I'm a full-time mummy

As a busy mum with 5 kiddos between 6 months old to 10-years old, I have started cutting down on doing product reviews to focus on my childcare and family life, home cooking, education, helping with hubby's administration site of the business and sharing informational articles on my FB fan page so I am only accepting and prioritizing products that can fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or educational stuff, family products, something along those genre)! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Book 1: Kid Normal
ISBN: 9781408884539
Pages: 400

Description from the product page for book 1:

"Murph Cooper has a problem. His new school is top secret, and super weird. His classmates can all fly or control the weather or conjure tiny horses from thin air. And what's Murph's extraordinary skill? Um, oh yeah - he hasn't got one. Just as well there are no revolting supervillains lurking nearby, their minds abuzz with evil plans. There are!? Right. Ok, then... It's time for Kid Normal to become a hero!" 

Book 2: Kid Normal and the Rogue Heroes
ISBN: 978-1408884553
Pages: 416

Description from the product page for book 2:

"The second, epically funny adventure starring Murph Cooper and the Super Zeroes from Greg James and Chris Smith. Not all heroes have superpowers. Don't believe us? Well Murph Cooper is living proof. Since becoming Kid Normal, he and the Super Zeroes have been catching baddies all over the place. But being a hero is about to get a whole lot harder ... Far away in a top-secret prison, the world's most feared supervillain has broken a thirty year silence. His first words? 'Bring Kid Normal to me!'"

Book 3: Kid Normal and the Shadow Machine
ISBN: 978-1408898901
Pages: 400

Description from the product page for book 3:

"YOU DON'T NEED SUPERPOWERS TO BE A HERO ... Or do you? Despite having no powers, Murph Cooper is part of the best team in the Heroes' Alliance. So when supervillain Magpie declares all-out war, Kid Normal and the Super Zeroes lead the charge. But Magpie believes that a powerless hero is no hero at all. And he's building a dastardly device to prove it. When Kid Normal enters the Shadow Machine, THE WORLD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME ...'"

We received the "Kid Normal" books which I had intended for our 10-year-old boy to read as he is into books like this nowadays. I could see the similarity of the theme in the "Kid Normal" books with the Wimpy Kid series and Big Nate series in the sense that the fonts are easy on the eyes with the occasional contrasting font types when there is excitement, surprises and shocking sentences by the characters or in the storyline and the wacky illustrations all over the books which caught my boy's attention.

I like the unique storyline that a normal child could also be special. That it doesn't take any superpower abilities to stand out or to save the day. That as common as we feel we are, we do contribute and could help out no matter how big or small our contributions it seems.

Overall, a fun book series to own especially if your child likes to read and/or they are venturing into chapter books!

The book is available at all major bookstores in Malaysia. Btw, do note that if you purchase any Kid Normal book(s) at the participating bookstores exclusive to Malaysia and Singapore, you will receive an A4 character folder (*while stock lasts of course).

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I've been so so so busy with my family... you see,  yours truly have given birth to her 5th kiddo (recently turned 4 months old!) and I'm now slowly getting back into the swing of my old self so for my regular fans who have not been reading much updates on my blog here, do check out my Facebook page as I'm still very much active there as it is easier to just share interesting articles on FB.

Every now and then I do order take-away foods especially when I'm just too overwhelmed and caught up with my work as I need to help hubby in the administration side of the business since Nov 2018 when our admin staff broke her arm and is currently on long medical leave. Anyway, I was really surprised when we received free books in our Happy Meal order early this year.

Turns out McDonald’s is using its Scale for Good approach to instil a passion for reading and to provide a moment of closeness for families. How nice is that?! I think this idea is so cool and beneficial and I'm very happy to know the books we got for free was authored by Cressida Cowell, who is well known for her bestselling ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ books.

As we live in Malaysia, I think it is cool to know that the books are available in both English and Bahasa Malaysia which caters specifically for the Malaysian market. I like that each book comes with a fun fact page about the dinosaur featured in the book.

For those tech-savvy parents, there are also digital versions of the books which you can find through the Happy Studio app that can be downloaded on both the Google Play Store and Apple Store. My 2 older kiddos (between 7 to 10 years old) seems to prefer the app and enjoyed playing the games and activities in the app.

I believe that reading changes my children's lives positively, that knowledge is key and never harm anyone if we read up more and know more. Every time I stumbled into books that are age-appropriate for my kiddos, I snapped them up and am very encouraged to see my kiddos getting all excited to read the new books in our collection. If the books are a bit advanced for any of my kiddo, I will either read together with them or read aloud before their bedtime. That way, they get to hear the right pronunciation and the way sentences sound as we read along.

I remembered reading an article on what reading aloud to your children does to their brain. Excerpt from article below:

"When parents read to their children the difference shows in children's behaviour and academic performance. And according to a new study, the difference also shows in their brain activity. The researchers saw that, when the young children were being told a story, a number of regions in the left part of the brain became active. These are the areas involved in understanding the meaning of words and concepts and also in memory. These same brain regions have been found to be active when older children listen to stories or read. 

The brain develops rapidly from zero to six years of age, and the more exposure, the more you enrich and nurture these brain networks that are related to social and academic ability, the more the kid will gain the future."

There are benefits of parents reading to their children beyond the child's performance, too. "It's one of the most pleasurable activities that you do with your child -- there's physical closeness but it's probably the most unhurried time that children have with their parent and it is focused on them."

Reading helps in spelling, grammar and pronunciation, the benefits multiplied many times more if we as parents are there to guide our children as they read along. Even our 4th kiddo learns by observing his elder brother and sisters reading most of the time and tried to emulate them as well.

Although he is just 2 years old, that does not mean we should stop him from reading. At this age, what I usually do is teach him about colours, shapes, naming of objects, anything interesting for his age right now. It is up to our creativity to know how to make use of the reading materials in our kiddos' lives.

As McDonald’s will be releasing one book every month throughout the year 2019, please don't miss out on these books since they come free with the Happy Meal. We have this poster of Dr. Seuss's quote which said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?

For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:

Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals

So for today's angpow story, it comes from this piece of lovely angpow:

Today's story is about this KitKat angpow which has the Tetris design look.

I remembered when I was in my early teens (mid 90s), my late dad bought a video game console and it came with hundreds of games. One of my favourite games to play is of course the Tetris game. I would sit and try to crack the game, trying to score higher and higher and break each record every time.

What's more memorable was the option for dual player mode and I remembered playing this game with my late mum as well. I remembered watching my late mum sitting engrossed with the game, trying to BREAK my high score lol. So so memorable sight to cherish forever.

Looking at this angpow reminded me of these childhood times...

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.