Daddy celebrated his 59th birthday last night with my in laws and Kelvin’s in laws. Sophie was in a super good mood last nite (thank God!) much to the delight of my parents. She was singing for everyone and entertaining everyone with her funny actions.

I had a hard time trying to find a cake that my dad and his friend would like coz my Dad doesn’t like to eat cake in general. You know how people their age are right? Not too sweet, not too creamy, no chocolate etc. Anyways, I got a Green Tea Red Bean cake from Breadtalk and they loved it! Not too sweet (in fact, not sweet at all!), and got red bean some more! Somehow elderly people like red beans. Personally, I found the cake too dry and tasteless but they liked it so I was really glad.

Happy Birthday Daddy and we wish you many more good years ahead and we love you for all that you are. Thank you that you are a man of few words but a lot of action. We have learnt so much from you. May the Lord bless you!

Ooooo I can’t wait. We’re going to Melbourne and Brissy very soon! We’ll be in Melbourne for friends’ wedding and in Brissy for the birth of my niece.

I’m so excited and I’ve been looking thru books and surfing sites to check out the places to visit. This time we’re hoping to do a lot more stuff since Sophie is able to join in the fun! The last trip to Brissy for my bro’s wedding, she was only 7 months old, hardly even crawling!

Right now I’m surfing DesignSpongeOnline for their Melbourne roundup of latest designers. So exciting! Can’t wait to check out the shops! This is my first time to Melbourne and I’ve heard so much abt the great shopping. Just browsing is going to be so shiok….

Sophie and I had a great time this morning at our retro neighbourhood.

She enjoys lying on the ground, prob replicating what we do the whole day at home…. lying around doing nothing whole day. She’ll lie down to draw with her chalk, lie down to sayang (pet) the cat.

It was amazing watching her interact with a stray cat. Everyone who knows me well enough know that I cringe when animals come close. Btw, while Sophie was petting and hugging and at one point kissing! (Ya! I almost screamed at her!) the cat, I was about 1 m away taking photos. She loved the cat and the cat loved her. It was very sweet to watch her.

(Funny how her little bag has a cat on it too, I just realised)

We’re on the jungle theme this week.

I inherited a whole stack of animals, birds, plants and even dinasours cut outs from a super on the ball mommy recently. I like them coz they’ve got the name of the animals attached to them plus they are all photographs. And best? They’ve already been cut out saving me a whole lot of trouble.

So here’s my version of a "flashcards": - Using the binoculars that we made some time back with two kitchen towel cores, we went around "looking" for animals in the jungle!

Looks ingenious? Well, Sophie was like, why do I need to look thru the binoculars? I can see them! Duh! Ok fine…. ditch the binoculars.

Here’s Sophie trying to take a nap with her Pooh bear in the baby cot she inherited frm che che Shanae.

She had a short nap and she wanted out!

Left: Taken this morning at the Library cafe near Yeye’s house. We spent the night at their new home yesterday.

Right: Sophie in her new Old Navy top.

Dearest Sophie,

Wow! You’ll be two years old next month! Although when asked how old you are, you still say "18 months" in your cute little baby voice. Haha! I would think 2 is easier to say than 18. And much cooler than saying I’m one. 2 is a great number! Can’t wait to celebrate your birthday. Oh wait, we already did! With your 6 other aug/sept baby friends. More about that later when I can get my lazy butt to upload the pics.

It has been a significant month for you so far.

You are now somewhat potty trained. In the past month, we managed to get you to sit on the potty (that took a lot of cajoling and bribing!), pee in the potty on our demand, say you wanna pee in the potty, and finally poo in the potty. We still have accidents here and there tho.

Next step is to get you to be comfy sitting on the bowl itself so that we can be diaper free out of the house too! And we’ll leave toilet training thru the night for later. Mommy has had enough of soiled sheets for a while.

Ooooooooooo and the other thing, you somehow managed to bite and tear your pacifier apart so we’re now left with ZERO pacifier! We were actually thinking of weaning you off it when you turn two. Looks like it’s happened on its own a little earlier! It’s been a tough time this week coz you’ve been finding it hard to adjust to sleeping without your beloved juju. But I think we’re getting there. Just a 5 min frantic crying before sleeping but you’re still ok sleeping thru the night.

You’ve started eating well again. Oh then again, maybe I’ve lowered my expectations of how much a toddler should eat. It’s nice to see you enjoying all sorts of food, your current favorite being sushi and all sorts of sweet pastries. You love your milkshakes, yogurt, cheese, fruits, veggies, meats etc. You’ll eat a bit of everything thru the day which is fine by me. Your last weigh at the PD shows that you are a rice bag full - 10kg and 82cm tall.

Oooo one more thing. You tend to be very particular about what shoes you wear. I’m not sure why but you are pretty easy with everything else e.g clothes etc but when it comes to shoes, you have to pick your own. We’re almost done with your Clarks, your toes are slowly peeking out of the open toe sandals (thank God they are open toes). We are eyeing a pair of cool black Nike and hopefully you’ll like it but you have to choose it or else it’ll be left there on the shelf like the white pair of sandals we got you from HK.

You are really fun to be with and I’m so thankful for that!

Love
Mommy

I got my iPhone! It is crazy! I love it!

I just uploaded this pic which I took with it and am using the phone to blog right now!

P/s Ok I still can’t edit the post completely on my iphone so I’m doing the actual edit using my com but will figure out a way. Oooo but it’s cool. Also means that I’m now with Singtel. M1 will prob launch it end of the year but it’s not going to make much of a diff I guess. They didn’t react when I said I wanted to switch so oh wells!

P/s 2 What’s up with the photo above? I found Real Simple Family (a magazine. I’m a big fan of Real Simple) at Borders yesterday and this was a featured picture in one of the articles. Oooo LOVELY picture of a kid’s desk! I love it! Took the picture with my phone and tried uploading it to Flickr to blog and it worked!

And I thought we were done with the self feeding mess……….

Today Sophie discovered that yogurt is good for the face! Told you she’s a girl’s girl!

Oooo we found this COOL Maisy coin box at Taka yesterday. Sophie loves it!

Maisy is one of her fav book characters. She’s got a few books and a bag but it’s hard to find other stuff featuring Maisy. So we were really glad to find this.

She can play with the coin box and I can enjoy the candies that came in the box, hiak!

What do you do when you have sweet potatoes and a plastic knife with your tabao food?

Steam sweet potatoes and let your toddler cut them up and eat them for breakfast!

Sophie had a great time and finished up the entire sweet potato! I tried this again with her and Evan in the afternoon and she finished 1/2 a steamed apple and even some carrots too! One more way to get food into these fussy lil toddlers!

Note: Only works with toddlers that can tolerate getting their hands dirty and those who have fascination to cut things up. Evan wasn’t very keen to get her hands sticky so it didn’t quite work with her. Oh and you’ll need to teach them how to use the knife properly. It doesn’t come that naturally but they learn super fast.

Oooooooo I love this piece so much!!!!!!!

We did this yesterday while painting. I bought some nice A5 sized drawing paper on standby, for one of those inspired moments and it came in so timely! Sophie loveeeeeees painting her hands so I had no problems getting her to wait and listen to my instructions. Coz one wrong print and we would have wasted the paper. It turned out great! Plus I had spare photo frames from ikea. Perfect!

It now sits on my dressing table. Reminds me to be thankful for the little hands given to me every morning.