Thoughts: Adoration

Every parent out there adores their kid irregardless of how they look or how they are. Every imperfections of a baby or a kid that's visible to another parent or human being is every perfection to the parent of the baby or kid simply because we're overwhelmed by love, thus those imperfections are blinded by the love we feel. They become simply perfect in our eyes. This love can only be understood when you are right there at the spot, when one has stepped into parenthood. It's an amazing feeling. So speaking of adoring your own kids, I'm no different than others. I am one of those mom who adores the hell out of my kids. I know they're not the worlds cutest baby but they're adorable as hell in their very own way in my world and I love waking up to see these innocent smiling faces. 

Baby Cadence in blue ensemble

Spiky hair like her dad

One early morning

The kid eating his dinner like a boss. There's something about fries that kids love. He finished his fries but NONE of his fish. Cadence sucked on the broccoli and loves it. You can see how she's trying to reach for her brother's fries.

Recipes: Dry Loh Shee Fun

OD-ed on outside food that I decided I had to cook lunch last weekend. Couldn't bear to go through another 'What to eat?' weekend so I figured I'll make something simple and since my hubs isn't a big fan of yellow egg noodle, I had to forgo making fried noodle and opt for loh shee fun or otherwise known as rat tail's noodle. Sounds disgusting I know and no, it's not made from rat's tail. It's just the look of this noodle kinda resemble rat's tail thus the name. Loh Shee means rat in cantonese while fun means starch? Well wiki has a better explanation, so here's the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_needle_noodles. Recipes are all based on estimation, as usual.

Kon Lou Loh Shee Fun

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of loh shee fun or rat tail's noodle
• 200 - 300 grams of minced pork
• A packet of porkball 
• 10-15 small shallots (sliced thinly)
• 6 pips of garlic (minced)
• 1 bundle of baby Kai Lan (optional)
• 1 packet of Kuey Tiau (Flat Rice Noodles)
• 1-2 stalk Spring Onion
• Chillies
• Oyster sauce
• Light soy sauce
• Dark soy sauce
• Pepper
• Sugar
• Water

Method:
1. Boil water and add in the pork balls to cook it. Or if you have clear chicken broth or is making soup, you can cook the pork balls in the soup. Once cooked, remove the pork balls. 

2. Marinade the minced pork with oyster sauce, light soy sauce, pepper and sugar. In a pan, heat oil, stir fry a generous amount of sliced shallots and minced garlic. Before it starts to brown, put in the minced pork and stir fry till cooked. Taste along, add oyster sauce, light soy sauce and sugar if more is needed. Put in the pork balls for a quick cook, so to coat the pork balls with flavors. 

2. Fry the shallots till golden brown. Remove and put in aside. 

3. Boil water to cook the noodle for 5 mins long. Drain once cooked and set aside. 

4. If you are opting for some vegetables like I did for a balance diet, boil the vegetables of your choice. To make the sauce, in a pan, heat some oil, stir fry minced garlic and sliced shallots till before brown, add in oyster sauce and light soy sauce and mixed immediately and turn off fire. Pour over vegetables. 

5. To make the sauce, dark soy sauce, water, sugar and light soy sauce mix and heat for few mins in a pan or pot just to thoroughly mix it. 

6. Sliced spring onions and cut chillies. Serve.

7. Assemble. First take noodle. Add a bit of black sauce, put the minced pork on top followed a generous amount of fried shallots (thats the secret ingredient!), spring onions followed by pork balls.

Thoughts: Positivity

"Happiness depends to some extent upon external conditions, but chiefly upon mental attitudes. Essentially, conditions are neither good nor bad; they are always neutral, seeming to be either depressing or encouraging because of the sad or bright attitude of the mind of the individual concerned with them."

Why so? My entire life growing up, I've always felt like a very negative person. Whenever something crappy happens, my negativity will soar above the sky making me feel even more negative about the situation. Not to mention my negativity has often played games with my mind that sometimes it does affect my self esteem. It's a lot easier to be negative than to be positive because positivity just takes that much more effort off a person. While I know this isn't healthy but old habits die hard. I've always admired a friend of mine that's very positive in life. I gotta say she's one of the most positive person I know and I like what I see and hear. Could it be her faith in God that contributes to her positivity in life? Is it? I don't know. I would assume so and I would like to believe so. :) I'm truly inspired by her positivity in life and I've always wanted that positive energy she gives out. While I don't have that kind of faith in God like she has, whatever it is, I believe positivity stems from within, from the mind and effort. I for one would like to move towards having a bit more positivity in life. Already there's just so so much negativity in life and around the world, a little positivity wouldn't kill and in fact it can be good and it could run a long way. I wouldn't want to go home and channel all the negativity aura to my kids, especially when the negativity within affects our actions and expressions we show whether we realize it or not.

One of the nights, my hubby was going to pick his dad up to get his car from elsewhere, seeing that he would be going over, I told him to take a box of Expressed Breast Milk over for his mother to be stored in their freezer as my own freezer was running out of place. The next morning, he took out that box of milk from the car and told me he has forgotten to pass it as the box was placed at the back seat of the car. I let out a long 'Noooo'. Clearly, I was very upset because by then half of the EBM was already defrosted and I can no longer put it back in the freezer and that would mean, 13 packets of 5 ounces of EBM is going to waste, getting thrown away. I couldn't utilize it because I know my mother in law would've taken out 4 packets the night before for the day. While the expressed breast milk is free but BECAUSE it is free that the pain I felt was even more intense, more agonizing, it is indescribable. I felt like crying. It basically feels like I got stab in the heart because of all the effort I put in to express, all the midnight 2-3 AM in the morning pumping session, my 3 days worth of supply was gone just like that. If I have to pay for milk, I probably wouldn't feel so bad because I could purchase it. Already I had to throw away 8 packets of EBM earlier because of the antibiotic I took that cause the episode of Cadence's rash and now this. Obviously, my hubby apologized for it. I knew he felt really bad. I couldn't get angry at him even though I was upset but I knew it was an honest mistake, a mistake I knew nobody wants to make. My face was so sulky, I couldn't hide it. I had all sorts of thoughts. I thought for a moment my whole day was going to be ruin, and I wanted it to remain that way, sulky till the end of day. I thought nobody cared about all the effort I took to express my milk, the extra hours I put in to make sure I have enough of stocks to last no matter how tiring it was to wake up in the middle of the night to pump. I had to take another box of EBM over for my MIL to keep, that added to the pain simply because I had to take another box over when the box I took out the night before went to waste. What made it worse was that, the second box I took out fell when I was taking a corner while I was on the way to drop the kids and the container broke. That added to my frustration, my volcano of emotions erupted in the car where the kids were present. Being a little OCD, my container to keep my EBM was THAT important. While on the way to work, I had to gain my composure and told myself what's done is done. I can't undo what has happened, all the more when I knew it was an honest mistake made by my hubby and how bad he must have felt. It's pointless to get angry at him when it was an honest mistake. It's pointless to turn his day into a lousy day as everyone would end up being sulky. I don't wanna be sulky the whole day long. I don't want to go back to see my kids in the evening with a sulky face and ruin everybody's mood. It will be pointless. So I just have to let it go and not think about it. And I just have to take extra effort to stock up again and I can always buy the container to store my EBM. So I thought of what to do with the milk. I figured I would make a milk bath for Cadence for those milk that has already fully defrosted and turn those still frozen EBM into home made breast milk ice cream. Upon reaching my office, my hubby texted me again to apologize, by then I was feeling much better not wanting to dwell in what just happened. And I'm glad I took the effort to not ruin his day and to forget what just happened and look forward. It paid off and it felt good. And I really hope it made a difference to him, I hope he was a little comforted. So I made the milk bath for Cadence and did the ice cream as planned though the ice cream sucks big time because of the weird lipase taste, I threw it all away.

The funny thing is I shared my story with breastfeeding moms and non-breastfeeding mom. The reaction I got was just so different! Clearly a non breastfeeding mom was not attuned to the kind of emotion I felt or could not comprehend the what the big deal was, and the reaction I got was just 'Oh ok.' whereas when I shared my story with breastfeeding moms, they all went 'Aaaaaahhhhh!!! What a waste or sayangnyaaaaaa' and I got a lot of suggestions on what I could do with the milk. The power of breastfeeding. It connects all the moms together.

That said, it doesn't mean changes happen in a day's time. Clearly, it's a trial and error process for me. There are days where I see myself being a little positive and there are days I revert to being very negative about everything. There are still days when one "bad" news happens after another that seems to paint the sky dark at that very moment in life, but it's important to remember that there's always light at the end of every tunnel you take. When the sea is calm, we must expect storms to hit and beyond the stormy seas, the calm sea lies ahead. And for every dark moments in life, nobody else can determine how to feel about it, how you look at it and how you react to it and how bad the situation is, BUT yourself. So it is entirely up to you whether to be positive or negative even though it might seem as if there's nothing to be positive about.

"Life is like a restless sea, full of wonders and always in a state of perpetual turmoil caused by the waves of events. No one is secure from the violent waves on the surface of this deep ocean. Pleasure and pain in this world, like positive and negative forces in nature, together perform their function everywhere. Opposed to joy and delight are grief and sadness and opposed to youth and vitality are old age and weakness. Everyone who is alive must bear the burden of affliction and suffering. Everyone who sets out on this sea is bound to be drenched by its waters and encounter in the course of his life a series of unpleasant and painful events: failure, privation, the death of dear ones and many other afflictions of the kind. Who is it that has remained unscathed by the arrows of time and secure from the tempests of events? The type of hardships and calamities, it is true, is different in every age, but the universal principle of hardship and suffering is intertwined with man's life in all its stages"

The box of 65oz milk I had to say buhbye to.

Cadence in her milk bath

The earlier 40 oz milk tainted with antibiotic which I had to throw away.