Mommy and baby dress alike

I finally summoned enough courage to attempt such a project. The primary motivation was that I was in desperate need of a dress that I could FIT INTO for two formal occasions. So rather apprehensively, I took a trip down to Spotlight where I poured over several pattern books to decide on a pattern that would 1) have a miraculous slimming effect (it didn't work) and 2)be simple enough for a beginner like me to make. That means no pleats, no pockets, nothing fancy.

It was the first time attempting any form of clothing adult size which meant alot more fabric to deal with, cut and sew. Of course, I also chose the stretchy sort of velvet to work with. Clever me... I felt like it was a little beyond me. But the massive lot of fabric did slowly take shape though I had to make some final alterations cos the size I picked was a little too loose. But on the whole, semi covered with a shawl, and perpetually carrying the child, all was concealed fine.

As for the little girl's dress, I had a pattern for a dress but it was sleeveless, so I copied the sleeve pattern from another dress and with fingers crossed that they would match, sewed the dress. The sleeves turned out a little long so I added elastic to it.

Here we are at my cousin's wedding dinner. The most frequent comment was "Ooh, did you get these made from the same fabric?" To which I smiled and repied yes. I guess that is a compliment if people thought we got it tailor made? Haha. Only closer friends who knew I was into sewing asked if I made K's dress and when they realised it was the same fabric, they ventured to ask if I sewed my own too.



I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of fabric that I stayed off sewing for a while. P was wondering why I hadn't done much sewing. Well, I have restarted sewing. Kids clothes of course. But now I have to think of another dress to wear to yet another wedding! Argh.

Own slide in the living room

After the dollhouse came along, we moved the furniture in the living room around to make more space for K and her toys. Being more spacious, we took out the slide that we were given quite a while ago which my niece used to have in her bedroom. That was how she got out of bed everyday! Sliding out of bed.

But since K's bed is really a mattress on the floor, it's too low for the slide. So we attached it to our 3 seater sofa.

A snapshot of school

Managed to get some photos off K's teacher. It's a glimpse into K's school world, activities and interaction with her friends. Something we would never see otherwise.

Honing motor skills - spoon, bowls and pebbles. With friends Wayne and Zhong Cheng.

Her outdoor partner, Wayne, the other guy's hand she holds regularly!

Deer in headlights shot.

Down the slide with Grace, the first friend whose name she could say, tho' not accurately.

Funny smile.

Walking on a line?

Her usual hand gestures of "where?" I'm guessing she was asking where she was to go.

Are they playing follow the leader? Or is it that K is moving so slowly and the queue is piling up?

Hard at work. They are decorating the goody bag for a school event.

Picking up flowers....I'm guessing for the goody bag deco?

She's really good at this. Picking up stuff and putting them into a bag.

:) She's a funny one. She would exclaim loudly "wanning" as she runs. She likes to describe what she is doing or what she sees.

Her classmates. Not easy to try to get a shot of them all looking at the camera.

I'm an Anchorvale Void Deck kid!

Ice-cream!!! Look how pleased she looks.

A row of happy toddlers. Don't ask me why her hair is such. Bah. Who ties a little girl's hair like that?

You can tell from this pic what flavour the ice-cream was. Half vanilla, half chocolate!

Haha. Lolling about! Cool shot. How the teacher managed to coordinate 6 of them in this shot is a wonder.

Language progress

K has been surprising us with her vocab lately.

One night after her shower while she was sitting on our bed, she said, "Read tory." She usually says, "Read book".

Just last Friday while she was brushing her teeth, she had saliva coming down her chin. She pointed at it and said, "Dipping."

At lunch yesterday, Peen asked her where the television was (mounted to the top of the wall just below the ceiling). She pointed (and we were both expecting her to say, "there" while pointing.) but she thought for a while and said, "Top."

She has recently been hooked on a panda documentary and would keep asking to watch it. She has now got a string of words that she uses to persuade us to let her watch it. "TB, manda, watch, peas, now, wan, on." (TV, panda, watch, please, now, want, on) If we don't react, the repetition would get more persistent and louder, with greater urgency. Funny girl.

For the longest time now, many things are known as "Baby". Well, at least that is the way it comes out for Kim when she means: baby, carry, TV, Dopey, baked beans. Her latest progress is calling the dog. So instead of saying baby for Dopey, she says Dappy. Haha. At least it's evolving though one could argue whether it's getting closer or further from the right pronounciation.

We can't take the suspense.

Kim has started showing interest in playing pretend. She was given a doll for her first birthday and never showed much interest until we had the doll pram. Then she's been pushing it around all day and wanting to get it to sit on the potty, putting on and taking off her shoes and getting me to change her.

We, or at least I, have been toying with the idea of getting Kim a dollhouse (to further encourage imaginery play) so I trawled the net for what's available in the market. It made me want to be a kid again. There are so many toys out there. So many different brands and most of them are way cool.

P was quite set on Playmobil. I wasn't very keen cos while they are nice, I thought that a dollhouse needs to have cuter dolls and more homely furniture. I was gunning for a wooden dollhouse. But boy are they expensive. So we decided to just wait and buy it for Kim for her second birthday.

I found a local store, which is the sole distributor of one brand I like here in sg. After doing research (checking out online stores and a few other shopping centres), I thot we'd go down and take a look. At the back of my mind, I just wanted to show P the other possibilities aside from PM.

We completely fell in love and came home with the whole lot. It wasn't intentional. Really. So we had the works. The house, the dolls, the grandparent dolls, the entire furniture set, the car, the pets. Oh dear. It felt like we almost bought the entire shop. Nah, far from it.

We discussed it and sort of decided that we might keep it till her birthday before giving it to Kim. But then I thought I'd give her the family dolls and the car for her to play with first.



Then P wanted to fix up the house. Here he is hard at work.

And with such a small flat, where can we possibly hide it without the little girl chancing upon it? So we unveiled it, thinking she'd just have the house, the family and the car to play with and that would be enough.

We made her sit on the sofa opposite the house (covered with a bedsheet) and this was her reaction when we unveiled it.

She takes a peek.

Really pleased.



Then I couldn't resist so in went the master bedroom.



And the dining table.



And her other doll Gracie, dropped by to say hi and just had to test the comfy level of the bed.



AND we added the kid's bedroom set.



The parent dolls took a rest after Gracie left. Afterall, supervising the incoming furniture can be quite tiring.



So did the kids, tired from all the excitement of a new place. Just the doggie keeping watch.



Oh, and of course one would need the bathroom. You can't live in a place without one!

Doggie checking out the dining area for scraps.



The dollhouse comes with two levels. But right now, Kim finds it hard to play with furniture in the lower level so it has become a temporary garage.

The rest will probably have to wait till her birthday IF we can resist taking them out just to see her reaction each time. :)

Our funny little girl. She would climb into the dollhouse if she could. She has already tried to walk up the staircase of the dollhouse.

P is on the rampage at the moment thinking about painting the dollhouse and how to install lights and all. He's even gotten my dad into it. Well, we'll see what happens and will post when he completes his project.

Hairpit

Yesterday we had dinner at my parents'.

As we were going home, a man got into the lift with us. He was dressed in a tank top. As he pressed the "door close" button, K pointed at him and said, "Hairpit." Repeatedly. P and I were embarrassed and wanted to laugh out loud. She was referring to the man's armpit which was semi-exposed when he reached for the button. Thankfully, he didn't understand what she was saying.

I think she replaces "arm" with "hair" because she sees hair growing out from it. :D

Two of K's firsts

We've been wanting to bring K for a movie but never know for certain if she'd sit thru one. We decided to try, but to watch one at the usual weekend screenings at the club so we could just walk out if she got too restless but yet not feel too terrible about the ridiculous amount we pay for the tix.

We waited for a suitable movie that we thought she might be interested in. On 5 Sep, we brought her to watch her first movie. A BBC documentary no less! It was one on meerkats. It was 83 mins long and she sat through most of it. Only during the last 10 to 15 mins she was restless and started to play with the water in her bottle. But what a feat for a 20 mths old. Although she didn't want to sit on her own seat throughout the movie. Well done, little one.

We shall have to do this more often until she can sit through one. Then it would be movies at the cinema proper, cheesy cornchips and popcorn!



On 12 Sep, we brought her to her first live concert. It was the Hi-5 Surprise concert. Initially, we weren't very keen to go because we very much prefer the old cast but we got complimentary tix from the Chengs. We are very glad we went.

This cast turned out to be much much better live than during studio recording....very weird. But we enjoyed it very much. K was happy just to sit on our laps throughout and only warmed up during intermission where she went wild dancing. During the second part of the concert, she was uncontrollable and almost did forward rolls on my lap several times. Funny girl.

Carpark coupon tabs

This is how you keep a little girl engaged for 15 mins or more...

....provided you have a doting grandfather who would sit beside her to help her with the tabs.

A new adjustment in school

I dunno really whether K realises that there has been a change in school. Her (and my) favourite teacher at school is no longer there. She has resigned. Wed was her last day. I was quite sad and I felt a little sad for K when I first found out. But I wonder if she would understand at this age.

K helped to make a card for her.



And was very eager at the idea of presenting the flowers when I told her in the morning that I would buy some flowers for her to give to her teacher. When she was actually supposed to do it, she went all shy and coy.

Last man standing

The family (well, K and P at least) have just recovered.

Kim started to run a highish fever on 3 and 4 Sep. Then it subsided. I was very relieved cos her fever never left so quickly before. Rashes started to appear at her diaper area. I thought it was due to the fever. Then there were more spots on her hands and feet. Oh oh. I suspected HFMD. So I got TK to check her out on Sunday in church and he said it was nothing. So we went on our merry way and did normal things. Although her appetite was somewhat affected.

Tuesday night we were to have dinner at the Chengs. When we arrived, there was just Dawn there. The kids were out - TK had Joel and the other two were at Chinese class. So K got to play with some toys. I thought that I had better get Dawn to check her out too just in case she went around the whole house and played with every single thing only to later be diagnosed with HFMD. It was confirmed! Oh no. Only because she had ONE blister on her left foot. The rest were just spots. The conclusion: it was a mild case. But she couldn't go to school. Had to wait for everything (read: that ONE spot) to dry up.

Sigh. So I kept her home on Wed. But she really did seem fine to me, except for the usual mealtime fights. Thu morning, I brought her to see our GP who agreed that his retrospective diagnosis was HFMD but said that she had recovered already. Which meant she could go back to school! I kept her home most of the day and only sent her to school for lunch and her milk before bringing her home for her nap.

So that was Thursday. Day. That same day, P felt unwell and so stayed home after going to see the doc to check out K and get mc for P. That night, he was feeling so terrible and ran a persistently high fever. He had reached 40 degrees! And poor baby was so ill and feeling all woe is me. Went to see doc again in the night and doc said he had tonsilitis. Fever broke in early morning but was very tired on Friday.

Went to see doc again on Sunday....cos he had spots!!!!! Yikes!!! He had caught HFMD from K!!! Oh sigh. So that meant that he couldn't handle K at all, couldn't do the dishes, had to try not to touch anything in the house and had to wear socks. Poor P. His was not a mild case.

Oh don't worry. We are now safe to be around. And I won't attempt to post any pics of the blisters on P, tho' he made me take some. :) I'm just glad to say that everyone is well again. And thanks to those who were praying for K not to get it again and for me to stay clear of it.

Latest interest - singing

She likes to sing along. Currently, she would only be able to pick up some words, mostly the last word of a phrase. She especially enjoys doing actions to a song, improvising along the way.

Here are her two current favourites.

Row row row your boat




两只老虎 (And I always thot it was 三只?!) / 手在哪里

You are being watched

We have heard that children learn by imitation. And so they do.

Here is K putting on her imaginary contact lenses.

And here she is trying to put on anti-perspirant!

Hand in hand

I caught this on video last week. It was in the late afternoon and the kids are usually allowed to do their own thing. You will see that they are rather aimless and are just randomly walking around.



I thought it was quite cute that K was holding her friend's hand and walking around.

You will see that this friend is much taller. She is also rather conscientious about keeping books which are left lying around, as compared to stepping on them.

I am told that our "very social" daughter quite often holds hands with her friends and just leads them around. At least this time it's a girl. Was there ever a boy? Ah yes. Read on.

Last Monday night while we were having dinner, K was given some icing biscuits. You know the kind that looks like a belly button with some bright icing on top of it. And as a child, you usually only eat the icing? Well, it is no different today.

We were sort of randomly chatting with one another and K. I was asking K about school. Then I went to the kitchen while she ate the biscuits. Suddenly, she said, "Nove." That means "love". I asked her who she loved and she said, "Yee Chin". Peen swears she meant "Icing" from the biscuit but mommy knows better. She meant her friend Eugene from school. I repeated myself at least thrice and asked her, "Did you say that you love Eugene?" To which she nodded and said, "Orhhh...nes (oh...yes)" much to daddy's dismay.