Bukit Tinggi Rabbit Park

Ordinarily, Rabbit Park is not somewhere I would take the trouble to go to as I always had this impression that rabbits are smelly creatures. But being a mummy makes you do unusual things and fortunately though, our trip to the Rabbit Park in Bukit Tinggi did not turn out to be a smelly affair, to our(my sister and I) pleasant surprise, those little fury creatures did not smell bad AT ALL. Wow! Anyways, let me start step by step, i.e. how to get there:

From TTDI we drove into LDP heading towards Sg Buloh, kept right after the Penchala tollgate (heading toward Kepong) and just went on & on straight into Karak highway, there will be 1 more tollgate at Karak where you need to pay RM5 (well, i remember it used to be RM2! bloody hell!) and kept going pass the Genting Sempah stop on our right and also the old exit to Genting. After this point the view was magnificient, there were hills after rolling hills of vegetable farms, neatly laid out from the top of the hill right to the bottom (wish I had pictures of this!). Pass Janda Baik and Kampung Bukit Tinggi exit (Kampung Bukit Tinggi is on the left and Janda Baik is on the right side of the highway) and the next exit is Berjaya's Bukit Tinggi resort.

Our first stop was Rabbit Park, obviously. We paid RM3 per adult x 3 of us and since Nia is barely 11 mths, it was free for her. We were greeted by these the moment we set foot into the "paid" compound.

Hubz and Nia were enjoying themselves looking at the baby rabbits from newborn to 4 mths olds

Look at her getting giddy with delight looking at all the little fury creatures ...

Oh, a friend! Hello pretty in pink, how do you do?

Let me go daddy, I wanna follow the bunnies, she seem to be saying..
We thought this panda-eyed bunny was too pretty to miss:

Can we please take this one home, daddy? The other animals at the Rabbit Park.. Spotted deers and donkeys, they even have donkey rides for children, I'm not sure if you'd need to pay extra for it, I know they have it coz I saw a boy riding this white donkey in the picture

Moving on to the rest of Bukit Tinggi - this is at Colmar Tropicale, I spy with my little eye something with a long black neck..
Yes, what do you know? It's a black swan.. ain't it beautiful?
Up, close & personal with the black beauty
And of course, the white one.. it was such a breathtaking sight to behold abeit the small pool area for the 3 swans to share

I remember going up to Bukit Tinggi long time ago when they were just opened, I think the ticket to go up was more expensive then, now it's only RM10 per adult which is a little too much considering there's not much to do up there plus the prices of food are exorbitant. Hubz & my sister have never been up here so I thought although somewhat tacky, the whole French Village thing will be an experience for them. Originally we thought of doing the Japanese garden & tea house thing and grab a bite at the Japanese restaurant but we made the mistake of driving there straight which means, you got to park at the foot of the hill, climb an almost 45° steep hill for 300m (or so the sign says, but who knows if it's really 300m!) to get there. At first we thought what the hell, let's just do this, so we walked up half way of the visible part of the ascending path, then we noticed how dark the sky was and decided to not take the risk and turned back towards the car and drove over to Colmar Tropicale instead! Apparently the better way of getting up there is to get the shuttle service from the hotel at Colmar, well, I didn't know that, so maybe next time.

Finally, a recipe!

We enjoyed this past weekend so much and managed to get quite a lot of things done that we've only been talking about for a few weeks now. We managed to go up to Bukit Tinggi to the Rabbit Park and took loads of pictures, (pictoblog will be duly updated) we ordered Nia's Pocoyo birthday cake, sadly though, our cake lady can't make 3D pocoyo & friends, so we settled for drawings instead :o( *sigh*; we checked out the birthday venue and surprisingly it was quite impressive; and we've ordered the food for the party except few more "loose items" from different suppliers!

Hubz made fantastic chicken rice yesterday, I call it Chicken Rice with a Twist! As instead of having the usual roasted chicken, he decided to make Beggar's Chicken, and OMG did it take ages?! But the outcome? Succulent, juicy chicken that just melts in your mouth! Unfortunately, by the time the chicken was ready all of us were starving like hell that I forgot to take the pictures! hahahaha You wouldn't want to see the picture of chicken carcass now, would you? I thought not :oPP

Baby Food Recipe
I also made different stuff for Nia throughout the weekend as her nanny was compalining that she doesn't want to eat her rice porridge any more, she wants what the adults are having, so I on Saturday I made Leek and Cod in milk. It goes very well with either soft white rice, toasts, plain bread or just on it's own. For dinner I mashed up the fish mixture and shaped into patties, dipped them in egg and rolled them in babies' oats and pan fried them. So that Nia didn't think she was eating the same stuff that was fed to her at lunch! :oP Yesterday I made her Chicken Brocolli dumplings, which was modified from the Steamed Chicken & Brocolli I made for her Sunday dinner - recipe at the bottom. Unfortunately I have no pictures of these! Will remember to take some the next time I make them.

Leek and Cod in Milk
Ingredients:

• 1 leek
• 1/2 of a large slice of cod fish
• 2 oz - 3 oz baby's formula
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Prepare leek by washing and slicing it up, put aside.
2. Wash and cut up the cod into small bite sieze pieces, put aside.
3. Heat butter in a pan, throw in chopped garlic, saute for a minute then add leek, saute again for another 2- 3 minutes (or longer if your baby prefers softer vege).
4. Add the fish followed by the formula, (add more formula if you want it soupy) and cook till fish is done which would only take 2 -3 minutes. If you are using a shallow pan the liquid may dry up faster so have some warm water handy.
5. Scoop em up and feast!

Steamed Chicken and Brocolli

Ingredients:

• Half a chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 small brocolli florette, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 small potato, sliced into small pieces
• 1 small sweet apple chopped up
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• a drizzle of sesame oil (for dumpling)

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a steaming dish, steam for about 1/2 an hour until the apples are mushy and chicken pieces are cooked well and serve.
2. To make dumplings, add sesame oil to the mix, put a heaped teaspoon into the dumpling skin, pinch and seal. You can either steam them or pan fry in very little oil , they taste just as good.

Oh I've been LAAZYYY

To update here that is. I wanted to post some recipes up in 'ere, but never managed to find the time to do that! I made beef kebab last week and even took a photo of it to put up and then something got into me and made me delete the photo! :oP Not that the kebab was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or anything. Just that I was so darn proud of myself for making it from scrath. Yea, s-c-r-a-t-c-h. I marinated the beef and left it in the fridge for a couple of days, then I baked it, then choped it up into tiny bits, then I cooked teh onion and tomatoes and put the beef in with tomato ketchup and a bit of chili sauce. It turned out amazing! Weird, but so yummy! Hmmm. I also made chocolate chips cookie dough brownie that everyone loved, that recipe was from Betty Crocker's website, I made it two weekend in a row! Not bad huh?

Anyways, I finally got that camera I was eyeing. Yay! There will be tons of pics from now on, just watch out! We finally got DBKL approval to utilise space in Taman Rimba Kiara for Nia's 1st birthday party. From now on my weekends are going to be crazy making preparation for THE day. I love party planning but it is also very time consuming. Did I mention we are having Pocoyo theme? I got to go speak to our cake lady to see if she can custom-make Pocoyo and firends from fondant as cake toppers, that would mean I'd have to got over to her house on a Monday coz she does not accept any 'cake customers' on any other days to view or discuss cake. I know, but she does make VERY yummy butter cake that's the only reason why we keep going back to her.

Nia on the other hand is getting cuter & cuter, if I may say so myself :oP She's been actively trying to walk all over our little house and her dance moves are getting pretty wicked. I wish I could post a video here, maybe later. She is also refusing to drink her formula as she rather get it straight from me! I can feel that my milk's drying up as it gets more and more painful within 2 minutes after she starts to suckle and as I have no intention to continue breastfeeding her beyond the age of 1, I dont really want to continue with the Milkmaid tea. So went out on Monday and bought a different brand of formula (Frisolac from Dutch Lady) but she does not like it too. Right now she's on Enfapro A+ which she has been on since a few months ago, as I only breastfeed her when I'm home otherwise she'll be on formula. I'm not sure if this is s phase where babies tend to drop their weight every few months as they are growing because I do know that during the phase they will refuse milk and eat less which results in the drop in weight. I just don't want her to grow up like me, not wanting to drink milk the moment I turned 1, and I doubt my parents did anything about it, they just let me be. I do want Nia growing up drinking lots of milk, thank God hubz drink milk otherwise I do not know how I will encourage her to drink milk when she gets to the questioning age! I shall be closely monitoring her eating pattern the next couple of weeks, if there is no improvement perhaps it's time to see her paed.

Scrap Credit to ScrapbookFlair.com

My Nia's growing up too fast!

She'll be 10 mths this Saturday, or about 43 weeks to be exact. She has been trying to stand without holding on to anything for a couple of months now but just this week she has been standing on her own for a good 10 seconds or so without any help! Last night, my sis tried to help her walk by holding only one hand, she seems a little afraid still as she closes her eyes before lifting her foot off the floor, she could walk really fast when we hold both her hands though, now we are all just waiting for her to take the first step! Oh, God, it's coming soon, the day she's just going to walk on her own, I wish I wouldn't have to miss that, I wish it would happen on a weekend or at a time when I'm home! My little baby is growing up too fast. I haven't even had enough of her yet!

I can't believe she'll be 1 so soon. Well, of course I CAN believe it, as hubz and I are already planning her 1st birthday party! As we have a very large extended family, we're thinking of having a 'picnic-in-the-park' party so that both the kids & parents could have some fun together AND we could keep the cost low! I enquired at Bird park and the zoo for this purpose but both seem to fetch more than 2K for a party of about 100 (this only involves the family and probably 5-6 friends!). We thought it's a bit too much to spend on a party that she's going to hardly remember! Per hubz suggestion, we'll look into those two options probably when she starts play school, then she will have her own friends to have fun with, which makes perfect sense.

I, on the other hand, am SO excited about the party! Initially, I wanted to stay away from any particular theme so that we won't have so much to do, but what do you know, I found Nia's favourite cartoon stuff on the www, I'm making full use of that as they are colourful & fun and most of all, she loves it! I'm going to be SO VERY busy every single weekends making party decors, how exciting!! But I'm gonna be loving every minute of it!! There's so many things to get done, I better be super organised this time! More later!

My obsession with names

I've been meaning to do this for a long long time, finally now I have the opportunity to openly talk about my obsession with names (people's names) since forever! Unique, uncommon names does something to me inside. It just make someone all the more interesting even if they did not look so interesting in the first place, won't you agree? I guess that's why I decided to crop my name when I was in Form 1 so that it would sound interesting and gives a sense of mystery when someone sees my name, ah well, until they see my full name, that is! So since then I've sort of been collecting all the names that I liked to perhaps use one day on my babies!! He he But, no, I did not get Nia's name off that book though. Funnily, those names that were so unique and uncommon in those days are no longer uncommon now hence I had to search all over again before we had Nia, this time made much much easier thanks to the Gods of the cyberspace!! To tell the truth, we already had 3 names from way before we got married, for our future 3 children, 1 girl and 2 boys. Talk about ambition! There were:

1. Nia Zahra
2. Ian Rumil
3. Dean Arahael or Dean Rahael

I decided against the name Zahra because when we mentioned the name to one of my BFF, she said she wanted to name her daughter, when she has one, Safia Zahra or something like that (I'm not quite sure about the first name!), so I ditched it. I do not want my babies and my friends' babies to have the same names! Urghh. What am I going to tell her when one day she turns around and asks me, "Mum, why is my name and Auntie so and so's daughter's name the same?" What am I supposed to say, "Err, because we're BFF so we thought it'll be cute for our babies to have same names"? Besides, I try to stay away from names that reflect too much of a certain race/religion. Zahra is so Arab and in this country, well, you-know-it. Although we are not pregnant with a boy yet, I have already ditched the name Ian, because OMG there are WAY too many Ians running around in here right now! No Arahael either, it's way too Tolkien. But am sticking to Rumil. It sounds just so lovely, all I need now is a unique and interesting first name to complement it, then I'm ready to have a boy!! (Yea, as if!)
Hmmm, it just occurred to me, I might've been so taken by hubz because of his sexy name! I mean, how many Jayross do you know? Me, none. So are most of my friends. We've never heard of a Jayross until we met him. And for the records, unlike some people, he did not pick his own name! His mother named him that when he was born, inspired by the tv show, Dallas! LOL. He hates it when I mention this fact to everyone, but I do that because I think it's SO cute of his mum! It's the same reason why I insisted that he CAN NOT change his name when he was converting, he should be entitled to keep his name no matter what religion he is, and yes, we managed to do just that.