I'm a full-time mummy

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews towards the last quarter of year 2016 to prepare for our coming 4th kiddo who was born in early November 2016 and I am now slowly resuming doing product reviews but prioritizing those that can fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or homeschooling stuff, family products, something along those genre)

However, as busy as I am with 4 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books, what more one as unique as this! 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! 

Title: Rasa Sayang Sing-and-Record Fun Book
Publisher: Peyron Singapore Pte Ltd
ISBN: 978-981-09-8706-0
Paperback: 16 pages (hardboard)

Description from the product page:

"Rasa Sayang Sing-and-Record Fun Book is the first-ever push-button Malay folksong book. Realising the importance of preserving and protecting the local cultural heritage, Lok Leejiun curated the book to reconnect the younger generation to their roots. The book introduces an ensemble of traditional Malay folksongs, featuring seven (7) Nusantara folksongs namely Rasa Sayang, Chan Mali Chan, Burung Kakak Tua, Anak Itik Tok Wi, Lenggang Kangkung, Bengawan Solo, and Gelang Sipaku Gelang for the kids.

The book incorporates interactive elements to enhance and create a more memorable learning experience for children. Besides the conventional push-and-play button for pre-recorded songs, the book also features a ‘record’ button to record parents’ singing, and a ‘playback’ button to listen to the recording – allowing for parent-child interaction even when parents are occupied. English translations of the Malay lyrics are also available to benefit children’s learning process further."

We received the Rasa Sayang: Song Book + Plush Toy Gift Set for our review. My first thought was "What a lovely gift box set!" Perfect to give on any occasion! And look at that cute plushie! When you press the toy, you can hear the 'Rasa Sayang' tune! Lovely! Sometimes either myself or our kiddos will press the plushie and let our almost 3 months old boy hear it, sort of like a lullaby song hahaha...

We immediately open up the box and flip through the book as well as check out the push-buttons ahahah... The book includes a ‘play’ button for pre-recorded songs, a ‘record’ button for interactive play and a ‘playback’ button to playback our singing.

I want to confess that I really did not read any instructions on how to record our singing and how to playback etc. Well, we were over excited with the new book and the push-button gadget hahah... but fret not, it is very easy to understand and operate the push-buttons, really, even for me who skipped following the tutorial (located on the 1st page of the book)

I got our girls to press the corresponding button pictures to the songs in the book and let them hear the songs over and over again. For ehem ehem, mature people like me, these songs really do bring back memories! I remember learning to sing them during my primary school time. Oh, how fun! I guess children these days will miss out on these lovely songs if they are not exposed to it anymore.

What I like about this book is it comes with the English translated lyrics as well (in case you can't sing in Bahasa, you can sing in English). The illustrations are cute and the fonts used in the book are easy on the eye, easy and big enough to read.

There is also a mini game you can play as you go through this book with your child(ren). You can try to find the mischievous baba (the company mascot) that is hiding in the pages of the book. Enjoying music as well as playing hide and seek at the same time, hahaha, nice nice!

At one point, our girls even danced along to the songs. Our almost 8-year-old boy told me he remembered learning some of the songs during his kindy time.

Our 3-year-old girl also quietly browsed through and repeatedly play some songs - I guessed she found some favorite new tunes. Days after we first used the book, I can hear her humming along to a few words from some songs. Precious, precious memories to pass on to our younger generation.

Overall, this is a really nice book to own. What a nice way to preserve a cultural gem!

I totally recommend this book!

Giant thumbs up!

You can purchase the book or the gift set at http://www.bababaa.com/shop-baba-baa/

For more information on baba baa, please visit their website at www.bababaa.com and https://www.facebook.com/bababaafamily/

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 had earlier wrote about the "Build Your LEGO Christmas Event", the day after the post went live, I delivered our 4th kiddo and returned home the next day and was caught up with settling down with our newborn, breastfeeding routine and all. So on the 9th November 2016, hubby went ahead with our 2 older kiddos (age 5 and 7.5) leaving mummy to catch up with her rest with baby #4.

Just in case you have no idea what is happening, with few weeks left to approach the season of joy and giving, LEGO Malaysia is currently hosting an exclusive "Build Your LEGO Christmas" event at the LG Oval Concourse area at 1 Utama Shopping Centre from 9th to 20th November 2016, 10 am-10 pm. If you want to find out more about the event, here is the info:

Date:  9-20 November 2016

Time: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Lower Ground Oval Concourse area

FB Link on the event: http://bit.ly/BuildYourLEGOXmas

The customary picture before causing havoc stepping into the event area. Our kiddos are big fans of LEGO related stuff so they were very excited to see the many things being featured in the event.

There are tons of dioramas of various LEGO CITY and LEGO Friends scenes, organised by 3 LEGO-certified user groups in Malaysia – LOM LUG LEGO User Group of Malaysia, Synergy, and Asia Bricks. I loved looking at dioramas like this, makes your mind wander how cool it is to be living in these miniatures world as well as to be in awe with the patience and creativity poured into each and every diorama on display.

When you enter the event area, you will also notice there is a LEGO Friends amusement park ferris wheel ride. The maximum weight capacity of each ferris wheel car is approximately 80kg so don't forget to let your kiddos try this! There are also lots of free-playing area for children to build and display their LEGO creations as well :)

Our kiddos also sat through watching some popular LEGO TV series at the mini cinema and they also played some games at the mini booths around the event area.

Our kiddos also sat through a LEGO free-build session. Within a short allocated time frame, the children are encouraged to build a vehicle to their imagination. Check out what our kiddos made!

Btw, LEGO is asking children to save Christmas this year by designing and building Santa a new, modern, cool sleigh. From 1st November until 4th December 2016, children can lend a helping hand to Santa by joining the Build Your LEGO Christmas contest on www.LEGO.com/XMAS. There are suggested sleigh building instruction sheets available on the website which participants can use to build and upload a photo of their very own LEGO Santa’s sleigh with a matching description.

There are attractive prizes that you can win such as a total of 5 consolation prizes of LEGO products worth RM200 each, as well as a Grand Prize of LEGO products for a year worth RM2,000, which you can choose from your preferred theme. The Grand Prize winner will also have their winning sleigh featured in a final stop motion digital video aired in mid-December. How cool is that huh?

All in all, this is a fun and exciting event that you must bring your kiddos along to enjoy together!

I received no monetary compensation for this review. I was provided with the press release kit 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.
 

** 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 everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity. 

I hope to share with you all the inspiring message from the story of a butterfly that I read recently. There's quite a number of versions to this story but the lessons to learn are the same.

"Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further. The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand. But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly…

The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly. His kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.

If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.

In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.

 

When I asked god for strength, he gave me difficult situations to face.

When I asked god for brain & brown, he gave me puzzles in life to solve.

When I asked god for happiness, he showed me some unhappy people.

When I asked god for wealth, he showed me how to work hard.

When I asked god for favors, he showed me opportunities to work hard.

When I asked god for peace, he showed me how to help others.

God gave me nothing I wanted; he gave me everything I needed."

** 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 everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.