Mama(n)datory

Sometime soon.
Anytime now.

Well, not me; a close friend.

Quick catch-up before baby

Talked about labor, and giving birth with her.. I actually miss being in one. I miss the feeling of the strong contractions, and the satisfaction from it once the baby is out.

My friends, they say I'm crazy for loving the contraction pain. Can't help it. I LOVE IT.

I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunity to went through two labor pains delivering my 2 girls. One had to be delivered via an emergency c-sec after a 9 cm dilation within 6hours (from a poor baby progression at the very last moment), the other a vbac in just 4 hours of active labor process.

Ok maybe I have a high pain threshold, and maybe I didn't have to go through more hours of labor pain as you lot, that makes me say I love birthing process. Alhamdulillah. Maybe. I love it still.

But no, even though I miss birthing, I don't think I'm willing to get myself pregnant again just yet. Maybe 2 is enough. I don't know. Tak boleh nak kata tak, tak boleh nak lawan. Just not the right moment.

In the meantime, I'll let you girls layankan contraction masing-masing dulu ok? Muahahaha.

5 days of break for Chinese New Year. What did we do? Balik kampung, just like everyone else.

Happy Chinese New Year 2018! Image source: Google

As the title suggest, I know you'd go "Brownies? Easy!" I'm sure if you type into Google for a recipe, there are thousands of brownie options - some are the same classic ones, whilst some with a twisted version of brownies. So which one would you choose?

I've experimented with various brownie recipes too but this particular one is the one I always go back to. The classic.

INGREDIENTS

175g butter *
125g dark chocolate, chopped *
125g dark chocolate, chopped (for molten)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt

*to be melted


METHOD

Step 1
Preheat oven to 180c. Grease a 20cm square cake pan (or you could line it with a baking paper - which I don't currently have at home - for easier lift-out of the finished brownies.

Step 2
Place butter* and 1/2 of the chopped chocolate* into a microwave-safe bowl. Melt in 30 seconds increment, whisking after each, until completely smooth. (Or you could even do the double-boil process if you prefer it that way)

Step 3
Whisk in the sugar while the melted butter+chocolate is still warm, until combined. Then whisk in the eggs and vanilla.

Step 4
Add the cocoa powder, flour, salt and the remaining 1/2 of the chopped chocolate. Fold everything together with a spatula. Batter will be very thick which represent the fudgy-ness. Spread evenly into pan.

Step 5
Bake for 25-30minutes. Once done, remove from the oven and completely cool it on the wire rack before cutting into squares.

It didn't have much crackly top this time, Mayesa took her time whisking in the sugar into the no-longer-warm melted butter and chocolate

BROWNIE POINTS

• Whisking in sugar while the melted butter and chocolate is still warm, creates a shiny and crackly top.

• Flour gives the brownie structure. Too much flour will make the brownie goes into the cakey zone, which we do not want.

• Folding in some chopped chocolates into the batter creates pockets of molten, which I like!

• To tell if the brownies are done, insert toothpick in the middle, and pull it out. If the toothpick comes out wet, the brownie's not done. Re-check every 2 minutes. The brownie is done if the toothpick comes out with few moist crumbs. You don't want a clean toothpick!

My girls are (considered at their age)pros using iPad and iPhones. The laptop, even.

Some say gadgets should be prohibited to kids. I say, gadgets are fine (with monitoring).
They say it limits the child's sensory play and can even lead to speech delay, eyes being glued on to the screen. But I find that it helps with my daughter's vocabulary and communication. Expressive imagination gone to the next level too.

It's an advance, technology era. I can't stop them from being in the loop, they need to be aware of these advancement after all or suffer from being in the L town who knows little if not nothing about the use of technology, the internet precisely.

All I have to be strict on is time limitation, and of course constant filtering.
You don't entirely leave the gadgets to them without filtering stuff, it is  a world wide web and the source is limitless. You do your part, and they'll be using it fine inshaa Allah.

Mayesa used to hog the gadget almost every afternoon, watching video after video on YouTube. My fault, really, for letting her sit quietly to avoid interrupting me doing chores and handling her then newborn sister. I've now limit her usage to only a short session or two per day, and she's doing just fine really. She's still all active and sometimes with an extensive usage of super vocabs. I myself am amazed, I don't even use those words in my daily communication.

Sofia too. Yes, she uses the iPad too, for YouTube. She now communicates mostly in English, surprise surprise. So I don't really see the wrong in letting the kids use the gadgets, if you monitor them to use it right.

And Mayesa has proposed to have a YouTube channel, just to document her daily vlog with her sister. Something similar to her favorites - Kaycee, and Ryan. 0_o Oh my.

So relatively, this happened (not so)recently: little did I know that  she had actually been eyeing to get a headphone for quite some time. She did once told me that her cousin has one, but she didn't say that she'd like to get it herself. She's only turning 5, I mean, why would she even need one of those?

It totally caught me by surprise that that one particular day I brought her over to the mall, we went into Smiggle for no exact reason - that she picked up a set of headphone. Of all pretty trinkets a little girl would want in Smiggle, she chose a headphone and went "Mama, can I have this? It's five eight."

She knows the numbers but she didn't really get what it meant, the price.

It was on sale, a half price cut.

I don't even know what got into me : maybe the shock that she picked out something out of ordinary - other than toys or any pretty little girly things, and of course for the fact that it was on sale, and also her wishful expression (see picture below); I bought her the headphone.

So yeah, kids and gadgets(technology)?
I'm totally cool with it.