Mothering Corner

Time flies. My short break back home is over soon and I will be flying back to Bangkok tomorrow. Frankly, I can’t wait to go home! As much as I enjoy my stay here, but my heart longs to be there with my kids.

I’ve got my visa yesterday, and the rest of the paperwork and approval will be done in Bangkok. So, I’ll probably be busy as soon as I reach there. As much as I have tried my best to work from here, but I know what things are piling up on my office table. I’ll probably take a few days to clear them out.

Besides that, the house should be in a total mess. I’m not sure if hubby has cleared out the mails and bills from our mailbox, and it’s not that we have a lot of wall mounted mailboxes! But all this while, it’s me who clear out the house mailboxes everyday. It’s rainy season in Bangkok, and if you don’t clear out the mails in time, they might get soaked up in the wall mount mailboxes. Worse still, you might also catch one or 2 lizards living under your mails!!! Yucks!

Next would be cleaning up the house. I know that hubby is busy at work, and once he got the kids home from school, he doesn’t have much time to do the house chores either. I can almost imagine the laundry piling up, dishes accumulating on the dish rack (he washes them but might not put them back in the cupboard), and my kids’ stuff all scattered around in the living room.

Nonetheless, it would be nice to be home. I might nag when I’m cleaning up the place, but nothing beats the feeling of being at home….in Bangkok of course!

It’s so funny that when I’m so busy in Bangkok, I wish that I would have some free time on my own, going somewhere and have a short break to recharge myself. But now that my wish has come true, I feel so bored in Penang.

Nonetheless, I managed to meet up with some friends and it’s good to catch up with them again. As usual, I got some updates about their kids, School matters, work or just plain gossip. LOL! It’s nice to finally see them again in persons instead of chatting in Facebook.

On top of that, I’ve just found out that my friend’s husband works in Bangkok once in a while. No wonder she mentioned about moving to Bangkok last time. LOL!  I guess I can help her to find a suitable and affordable Private School if she needs some info, and it would be nice to have another friend here. But then, it’s just a talk. Actually, it’s not hard to get into a private school in Bangkok, as long as you can afford it. Best still, if your company pays for it! LOL! Too bad hubby’s contract doesn’t stated that. Sigh…

I really miss the kids. I’m sooooo counting down to the day I’ll be flying back to Bangkok!

It’s Mother’s Day in Thailand tomorrow, so most of us will have a long weekend. Yours truly here is taking the opportunity to fly back home so that I won’t have to skip work a lot. Furthermore, hubby can easily send me to the airport if he has the day off.

My mom should be quite happy that I’m flying back to celebrate Mother’s Day with her, even if it falls on a different day back home. I won’t get her any fancy flowers nor gift. She is very practical, she would love it if I can buy gold coins for her. LOL! However, knowing her well, a good dinner together will work fine as well.

Changed of plan again. I’m leaving this week and will be away for a week with a heavy heart. This is the first time I’m leaving the kids behind with hubby, who keeps assuring me that everything will be fine but I still don’t believe him.

Anyway, I can only pack one bento this week for the kids, and they requested French Toast with honey. I cut the bread with Rilakkuma cutter and pan fried them with some egg. Then, I spread some honey between the French toasts when packing the bento. On top of that, I packed some nuggets and fruits for the kids too. Today’s bentos are quite speedy since I only needed less than 5 minutes in decorating Rilakkuma.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Rilakkuma French Toast bento

This is for my boy.

Ok, I’ll have a short break from bento-ing, and I sure miss my kids! And thanks for hubby for helping out.

Yeap, I’m going home next week! Like I’ve mentioned before, I’ll only fly back on my own while hubby will take care of the kids here. Of course, the worries and doubts are still there, but I have to put some faith in hubby.

It’s only 3 days that I will be away, so I guess he can manage everything. The grandparents are clearly quite disappointed that the kids can’t go home with me since they haven’t seen them for months, so we shall see if we can bring the kids back during their holiday. Better still, if the grandparents can just come here and babysit them! LOL! But my mom had already told me, most probably, they won’t be coming.

Anyway, I’ll fly back with an almost empty luggage and bring back a lot of stuffs! If time permits, I’ll search for some toys or personalized gifts for the kids. I swear that I won’t be like hubby who just buys chocolate from the airport duty free each time he’s away.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by Mari Miyazawa’s blog post, as well as my boy’s encounter with a baby chick which fell from the nest. Just check out the link and see how creative Mari is in decorating food as cute little chicks and birds!

On the other hand, my boy found a dead baby bird a few weeks ago at his school. It’s rainy season here, and the storm can be rather strong. I guess the baby chick fell from the nest accidentally by the strong wind, so it’s quite sad to see its dead body. But my brave little boy just picked up the chick and showed it to his friends and teachers, while the mommy was basically screaming, gosh, that’s gross. Sorry, I’m not so into little animals, especially a dead one.

Then a few days ago, he found a bird nest in our garden, probably dropped from the trees as well. We saw some egg shells but no birds were found in it. Maybe they had all flown away, but the nest was still there. Again, blame it on the strong wind.

With this theme in mind, I decided to decorate a piece of sandwich as a hatching, and some nuggets as baby chicks. This is what I did last night:

I cut the bread with a stainless steel bento. By doing so, the bread can fit well in the lunch box.

Then I cut some smoked cheese with the bento too.

Cut the bread and smoked cheese into semi circles, but the cheese is slightly smaller than the bread.

Cut off 2 smaller semi circles as shown in the pic.

Next, cut a round piece of white cheese. Sorry about the lighting, I know the pics can’t show the different colors of the cheese!

Then I cut off the sides of the circle. After that, cut them in halves.

Cut some kamaboko as the chick’s beak.

This is what you would get after stacking up the details, which will be placed on the sandwiches.

For the little baby chick nuggets, cut some baby carrot as their beaks.

Try to blanch the baby carrots for a minute or so to soften them. It’s easier to pin them onto the nuggets (with spaghetti strips) if they are soft.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s baby chicks nuggets.

Here’s the top view of the bento, showing the baby chick sandwich.

This bento belongs to my boy.

My mom got me some gold jewelry when I was young and I still keep them all. I haven’t tried selling any, even if the price is very much higher now. I would make some money if I did, but what’s the point? They are keepsakes to me, and I will pass some to my kids later on.

Of course, if I can afford it, I would get more gold coins from United States Gold Bureau, but it won’t be something that happens this year. I hope that I can do so next few years on a regular basis, especially after my biz has stabilized.

My kids love SPAM, but the mommy is trying her best not to buy too much SPAM for them. Nonetheless, I do have my SPAM craving too once in a while. So, I fixed mini SPAM burger as breakfast this morning, and packed 2 in my kids’ lunch boxes. Needless to say, they were so thrilled to see that piece of processed meat!

My boy’s SPAM burger bento, with some star fruits, cherries and blueberries.

I decorated his burger as an unhappy face with a little bird resting on the nose. Ok, it doesn’t make sense. I didn’t have any bug pick, so I just pinned the duckie pick on the nose. The white was cut from hard boiled egg white, and the red was cut from strawberries.

My gal’s burger has a smiley face, as if she’s picking up a hatching bird.

Frankly, today’s bento theme doesn’t make much sense. LOL! But I was running out of time.

I hardly give money to beggars. Not that I don’t have sympathy in my heart, but I do choose the “persons” whom I will give some money away. If he’s a man, very well built and looks “healthy and normal”, I don’t see the point of giving him some money for his free meal. But if they are kids, and under a “safe and sound” circumstance, I would give some coins to them.

However, I don’t give money to kids beggars all the time though. When I was in Cambodia, there were a lot of children asking for money. My kids were totally horrified and they refused to step down on the muddy ground. The children came pretty close to us and there were quite a lot of them. Hubby and I carried our kids most of the time, and I had a very bad backache after that short trip! Giving money out will be a bad idea as we might get trapped with more  beggars.

But there was a time when I couldn’t help holding back my eyes when I saw a little Indian girl, who had severe burn scar on her body. Most of her body and part of her face were badly burnt. I did get a shock when her mother patted my shoulder, and asked me to turn around. They were asking for money in a small supermarket in Ipoh, and I didn’t expect that to happen.

I did wonder if the girl had gone for proper Burn treatment, what had happened to her, and how painful it would be for her to go through her agony. Judging from the way she and her mother dressed, maybe they couldn’t afford a better burn treatment nor medical disposables for the little girl.

I gave some cash away, and secretly hope that they won’t be kicked out from the supermarket by security guards. You know? Most malls and supermarkets won’t allow beggars to be in there, and I’m not sure how they managed to get in in the first place.

Anyway, I hope that everything is well for the girl and her mother.

My kids love Toy Story 1 and 2 and they have been looking forward for Toy Story 3 for many months! It will only be shown in Thailand next month, so they have been asking us to bring them to the cinema since they saw the poster. On top of that, they requested Woody and Buzz Lightyear bentos too, which I’ve tried my best to squeeze out some time on Monday to fix it.

I was having a long weekend, so I made good use of my day off to fix the egg sheets and cutting the details. Everything was frozen until last night. I could have done the preparation yesterday, but we were out and about. Hey, it’s my long waited day off, thus I wanted to check out some clothes and lingerie at Paragon too.

Anyway, here are the bentos:

Woody Bento for my boy

My initial plan was to fix a smiling Woody, but I gave up on cutting his mouth. That’s why I just replaced it with nori. LOL!

My gal prefers Buzz Lightyear.

I think my Woody looks kind of weird. Maybe he’s too simplified.