Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog

CNY is just around the corner. It is actually the Eve of the CNY already. Whilst everyone is busy preparing or enjoying the Reunion Dinner as a tradition, a family somewhere here is covered in gloominess.

My ex-boss, Kim, sent me this email yesterday, which I’m sharing as is below. After leaving our ex job, Kim has been involved in social works in Kapar (stories can be read here, here, and here), and later formed this non profit organization – The Little NGO.

If you can help and are willing to help this poor lady and her family, contact Kim with details at the end of this post. My sympathy goes to them. Do spread out words too. Thanks.

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Dear Friends

I know this is bad timing with Chinese New Year just a few days away. But this is an urgent call for help. Hope you can help and would be great if you can also circulate to your team, family members and friends. Jacelyn is a friend and I have been going to her for facial for more than 12 years.

Jacelyn is a beautician and a loving mother of two, Marcus aged 12 and Megan aged 10. Most of her customers have been with her for many years, including myself. We all love going to her as she is always cheerful and bubbly, making us feel very comfortable and relaxed.

During the second week of January 2012, she started having difficulty thinking, speaking, and finding words. Her family thought she was stressed from all the cookie-baking she has been doing to get additional income for Chinese New Year. On the 16th Jan, she was admitted to Pantai Medical Centre. After several diagnostic tests, she was confirmed to have a brain tumor.

A friend and I visited her in the hospital on the 18th Jan and she is still her cheerful/bubbly self … I am not sure if she is just putting up a brave front. She told us she was still having thoughts about pushing through with the surgery. She has used up all except RM70K of her medical insurance for another serious surgery and treatment several years ago. She is only 43 years old but is having to go through this for the second time. She is worried that the RM70K will not be able to cover the cost of this round of surgery/treatment. She admitted that her family do not have savings to pay for anything beyond the RM70K from the insurance company.

We managed to persuade her and she underwent surgery, today, 19th Jan, to remove the tumor and we are still awaiting to see what the biopsy results show.

To relief her financial stress, a couple of her long time customers and myself have taken it upon us to help raise some funds to help her. It would be great if you can help Jacelyn to remain hopeful in the fight against her illness and its aftermath. Whatever little you contribute will go a long way in ensuring Jacelyn that she and her family will pull through this with support and care from family, friends and the generosity of fellow human beings.

If you would like to help Jacelyn, you can contact Kim at 012-3036019. Thank you for your support.

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

Kind regards
Kim
The Little NGO
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Today, spent 4 hours at my regular hair dresser to do my 3-months delayed hair. Well, usually I do my hair around Nov, but due to busy schedule this has been delayed again and again. Finally found the time to do it. Just don’t want to procrastinate this any further…

Left everything to her decision, just told her that I don’t want to look like auntie (although I am one already, at this age!!). She cut my hair too short to my liking – still prefer longer. Then permed, and dyed… Finally, something that I don’t recognize but still acceptable.

Then went to Isabel’s school to pick her up.

When she was properly seated, she suddenly realized my new hair-do.

She said, “Mama! Your hair is so pretty!! I like it very much!”

And she kept saying it again and again… then suddenly she blurted out, “… LIKE MAD HATTER”

Wahahahahahahah! I just couldn’t stop myself laughing!! My hair looks like Mad Hatter?! Oh no! That is DISASTROUS!

And then… whew, something relieving… She continued, “I mean the color, is Mad Hatter’s hair color”

Hahaha! Ya, it is a little more to the reddish side. The base color is the same as my previous one, but the highlight I couldn’t remember which shade, and chose something new. There I go, got this Mad Hatter hair for myself.

Geez… >_<

I have announced in my FB wall that I have decided to close down my online bakery. Some friends were disappointed, kept asking me why and tried to convince me to re-open. Haha! Thanks for your concern. No lah, no because of lack of support, actually I am not the type can do business this way… :p

I have 3 reasons not able to continue that bakery.

First of all, I really have no more time for it. My freelance business has been very good, and often I have to burn my midnight oil to complete my jobs. So it is really stressed when I have cake orders that come in during my busy period. I could hardly spare time to bake for hubby’s birthday, and had to resolve to shorter timing stuff (which thank God turned out good too). I didn’t have time to bake for my own birthday, nothing for myself. But when order comes in, I have had to squeeze out time to make them due to commitments put forth. Stressed!

Second reason, my orders usually come from friends. Whether those friends are closed or not, I just feel hard to take their money, so I often gave discount automatically without being asked – and charged just for the cost. And I am bad at calculating the electricity cost, and I often forget about my own time cost. So… I am actually making a loss in those sense. So, combined first and second reason, I am stressing myself making a loss financially. Not worth. LOL!

And the third and the most important reason for me, is that… I grew to dislike this task. I am easily bored with the same task again and again. Before this business, I hardly reproduce the same cake. When I got it right, I usually move on to new adventure, experimenting new stuff. But this business has set me to reproduce again and again the same stuff. I find it really BORING!!

So, after much thoughts, I’ve decided to close down that bakery. No more orders.

The other day when waiting at Dr. Chin (pead) clinic, I managed to catch some video interviews with the experts whom I have missed meeting at Bora Asrama earlier this year. Got me so excited, coz I missed that dinner discussion although I had the materials they presented at that session.

Here are what I got from Youtube on the videos to share with you all, two interviews with Professor Peter Davies.

First one here:

I really can’t agree more on the point that children don’t need a lot of added sugars for energy and growth. It is really a myth when people says about Ian “Oh, he is so active, so he needs more energy, so it is alright for him to eat more sugars…” People just don’t realize how wrong it is, so watch the video above, listen to the expert!!

Although some children are skinny (like my Ian), it doesn’t mean we want to stuff them with so much of added sugars. Those extra calories are not necessary, and can only increase the risk of obesity. Not that I am concerned about how he looks, but obesity IS the cause of many illnesses. If you have obese children, you should even watch out more on their sugars intake.

And here is the second video of the interview:

Listen to what he said: “… there is really not many calories to put aside for added sugars…!”

He quoted WHO that added sugars intake should be kept below 10% of our total calories intake. That is only 150kcal (max 7 tsp) per day for children. Normally this “quota” can be easily filled in our ‘normal daily food’. I can already think of many that we eat daily – jam, kaya, coffee/tea/chocolate-drinks/3-in-1 cereal, ice cream, juices, bread, etc. Even in cooking we also have to add sugars to taste (e.g. marmite chicken, butter fry whatever, etc).

So, parents, listen to what he says, there is really not much room to put aside for added sugars in our children’s diet. 7 tsp is used up pretty fast.

Since children 2-3 years old still drink growing up milk a lot, as parents, we should be more careful in choosing the right brand that has no added sugars. Choose wisely! Don’t feed them with empty calories that could lead to obesity and nothing else. They might look chubby and adorable now, but think of the long-term impact to them due to obesity. I have friends with obese children that they can’t control their diet when they grow up. Nothing ‘cute’ when it comes to that stage.

So far, I think Anmum Essential is the only growing up milk without added sugars. I’ve tried to verify this, checking on many brands’ labels when I shop for Isabel. If you do come across other brands of growing up milk without added sugars, please share!! Remember how do you check it out? Not more than 11-12g of carbohydrate per serving is the key. Read my previous post here. Cheers!!

Yesterday I registered for this bread baking lesson at my regular baking ingredient shop. It is for mother and child kind of bonding session/ activity. Mel stays with us for the school holiday, so naturally if I were to bring Ian, I have to bring Mel too. The shop is quite generous, I only have to pay 50% fee for Mel, and she is given the same amount of ingredient and do the same thing like a full fee lesson.

It is indeed a very worthy and interesting session. I learnt a lot about bread making. The teacher is not stingy at all in sharing tips in baking bread successfully. She gave us more than what promised, as they have made extra dough. We ended up made so many bread (was supposed to be 6 bread each pair, we ended with 10 each).

Mel and Ian were so happy…

Here are the 2 trays that are already proved, getting ready to get into the oven:

And here are our yummy end results. Well, we didn’t make it as nice as it should be, coz the kids played with the dough too much, that the dough were not smooth at the end. LOL! But some were quite good though. ^_^

BTW, those photos were taken with iPad. I forgot to take my camera there despite reminded by DH!! Sob! The kids photos didn’t turn out well, coz they keep moving (of course!). My fault…

Anyway, we ended up had bread for our dinner. This is not like those bread shops and we didn’t use any bread improver. So the inside is really filling, not empty air bubbles. Only 2 buns can make anyone full! We have so many balance, going to be our breakfast tomorrow. Looks like the biggest challenge for me is to make the dough, coz I do not have a bread maker or a high power mixer. My mixer –> smoking!!

I wish I could get a reasonably good bread maker ler… It would be so much fun making bread for everyday. :p
Baking is really a good time spent with kids. Should do more often!