Confinement lady found

I finally found a confinement lady (CL) who was recommended by my midwife. I nearly gave up getting one after making so many calls and finding them all unavailable. My backup option was to call my MIL to help me keep an eye on Brae for the whole confinement period (which I really do not wish to do as I do not want to trouble her).

A week back, I received an SMS from my midwife telling me she had a client who had a CL which was quite good. I called the number she gave me and was expecting the usual reply “Sorry, I am not available”. To my surprise, she agreed to be my CL but she won’t be able to help me for the first few days due to a clash in timetable. Therefore, she suggested to get her friend to help me before she takes over after she is done with her other confinement job.

She told me the charges were double because of CNY, I nearly fainted when I heard the price – RM4288 and I wondered whether it is the standard price charged. I told her that if I would only require her services for 3 weeks so she dropped her price to RM2800.

We met her on Tuesday to discuss about the details. From the conversation, we found her to be quite okay.

Hope that I won’t be having a tough time with her. *cross fingers*

Confinement lady list

I searched high and low for a confinement lady (CL) on the net from bloggers and forums. I found a blog which had a list given by Jazzmint, apparently the list was extracted from a forum. Therefore I searched for the forum Mybabybay.com and found the same list and also recommendations for an ‘urut’ (massage) lady.

Since I’m desperate for a CL, I called ALL of them. As expected, all the GOOD ones were booked and some of them are no longer working as CL. I decided to compile the list again for my future reference (if we decide to have a 3rd one?) (daddykhong: from her hints, don’t think so) and for others who need it.

Brae: Hair cut

Brae had his hair cut after his 1st birthday. Since Daddykhong was going to cut his hair, we requested our usual hairstylist to trim Brae’s hair as well. Fortunately, he didn’t make a fuss during the trimming.

NZN @ Queensbay Mall, Penang

Daddykhong had to go to Penang for 2 nights for the opening of a New Zealand Natural (NZN) outlet at Queensbay Mall, so mummy and Brae tagged along. We started our drive on Tuesday evening after daddykhong settled his work in the office and we arrived at Queensbay Mall just in time for dinner, which we had at the Dome outlet there (I know, drive all the way to Penang and settle for a dinner at Dome. Rather sad!) After dinner, my BILs helped out with setting up the store for the grand opening the next day while the 3 of us went mall-touring.

We noticed that most of the F&B outlets in the mall were packed except for The Chicken Rice Shop, Siam Express and Bakerzin. Bakerzin is doing very well in Bangsar Village and 1-Utama but not in Penang. I wonder why?

Later, we made our way back to the NZN outlet and while daddykhong was helping out with the outlet setting-up, I took the opportunity to tone my flabby thighs by pushing Brae round and round the mall (for God knows how many times, I lost count!)

It was already 11pm by the time we were done and we made our way back to Krystal Suites which will be our home for the next 2 nights. We had a 2-room apartment with a room for the BILs and a room for the 3 of us. Brae decided to test the quality of the bulbs in our bedroom by pressing the light switch on-off-on-off many, many times. Everytime we stopped him, he would make a fuss and make his way to the other side of the bed where another switch awaits. He only stopped when the bulb failed to light up despite his efforts (we switched the lamp off at the mains).

13th November 2006 (Wednesday)

New Zealand Natural @ Queensbay Mall, Penang

Grand opening day – We woke up at 7:30 am and fortunately Brae got up at the same time too. Knowing that my BILs would either skip breakfast or grab a quick bite at Queensbay, we decided to have breakfast at a nearby coffee shop so that we can at least say we tried some local fare. (Aside, BIL 1 who was in Penang 5 days earlier, had each and every meal at Queensbay Mall and promptly fell sick by the time we arrived. If you want reviews for all the F&B outlets at Queensbay, you can ask him).

Since the Queensbay outlet is NZN’s 1st outlet outside the Klang Valley, a charity drive was initiated where 10% of the sales from opening till end January 2007 will be donated to a local charity (St. Joseph’s) so to give the home’s kids a treat, they were all invited for the opening to eat all the ice-cream they want. 26 of them turned up and while they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, a part of me felt very sad for them because they are either orphans, from broken families or have been abandoned by their parents. The youngest there was 5 years old and he was such a cutie-pie. The kids were accompanied by Mr. Anthony and Miss Mag from the home. I guess it is not often that the kids can have unlimited ice-cream so they kept eating and eating and eating non-stop till their hands turned cold (they came over to shake hands with all of us before they left so we knew how cold their hands were). Three clowns were also roped in to entertain the children and some of the children entertained Brae. All in all, the opening ceremony took about an hour.

Clown showing his skills to the children

Clowns greeting the children

Children playing with Brae

Isn’t he cute?

Brae in a freezer basket

I wanna get up!

Much later in the day, we had our dinner at Breeks Cafe (yes, BIL1’s addiction to Queensbay Mall joints has spread to us too!). The food was very mediocre. I shared a mushroom and cheese sandwich with Brae. It was only our 2nd meal at the mall and we were already ‘jia lat’ (sick) of the food there. Cannot tahan anymore, die-die must put some decent Penang hawker fare into our stomachs. Most fortunately, daddykhong’s cousin called us out for supper in Jelutong where we had ‘Qing Bou Liang’ from a pink corner shop (good dessert but very poor taste in colour matching – the whole shop was painted yellow and pink – yucks). Also had some finger food and Hokkien Mee. Brae fell asleep in daddykhong’s arms halfway through supper.

14th November 2006 (Thursday)

We woke up late at around 10am. After checking out we had brunch at the same nearby coffee shop before heading back to the outlet to make sure everything is fine before heading off for home. We left at 2:30pm, stopped by my hometown Tapah to say hi and have an early dinner before finally arriving back home in the evening.

Our visit to Zoo Negara – Part II

We brought Brae to Zoo Negara on 10th November (Sunday). We got there at 3-ish and it was so sunny and packed with people. We really shouldn’t go during school holidays! Brae’s face starting to glow red from the heat. The first animal he was introduced to were the monkeys which thoroughly frightened him because they started swinging towards him when they saw us. Apart from him crying, his usual expression for most of the trip was him staring intently at the animals without blinking. You could almost hear the gears in his head spin while he was absorbing the information.

So, as you can see from the pictures below, Brae cried when he saw the monkeys, pointed curiously at the pony and was scared of the buffaloes.

After a while, he started to warm up and started pointing at the animals. Then, it rained. From then on, we hopped from rain shelter to rain shelter whenever the rain eased off. Brae was so tired that he fell asleep in the stroller so he missed several animals but he managed to wake up in time for the elephants and the giraffes.

It was already 7+ pm when we headed home. Fortunately Brae didn’t fall sick the next day from the rain.