J u t z 1 B l o g

(credits & details here)

Yes…this is with regards of our lil man, Vyktore. I’m very proud to announce that despite him being limited with his words, he’s been going diaperless for more than a month now (for day, not for night). Wohoo….now can spend the diapers money on other things :P.

We started training for him back in July in school because of some unforseen incidents. He was soaked in a soiled diaper for several occasions, even sometimes had poo in it. As a result of that, his very sensitive skin turns reddish and started to have rashes. Hence we took that chance to start toilet training. It was tough because he didn’t understand why we took the diapers off him and he’d go pee pee all over the place *roll eyes*. We had alot accidents in fact, including poo poo in the pants (And I had to wash the pants as that time I was maid-less)!!! But nevertheless we didn’t give up. We still do the same, bring him toilet every 2 hours or so. Turn on the tap and let him get that urge to pee.

Then one fine day, the teacher in school told me that he’s able to bring them to toilet to sign to them he wants to past motion. Whoa..and I was wandering how come he don’t do that at home. But shortly after that, he finally did it. Each time he has the urge, he’d pull his shirt up, or put his hand at the birdie. But this funny boy, his signs are like just 5 seconds, if you don’t catch it you’ll miss it. What he does is he’ll run up to you, then put his hand at the lil birdie, and huh…make a sound, then that’s it, and run off…So you have to be real quick to catch that, then say lets go toilet or she she…then he’ll follow us upstairs.

Now he’s pretty good at it, once in a while he’d utter she she, but so far I’ve only heard once. He gets upset sometimes when the maid couldn’t read his sign, he’ll bring their hand to his private part LOL. But occasionally we still get accident, when he played too long and forgot bout it. I still do the 2 hourly thing and keep asking him you want go she she? He’d shake head or just follow you, then we know he has the urge.

At night, we still put the diapers on cause I’m not so rajin to wake up and bring him to toilet. Sometimes his diaper at night is dry, but sometimes it’s soiled!! Hence I’m still not taking the risk until later, when he’s older.

Now his favourite thing is: FLUSH TOILET!! He loves doing that each time after his business and utter: ush..ush..he’d scream if we don’t let him do it. After he flush the toilet, he’d gleam from ear to ear and clap his hands. Show of satisfaction and mission accomplish hahaha….He even want to flush the toilet when Faythe or ME doing my business!! That explains why my water bill is going up at home.

The only problem I have now is going to public toilet. He seems to have a phobia going to public toilets. The 1st time I brought him to Tesco public toilet, he refused to get off me (clinging like a koala) and demanded to leave the toilet :|. 2nd time at Ikea was the same too…but I forced him to pee cause he dranked a whole 3 cups of water!!

Parents out there, how to convince your children to use public toilet? I don’t have this problem with Faythe, but somehow Vyktore is a different story all together.

No more wine today after visiting 4 the day before :P.

We rented a car from Ausdrive for 5 days to take us to Great Ocean Road and around Melbourne. Everyone was back to work except both of us, holiday-goers. So Daddy & Jonathan went out early morning to pick up the car while I pack our luggage and prepare for the Ultimate Drive.

We left Melbourne and head to Geelong (1st stop before the start of Great Ocean Road) around 10am. The drive to Geelong was pretty boring, Freeway all the way. As usual, I do the driving since I can’t read in the car (goes dizzy). And Daddy read the map. Peter loan us the GPS and it’s pretty useful, except at times when it gives the wrong direction :P.

When we arrived @ Geelong, we were in awed by the spectacular blue sky, blue sea & the scenery. We had our lunch by the Pier/Marina. Expensive lunch, but filling!! Then we started our drive and finally arrive at Surfer’s Beach. The 1st stop of Great Ocean Road Drive. The beach is long and beautiful. So windy and chilling. But there were surfers preparing to surf in the 4 Degrees. Crazy eh.

We left Surfer’s Beach and continue driving. Wanted to look for some koalas, so we stopped at Lorne to get more information. But we couldn’t find the koala place, instead end up @ Teddy’s Lookout Point. This lookout point has a few viewing deck, hence we walk from one deck to another to see the different view. It’s really beautiful. No words to describe. Crystal clear water. Green hills. Very soothing. Except that the wind was really strong.

We left Lorne after a while and head straight to Erskine Waterfall. It was quite a drive from the main Great Ocean Road. But it was worth it. Beautiful cascading waterfall. Very clean water, unlike those in KL haha….

It was pretty late by then, close to 4pm. The problem travelling during winter:

1. gets dark very early
2. shops close by 8pm
3. everywhere is like ghost town

So we had no choice but to start driving faster, but on the way we did another short stop. We arrived at Apollo Bay close to 6pm, it was already dark :|. Then we scout around for a Motel. Yup, you are right, we didn’t book any hotel/motel/apartment. Since winter the place is quite deserted, hence we took a risk just walk in and check the hotels before we decide which one to take. After a few, we decided on 1 of it, for quite a good price. Winter mah…all kasi discount LOL.

We quickly check-in and took shower and went out to look for food. And guess what, all the shops already closed except 1, which is still open for another hour. So we went there and have our simple-giant dinner. A very large pizza (Daddy very greedy) and a giant Fish & Chips, which comes with other seafood too (scallop, crab, prawns). We couldn’t finish the food, hence we packed the pizza and reheat for tomorrow’s breakfast LOL.

So that was Day 3. Didn’t take many photos as I was worried run out of memory. I had to switch within RAW & JPEG sometimes to make sure I have enough space to last for the coming 6 days.

MORE PHOTOS HERE ON DAY 3.

to be continued….Day 4 - Heading to 12 Apostles

This is just a quick post to record what’s been up with ME (just feel like writing something not so backdated).

So the long weekend came and went very quickly. My internet was down over the weekend (thanks to the lightning on friday evening), but I guess even if I had internet, I wouldn’t have much time for it.

On Raya 2nd day, we paid Sasha a visit and took some photos for Justin. I think she will be posting up those pics on her blog soon, watch out for that :). As from my side, next week I’ll try to post it OK…

Actually it wasn’t a long weekend for me, cause I didn’t take leave on Friday, but opt to work from home since the kids were not schooling that day. I actually had to work on Raya!! Sigh…can’t runaway from the fact that when you work for global company, sometimes you have to rush for deadline. And you know what, after finishing off my work during raya, I now have to redo that report again and deadline is today…arghh…I’m really so sick and tired of this repetitive report. I do this every other week without fail. Now is for Oct submission, then we back track to July, then September…then October..it’s endless!! From prioritizing, then we do the approve and when want to release..I wonder if they are really looking into it or not, or just buying time for themselves, but I’m really so sick of all this hiring reqs!! Imagine I spent a good whole 3 hours yesterday (hiding somewhere in the office) to sync up on all the reports (cause some were like resubmissions from those rejected ones…)..totally whacky!!

Over the weekend, we had gathering over at my place. Paik Ling, Sue & Chin Nee came over. Yeah…imagine 4 families and 10 kids (4 babies included). Good thing my house didn’t terbalik haha…and there weren’t any kids fight except Mr. Vyktore refused to share his toy with Bryan and started screaming….he’s very protective over his stuff nowadays. I’ll share some pics from the gathering later, after all my travel post haha…

I’ve scheduled most of my travel post, but haven’t finish yet, hope will come to an end next week. I think everyone getting sick of travel pics haha…and they are so backdated!!

Daddy is finally coming home this weekend, after err…4 months not being around!! Yeah…he skip the home trip in August when we went to Australia. He even asked for Open ticket so that he can come back 1 day earlier (good also, I don’t have to take leave to fetch him). Pity him, he miss the kids so much and Faythe misses him too. She’s been asking me when is Daddy ever gonna come back…Good thing is with technology, we can skype and talk to each other and video conference, FOC!!

Daddy coming home, means I’ll be like off schedule for the coming 2 wks….we will be doing some travelling again…don’t he just love to travel *I’m starting to get travel phobia*. I’m counting how many leaves I have and I feel so sakit hati each time gotta take leave haha…I’m so looking forward to next year when I finally can get 18 days in a year.

Why am I up so early? Spot check my maid to ensure she is doing her work. Dealing with Cambodian maid is really like a roller coaster. 1 day she is like the 101% tip top maid, the next day..she’s the 101% meaningless maid making all the mistakes. I’ll save her story for another day…

I’m finally back into my scrapbooking mood. Actually I’ve abandoned this since April!!! It took me so long to get myself back together into the scrapbooking mood. I think I have to start doing Vyktore’s 3 yr book soon, as I remember I started about 6 months before Faythe’s 3rd Birthday to catch up on all that 36 months!!

I’ve given up waking up at 11pm at night. I used to set my alarm and wake up at 11pm to do my stuff. But nowadays I’ve not been doing that (but I always left my PC on without logging off LOL) cause I just couldn’t hear the alarm anymore. Signs of getting old eh. Hence I wake up earlier instead. But I don’t end up do bento-ing like other Mommies haha…I think if I start bento-ing, it’s gonna take me ages to finish cause I’m slow at cooker and I sucks at cooking too!! I’ll just clear the blog feed in the morning, and sometimes catch up with scrapbooking or doing my scheduled post (at the same time spy on the maid too :P).

I’ve been researching for kindy for the kids next year and finally made my decision over the weekend. Now going to register next week when Daddy comes back. Must let him see also since he’s the one paying :P. I hope they will adapt to the new kindy easily when the term starts in 2009.

On a side note, I’ve been doing a lot of photoshoot for newborn baby (I’m sure you notice that my blog is full of photoshoot nowadays haha)…trying to earn some extra cash for my photography indulgence :P. So anyone out there gonna pop soon and need some pics for their precious new born, do let us know yah…We are taking orders (but coming 2 weeks I won’t be available). We usually do on weekends since weekday we have to work. I’ve been considering seriously should I really go fulltime photography. Sometimes I really don’t have the confidence to take a bold step in changing career. So what do you think? Should I? I really don’t know if my photos are really good…will the customers pay for what I shoot? Lots of questions at the back of my mind.

OK….that’s all for the post. Lets move on to Great Ocean Road Trip :P.

this is a sponsored post.

Anyone heard of Zenni Optical? I’ve seen it on the web!! If you are one who wear glasses or likes to buy sunshades then this is definitely the site to look for. Why are they different from other optical shops? I’m sure if you’ve been to optical shop, you’d notice that their specs are all so expensive!! Most of the time, they charge you exorbitantly for just a pair of simple frames/specs. The margin is very high. Imagine during sales, they can offer up to 70% discount…and yet they are still making money out of it!! This is really what I hate about getting sunnies. I’m lucky that I don’t wear specs. At least I don’t need to spend a fortune every year to change my eyeglasses.

But fret not, Zenni Opticals is where you can get cheap frames. Very affordable. That’s what makes them so special. They get frames direct from manufacturers. Which explains why they can give a lower pricing compared to the other optical shops. They’ve new frames just arrived recently and you should hope over to have a look. So what are you waiting for? Hope over to their website today and go grab yourself a pair of new specs/sunnies. Don’t forget to leave your comments on your experience with Zenni Optical.

lets take a 1 day break looking at Travel photos and look at some cute baby photo :P.

We did another photoshoot few weeks ago for a baby boy, Cody Chong. I tell you, one look at him, you will not mistaken him as a girl. He has all the boyish look for sure!! Extremely prominent boy looks haha…

He wasn’t too co-operative at first. He didn’t sleep in the morning, so we shot him with his eyes wide open, staring at our camera lense. He finally doze off arond 12pm+ and we quickly setup the props and shoot.

This time we got some new props:

1. Brown Square Basket
2. Tong Sampah (brand new OK :P)

We also bought some linen cloth to go with the props.

OK and here’s more photos of Little Cody.

As the globe turns each day, have you ever stop and wander what is going to happen the next minute? Seriously, I’m not really a positive thinker when come to such thing. I only worry that I have not enough money to spend in future, so I try to save more each day LOL. If I can really predict the future, then probably I can invest some money in futures trading to grow my money. Only if I have the power to do that, then I don’t need to work so hard to make more money

What do you usually buy for your hubby when it comes to birthday or anniversary? Seriously, Mens choices are pretty limited. This is because there are only so few accessories they put on their body LOL. Some ties, some shirts, cufflinks, pens, maybe Nautica watches and probably some other boring stuff. This is because they like gadgets which is way to expensive to afford as a birthday gift!! Call me kedekut LOL.

When Daddy used to be around, during Raya or other festive season, we will usually be so indulged with house visiting and pigging out at each and every visit. Sometimes over eating so much that you don’t even feel like eating after few days. And mind you, those are not really healthy food that you want to eat everyday. After all those pig-out, really feel like going for colon cleanse to clean up the system.

Lately, I’ve got quiet a few acne popping up. I’m not really sure what’s the reason for that, since I’ve been having sufficient sleep. And I’m not at the teenage age where it’s very usual to have acne popping up. Those that pops up are not small ones, but pretty big and mainly at the side of the face. I think time to start some acne treatment regime for the face before it gets worse.

From where we left yesterday, this is for sure a not-so-interesting-day for ME, cause I don’t enjoy wine tasting LOL. But for Daddy, it’s like a gift from heaven. He’s been yearning to go for wine tasting in Australia since I’ve known him 7 yrs ago!! He just couldn’t get enough of it. Now that he’s gout free, he’s very happy that he’s able to drink wine again.

We visited a total of 4 vineyards, bought 8 bottles of wine to smuggle back to Vietnam :|.

1. Yering Station - very beautiful entrance they have
2. Punt Road - small winery
3. Domaine Chandon - award winning winery
4. Can’t remember the name, but it’s uphill

Well, it wasn’t as bored as I thought. I got to snap many photos at the vineyards. Using my wide angle lense, it’s really satisfying snapping all the beautiful scenery.

After all the 4 vineyards, we went back home to chill out and had some snacks. Then I went to nap while Daddy & Jonathan cooked dinner. We had baked drumstick with mustard marinate (Daddy’s recipe), Lamb Chop & Roast Carrots, Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes.

After dinner, the guys went for a drink while I stayed home and watched Olympics Closing Ceremony haha..Yup, I didn’t miss that even though we were on holiday :P.

PHOTOS OF VINEYARD & DAY 2 HERE.

to be continued…Great Ocean Road Drive…