Blessings from Above

since li'l one's birthday is just over a week away, she has started receiving birthday presents... first one was from dear daddy (kitchen set from toys'r'us) & the 2nd one is from aunty audrey who flew the present all the way from OZ, together with some supplies of rafferty garden! thank you aunty audrey! have a safe & fun trip to africa!

what a busy weekend it was! we started off with JK's early birthday celebration on fri - a small, cozy home party which we feel honoured to be invited to! it was such a heartwarming sight when mummy L and daddy BK took photos with the 7 toddlers that were present - it almost felt like mummy L gave birth to all 7 of them! on sat, we attended Glady's big birthday part held " with a pinch of salt " - what a cute name for a cafe! dh and i passed by this cafe previously as we frequently visit the marine fish shop located in the vicinity for our supplies and we have always wanted to try it. mummy G and daddy E booked the whole place and we enjoyed an afternoon of good (junk) food - definitely a place to visit again! we ended off the weekend with yummy lunch @ one of our family's usual haunts - keppel club's chinese restuarant: peony jade with the in-laws and another small, cozy BBQ party at dinner time held in the bungalow at our club to celebrate Jesse...

i've been asked this a lot recently - what's the gender of #2? when i give my answer, i usually get this response 'good! can close shop already...' funny how we have been 'brain-washed' by our gah men that 2 is the magic number (that was what our parent's generation were told) and the consequence? we have to import 'foreign talent' now... to make up for the 'lack of offsprings' - so much for having foresight! so i say, if you can afford it - have more! i know that we all want to give the best to our young ones - but i believe that we can make the most out of the limited resources that (almost) everyone has. we (dh & i) are far from wealthy but we do have the luxury of me not having to slog it out to contribute to the family finances (as with many of my friends who are SAHM). this allows me to spend time with our li'l ones in their formative years - sure, we can do with a bigger house, a bigger car or more luxury goods, who doesn...

Its 4am and I’m awoken by my usual urge to relief myself – as I get up and walk to the bathroom, my dreams are still twirling vividly in my mind – my dear friend, you write so well! I read a good friend’s blog earlier today and after going through some of the entries, felt like kicking myself – how come I did not pick up her unhappiness in the last few months? We normally catch up over messenger and while I noticed her ‘quietness’ online, I wrote it off to ‘busy with work’ and ‘strict company policies’ (many companies do not allow ‘social tools and websites’ – think chat tools, friendster and facebook) – never did I expect all that heartache she has been going through and I feel really bad about not ‘being there’ for her. My dear friend, you are the reason why I am still bfing my li’l one today, the one who gave me heads-up how tough my bfing journey will be when I just started and the one who gave me the support and strength to carry through up till now! When C was having eating (...

how time flies... our li'l darling will turn 2 in less than 3 weeks' time! so what else can i be up to, other than planning her birthday party? we (actually, yours truly) decided to have a beach themed party this year - starting with a play session for the li'l ones at Frisk'n'Romp, cake cutting (since some of C's fren will be going home after that play session) and followed by a BBQ by the beach! i'm still in the midst of consolidating the guest rsvp list, personalizing the goody bags for C's frens, finalizing the cake design and confirming the food order so if you've been invited, pls rsvp the soonest (and NO GATECRASHING pls! - i will totally make you feel out of place and uninvited! :P) what do you think of these cupcakes?

its the time of the year where we start getting truckload of invitations to birthday parties since we hang out largely with others whose children are born around the same time as C. Ju Xian (cousin of C's cousin) has the honor of being the 1st birthday boy we celebrate with for this year... we had a great time at Gogo Bambini - thanks for inviting us!

according to the chinese, li'l one should be 3 this year... and her lunar birthday is on the twenty-second of the second month, which is today! some of her li'l frens had planned to visit the zoo and we decided to 'gate-crash'! our annual zoo pass will be expiring at the end of this month and dh is not in favor of me renewing since i probably won't be able to go too often in the later part of this year so this may well be our last visit to the zoo for the year - i wanted to let li'l one try out the new water play area within the children's section of the zoo at least once. interestingly, even though she is quite a water baby, she didn't really enjoy the water play area (maybe its because my helper was the one accompanying her instead of me!) anyhow, we can always resume our membership after #2 turns 6 mths (which is when li'l one will turn 3 and will not enjoy FOC admission anymore) after our zoo outing, we headed to town for some retail ther...

can you spot the spout of the 'teapot?

cheeky gal at her fav. playground (or maybe just the most frequently visited one!) macro shot at the same playground

*sniffles*... we have been co-sleeping for almost coming to 2 years now - and it is only a matter of time to move our li'l gal to her own room/space. our bedroom/bed now feels empty w/o her - strange even! but with my growing need for space and that impending arrival of #2, better now than later! afterall, i read that its common for #1 to feel insecure and regress when #2 arrives so i want to give her plenty of lead time. its been almost one week (we started on mon) since she started to 'sleep on her own' - the first 3 nights, i slept in her room with her and for the past 3 nights, i returned to my own room once she fell asleep but went back to sleep with her around 6+ in the morning so that she still 'wakes up with me'. i simply cannot explain the joy that i derive from getting her hugs and kisses when she awakes in the morning - its not as if she doesn't hugs and kiss me during the day but her big, lovely smile, the first thing in the morning, just brightens u...