I'm a full-time mummy

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews since 2014 and only accepted those that I feel will definitely fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or homeschooling stuff, family products, something along those genre)

Few months ago, I received an offer to review some products carried by TheBigBox.Asia. After browsing through their website and seeing the yummylicious treats, I decided to go ahead with the review.

About the company:

"Made for treat lovers everywhere, TheBigBox.Asia offers Malaysians the chance of sampling exquisite imported delights at affordable prices from continental brands such as Elle & Vire, Delacre, Compal, BN Biscuits and more. TheBigBox.Asia is a mall of treats with prices that will not hurt your wallet. Their delivery service currently covers the entire Peninsular Malaysia excluding Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan."

I requested for the following items for my review after some serious browsing and selecting and shortlisting a couple of times the items I wanted:

One cool thing I must mentioned is how impressed I was when I received the parcel from TheBigBox.Asia. The treats are still chilled cool inside the parcel, nicely packed for maximum pristine condition.

The first item to be whacked cleanly by my 3 krakens of course is the Um Bongo 8 fruit juice. It comes neatly in a pack of 3, each pack is 200ml. My krakens slurped everything without leaving me even a drop to try!!! Must be that good for them to slurp cleanly so fast!

Next item we reviewed was the Elle & Vire Crème Dessert Chocolate. Just a little FYI, Elle & Vire’s dairy products can be found in more than 120 countries. Their products have become a reference for quality with consumers and professional chefs/caterers the world over.

I chose this as it comes in a tub of 4, just nice for myself and my 3 krakens (so sorry dear hubby! LOL!!!!) Now how does this crème dessert chocolate taste like? Liquid pudding chocolate but still jelly-like feel. Not bad. My 3 krakens licked clean each cup. I love that the content is almost filled to the brim and the nifty little foldable plastic spoon that comes with each tub.

The next item has got to be my favorite, the Elledi Party Wafers Cocoa Cream! This pack of 250g bite sized cocoa wafers filled with velvety cream is just so so good! I had to try real hard to refrain myself from finishing everything in one seating! Also, as ashamed as I am to admit this, I actually hide this pack away from being seen by our 3 krakens, only to take it out to savor bit by bit at midnight after my krakens have gone to bed, deep asleep hahahahaa... Anyway, I can practically taste the chocolate cream layered in each bite sized cocoa wafers, so rich and filling! Yumssss!! Two thumbs up!

The following item that I would like to share with you guys is the ERU Naturel low fat cheese spread. Forgive my lack of knowledge but when I first tried this cheese spread, I was totally mind blown as I gently spread out the cheese on a slice of bread, it is quite runny when I first put it onto the bread but then I discovered that the cheese sort of hardened/liquefied to be like those cheese slices texture. Like magic! The cheese is not too heavy or too salty, just nice for sandwich bread or to be eaten with crunchy crackers.

I also get to review the Delacre teatime snack box and the Delacre Delichoc Chocolat Lait. It comes with an assortment of Delacre’s classic icons including marquisette, Biarritz, Russian Cigarettes and other creations like Délichoc, Mini Sprits and Nordica. Tasty selections of treats that get eaten fast by all of us.

The last item is the BN 16 Framboise (Raspberry). The biscuits were made from whole-grain cereal with a delicious raspberry filling in the middle and comes in a handy reseal able package to maintain BN’s unique crispy texture. There are also vanilla and chocolate filling if you prefer to have other options.

To sum up my review, I am very grateful to be given the opportunity to try out the products from TheBigBox.Asia. Where else can you shop in the comfort of your home (or office hehehe) for treats from all over the world?

Highly recommended!

For more products and promotions, do check out http://www.thebigbox.asia/.

Do note that I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products 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.

** 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 came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. Do note that sharing this does not mean I agree or disagree with it. To view the video on YouTube, you can click on the images below. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

Women have revealed the painful and insensitive things people said to them after suffering a miscarriage in a thought-provoking 35-second video. The clip, produced by pregnancy charity Tommy's, features misjudged remarks such as 'it happened for a reason' and 'at least it wasn't a real baby yet'.

Others were told: 'At least it happened early' and 'There'll be plenty more chances'.

 Some women were offered 'reassurance' with the words: 'At least you can get pregnant.'

 The video is part of a campaign called #miscourage to end the taboo around the subject. It follows a recent study suggesting that 85 per cent of women who suffer a miscarriage don't think people understand what they have been through.

The research, carried out by Tommy's in November 2015, also showed that 70 per cent of women feel guilty about miscarriage and 79 per cent feel like a failure.

The #miscourage campaign aims to encourage people who have been affected to speak out and share their experiences, in order to change the lack of awareness around the subject.

It is supported by writer Viv Groskop and broadcaster Lisa Francesca Nand, who have both suffered miscarriages.

One of the campaign's main aims is to change legislation in the UK; currently, women have to endure three consecutive miscarriages before their case is fully investigated. Jane Brewin, the CEO of Tommy's, said: 'It is not acceptable for a couple to go through this much suffering and uncertainty. 'We would like to see an immediate reduction to two and ultimately our aim is that every miscarriage is taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.'

What do you think?

** 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 came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. Do note that sharing this does not mean I agree or disagree with it. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

Being a parent is a difficult job, and it’s no wonder that not all of us succeed at it. We all bring a fair amount of baggage to the enterprise—our personalities, how we experienced parenting ourselves, how well we manage our emotions and express our feelings, how empathic we are, and, of course, how comfortable we are in our own skins.

A large part of good parenting involves avoiding behaviors that can damage your child. It’s a psychological truism that “bad is stronger than good,” meaning that negative events have a much more significant impact on humans than good ones. For this, we can thank evolution. To increase the odds of survival, the hardiest of our forebears were much more reactive to bad things and committed them to memory faster and more completely than good or benign ones. It’s still true of us, all these millennia later.

In their terrific book, Parenting from The Inside Out, Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzwell distinguish between high-road and low-road mental processing. When you’re on the high road, you’re very aware of the emotional baggage you have in tow and what triggers your own worst responses. You work at being present and rational, committing yourself to thinking things through rather than being reactive.

High-road processing tends to present different possible responses to a situation, and keeps you in the driver’s seat. Imagine that your child suddenly starts crying when you’re in the middle of something you need to get done, and it’s irritating you. You register your feelings of annoyance, tamp them down, and then think, "I need to find out why she’s crying. I have to stop what I’m doing and spend a few minutes helping her calm down.” High-road processing effectively invites your best self in as your child’s parent.

Then there’s low-road processing, which has you forget about your emotional baggage and become a quivering mass of emotional reactivity the second your kid starts crying because, dammit, you have stuff to get done. Low-road processing hijacks your conscious thought process and ability to be empathic. You just let whatever you’re feeling rip, either yelling at her to stop or screaming, “Go to your room now. If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about!”

All of the following behaviors are reactions that low-road processing enables. This is the road the attuned, loving parent shuns. If you are a loving parent who has fallen into the trap of one or another, sit down with your child to explain and apologize.

1. Use words as weapons of shame or blame.
Whether it’s calling a weeping child a “cry baby” or a “sissy” or telling a child he or she is “stupid,” “fat” or “lazy,” the damage is done: Words wound just as much, sometimes more, than slaps. Recent research shows that the neural networks for physical and emotional pain are one and the same. Additionally, as the work of Martin Teicher and his colleagues showed, the kind of stress verbal abuse induces causes permanent changes to parts of the developing brain. How powerful is the force of verbal aggression? In 2014, Ann Polcari, Keren Rabi, Elizabeth Bolger, and Teicher examined whether verbal affection from one parent or both could offset the effects of one parent’s verbal abuse. The sobering conclusion: No. Verbal affection expressed by either the other parent or the parent who was aggressive in the first place does not mitigate the effects of verbal aggression. Bad is stronger than good.

Shaming a child is abusive behavior which inflicts lasting damage. If you have it in your head that talking to your child this way will make your kid “tougher” or make him or her “wise up,” you could not possibly be more wrong. I have heard many unloved daughters say that they wished a parent had hit or physically beaten them “because then the scars would show.” Don’t kid yourself: Words are weapons.

2. Begin a reprimand with the phrase, “You always…”
Possessions get broken and lost, children make mistakes, and sometimes they behave badly. All of that is true and, as a parent, there will be moments when a reprimand is necessary. If they don’t listen, run across a busy street, or do exactly what you told them not to do, your first impulse may be to lash out because that part of your brain, the reactive part, is mighty powerful. But this is the moment at which you must hew to the high road.

Why shouldn’t you begin a sentence with these words? Because you’re no longer addressing the behavior but attacking the child for being who he or she is. The words “you always” turn what is supposed to be a parent’s response to a single event or action into a litany of everything the child isn’t and should be. This behavior is highly toxic in adult relationships—marital expert John Gottman calls it “kitchensinking,” as in you recall everything your partner ever did that was wrong—but it is absolutely devastating to a child’s sense of self.

Variations on the theme include “Can’t you ever…"; “What is wrong with you?” and more. Don’t use words that personalize the wrong the child has committed in this way.

3. Dismiss a child’s feelings by saying he or she’s too “sensitive."
This was my own mother’s mantra. Telling a child that he or she is “too sensitive” is common behavior among unloving, unattuned parents since it effectively shifts the responsibility and blame from their behavior to the child’s supposed inadequacies. A young child doesn’t have the self-confidence to counter this assertion and will assume that she’s done something wrong. She will often believe that her sensitivity is the problem and that, in turn, leads her to mistrust both her feelings and perceptions.

This is a more subtle form of emotional abuse, but it is highly damaging because there are numerous take-away lessons, such as: “What you feel doesn’t matter to me or anyone else,” and, “The fault is yours because something is wrong with you.”

4. Compare one child to another.
Sibling rivalry is common, but as recent studies have shown, it's not benign. Any parent who manipulates the tension and competition between and among siblings is either woefully misinformed or downright cruel. Statements such as “Why can’t you be more like Jimmy?” or “Your sister’s success should inspire you to try to do one thing right” are not inspirational. All they do is make a child feel “less than.” A loving parent recognizes that each child is an individual.

5. Ignore a child’s personal space or boundaries.
As a child grows and develops, a good parent makes adjustments along the way; what works with a rambunctious toddler will not necessarily be the approach you want to take with a seventh-grader testing out his or her social skills. Respecting a child’s boundaries in an age-appropriate way—recognizing her need for privacy and for enough room to articulate feelings and thoughts without worrying about reprisal or criticism—not only permits a child to be herself but teaches that part of emotional connection involves being respectful of other people’s boundaries. 

There are numerous ways unattuned parents ignore boundaries. An authoritarian parent who requires conformity to a rigid set of rules and norms not only puts a child in a role where he is constantly trying to please or placate a taskmaster but also ignores him as a unique individual with unique qualities. These parents may mock a child for his interests (“Why would you want to take art classes? It’s for sissies”) if they don’t fall within the parent’s list of “acceptable” or “valuable” activities. All of this weakens a child’s sense of self and isolates him.

Similarly, a self-involved parent who sees her child only as an extension of herself doesn’t, by definition, recognize the child’s boundaries. These children become inveterate pleasers, insecure in themselves, without a real sense of self. They may suffer in adult relationships because they have learned either to armor themselves—mistaking walls for boundaries and becoming avoidant of connection—or to be anxious and clingy.

Enmeshed parents also don’t acknowledge the child’s separateness, and suffocate their children emotionally. Parents who can’t permit their children to make mistakes or who are “helicopter” parents also don’t recognize boundaries and end up communicating the message that the child is incompetent or incapable of functioning on his own.

Parenting is learned behavior in our species and nothing prevents any of us from being dedicated students, learning and growing from our mistakes and always hewing to the high road.

What do you think?

** 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.