Michelle Khang

I LOVE my new banner!!!!!

If you’ve been reading my blog from day 1 you’ll notice how it has evolved from an online marketing blog into a working mummy blog. I think it was about 2 weeks ago after my “Too Young For School” post that I felt like the whole “This is how I make money online” thing was not working for me anymore… No doubt, I still blog a lot about making the extra 1k a month online but recently I’ve just been so involved with my boys and I’ve suddenly got so much to say about parenting these days so I decided to ask my Graphics Designer to create a new look for me.

So here it is…after much discussion back and forth this is version 6D. You must think that I was a real pain of a customer to be dealing with … (hahaha) … I am NOT! You see everytime I make a small change like the font or the colour of the font, one version gets created. So 6D is actually pretty good, doncha think? Much better than 12M LOL..

When we first started out, Tsulin did all my wording for me and the picture editing, but I only decided on the wording today. I was thinking of how I would include the fact that I work from home and I am also pretty much a hands on mum.

So for a moment I actually thought of using “excerpts of my life as a part-time mom and a full-time internet marketer“!!!!! ROFL…  Can you imagine the look and the thoughts that would be going through my reader’s heads when they read that?

There is some truth in the funny tagline above because I am really kind of a part time mummy since I don’t need to be glued to my boys and have to follow them around all day long as I have my Indonesian maid who does everything for me. All I ever do is referee their fights (between the boys) and supervise the maid after giving her some instructions to follow (While I’m also their driver and meal companion and their tutor….etc etc..I actually spend a large percentage of my time working). BUT for the sake of humankind (human rights NGOs haha) I’ve decided to make it sound a little mummy friendlier!!!

So then…..forget what I SHOUTED out in my first line in this post and tell me what you really think? Nice or not nice? Do you hate it or do you love it…. Do you like the font? Do you hate the way the pictures were edited? Do you think the colours match my blog theme? How do you think I can improve on it or should I change anything else? (Tsulin must be thinking…. OMG…we will end up with Version 20C at this rate!!!)

If you’d like to see more of Tsulin’s graphics work, you can go to her blog and see the lovely pictures there. You can get her to create banners or edit your pictures for your “About Me” page or for any or all your posts. She can even edit a nice profile picture for Facebook! You can contact her at (tsulinplusplusATgmail.com). Please change AT to @ before you email her.

A month ago I saw an advertisement in the newspaper looking for cute boys – 24mths old and below so I took Aaron for a casting session just for kicks! Needless to say I have a lot of free time to kill! LOL..

The phographer made him stand on an X mark on the floor so that he could be in the center of the picture… I can understand why now, it’s not easy getting a 2 yr old to stand center of the camera view.

Check out this video of Aaron singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and notice 2 things.

1. We had to shoot this video several times as the memory card was full and he got distracted a few times too. Listen carefully to the first word he says… my seasoned performer!

2. I recently potty trained him (a whole blog post about this later) so watch out for how he feels without his diaper and no underwear!!! LOL

Truth be told, I offered him a Mentos in exchange for a nice video!

Enjoy!

I paid Ethan’s new teacher (new school) a visit last week on Parent’s & Teachers day and was surprised to learn that all but 2 of the 20+ students in the 4 yr olds class can read the Peter & Jane 4A and further they can also write the alphabet from memory.

Ethan had only joined this school in early October, so his teacher has only had a full month and a half working with him so he is one of the 2 who cannot write the alphabet from memory and could only read Peter & Jane 2A – currently onto 3A.

Obviously this kindergarten has higher expectations and goals for their students because most other kindergartens don’t even teach the 4 yr olds how to read at 4yrs. Personally I not too worried that Ethan is a little behind compared to his peers in this school because I am sure he’ll catch up in no time especially since he is practising his writing and reading at home with me everyday.

When I first enrolled Ethan back in October I also enquired about enrolling Aaron (who just turned 2 in Oct) for classes starting in January. The administrator told me that many parents were happy sending their kids to The Core (name of Ethan’s new school) rather than leaving them with a maid or babysitter as they learn more and at a faster rate this way.

She also said that we (parents) should not limit the childs’ ability to learn. Since they are not forcing the kids to learn but are just helping them learn through play and they really enjoy themselves… I decided that my tiny tot (whom I still refer to as BABY) will be starting school in January.

As parents… do you think a 2 and a half year old is too young to be going to school?

I’ve been using this method of getting targeted traffic from You Tube very effectively for the last whole year. Infact you can say that part of my online success it due to the traffic that I got from YouTube in the early days. Had it not been for the free traffic flow, my first website would have been a complete flop as it did not have any other source of traffic except YouTube. I have sold over 200 copies of my first digital product as a direct result of the traffic from YouTube.

All you need to do is shoot a video in your relevant topic, edit it using Microsoft Movie Maker (this is provided free with your Microsoft Package when you purchased the computer) and then upload it to YouTube. Even a simple video like my son’s sports day can drive some traffic to this blog. Here is his 2nd Sports Day video taken in April 2008.

You’ll notice that I have added my website URL to the entire video so many people who are curious will likely click through to view my website. My website address is also posted as the first line in the video description that I posted in YouTube so that people can easily click on the link next to the video after watching the it.

I’ve used videos to promote many products with great success, you can also create videos about any topic and generate enough traffic to a website to either increase your blog readership or make a profit.

You’d be surprised at what people like to watch, because even really strange videos that you would not spare a minute for have many views and do remember that not only is this traffic source free it is also a one time set up project that will continue to work for as long as YouTube exists or until you remove the video.

Since Microsoft Movie Maker is free to use and also easy to use, you can create many videos to suit your targeted audience. Give it a try and you’ll be very pleased with the results.

I know… I am most inconsistent with posting on this blog, you’ll have to excuse me I’ve been so busy the last 2 weeks… with raya, birthdays, more birthdays, change of school and also work.

I’ve received a notice from my host provider that they are moving their servers to somewhere more secure so this move will make all my sites inaccessible for updates for a whole week, so I am trying to sneak this post in today before I get locked out of my own website soon.

Here goes … starting from 1 oct.

We went raya visiting at an old employee’s house in Gombak on Raya morning. We left our house pretty early at around 10am and even though we had been to her house before we ended up getting lost AGAIN!! (this happened the first time too!) So after driving around most of Gombak for like 10 mins I called for directions (so shy) and we finally got to our intended destination at 11am. We sat around and caught up because I had not seen her since I sold the cafe 3 years ago, the boys were keeping their mouths busy with chocolate and cookies! (lots of it)

Then we headed into the kitchen for this…(Kak Yah was my chief cook when I ran my cafe & catering business)

The food was so yummy!! oohh…there was lemang too but we did not take a picture of it. After we had our fill, Kak Yah even gave us more food to take away (again so shy…). Since we were so close to 1 Utama, we decided to spend the rest of the day there.

We had dinner with Chris’ dad and family that night at a chinese restaurant in SS2 and the following day at Pangkor seafood in Taman Megah. So wednesday, thursday and then friday we did celebrated Aaron’s 2nd birthday at Fullhouse in NZX near Ara Damansara.

Here is a picture of me and the boys, we shot a video too but I have not edited it yet, will do it soon I promise and post it here.

Aaron had a wonderful time and was quite delighted that we sang happy birthday twice (you can see this when you view the video which I’ll post here in another post). The next day he actually said “Aaron… Koko…Mummy…Daddy…Kakak go Happee Day.” He can’t say Happy Birthday yet, he can only say Happy Day (lol). After his birthday dinner we came home and I gave them both a lollipop each, so the boys were even more delighted! The wonders of the lollipop…

We did nothing on saturday which was good as we really needed a break from all that restaurant food and then on sunday the 5th we went to church as usual and then headed on over to Tony Roma’s to celebrate my brother’s Happy Day!

After gorging ourselves too full, we then took some pictures (just a tip, make sure you order way less than what you need if you go to Tony Romas because the portions will shock you!)

Can you see, we are like so sick from an overdose of food… and there is still more food leftover! This picture was taken from the top of Aaron’s pram on automatic and yes the pram is red.

After all that food we had to “walk it off” around Sunway Pyramid and we ended up buying Ethan a pair of Clarks. This was sunday right, so for the next whole week (which was last week) he bugged me everyday wanting to wear his new shoes. He wanted to wear them whenever we stepped out of the house. So here is a picture of him wearing them 6 days later on saturday night when we were going out to Subang Parade.

Can you see the delight on Ethan’s face?

The Monday after Tony Roma’s Chris talked me into sending Ethan back to school as we had already paid more than 100 bucks for his concert which is supposed to be held in November. Chris also felt that it is good for his socialising skills so I said ok why not… it won’t hurt to send him for the next 2 months. So Chris sent him to school in the morning and I turned up at noon to pick him up as usual. To my dismay, his knees we literally filthy and his white school shoes looked like they were worn for a week already. (this is monday only!!!!)

He came home sat down at the dining table and gobbled down his lunch to my surprise, so I asked him what he had for break in school. He said they gave him one of those salty crackers coated in sugar…I said… “IS THAT ALL?” Can you believe it…one piece of square biscuit that even I would not buy for our house…

So I made the decision that night after talking it over with Chris, I was going right to the New School – The Core in USJ11 to see if they will take him right smack in the middle of term. So that is exactly what I did and I went back to his old school to collect his things and we said goodbye to that filthy school.

I told the administrator of the new school about my concerns with the previous school and they said that they would help him with catching up with all the reading.

To my amazement, after only 1 week at this new school Ethan has a whole new outlook about reading and he now loves to read compared to just a week before when he did not even want to read 2 pages of Peter & Jane. His new teacher Ng, is quite dedicated even writes short notes in his Peter & Jane book to mark his progress so that we can read it and today Ethan came home with 4 stars for todays’ reading. Yes… I am a proud parent!!!!!

So last week I was pretty much spending my time ferrying him to school and settling all his fees and uniforms and blah blah…blah…ooo books too…  So much for home schooling….HAHAHA…

This week I’ve had my head in work trying to make up for 2 weeks ‘leave’ that I’ve taken, so far this months sales has taken a direct hit from the world financial crisis as I think people are just scared to spend money just incase the worse is  not over… so sales figures are at an all time low for this year.

I’ll have a few videos to edit and post here over the next few posts, so look out for them!

It was another hour and half of work for the kids and me this morning. I bought a new box of paints last night so the boys were bugging me right after breakfast to do some painting. We had not done painting for a long time now because we ran out of paints, so they remember that it was loads of fun…

I started them off with a drawing of a car each on an A4 paper and they had to paint it.  It turned out pretty…er ugly…because the paint brushes were all out of shape. I need to buy them new ones… (mental note..buy buy brushes…)

Here it is, I guess you can figure which one is Ethans.

After painting cars, we did paint leaves and “chop” on the paper. Ethan really liked this, he kept trying new colours and ended with a paper full of different coloured leaves. Aaron is just plain bossy…he wanted to do everything himself, he was like “I wan doo, I wan doo… , Aawon doo”

Here’s Master Bossy doing his cheeky smile and Ethan doing his leaves.

Ethan and I went on to make a mask while Aaron got bored and left to watch Barney!

I brought out some old paper plates from Ethan’s first birthday party and Ethan drew eyes, a nose and a mouth on it, then coloured it a bit. I then cut out the eyes and mouth with a pen knife and Ethan took a picture of me in action.

Then I cut some hair from newspaper and we even added a beard, LOL… poor mummy is already running out of ideas on day 2. Anyone with craft ideas or suggestions of activities to do with a 4 year old, please post them here… PLEASE!!!!

Here is Ethan wearing his mask after he attached all the hair himself.

That was the morning session – 9am till 1030am. They had a mentos each then watched Elmo Wild Wild West, which is hilarious by the way not to mention super entertaining.

After Aaron finally decided to nap at 11.30am, Ethan and I played word games using the flash cards. I have to find many new ways to teach him his words as 4yr olds have super short attention span. So we started of with flashing the cards, me to him then he became the teacher and flashed them back for me!

Then I laid out 3 words a time on the floor and read out a word each time for him to point out. We also reversed roles for this “game” too, where he laid out the words and he read out one and I had to pick it out!!Very cheeky way of getting him to read them… kekeke!

I even resorted to letting him throw the words like a frisbee towards the sofa and I must say he is really beginning to read most of the first 12 words.

Here is our last game (Aaron woke up) where we had to pick out the word and place it in the basket. I took this picture with Aaron on my lap so you can see his little legs in the picture. The camera was facing us and the picture was a little blur because of this.

This is real different from all my online google work … kekeke…boy am I glad that tomorrow is a public holiday! Yes, I do follow the Selangor gazetted holidays!!!

Over the weekend Chris and I asked Ethan to read his Peter & Jane 2b and were a bit disappointed to learn that he could only read about 40% of the words in the book. We do realise that he is only 4 yrs old but he has been going to ‘school’/nursery for the last ..almost 2 years. He spends 3 hours a day in school and what he has achieved this year is less than satisfactory. So I’ve decided to stop sending him to school for the rest of the year and to try home schooling him.

In December last year after Ethan had been attending school for 1 year, I tested his ABC’s and found that he hardly knew them. Yah…sure it is play school but they are supposed to teach them simple things like ABCs & 123s. Last year I did not expect him to learn to write yet. So I complaint to the pricipal last year that having spent a year at her school he still did not know his Alphabet, so she said “don’t worry, this year he will learn all that and more”, “furthermore you don’t want to force too much onto him because he may just tune out after that”, she reassured me that the pace picks up this year. I decided to teach him the alphabet myself using flash cards during the school holidays and he picked up  75% of it before school started in January.

So history has repeated itself with this year’s good money spent that resulted in below average results because Ethan actually believes that school is where kids gather to play…

Chris and I agreed that I can teach him more in a month than what they have taught him in a whole year, this is why we have decided that he should not return to school till January for the start of proper Year 5 kindergarten.

This morning was day 1 of home schooling which will carry on for the next 3 months till he goes to a new school next year.

Here is what we did today. I have no experience with this but I thought that I could make it a little fun for both of the boys so that they can enjoy learning.

Class 1 – I drew a house (remember that I am lousy at drawing!) and asked them to use some old colour stickers to colour the house. Here is Ethan’s house , all completed on his own.

Aaron took part in this assignment as well but had the maids help! Here is his house.

After this I drew the letter A for the on paper and gave them a pair of scissors each for Class 2. Only Ethan managed to complete this task but on the second attempt. This task is supposed to help with his motor skills. Here’s his work.

Aaron was just so excited to get his hands on a pair of scissors (under supervision) for the first time.

The maid ran off in search for the colour pencils that have disappeared recently so Aaron started to wander around so he ‘left school’. Ethan then went on to colour a fisherman for Class 3.

All that work and only an hour had gone by!!! I wonder how they can hold their attention for 3 hours…kekeke, that’s probably why the kids end up playing so much. They probably only teach them things 30 mins a day!

I dug out some old flash cards that I had paid a hand and a leg for when Ethan attended Shichida classes and we went on to learn 12 words by using the flash to memorize as pictures technique.

I must have gone through the 12 words like 10X with him because after the 5th time, Ethan was asking me.. “again?”

LOL…

In total today we spend 1 hr and 30 mins on work and then I rewarded both of them with a gummi bear each, so that we ended on a good note. The wonders of the gummi bear!

I’ll need to drive out to get more supplies for this home schooling thing so that we can do more art and craft , then I’m going to need to read up about what 4 year olds are supposed to be learning.

Not bad I guess for day 1 of school considering that we were totally unprepared!

Oh yes, after lunch Ethan practised his writing and he is getting much faster these days compared to the first day he started writing at home.

You can see Aaron in the background trying to ‘get involved!’