I'm a full-time mummy

Ever since I started kindergarten at 6 years old, I have been attending public schools (main language is Bahasa Malaysia) and during my earlier years, I mixed around with a lot of Malay friends and even spoke Bahasa with my elder brother at home (he also attends public schools), even to this day. So Bahasa Malaysia used to be my main language other than Cantonese and later on English (brushed up more when I met my hubby then boyfriend through snail mails, I had to practise and brush up my English as he doesn't speak Cantonese) Anyway, I think it is fun to be able to practise back and sharing what I know with those of you who are interested.

And so, here goes our next lesson: I LOVE YOU

For those of you who are more often on Facebook, you can also find the tutorials on my Facebook fan page. I have created a "Let's Learn Bahasa & Cantonese!" album to store the phrases. Enjoy learning!

 ** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: The Adventures of Squirky the Alien #1: Why Am I Blue?
Author: Melanie Lee    Illustrated by David Liew
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd (15-Aug-2014)
ISBN: 9789674152062
Paperback: 40 pages

Description from the product page:

"On his fifth birthday, Squirky realises that he's different from his sister Emily. For one, Squirky is blue in colour. His parents reveal that he's an alien from Planet Q, who was sent to Earth when his homeworld was endangered. They also show him the UFO he’d arrived in, which they had been keeping. Though he is assured of his adoptive family's love and acceptance, Squirky still has questions about his origins. His quest for answers begins when the UFO activates...

Currently, many children's books on the subject of adoption are from Western countries. However none of them deal with issues of adoptees' identity, such as questions over their origins and why they were adopted. Also, adoption is still a relatively taboo subject in Singapore and
Malaysia.

The Adventures of Squirky the Alien is actually a series of six (6) storybooks altogether. Currently, three (3) books are already released and available for purchase now at bookstores while the fourth (4th) book is in progress. If you wish to know more about the series, you can find out more at the FB page started by the author, Melanie Lee. The author, Melanie Lee, a writer based in Singapore, is also an adoptive parent herself. She adopted her son, Christian, who is now a healthy and happy 2-year-old boy living with her and her husband, Darren. Inspired by her son, Melanie then began working together with her friend, David Liew, who is the illustrator of these books, to produce the series."

Firstly, I am very glad to be able to review this book as I have never talked about the topic of adoption with our kiddos. We don't have any family members who are adopted or adopting so there have been no reasons to approach on this topic until this book came along.

The illustrations in this book are very nice. I love the details drawn and reading this book together with our 6 years old boy, 3.5 years old girl and 1.5 years old girl is just a wonderful delight! The pictures are on the left hand side while the text is on the right side. I tried to encourage our boy to read the book but there are some letters that he finds it difficult to read, for example, the letter 'i' and 't' as it sort of looks similar. The words used in this book are easy to understand for young children, no complicated words so I do appreciate that.

This book captured the attention of our kiddos especially our boy as he is into things like aliens, spaceships so he was asking for continuation when we reached the end of the book. I can see he also gained a new understanding on what adoption means after going through this book.

I like that there are notes at the back of the book that guides you on how to discuss about the topic of adoption with children like why should it be discussed and how to comfort the child, at what age is it appropriate to do so, how to respond if a child wants to search for their  birth parents, what to do if a child  disregard their adoptive parents as their 'real' parents after finding out about their birth parents and how to reassure a child that they are still loved no matter what.

In summary, it is an eye-opening book with good parenting points to take note and applied to if you want to approach or be approached on the topic of adoption in a family. 

The book is available at all major bookstores in Malaysia. You could also buy it online from mphonline bookstore.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?

For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:

Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals

So for today's angpow story, it comes from this lovely piece of angpow:

When I first see this angpow, I remembered back when I was about 8 - 9 years old when during my school holidays, I would follow my late mum back to her hometown (a small village used to be well known with charcoal mining). I always cherished my childhood memories because these are the times when I get to roam free, enjoy my childhood with my cousins, catch grasshoppers, catch tadpoles, pluck plants and play 'masak-masak' (pretend cooking), cycling around my small little 'kampung' (means village).

Now what is so memorable with this angpow?

One time, I followed my cousins cycling to this small river further into our kampung. We parked our bicycles nearby and went into the small river trying to catch fish. Happily wading into the ankle length water we suddenly realised our surrounding became very quiet, so we looked up and saw a bunch of cows drinking water from the stream. The closest cow to us was about 10 feet away.

We continued playing but one of my cousin suddenly shouted that I was wearing a red colored top and kids being kids, we ran away as fast as we could thinking the cows are going to chase red colored stuff. We ended up going to another safer river to catch tadpoles, which became another childhood memories of mine as it was my first time seeing tadpoles too.

What a sweet childhood memories!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.