Ouchie shots

She turns 4 months 4 days ago and today she had 4 shots to get immunised.
She is still adorable and hope she'll will always be.
I can't keep even a minute away from her admiring her white pearly skin, so smooth .. Ohh she is a really blessing for us. I remember when I was still single, had a chance to hold someone's baby girl with unspoiled smooth like silk skin, typical baby skin..  daydream I wish to have my own baby like this..  and it came true...

Holding her in public health nurse's room, half naked just with her diaper on, she was happy, excited, giggle without knowing that shortly 4 needles will be poked on her chubby thigh. Then in seconds, the nurse gave me sign to be ready to hold her tighter.. then big cry out loud... "I know baby it hurts"
4 spots gave insignificant bleeding but I asked for bandage to cover it..  "It's okay I will peel them carefully without hurting her. I thought it's better to put the bandage on. She was still crying, sobbing. even in next 10 minutes. In her first vaccine, when she was 2 months old, she cried only short time, as I was able to soothe her by breastfeeding. But this time, she could not calm down, she even refused breast. Then I decided to take her home while she was still crying. Luckily, she felt asleep in the car. She is just too tired crying.

TGIT

Yes, I love it's Thursday, even more than Friday... been enough tackled errands alone for 4 days 4 nights as he goes to work up north in the field. He's always back on Thursday night. I know, I let him work there. I said OK I can handle them, shouldn't be difficult. He is paid 20% more money there, even they give $245 cloth allowance per year, great saving for our next summer vacation.

This week, I have been busy browsing preschool for Rafee. Time flies so fast. Almost beginning of the 2010. He will start in September,10. I know, still long way to go but I don't wanna miss registration season. Like what happened last year.. he supposed to start preschool last year. But due to ignorant mommy he didn't, end up indulging himself at home, no learning at all. Well, it's o good at least he knows alphabet and number now. He talks too much tough.. I guess he's got more than 200 vocab now..
Back to the business, So far I have got narrowed down the school list with 2 options either near campus or home. Near campus, I found some good preschools. Near house well, it's so so, should be fine for preparing him to wait for K school.
I have figured out typical schedule of my courses so I can choose class schedule for him. So well done..

Bloggin' again

When I look at my webblog... appear to be outdated, first how it looks, profile picture ohh only with my son, I have my little girl now.. then last post not too bad about 4 months ago when my little one was born.. I think I may need to reconstruct the template, looks too crowdy too many things wanna be displayed, like those quotes, birthday meter ... but thinking about redesign the template, when I will have time, it's uncertain, when I can have time. Hmm, my be just leave it like that. As long as I have some ideas to keep posting is good enough.. sometimes I have mumblings, grumblings about all the happenings in my daily life not enough to be put in facebook status, better write it here..

Your birth day - August 15

It was just an ordinary Saturday. Mommy had terrible high blood pressure on Friday night. Tummy was quite tight. No idea what happened with you, baby. Did you give sign to mommy that you wanted to come earlier.

Mommy just took it easy. And that morning mommy as usual wrote status on FB, “wanna make rempeyek, peanut crackers even thought of cooking Indonesian beef curry”. Then nurse Wanda came to give NST and check BP. NST was good, you kicked a lot as usual. But BP numbers even were always high, constantly.

Nurse Wanda was not happy. Later on after she talked to doctors at PLC unit asked mommy to go to the unit to see Doctors to get prescription for BP. She even ensured that I won’t have earlier delivery.

Then after lunch daddy took mommy to hospital for assessment. Again another NST and they found >100 diastolic number. It was continuously high. Dr. Wagner who was on duty also check your position with USG station at the hospital, yes you are still breeching baby. They made blood work too, which is OK.

Dr. Wagner talked with mommy, she thought it’s time to deliver you as BP concerns. She suggested to deliver you with C-section. Though, it is also possible to reposition you to head down and then try to induce you for normal delivery. But negative side, it will take time and make you distressed with high BP and tired as she said normally premature baby will not be able to do labor. Mommy just can’t imagine how busy and tired you are inside when mommy trying to push you. It’s gonna be another torturing for you. No mommy won’t let you be that, you have been exhausted with my BP.

So mommy accept the decision. When mommy listened to Dr. Wagner’s explanation, it was so sensible, easy to understand. So mommy decided just to let you free.

Then 7.30pm, everything was ready for the surgery. Daddy came at 7pm. Your brother was OK at home. Things happened so fast in that room. Quickly after injected with epidural anesthetic, half part of mommy’s body become numb.

At 8pm, you were out of mommy ‘s tummy. Mommy saw your face, cute, hairy with red lips and huge nose like daddy’s.

Surgery took only 40 minutes. It was so fast.

Around 10pm mommy drop by to your unit 35BNICU. You were taken under heater but no hose for breathing. Just IV to stabilize your sugar blood level. Mommy was surprised with your progress.. You are doing really good at the beginning.

Time to write again!

Yes, i t's been tooo looooooong I am not writing, why?

Kind of lazy to be honest, other than also busy for more than a year. But now no more excuse to be busy, not a single course I take, not a work, just stay home with regular home work.

SO it's time to spend time to write, about what?

SOmtime got no idea what to write... but whenever I visit this blog it's just too pity to keep it out of date. OK now I will try to keep it updated...

campus mania

Hey people..

I am back, yes I am still alive of course. For all you don’t know I am back to campus now. And here I am waiting for my lab schedule another 2 hours.. siting here on public cubicle at the corner of one campus building browsing around, bored enough listening to so called interactive MatLab on net. Yes this programming language of nowhere land spoken by spooky alien possibly - is gonna be first hurdle that I need to cope with. Next one is math, calculus and linear algebra would be challenging too. Recalling those stuffs which I liked at the most back to 18 years ago, it’s kind of pain in butt. But I have got to do it otherwise I will fail. Better I spend more time to review all to refresh to get them back in my head… I will let them dance happily inside my brain till they cool down inside my memory ready to serve back all my motoric sensors (aka in exams etc).

So.. enough about that. First week almost passed. Got “excitement” assignment starter to spend at the weekend. But surprisingly, I got a young, funny, and of course cute TA (teaching assistant) from my geology lab who always want to greet me in bahasa Indonesia. Nice isn’t it ? First Canadian in this Land of Rockies that I met who can speak my language not even my hubby who always sleep beside me. Ironic..

Other more I wanna write here, but my time is up.. I need to cross more thing in my list to do here before I head to

Post Canada day trip

Up to 1750 km driven, wandered around mountain playground of our neigboring province, the so-called Land of Kootenay Rockies a.k.a Valley of a Thousand peaks in SW of British Columbia. More than 400 litre of gasoline was consumed by our SUV to drive along more less a 150 km winding narrow road cruising the 100 km long Kootenay Lake. Almost 31 towns were passed and 20 places located in some of the towns were visited from lakes, water fall, hot springs, Japannese gardens, campground, orchards and various historical sites from local museums, the biggest surviving sternwheeler, abandoned 'ghost mining town', to Japanesse Canadian internment site.

About 7 days, 6 nights were spent and nomadically stayed in 4 different towns for the sake of experiencing different things from our routine daily life. From budget motel in the middle of quite downtown of Cranbrook, feel-like-home hostel as I can cook in full kitchenette (Ainsworth), neighbored by hot spring pool and pure natural hot springs cave, a quite cabin with valley view of an agricultural town of Creston to an affordable cozy family country inn in Fernie, nestled in the Elk Valley, famed as a destination town of all year round outdoor sport lovers of water rafter, skiers, snowboarder and mountain bikers. And…as always posted in every tourist spots, wherever you go on this our lovely planet, only footprints left but we are welcomed to take as much as experience or memories from those places. Enjoyed the warmest lake in Invermere, barbeque lunch in the wonderful campground surrounded by a lake in New Denver, cozily soaked in silica rich hot spring pool and cave in Ainsworth, cruised the longest free ferry ride in the world (Balfour – Kootenay Bay) in breeze and crispy wind blowing along the lake, had a stroll at the ferry harbour in one misty morning waiting for ferry arrival, watching geese, seagulls and ducks by the lakeshore, took a stroll down the 100 foot high Marysville waterfalls, just located in backyards of some resident in Kimberley, took train ride to the historic Sullivan base metal underground mine in Kimberley, made Rafee's day even so memorable, then stunned by the sights, sounds, smells of all happenings in the last century that have been recreated on the world's oldest surviving passenger sternwheeler of SS Moyie historical site in Kaslo, and lastly a meaningful visit at the Nikkei Memorial Internment Centre in New Denver, appreciated how the Japanese Canadians who were stripped of their civil rights, impacted by Pearl Harbour booming in 1942, forced to relocate from their coastal BC homes to camps or lived in shacks of mountainous regions in BC, and other provinces. All of those, what we got …. unforgottable moments ....

--- some more detail of our travelogue and photologues will be posted as soon as time available to write and upload ----

Winter wonder land in Spring

Winter wonderland is back.

It’s been 3 days snow falling, will keep going on till Tue.

Mother nature seems to make all regions here experience even winter troublesome. Eastern had couple of severe snow storms in January February. While Western had spring like weather in Winter. Now she takes revenge giving us more than enough snow to whiten all about to green gound, just in two days. This time, Eastern and western totally 180degree difference. Whereas, we just had lovely sunny warm 25deg C weekend last week. I even planned to box in all my winter gear/clothes exchanging with summer stuffs since last week.

I just can’t wait to see green blanket in our neighbourhood what we have now nothing but white.

I just can’t wait to see my tulips start blossoming. I saw their brown buds came out already last week. They may think, heeeyy what’s going on here how come the white still covering me. Isn’t enough I you it for more than 4 month since Fall.

I can’t wait to put shorts or no sleeve shirt on Rafee. I can’t wait to have barbecue lunch at weekends. I can’t wait for our summer vacation to visit orchards, vineyard and Kelowna in BC this July.

Can you wait for womderful moments in your favourite season?

DIY PROJECT

Last night, my hubby came upstairs from our basement to join threesome bed at almost 11pm. He looked totally exhausted, but with a big grin. "YES!! $3000 in our hand and finally my job is done." And I gave him my best-ever-smile with big hug too though his cloth is extremely full of wood saw dust. And he said "But pls, give me back massage".

Before The D-day It's was in early summer this year when our walkout basement started being developed. After additional mortgage was approved in August, a design plan for converting one big room basement into 2 bedrooms, 1 washroom, and an open kitchen with living room was made, we hired a builder to have want it done except for the floor. One of hubby's friend referred one for the job. They are skilled immigrants (just like us), running a family home renovation business here. Surely, meaning their workmanship cost is lower than local "white" builder. No formalities, friendly, negotiable, flexible for any change in plan. However, we got to tolerate their working time which affect the completion date as they also work for other job at the same time. Well, we got no problem with that as we are not in a hurry, anyway.

Money-money SO it's all about money saving project for our basement. We use the expert for things we can't do, in term of work needing specific skills, heavy lifting stuff, and special tools. Such as framing, wiring, taping, etc. Compared to our home country, workmanship for home renovation here is extremely costly. Well, great thing being here, with do-it yourself project if YOU WANT, you can make your own deck, your own patio, or garden, or develop your own basement or renovate your own washroom or whatever is not difficult. What you need is enough patience to learn and do new thing, ample of time allocated, persistence to complete the work notably related to heavy duty work. Those will save you money.

My hubby has limitation in time as he can got FT job and also his physical condition due to back surgery. We admit and realize, big period. But, then we thought nothing wrong to have experience to do one part of the project completion. SO, let's try installing the flooring for our basement. Why not, while we can attend free class, free support on how to install tile, drywall, laminated floor. THE HOME DEPOT gives us solution, as they also say : YOU CAN DO IT, we can help. We don't need to buy their products to attend the free class. It's up to us.
Several classes he attended to gain practical procedures to install the stuffs and not to mention, also to boost confidence that you can do it. Luckily, it happened, the instructor had to delay one class for an hour and he nicely gave the 10% discount. he delayed one class for 1 hour. Of course, more loony saving to purchase all the things needed such as tiles, laminated wood, safety gears, grouts, tool kits and even table saw for cutting the tiles/laminate wood, he bought. We in fact can rent it from the shop, or we can have them cut at the shop but we decided to buy it and again $$ saving. We will need it anyway for next garage shelving project. We spent a lot of time to survey the stock availability and price of the tiles and laminate. My hubby is "non-negotiable" perfectionist for the sake of similarity to our main house. It's almost for everything, like kitchen cupboard and colour of the appliances.

Finally at The End the Errands Tiles have been installed around mid October. It's only in

entrance and kitchen area. We out carpet for inner stairs connecting to the main floor. We had the carpet installed from local store. Other area is all laminated. He started putting some part of the laminate at the end of October. First we got help from our close friend to start up. Then, his confidence and skills improved in several days. I would say after watching and giving some help when I'm free, it's not a rocket scientist work, it's pretty easy and easy to follow. It's basically more practice you will get better output. We had a break at the first two weeks in November as his brother and family from Bangladesh came over and stayed with us for a week. We got to entertain them.

Finally, until last night, we're glad and satisfied with hard work we've done as all flooring work is done. This weekend the builder is coming to finish up putting the casings to the walls, windows and other final work. We just need to do put the foot path at sideway so that our tenant of this basement unit can get access to their entrance from the back. Ideally we wanna rent it especially for new landed immigrant not sure when. But it can also be for our relatives/friends who wanna take holiday here. Oh by the way, one Indonesian friend who plan to migrate in next summer already ask for that, OMG. No, we're not ready there yet!!

GEOPROBE

It’s the name I gave when I called the Revenue Canada to register it for getting GST number. The name just came up, as it’s so close to my mind. Most possibly, that’s always the name I put whenever I need to sign up in professional sites acquiring company name. It was just fictious. I never thought of having own company but my husband does.

The 2 contract jobs I got at the end of this year in fact took me to the idea of making a small consultant company. Initially, one of my hubby’s friend suggested us to get a GST number submitted to the employer if hired as contractor so that we can claim some expense for more return in tax reporting every April. He said just easily call Revenue Canada with quick option, a GST number will be instantly created. I did call the toll free number, in a minute I got the GST number. Then, they asked me to voluntarily register my business too. OK I thought why not, it won’t hurt me. It’s free anyway.

Less than a week, I got confirmation letter from the Revenue. Very surprising, as normally if you deal with Govt, their response is always super slow. My hubby said, not this matter as they will get money from me. Aha! No wonder.

What I need to do, report my income from Geoprobe from next June. They give me extra time, supposed to be April. So from now on, I have to file all receipts of the expenses made for the Geoprobe. I did buy a new laptop, scanner, and other office stuffs which in fact I used for the work. I am hoping to get some return when I report them next year.