Chinese New Year Day! Rat Year!

So rapidly time has passed. It is this time of year once again. Birds are chirping - Spring is here. Although in Penang we only gets 2 seasons, dry and rainy - but spring is in the air for Chinese. China calls it spring festival 春节. This is Ethan's third Chinese New Year.

Furthermore this is the year of the Rat. For daddy, it signifies a good year for his division. Daddy had been working for nearly 7 years in a division that develop optical mouse. That's how Ethan gets mouse to torture and run stringent qualification test with. Daddy says that Rat year should be a auspicious year for mouse business! Since daddy married a rat - mummy, this year should be double luck for our family.

Early in the morning, we traveled back to Guar Chempedak grandma's place. Mummy had prepared an abundant of red packet "Ang Pow" to distribute to visiting relatives. Of course, Ethan is also anticipated to get "Ang Pow" as well.

Seems like CNY is a time for eating, and eating and further eating. Obviously Ethan did not waste any time and started to get goodies from Grandma to eat. For example he is munching on the beetroot crackers shown below:

Ah Wen sister came to visit and Ethan took some photos with her. Initially those 2 kids stood so further apart from each other. Ethan was wearing his new red shirt and Ah Wen sister also dressed in red cheongsam.

Mummy had to pair them together by curling sister's hand around Ethan's neck.

Food still in hand, Ethan had a cute grin on his face.

More photos taken at grandpa's garden while waiting for the arrival of the lion dance.

Finally the lion dance arrived at grandpa's house. Grandma and mummy initially did not allow Ethan to be near to the lion. They were afraid that the lion would give Ethan a scare. Therefore, they watched from a far with Ethan.

This is the first time that Ethan had seen a lion dance. However, Ethan seems to have enjoyed it and he was not at all afraid. After the lion dance left and went to another house, Ethan ran out to chase after it. Daddy had to accompanied him to walk over to the neighbor to watch.

This time at the neighbor's house, Ethan watched the lion dance close up. After the lion dance, mummy positioned Ethan in front of grandma's big bucket of oranges to take photos. Ethan used this opportunity to throw some oranges out of the big bucket. Notice that this is just the first day of new year and not the 15th. The tradition of throwing oranges would not happen until 15 days later during Chap Goh Meh.

Mummy took this great "National Geographic" quality shot below with the orange frozen in mid air. This is perhaps a one in a million chance shot. Daddy likes it very much!


Steamboat, there is always steamboat during CNY lunch or dinner or both. Here we had steamboat lunch since we just arrived at grandpa's house this morning. Again Ethan got the chance to enjoy eating more food.


He has not stop eating since arrived here, except for a moment of diversion watching the lion dance. Here is Ethan eating his special handmade wanton.

Putting on my hair band so that my hair does not interfere with my food. After all those eating, a good exercise to get rid of extra calories.

Riding on daddy is also a kind of exercise. Ethan is so hentai that he pushes daddy's head down so that daddy could not lift his head. You can observe clearly this behavior in the video shots below:

Ethan enjoyed himself thoroughly today.

Gift from daddy ex boss

Today daddy received a Korean Omiyage from his ex-boss, Dave when he reached company for work in the morning. It is some Korean cookies that looks like rice crackers. Yesterday evening daddy took his ex-boss and family to End of the World restaurant for seafood. This is the first time to Penang for Dave's wife. The whole family decided to spend few days in Penang and then proceed to Singapore today and go back to Korea on Saturday.

Look at Ethan unwrapping the Korean cookies.

Strawberry! strawberry! He just loves it.

Yesterday night we went shopping and brought one box of strawberry for Ethan. We have to let Ethan have it because we want to reduce his constipation problem. This morning when he woke up he straight went to the fridge and took the strawberry out for mummy. He wanted it badly.

Mummy mixed the strawberry inside his breakfast i.e. cereal. Sometimes mummy had hard time trying to feed Ethan the cereal maybe because it is tasteless. So in order to lure him to eat normally mummy had to give him something to keep him busy or add something inside the cereal like banana or cheerios. This time mummy added the strawberry inside. Well it was very easy for mummy this time and Ethan ate it very fast. Next time should color his cereal breakfast with other fruits and make it more interesting. Think hard.

After finishing his breakfast he went to the fridge again and wanted to have another strawberry. Well, mummy asked him to choose and he was really smart as he chose the biggest one.

Ethan was getting better compared to yesterday. At least he didn't sneeze this morning and also not coughing.

Patience wear thin recently againt Ethan

Maybe Ethan is growing up and has his own character??
Recently both parents' patience were wore thin sometimes when Ethan tested his limits by not following his parents' direction. Even the good man like daddy also run out of patience. Don't know whether our manner can effect the growing stage of Ethan? Well kid are like sponge and can absorb whatever things he sees, hears .... Like yesterday daddy was cutting his nails in front of Ethan and mummy told daddy not to do so. She was afraid Ethan will used the nail clippers to cut his nail himself. Today we saw the result, Ethan used the nail clippers to cut his daddy's nails. Luckily he didn't do it on himself.

I guessed we parents should have to control and be careful especially doing things in front of Ethan.

Initially we planned to bring Ethan to the bookstore again as mummy told daddy that mummy doesn't have any books to read. However, because it seems like Ethan's flu was coming back again (Ethan was sneezing lots this morning), we decided to cancel our trip and stayed at home.

Doman Picture Dictionary

These two days mummy let Ethan watched the Picture Dictionary. He quietly sat on mummy's lap and watched it well. In the meantime he can play with the wireless mouse again. Mummy held his hand to choose the subject. Mummy didn't know what was so funny about the sound when we chose the subject to be presented. Seems like he enjoyed listening to the sound.

Before Ethan was 2 years old, mummy did play this VCD to him before but he only interested in English and not the Japanese one. Well, this time he accepted all of them. This might be due to that fact that he had lately have chance to expose to Japanese language. Recently he loves to watch the Japanese MTV, songs, flashcard etc. He had even tried to sing the Japanese song when we played the CD.

New stuffs and visited the great grandma

Today Ethan's parents finally bought the radio. It consist of USB which the parents like the most because it does not need to burn the song in the CD. To play, we would just have to insert the USB stick and switch play mode to USB instead of CD.

Mummy wants Ethan to learn to listen instead of just watching TV to learn the language. This is mainly because mummy had got a lot of Mandarin story in mp3 form. Last time we used ipod to play the kid songs for Ethan but he was mostly interested in playing with the ipod instead of listening to the song. We let Ethan play with the ipod when he was small. I guess roughly was about 5 months old. Ethan loved to used his thumb to control the music and so on.

Besides this he also like to play other gadgets such as the remote control, calculator, digital camera, optical mouse etc. Well, one of the optical mouse failed Ethan's quality drop test (the company should hire Ethan as their drop test engineer - just joking). Now the mouse does not really functioning anymore. What Ethan likes most about mouse is that he can go and eject out the wireless dongle from the mouse and try to insert it into mummy's notebook. He tried few types of mouse before. Of course those are all wireless mouse.

When he was small Ethan's parent had to teach him how to eject the wireless dongle from a mouse. Well he had learned very fast. We have just shown him one time and he knows how to take it by himself the next time. Recently he will go and find the mouse to play with. The new one we do not dare to let Ethan touch again. Maybe we can use the wired one to prevent it from dropping again) Besides this, the mouse also kena his artistic hand through the use of crayon to draw on the mouse.

New puzzles for Ethan once again, this time the one we brought had increased the level of challenge. It has got 70 pieces inside one picture. Hope he can enjoy it.

Beside went back home, we drop by the great grandma house before the CNY. In there Ethan met another baby want to be 3 month in this coming CNY.

Miserable morning

Mess! All the mess! What a miserable morning that Ethan had made for his mummy.
First when mummy entered the playroom she found out that Ethan pee on the floor while mummy was cooking the breakfast for him. Guessed he was using his clothes to lap the floor. Mummy has strip Ethan naked and went to the outside to take the towel to the lap the floor.

When mummy reentered the room again she found out that Ethan had poured away all the cereal on the floor. This really made mummy mad. Guessed he tried to take the bowl from the cabinet. Mummy put it in quite high he tip his toes to try to get it. Since the breakfast is still hot and he cannot hold it, he just pour all over the floor. Luckily the bowl didn't break as the bowl was made of glass. Mummy had to clean up all the mess that Ethan have put mummy through.

Mummy was cleaning the floor and have to rush to toilet to wash the clothes. Since Ethan was crying so Mummy dare not close the door to the playroom. When Ethan saw mummy walked out from the room he quickly followed and mummy have to stop him from walking down the staircase. What did Ethan do while he was standing at the staircase. Oh my god! He pee again on the staircase. Really messy, mummy still haven't finishing cleaning the room another place had become dirty again. Really terrible morning.