Day 7

It is our family tradition to have dinner as a family on Christmas eve. Things have not changed even after we got married. Tonight all three of us - Mum, Rach and I prepared dinner together. The only one missing was my bro and his family who lives in Brissy. I so look forward to the day that all of us can celebrate Christmas together again!

It’s starting to feel a bit more Christmasy around our home. I finally got down to planning a countdown for Sophie to help her understand the meaning of Christmas! Instead of a 24 days Advent calendar, I have the improvised quick fix one - 8 days! Hahaha! Better than nothing!

Day 1
We started Day 1 yesterday by fixing up our Christmas tree! Ok not we, just James and Sophie, I was busy taking pictures! Finally! Just 1 more week to Christmas! With all the boxes lying around, we had to dig out a space to put up the tree. One of our family traditions (er ok, we only have 1 so far… hiak!) is to buy a new Christmas ornament every year. We got this in Brisbane for this year.

Day 2
Today is Day 2. We got down to making Christmas cards, somewhat. All my grand plans of making different types of cards with Sophie turned into one big fingerpainting exercise. Oh wells!

 Prints for Christmas

The other thing we did was to set up a Nativity scene……….. er……… with our multi purpose Happyland Farm set! Wah hahahaha…. the Farmer is now Joseph and his wife is Mary. Pretty convenient huh? I handmade (Hahaha!) a star using origami paper and it really looks like a nativity scene. My original plan was to make the scene from scratch. Ya right. Maybe next year if I start now. But I love it. It sits next to the tree and it served as an excellent teaching tool for Sophie to learn about Christmas. She tried to put baby Jesus to bed.

Nativity scene next to Christmas tree

And finally, we try to read different versions of a Christmas story to Sophie every night - traditional, modern interpretations, the bible itself etc. Oh yes, and we’ve been playing Christmas songs all day. I bought a Veggie Tales Christmas soundtrack off iTunes yesterday - it’s ok, quite funny! She’s now able to sing Jingle Bells and Away in the Manger, sometimes she mixes up the lyrics from the different stanzas but it’s super nice to hear her sing them!

Join us for the countdown….

It’s been a while since I cooked for the family. On Monday I decided that I will attempt to cook again so we had chicken curry (thanks to Prima Taste!) and oyster sauce spinach with mushrooms. YUMS! Sophie had some curry too and she said "It’s not so spicy.".

Blowing out the candles. For more photos, look here.

We had a little lunch celebration at Sol Playground Cafe after church for Sophie and her church friends. Ally, Arya, Evan, Skyler, Summer, Kyla and even little Eli were all there! Even Minnie Mouse! I had an ideal in mind - that Sophie can invite one more friend with each increasing year for her birthday e.g. 2 friends when she turns 2. BUT as it turns out…….. nay, forget it, it’s so fun to have friends!

Having the party at the cafe was a great idea if I don’t say so myself! Hiak! Endless supply of great food (as opposed to catered buffet food), someone helping to pour the drinks, play area which I don’t have to clean up after!, super child friendly - no one bats an eye at kids running amok plus there’s a nursing room n changing room in the cafe itself!, free face/hand painting on Sundays (hee I planned it such that the timing coincided haha) etc… SUPER! Only problem was that they didn’t tell us earlier that there was a party after ours and we had to clear out by a certain time. But at least they were nice enough to offer us another table and helped us to move over.

This time round, Sophie was pretty much involved in the party planning. She choose the
- friends to invite
- theme (ok, truth? hee… i didn’t put Barney as a choice… HAHAHA. Sorry lah I’m growing fond of the purple guy BUT balloons, cake n party bags? That’s too much… Mickey still can.)
- goodies for the goody bag (I was really tempted to escape and run out to do a quick buying trip but decided in the end to bring Sophie along. She totally enjoyed the process. I strongly recommend this. She was so excited to pack the goody bags and kept saying "These are for my friends, right?". So cute lah)
- cake (Er…… also guided choice. It’s Mickey OR Mickey. Hahaha)

She was so hyped up about the party the night before, she even said "I LOVE to sleep!" coz we kept telling her that she needs to sleep so that tomorrow can come. Hiak!

I had a great time observing Sophie and how she has grown - the spontaneous hugs to her fav friends, the shyness, the joy when Evan her best friend walked thru the door, the willingness to dress up with a tiera, recognising and mouthing the words of the birthday song when the record was playing because she was too shy to sing it aloud, ability to sit alone with her friends and interact with them, willingness to sit and be painted coz it’s pretty……. yes all that….. My little girl is growing up

The adults also had a great time. James and I felt right at home, walking around playing host to our friends. I was SO thankful that my parents were around helping to keep an eye on Sophie. Sophie’s godparents also did such a great job watching out for her and Vic at one point was feeding Sophie the birthday cake!

We are really blessed to be surrounded by great friends. Thanks guys for being there and also for all the lovely thoughtful presents!

We had a great day today!!!

In the morning Sophie and I went to West Coast to have a bit of sandplay… gotta prepare her for the upcoming trip. I’ll be so sad if she refuses to walk on the beach!! It’ll be a disaster! I’m having dreams of us walking on the beach, building sandcastles… la di da…. can’t wait! She did well! She dug her head into sand and pour sand on her head. Ok pass, she’s not afraid of sand. I battled being the scardy cat Singaporean mum and wanted to stop her but she was having so much fun, I just had to sit back and just laugh with her. Sometimes when I relax, we do have so much more fun.

After that, we had lunch at Macs. Yes, also in preparation for the trip - to eat junk food! Ok like as if we need any training in that! Hahaha… She enjoyed her milk, corn and scraps of meat off my oily McWings and cheeseburger. Argh, so unhealthy! But so yummy! Oh ya, plus fries. Dipped in chilli! Argh, she’s taken to the chilli sauce! This time round she’s not so keen on fries, donno why, good thing I guess. We’re going to be away for a whole month so I really need to start relaxing on her food intake or else I’m really not going to enjoy the trip very much. She doesn’t eat a lot so I really need to be very strategic on what I give her - max nutrients on little food. Ok I guess one month of junk food won’t kill her, in fact, she might really start to enjoy food again! Avocado land here we come!

We spent the afternoon with Evan and then later popped over to Summer and Kyla’s place. The girls had a great time. Today’s lesson was on Good Friends. I really pray that these two girls will stick thru thick and thin together, just like Gin n I. We made them do hand prints - each girl has a hand print of her own n the other’s. So sweet. It’s going to be so memorable in time to come.

Ended the day with dinner downstairs with Daddy. Nice. Friends and family that’s what we need for the long run. I’m deeply appreciative of that tonight.

Docile Sophie listening to Peppa Pig. I actually found her sitting on the chair - still and listening! Wow amazing! Haha not for long tho.

I found a good alternative to the TV! My daughter LOVES (big time!) listening to music and audio stories! If ever I needed her to calm down or just chill on her own, I just have to put on a CD!

In the morning we were out till lunchtime so I didn’t have to cook lunch.

In the afternoon, we listened to Chinese songs (Today is Chinese Day), Rainbow Fish (I love the CD! Sophie’s starting to sing some of the songs!), and Peppa Pig (This is a cartoon but I don’t put on the TV, just the sound) and she spend the entire afternoon just doing that. I was even able to cook dinner and she was fine on her own. I made easy dinner for her - porridge, just plonk everything in and cook. If not for the music and stories, she would be at my feet whining for me to do stuff with her. She really turns very docile once the CD is on. She is quite definitely an audio learner.

James and I will prob sit down to work on a outstanding project together tonite. Hopefully we can keep to no TV!

Oops I broke the rule for SuperNanny. I just had to watch SuperNanny.

Sophie did pretty alright - she asked for TV a few times today but each time I said no, she protested for a bit and went off to do something else.

Since Sophie normally watched TV when I cooked lunch and dinner (2 x a day), I had to find ways and means to keep her occupied during those times. Today she ate most of her lunch while I was preparing it - I kept feeding her the avocado that I was going to use for the salad. She ate 1/2 of it while I was cooking. That worked out pretty well :).

We were out with June, PF and DN for dinner so no problem there.

Top Left: At Borders reading with Daddy

Top Right: Reading at lunch. She loves this book although we got it for Evan. If she turns out to be a bookworm, it’ll seriously be my fault.

Bottom Left: Checking out the canal. Pretty nice lah even though it’s a canal.

Bottom Right: Sunset Way

I love the weekend. That’s when we have James all to ourselves.

Yesterday we had a lazy Saturday doing our favourite things - bookshop (Borders great sale at 45% off w the coupon & card), leisure lunch, Macshop, lazy around at home and then early dinner at quiet places.

James was so sweet. He spent the morning reading to Sophie while I scoured around for good buys. After that, we had lunch and then I put Sophie to nap in the sling (Yes! I dug out our old red sling to give it a try) and it worked. She was asleep in a few minutes. But I couldn’t walk around too much, too heavy, I need to figure out how it works. We need to try this in prep for our aus trip coz we forsee Sophie’s not going to be able to fit into the baby bjorn. While Sophie napped, James happily combed thru the Macshop and I rested.

We got home and Sophie continued napping on me. I slept together with her on top of me for almost another 30 mins before she woke up! Nice!

We had dinner at the revamped Sunset Way. It’s been a while since it has been redone with restaurants like a mini Holland Village. But we’ve never been even though it’s so near to us! We like it coz it’s quiet, it’s close to a playground and near the canal where we saw many people doing their evening jogs and exercise. We liked the vibe - down to earth and casual. A great alternative to overcrowded and too hip Holland V.

Top Left: Rows and rows of fish tanks

Top Right: Mama and Sophie feeding fish

Bottom Left: Sophie going for the durians

Bottom Right: Farm Mart

We started Father’s Day early.

Yesterday we took James to a Fish Farm (Qian Hu)! He’s into fish and shrimps these days so we thought it’ll be nice to just hang out there. Sophie got to feed some fish, pick up some terrapins (yes! with her hands!), and check out lotsa lotsa different types of fish. I think she said fish like a hundred times coz she went to every tank and pointed "FISH!" Haha.

Since James started keeping fish tanks of ornamental plants and shrimps and snails, Sophie’s been asking to see and feed fish everyday. So, she was quite happy.

After that we went to the Farm Mart around the corner. It’s supposed to be like a farmers’ market where they bring all their produce to sell. Erm… it’s a bit like Malaysia, the look and feel. Quite cool. In a retro way, that is. I like. Not so modern and altogether. They have a lot of weird products that you don’t see in the supermarket like super hot chilli (crazy hot), vegetarian inards, etc. We tried a super sweet pineapple. It was soooo good in the hot weather.

Before we left, we sat down to eat durians. Sophie tried some but didn’t take to it. But at least she tried.

After all that, we went for Ryan’s 4th birthday party and their family’s house blessing. Sophie had a blast! She was up playing with everyone until 10plus. All the other babies and tods took their shower and were all half asleep by then but she was still going around with the older ones, full of energy.

Ooo and this i must record - Kieran asked Sophie, "Would you like to go for a walk?" I almost fell over when I heard him say that and when I told his mum, she said that Kieran gave Soph a hug and kiss before that! WHAT?!?! How ah?

Oooo we just went for a ride on the Singapore Flyer. You must know that it’s the world’s largest observation wheel! It was really quite something, if you overlook the surrounding construction sites!

Oooooooo but my heart almost dropped many times! Sophie was buzzing around and bouncing from side to side, jumping (kinda), running (yes, she just started running, kinda). It was like she was running towards all the windows!

She was on super hyper mode. I felt so bad for the couple in the same cabin as us. They must have been looking forward to a romantic ride. Oops. Sophie was like an energizer bunny that screeched! She refused to take pictures so we gave up after a while as you can see in our pictures!

But the scenery was pretty amazing as the sun was setting and the lights were starting to come on. I saw a beautiful mosque and the hotel rooms across looked like little holes.

Verdict? I wouldn’t pay $30 bucks each for this. Good thing we got to do this free.

Top Left: Papa helping himself to the cold noodles

Top Right: Ooooo the beef!

Bottom: Happy Birthday Papa!

Papa is an amazing man. He’s a man of charisma, energy and lots of different hobbies and interests. He’s a sought after speaker both in his industry as well as a bible teacher. He turned 66 yesterday and we celebrated his birthday at Aburiya, Japanese charcoal grill restaurant. IT WAS SO GOOD.

The Waygu beef was to die for! And of course, it’s at our doorstep, almost. The atmosphere was great - very Jap. We were the only locals there actually. If you want good Jap food, go to where the Japs go.

More family time at HK n Sharon’s wedding last nite. I was helping out with the reception so didn’t get to take much pictures. We managed to take some at the end of the dinner.

Left: The three of us - Sophie was still awake at midnight!

Right: My immediate family - sis in law, younger bro, dad, mum, younger sis, me, james and half awake sophie.