Growing up months

At six months' old, my girl was given her first solid food - porridge mixed with finely blended carrot bits. She was excited and managed to gulp down five small servings.

She seemed to be satisfied with her other-than-milk food. And yes, she was sitting inside a baby walker.

At seven months' old, she was walking, inside her walker, freely from the living room to the dry kitchen. She managed to pull herself up while holding to the bed rails.

At eight months' old, she said her first word Ba Ba. Last night, when we opened the Whatsapp chat, she seemed to recognize me and called me Ba Ba. Ba ba. She even gave me kisses on the screeen!

              

Time moved fast. And so did my Angeline. Every week upon reaching my doorstep after a horrendous 3-hour road journey from Marudi, she was sitting on the floor, giving her widest grin. 

And I would notice certain differences from the previous week. That she's becoming fairer. Her first word. Her eyes getting bigger relative to her face. Darn the system for making us far apart.

Her brothers always asking to let them carry her around the house but Darrien would sometimes gave us a big scare by letting her sit all alone on the sofa. Jacob could carry her despite his 4-year old of age. But not for long. My heart might had stopped if she fell down. My phobia is still haunting me when I fell aslept on a high bed while keeping an eye on her. The next few minutes later, there was a loud thud, followed by a loud cry. She was on her stomach, on the hard wooden floor when I was jolted. Scared the heck out of me!

Road trip to Sabah 2017

It was Gawai holiday and Wife said we should had a breakaway holiday from everyday's routine. At first, I was reluctant to go as I was worried that Angeline might had fever while having a road trip.

  

Very delicious Wrap with omelette, cheese and ham

With God's grace, we drove off to Sabah on the first day of Gawai. Wife had prepared all our luggages and necessities a day earlier. She woke up early on the day of the road trip and prepared a lot snacks to munch along the trip. Wife drove almost for the entire trip while baby was strapped onto baby seat. We were a bit concerned of traffic jam at the Immigration counters and the route itself. Wife read a lot of blogs to make sure we were taking the correct lanes. A collegue of hers told her that GPS might not worked in Brunei. As we drove along, there were few cars on the road. Immigration clearance was smooth. GPS worked just fine. Wife even used her Waze application to make sure we were on the correct way; just in case the GPS device malfuctioned halfway.

 

Our first stop after 2 hours on the road

Brunei's petrol price seems to be at least 30% cheaper than ours. But we were told that there were not many petrol stations which were allowed to sell petrol to foreign registered vehicles.

Immigration check outs before entering Limbang

We took almost 3.5 hours to reach Limbang. From there, we entered Temburong, Brunei for a short ride before coming to the seventh and the eighth Immigration counters. By noon, we reached Lawas. 3 hours later, we reached Kota Kinabalu. My excitement grew as we drove nearer to the capital of Land below the Wind.

We checked into our nice apartment, located above IMAGO shopping mall. The road trip was tiring and after a quick rest, we drove to Welcome Seafood Restaurant, Asia City. I remembered we had a very nice dinner last year. But the taste of the baby lobster, black pepper crab, seafood soup, sea snails did not taste as great as last year's.

Seafood on display

We drove to Lok Kawi to see animals in the zoo on Day 2.

The sun bear was so adorable and it was clever to show everyone that it could stand on its feet.

The animal show was very good and there was a parrot pretending to be dead after being 'shot' by a burglar

We enjoyed the show but Wife decided not to venture further for other exhibits.

Darrien said he must visited the emu while Jacob said he wanted to see the cows.

I literally ran back to the car after we visited the said animals. 

Day 3, we drove to Tanjung Aru for the very nice, thick, smooth avocado juice. The drink was so good that it itself could be the reason we were in Sabah.

We had so much nice food in Kota Kinabalu but unfortunately I did not take any pictures of them. One was the Fatt Kee's fried grouper with its internal organs in soup with mee hoon. I tried the fish skin. Fish liver. Fish maw. Fish stomach? Every bite was heavenly delicious. Another good reason to have a visit to Kota Kinabalu. We had dinner in a Korean restaurant which offered free flow of pork slices to be barbequed on the hot plates. It was good enough to have a second visit next year.

Our Sabah trip ended with performance from an energetic local dance group.

Of course, I could not resist taking pictures of my energetic boys as well.

We decided not to drive all the way to Miri on Day 4 as we were quite tired. We stayed a night in Lawas. Weather had been cloudy throughout our trip and I can't thank God more.

River view from Seri Malaysia Hotel

I was very satisfied with our Sabah road trip. We agreed to go for another trip to Kota Kinabalu next year but using the flight instead. Kundasang and a trip to the island would be our next destinations!