Most tiring and energy zapping job in the world

Whew... It's been almost 3 weeks of schools and my days were gone with a snap on my fingers. Snap! Just like that. Why? I'll tell you why. The first week was not so hectic because my sister in law who stays with me helped me with house chores and with the kids. But Last 2weeks, She got a phone call from SMK Riam to be a temporary teacher which she gladly accepted. I also agreed that she accepted the job because my brother (her husband) only works as a Prison Wardar with the Prison Department of Malaysia grade K17 and this doesn't offer much on his salary. Their only son, Hadi, is having a severe dermatitis and needs special care because up to this point, he is allergic to chicken, eggs, all kind of sea produce, dairy products and others which can keep the list going on for quite a while. This really costs more because they have to find special milk and food for him or else it will triggered the allergies and make him scratch to bleed. I myself have dermatitis problems but it's contact dermatitis, where it is mainly cause by contacts with harsh detergents, some seafoods and air pollutant.

The problem with Hadi is he is still breastfeeding and he is 15 months old, so they (my brother and his wife) leave him to me to take care during their working hours. They roughly arrived around 2.30 to 4.30 pm everyday. My days are routinely goes like this:
4.45am - making breakfast, cook porridge for baby Darwish and Hadi
5.10am - shower and perform Solat Subuh with Dayana, nursing baby Darwish
6 am - preparing Dayana for her school
6.15am - see Dayana goes to school and sweeping the living room plus mopping
7 am - preparing Danish for his kindy
7.20 am - waking hubby up and watching both of them go off to kindy and office then attending Hadi, if he wakes up
8 am - 8.30am - attending the other 3 (Delisha, Darwisyah and baby Darwish), making milks, nursing, bathe them
8.30am - 9am - doing the laundry
9am - feeding breakfast to all 4 of them
9.30am - nursing Darwish and playing with him
10am - cooking lunch, doing laundry
11 am - spending some times to the 4 of them and making sure they take their nap if they are sleepy.
12 pm - bathing Danish, ready lunches for both hubby and Danish
1 pm - bathing Dayana, ready her lunch
1.30pm - checking both Danish and Dayana's bags for homeworks, waiting for them to finish it off
2 pm - nursing Darwish, lull him to sleep, folding clothes
3 pm - spending some times to any 6 of them or all of them together
4 pm - making dinner, bathe them for pyjamas time
5 pm - taking out the rubbish, cleaning the kitchen
5.30pm - waiting for hubby to come home form office, shower, drink some coffee
6 pm - listening to the kids stories, problems or complaints
6.30pm - 7pm - gathering my own kids to my room, taking some time off with the internet
8 pm - making sure Danish and Dayana go to bed
8.15pm - continue with some time off for myself, laying down, doing some reading while nursing Darwish
10.30pm - 11.30pm - get ready to sleep then zzzzzzzz

These roughly summarized my daily activities and I can assure you that nothing is more tiring and energy draining than doing this job of mine. I've lost 2 kg and my elbow and ankle are both swelling and aching. But life has to go on, I chose to be a housewife and a mum to 5 kids (and still counting), so all that I can say is, I enjoy doing it though sometimesI can't help myself from complaining it to my kids and hubby. I love my family but I hope sometimes, hubby can see how tired I am and do something about it, like giving surprise or treat to me. Hahhahahah.... In my dreams... .. :)

Dear iMac

Wow... I had quite an episode with my iMac last midnight. I was deleting some photos and at the same time, my iMac was updating itself. Suddenly, I accidentally moved thousands of photos on the desktop instead of dragging it successfully into the trash bin! You can imagine what happen! For those who are using Mac will get what I meant, before I managed to do anything, the Mac restarted itself for completing the updates. Here's when everything goes wrong!

After it restarted, my iMac suddenly freeze. It doesn't respond to any of the mouse or keyboard commands. Even the clock froze! At first, I panicked! Then, I grabbed my Blackberry and googled everything from the accident-of-dragging-the-photos to software updates. Most people came across frozen Mac after updating certain updates on their Mac. Regarding the photos problem, the desktop was fully loaded with thousands of photos (even though each of the photos is only 29kb in size, just thumbnails), it managed to crash the Finder application. I've restarted so many times, I even followed one of the advice to reinstall the OS! After waiting for almost one hour, the installation completed but the problem still persisted. Then, I remembered about my hubby using his iPad to remotely access my songs in iTune, so I googled for any free remote access program. I found TeamViewer but the problem is that I still need to be able to install it in my frozen iMac to enable the accessibility from the iPad.
I decided to use one last way, that is by getting the iMac to start in Safe Mode. I press the 'shift' button to enter the Safe Mode and at last, my Mac's finally responding a little bit. I can open Chrome browser and from there, I tried to googled for Terminal command to do something about deleting the heavy files on the desktop. I managed to hide the icons on the desktop first, this is to enable the Finder to unfreeze itself, due to the heavy loading of thousands of photos. Then from the Finder, I open the Desktop and delete the unwanted files and tadaaaaa, problem solved. I unhide the other applications on the desktop such as games and my iMac is still kicking alive right now. Terminal is Command Prompt for iMac as it is for normal Windows. So, here's the codes for hiding, unhiding and even clearing everything on your desktop! Before you do anything, you have to be sure of what you are doing, or else, you are risking of wiping out important files clean from your Mac or PC! As for me, I really love doing troubleshooting for computers and it has been my passion from the last 10 years.





Source: http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/cleandesktop.htm


I'm so sleepy so you guys can read more from the link, above.

Online Scam, Fraud and Crook!

I noticed that after posting an entry about a girl that killed herself scam, I noticed that my friends in Facebook still click on the link that had been passed to them about that poor girl that doesn't exist at all! Are they being just plain stupid or ignorant about these scam thingy? Maybe they think that my blog is not worth reading but it's okay. That's up to them. I'm just doing my part on spreading every knowledge that I have to other people because in Islam, you get merit on every single good thing that you pass that will help other people's life.
I read this article from Reader's Digest October 2010 entitled Cyber Thieves and besides the usual tips such as don't use the same passwords and user ID's for multiple sites and don't use you mother's maiden name as a security question, these other tips are very intriguing and good to know:

How to protect yourself from cyber thieves:
1. Do hold your cursor oven an unknown link before clicking it. Look at the bottom of your web browser and you will see the actual link that it's taking you to.
2. Do note the wording before the last period of a URL (just to the left of .com, .org, .edu, etc). It's what counts. So, paypal.com is legitimate but paypal.1234.com is fake.
3. Do look out for links with the @ symbol. Browsers ignore everything TO TE LEFT of it, so paypal@1234.com is not a PayPal site.
4. Do watch for deliberate misspellings like paypol.com where it is designed to trick you into clicking.
5. Create passwords that are at least 8 to 16 characters long with a mix of of capital letters, numbers and symbols. They're harder to crack.

My advices are don't simply click any link that people are giving you and if you see that lots of people are posting the very same link with dramatic caption, it's likely a scam. Be alert. Stay safe.

Crispy Dahfa Fillet

I stumbled upon this very simple snack a few months ago but had not try it until this late afternoon. My kids were asking for something too much on, especially snacks so I remembered about the Dahfa / Wanfa fillet that we bought last weekend. try it and you'll love it. Even my baby munched on it! :)

                       Diva Crispy Dahfa Fillet


1 packet of Dahfa / Wanfa fillet - large sheet and cut into bite size
                                                   - don't use the long, sliced type


1. Pour the Dahfa/Wanfa fillet on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.
2. Keep in an airtight container. Enjoy!

Spaghetti Meatball

I was out of idea on what to cook for lunch today, so I made Spaghetti Meatball.

                                Diva Spaghetti


1 packet Spaghetti ( I used Sam Remo)
1 medium sized can of tomato puree
Half packet of instant beef balls
Hakf packet of minced beef (I used Supreme's brand)
1 can of button mushroom - diced
1 carrot - diced
2 tomatoes - diced
2 cups of water
Sugar, ketchup, chicken stock powder (I used Cukup Rasa) to taste
1 tbsp of flour mixed with half cup of water
3 cloves of garlic - diced
Dried oregano herb (I bought a packet from Boulevard Hypermarket)


1. Boil the spaghetti according to the instruction on the packet. Strain. Put aside.
2. Sautee garlic til brown and fragrant and add in the minced beef.
3. Add water and tomato puree. Add in beef balls, carrot, tomato and mushrooms.
4. Let it boil. Then add in the flour mixture to thicken the sauce a little bit.
5. Add in sugar, ketchup and chicken stock powder, to taste. Add in the flour mixed to thicken the sauce.
6. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp of oregano. Turn off the heat.
7. Put a portion of spaghetti on a plate and pour a heapful of sauce on it with some beef balls.
8. Enjoy while it's warm.

First attempt of making home-made bread

It's been 3 weeks since I ordered Cosway's Empress bread maker and finally, it arrived yesterday. I was the first customer to get my hands on the bread maker as the Cosway stockist owner is a good friend of mine (Pujut's branch). We got the bread maker around 5pm and we didn't plan to buy anything to make a bread. was so confident that I have the right stuff needed to make a bread in my kitchen but to my disappointment,  you need to use high protein flour and I only use that kind of flour to bake biscuits during Hari Raya because I was told once by a baker at K.S.Tan Bakery that when you bake biscuits using high protein flour, you'll get a very crispy-mel-in-your mouth biscuits. Luckily, I have protein powder which I drank to lose the post-pregnancy-baby-fats and I made my own formula for the high protein flour. Recipes are included in the box of the bread maker and it's very easy to make a bread out of it because all that you need is to weigh everything according to the recepis, accurately, and let the machine do it wonders. Wow, the bread was super amazing but the texture was a little bit dry because of my self made high protein flour. Hahahahha.. I bought the bread maker using my RP points plus RM267.90 (if I'm not mistaken).

How Much Sleep Does Your Child Need?

During the school holidays, I let the kids to sleep late, the latest was at 11.30 pm because they were so excited playing with each other that they couldn't waste any time just to sleep. Hahahaha... So, of course that made them woke up late in the morning, the latest was at 9 am. So, late this evening, while watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, I was wondering to myself, how many hours does Dayana (7 years old this June) needs to sleep so that she'll have enough rest for school. She needs to wake up at 5.30 am to get ready for school and do the Subuh prayer  (I've vowed to myself to train her do the Subuh prayer everyday without fail starting tomorrow) and needs to start her journey from home at 6.15am because school starts at 6.50 on the dot. The teacher told me that by 6.45, the students have to be in the class and my neighbor (ex-student of the school for 6 years), told me that if you arrived at the school at 6.40am, it's considered late.
I quickly grabbed my Blackberry and googled about sleeping hours for children and being a member of babycenter.com, I found out that this information is very useful for a mum like me, who doesn't have anyone (own mother and mother-in-law) to refer to, regarding this matters. I really thanked the existence of INTERNET for being such an IMPORTANT thing to have in our life! :)

Sleeping angel, baby Darwish

SOURCE: www.babycenter.com

Age	Nighttime sleep	Daytime sleep	Average total sleep
2 years	10.5 to 12.5 hours	1 to 3 hours (1 nap)	11.5 to 15.5 hours
3 years	10.5 to 12.5 hours	1 to 3 hours (1 nap)	11 to 14 hours
4 years	10 to 12 hours	0 to 2.5 hours (1 or no nap)	10 to 13 hours
5 years	10 to 12 hours	0 to 2.5 hours (1 or no nap)	10 to 12.5 hours
6 years	10 to 11.5 hours	none	10 to 11.5 hours
7 years	9.5 to 11.5 hours	none	9.5 to 11.5 hours
8 years	9.5 to 11.5 hours	none	9.5 to 11.5 hours
*Note: The two sets of numbers don't always add up because children who take longer naps tend to sleep fewer hours at night, and vice versa.

Keep in mind that most kids need a lot of sleep — usually more than parents allow for. Often, says BabyCenter sleep expert Jodi Mindell, author of Sleeping Through the Night, if a child has poor sleep habits or refuses to nap or go to bed before 10 at night, his parents will assume that he just doesn't need much sleep. That's probably not the case — in fact, it's likely that such a child is actually sleep-deprived, hence his hyper, overtired behavior at bedtime. To see whether your child falls into this camp, ask yourself:

• Does my child frequently fall asleep while riding in the car?
• Do I have to wake him almost every morning?
• Does he seem cranky, irritable, or overtired during the day?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your child may be getting less sleep than his body craves. To change this pattern, you'll need to help him develop good sleep habits, and set an appropriate bedtime and then stick to it. A preschooler or young grade-schooler who's outgrown napping needs a solid 11 to 12 hours of sleep a night, and that amount will gradually decrease as he gets older. Even so, by the time he's a teenager, your child will still need nine to ten hours of shut-eye a night.

After reading this, I decided to ask both Dayana and Danish to sleep at 8pm, the latest is at 8.30pm and they agree without any drama involved. So, mums and dads out there, please take extra care for our kids's sleeping hour and patterns because well rested children will be more alert and ready to learn at school.