K turns 4

This year's theme is all about Peppa. K loves the character Peppa and her family. Here is the little girl opening her present while waiting for lunch with grandparents.

Peppa and her family figurines!

Papa and B watch on.

The cake. Also Peppa and her family but they look sunburnt.

Happy birthday K!

She is pleased with the cake. B can't wait to get his hands on the figures!

They huff and puff. B still eyeing the piggies.

Eating her cake. Oh, and here you see her Peppa top.

B smiling for the camera.

B giving big sister a birthday hug.

Birthday girl acting silly.

End of celebration #1.

Dinner that night at Urban Spoon, a newish place near our home. It serves really good food and plays very good music. K picked out her own dress which she calls "Bride / princess dress".

The two of them checking out the decor.

Cake from earlier.

K eating Peppa.

Laughing at Peppa without her snout, hand and ears.

B gets to eat George, Peppa's little brother.

He was not very pleased with how the earless and snoutless George looked.

End of celebration#2.

Celebration #3: School. This was the cake for her school celebration. Peppa with Teddy.

Her group: Red Apple.

With all her friends. All 31 of them! She was very uncomfortable about being in the limelight. I think she expected P and I to be next to her, not sitting by herself surrounded by her friends.

Her three teachers.

Serving her little friends cake.

Eating her own cake.

With her little friend with whom she has a love-hate relationship. She has known her for more than a year now and has always loved playing with her but also can't stop complaining about her.

The kids really loved the cake!

P was very impressed by this little friend. She was very polite.

Later that day we brought the kids swimming and she had some ice-cream as a treat.

On her birthday itself, we took her out. We went to the zoo. There were new exhibits. She loved the naked mole rats.

Tram ride.

Final cake. Agar agar.

Happy birthday sweetie. May you continue to grow in grace and compassion. May you love people and love the Lord. I pray that His blessings will be upon you all the days of your life.

Milestones for B

8 Nov 2011

B put on his own shoes! From time to time, when he passes the chest of drawers of shoes, he would take out his shoes and ask us to put them on for him. He tried putting them on himself today.

9 Nov 2011

I gave B a two-step instruction. We were going out and he was holding his bear balloon. I told him to keep the bear balloon in the playroom and then go wear his shoes. He walked to the playroom left his balloon on the floor, went to the shoes drawer, took out his yellow shoes and then put them on! Well done little boy!

Language development

On our way out, I was going to throw the trash with B. He put the back of his hand to his cheek and wriggled his fingers and said, "didi." Yes, indeed. Trash is dirty.

Kim was talking about going to her grandparents' place for dinner and she realized that gong gong is in the "hospital". Instead of her usual "hosapital".

Tooth Fairy

K has been very into Peppa Pig. She watched The Tooth Fairy video tonight.

She asked me if a tooth fairy would come by when her teeth drops and she puts it under the pillow. I said yes. Then she asked how the tooth fairy would know when her tooth drops out. I told her P would tell it to her. Heh.

So here is what P said.

There are many many tooth fairies. But there is just one queen tooth fairy who would assign the tooth fairies to the children. Every child has one tooth fairy whose sole (and very boring) job is to collect teeth from that child.

This tooth fairy is only two-teeth high. When she knows that the child has dropped a tooth, she would come stealthily and crawl under the pillow to take the tooth out in exchange for a coin.

The Weather

It is October. And it has been raining. So much so that I went to the zoo one day, only to turn back as it started to rain upon my arrival at the car park.

Today we saw some evidence of the wet weather. Mushrooms! P and I used to look for them during the rainy season and talk about how there ought to be Smurfs living in them.

B shares his apple

B was eating a slice of apple. When I expressed interest, he fed me some. One bite for him and one for me.

When he ate the last piece, I pouted. He looked at me and as if understanding, spat out the pieces in his mouth to give them to me!

My reaction? Both Awwww and eeewww. Haha. My sweet little boy.

B is 14 months

He has been very thrilled these days as we are able to understand some of what he wants to say.

He can sign:
Dog (at 13 mths)
Cat
Bird
Fish
Please
Milk
Sleep
More
Shoes
Ball
Aeroplane
Wind
Flower
Eat
Apple
Yes
No
Bye
Flying kiss

He attempts to say some words:
Mama (grandma)
Papa
Bor (ball)
More
Wowa (flower)
Fff (shoes, finish and fish)
Up

With his newly acquired language skills, he is able to make simple requests for what he wants.




He knows where his head, ears and nose are. He can also blink his eyes when asked.

He loves Chyna and laughs when he puts his face in her fur. Sometimes we catch him trying to eat her fur.



We finally managed to take this pic of ben lying on chyna. K had a similar photo but she was much smaller and lighter. B is much heavier here. Poor Chyna.

He enjoys music and after watching K perform a dance, he has picked up some steps. Now, everytime he hears a rhythm, he would be bobbing up and down and moving his arms. His latest favourite is Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.

In want of fabric

K has outgrown the pjs I sewed for her some time back. The first one has been passed on to B.

She still wears the second one with a longer pair of pants that I made with the same fabric.

Decided that when we go to Langkawi in Nov, both B and K will have decent looking pjs meant for them. Especially since grandma and grand aunt will be there.

I was online shopping for fabric and I saw some really cute flannel that would make nice unisex pjs but the shipping alone would cost more than the fabric! USD70 for 4 yards of fabric? :( Depressing.

So despite still nursing a week old flu, I took B shopping for fabric. At Spotlight! We really very sorely lack places to buy nice kids print flannel.



The two of the right are flannel for K's pjs and nope, definitely not unisex. I'm just hoping somehow the blue backgrounds would make it more boy skewed than it now looks for the time when B wears them. Then I also got the boy cotton fabric for B to sew some mattress covers.

The sales lady looked at me rather apologetically and said, "Erm. These no more 50% discount ok?"

There was a 50% discount!? Drats. I need to pay closer attention to the mailers from Spotlight.

No, actually what I need is to teleport myself to large fabric stores. I could stay there all day I think.

A Typical Sunday

Our Sundays are pretty much packed these days. Well, at least for the first half of it anyway.

We would all crawl out of bed by 7am and then start the day by getting dressed, wolfing down our breakfast so we could be out of the house by 8.30am to get to K's dance class by 9am.

Yesterday, we put K in a leotard and skirt for the first time after 10 weeks. She was very happy with the skirt especially. She was rather cross with me when she found out that she wasn't going to wear it to church.

B was also rather pleased as he got to walk to the carpark.

In the car, they both chatted to one another / themselves in a secret language where no one else (especially adults) could comprehend.

Some weren't very happy to be observed.

We finally arrived at Bishan CC. While we waited for the teacher to arrive, we sat on our favourite red stool.

Those who didn't make the cut, had to improvise.

Other little ones arrive. And then it's time to form the chugga chug train.

After dance, it's a fanatic rush to get to church and not miss too much of worship. We usually arrive about 10.40am.

P would go with B to the main service and K and me to Sunday school. Yes, our little girl still needs to be accompanied. Sometimes P and I swop.

Yesterday was a little bit of a milestone for K cos she actually helped the teacher out. Not by choice naturally but because she was seated in front and the teacher and us were friends.

Then she listened attentively to several stories

before proceeding to the craft activity of making a happy and a sad face which she used to respond to the teacher's questions of which scenarios demonstrated love.

So yes, that sums up our Sundays. Of course it would include a hurried decision on lunch venue. Then stuffing our faces and rushing home to get the kids into bed for their afternoon nap before the madness continues when they awake. But that's the fun of being parents isn't it? Gone are the days of slow unhurried meals and coffee or ice cream after.

Racial Harmony Day 2011

Racial Harmony Day is a day for schools to celebrate Singapore's success as a nation and society built on a rich diversity of culture and heritage. In schools all across the nation on this day, students are encouraged to be dressed in their traditional costumes. Traditional delicacies are also featured in the celebrations.

In K's school this year, the above is watered down to learning simple salutations in Malay, Tamil, Chinese and English. Each level had to put up a dance by a given racial group. K2s did a Malay dance, K1s a Chinese dance, Playgroup an Indian dance. Nursery was to perform an "English" dance as the teachers put it. Whatever is an English dance? An immediate thought would be the Maypole dance but her teachers decided on hiphop. Guess this MTV generation would be more familiar with that.

Here are the performers all ready for the performance. The guys had their hair done by the teachers.



Nursery class presents hiphop to the school to the song Baby by Justin Bieber, which incidentally is the first pop song that K knows.