versa. You can even create your own “backdrop” by taping a cloth to the wall. Something that I am planning to try next week (let’s pray my son will cooperate)… using batik as a backdrop and have my son in diaper only.

• Clothings. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the styles and colors. You’ll never know until you see it in prints (or computer screen – if you use a digital camera like me). For example, one photographer specifically says NO NAVY because it just looks bad. You know what, my son looks gorgeous in navy! However, I can’t say the same thing when it comes to yellow. Then again, I didn’t notice this until I saw the pics.

• Experiment with the “photojournalistic” style. Shots some pictures when your son/daughter is busy playing/eating biscuit/swimming while keeping in mind the lighting, background, and clothings.

Last but not least, HAVE FUN!

Check out my Slide Show!

My Playlist

Future Race Car Driver

It's Potty Time!

We started potty training when Nick was 9 months old. Some may argue that it's not really potty training because we never ask him to tell us when he needs to 'go.' Instead, we just take him to the bathroom every once in a while and encourage him to pee. As for the 'number two' goes, we just wait for the 'signs.' Although Nick is still far from being potty-trained, at least he is very comfortable on his potty booster *_^.

Alun-Alun Indonesia

I went to Alun-Alun Indonesia in Grand Indonesia last week. I was very impressed with the place and the merchandise. I think it’s the best high-end traditional Indonesian arts and crafts shop in Jakarta now.

As a born again “shopaholic” I define their collections of modern batik clothing as the MUST VISIT and MUST BUY of 2008. If you are like me, a frequent shopper of mass produced clothings at ZARA, MANGO, and the likes, you can get limited edition styles at the same, or even cheaper price.

My favorites are the short dresses. Most of them have simple lines to make up for the bold batik colors, sometimes adorned with ruffles and flower applications.

Oh, they also have super cute collections for kids!