1st Fred Perry

If I ever have a boy, he has to have a Fred Perry.

Limelight Thief

Munchkin is turning into that irritating attention-hogger brat who tries to weasel her way into the center. The 5yr old Birthday Girl has always been sweet and giving towards her. Like always, she included Munch in playing together, consoled when Munch sulked about not being able to play with the toy she wanted, making the other kids take turns and letting Munch have the first turn. I was in awe at how sisterly she had become over time. Hope Munch learns a thing or two from her.


Grinning ear to ear like it's her birthday! How do I make her stop?

1st Plant

Munchkin is currently obsessed with flowers and (the act of) planting thanks to Tigger and Friends so Shad's science experiment triggered me to let her try one.

She has been overly excited about it, going "Mama! Mama! Come and see my plant! So tall now!" for the past 2 days when I got home from work.

The BEST part of this is.. I was able to con her into sleeping early so she could see how tall it has grown when she wakes up.


Munch and her 3-day old sprouts.

Black and White (and Grey)

This black shift dress from Gap caught my attention.


But I can feel the spouse rolling his eyes at it. I can feel it in my bones. I don't know why.



Before the baby shift dresses came, there were these from my ebay addiction days:

I didn't know they were capable of pro-creating. Probably doing it in the corners of the wardrobe.

Munchkin's Baby Story

Almost every blogging mom I know will, up to a certain degree, blog about their baby's milestones or kids' accomplishment. And to most, that was why they started blogging in the first place. As much as I try to avoid it, blog like I did in 2001 of all things useless and random, I can't cos the best part is, crazy mothers have the tendency to look back and check on what their children did at which age (ok not crazy but we're sentimental like that, can?).

So there aren't any here on Munchkin when she was a baby cos I was inconsistently toggling between multiply and LJ at that time but today there's a need to mention a bit cos it's a sort of reference to my next entry.

Munch was pretty much late in everything. Everything except for speech. And flipping over. She flipped at 3mths 3weeks cos she was an angry baby majoring in kicking. She was wailing and kicking 22hours a day and that day she exerted a little too much force in her kick that she accidentally flipped herself over (it also helped that she was featherweight). The wailing stopped cos she was in awe of seeing the whole world in a different perspective, not just the ceiling.

As for speech, her 1st two words she really meant (babbling mamamama or papapa don't count cos we didn't think she meant them) was burb (bird) and tet (cat) at 8mths but she had pretty good vocab by the time she turned 1. And my theory in this was, because of her short-tempered nature, she couldn't cope very well with people around her not being able to understand what she wanted.

Anyway, the rest came in late. Crawling at 8mths, walking on her own at 15mths, but there's this one that no one can beat - Teething! Her 1st tooth came out at *......drumroll.......* 22 MTHS!. I can't imagine how dreadful it'll be for her if her milk teeth will only drop when she's 13 or so (as mister said, was what happened to his brother).

So if you hear anyone complaining their babies not teething yet, well now you can tell her/him that you know of one who started teething close to turning two.

PLAYtime @ Esplanade

Munchkin seemed to have enjoyed PLAYtime (thanks, Chloe for the recommendation) at Esplanade yesterday with my friend Feza and her 3yo, Elly. Recommended for 2-4yr olds so if you've run out of ideas on where to bring your kids, consider this. There's another one happening in August: Into the Deep, Deep Forest – Adventures of the Mouse Deer.

Motherhood Unites

Cheesy title but it's a fact.

Sue and I have known each other since our days in art school but we couldn't term ourselves friends then cos in that 3 years, we barely spoke. Later we found each other working in the same building but there weren't anything more than hello-goodbye exchanges. Even our occasional running into each other at Tower Records were nothing more than 3 sentences. We were stiff like that.

Until (was it?) last year when were reunited via FB and blogsphere, we learnt that our 1st-born are both girls, only 3mths apart. We got pregnant again and we both gave birth to another girl, a month apart. All of a sudden, I think we felt like we've been BFFs forever.

Never mind the fact that we both came from the same school, same workplace, currently temporarily living in the north, share the same taste in music, had the same man attending to our southern region (we shared the same obygyn. what were you thinking?), it only took motherhood to break the ice.

I spent a lovely afternoon with her and our girls and our helpers. She has the cutest pair, they make heads turn.

My Six Kitties

My love-hate relationship with a certain $2-shop that starts with "D". You end up buying nothing that you actually need. Like these kitty cat headbands. Which made 3yo Munches not stop pretending she's a cat.

Girl Thing

I succumbed to tutus. a girl cant help it, bb.

Gig + Zoo Weekend

Sometimes I wish The Spouse works regular office hours so that we can do normal family weekends instead of him having to take leave to do so. Since a friend was coming down from Indonesia, he took both last saturday and sunday off work. We made use of sunday for the zoo which I've been wanting to do for loooooong while. Quite a shame we took this long since we don't live that far away.

Munchkin loved feeding the goats. I think we found ourselves another regular spot.

PlayDoh-Coated Nails

We got tired of shaping food and animals out of Play-Doh. This one made The Munchkin all giggly. Mentel kan?

For The Mommies of Boys

Friends who have baby boys sometimes tell me how lucky I am to be able to play dress-up on my girls (although I don't deliberately do that for the sake of playing dress-up cos realistically, it'd be expensive). But I sometimes have a mental picture of what my sons would wear if I were to have boys.

These would be he images that'll inspire me. They'll wear their hair floppy with chuck taylors and tops that are a tad size smaller too snug.



Mommies, you're so lucky to have boys.

Alphabreaks. OMG kids got cool.

I absolutely love what I saw on Playhouse Disney recently. Alphabreaks is a new kids' show that teaches alphabet through music. That nifty band outfit, awesome set design, their outfit color coordination and of course, handsome musicians made me do a bit of homework.


The kids in the video are crushingly adorable.

And the band that played, Dappled Cities is on my exploration list.

Yoghurt for Babies

Pumpkin loves but it seems not many supermarkets carry them. I got mine at NTUC AMK Hub.

Grape-Scented Hair

Munchkin's curls are not easy to manage. They get into nasty tangles and when she was a baby, I had a hard time finding her appropriate hair conditioner (why don't they make enough hair conditioner for babies?!). The only one I managed to get was from California Baby but I had to wait for it to be shipped internationally.

I swear by California Baby products but they're not very economical. Recently I found Loreal conditioner for Kids and since she's over 3-years-old, I thought it's time she graduates from baby products. It's fabulous. Now she has hair smelling like grape yakult has been spilled all over. So addictive.

Emelda's 1st Birthday

My cousin's daughter turned 1 and I liked how my aunt did the sweet deco. She has gotten pretty good doing for weddings and company functions but those are major. I like the fact that she takes the trouble to do kids' birthday parties too.



The hut turned into a shisha den.


The "kitchen" was not too close so not interfered by BBQ smoke.




deco: http://rissagallery.multiply.com/

Eventful January

Crazy start of the year when Pumpkin had to be hospitalised for viral infection for five days, Matriarch, Mister and myself took turns to do night duty at the ward but all of us came back sick after one night. Equipped with only my hp, I managed to connect to mobile blog and facebook for updates. As soon as we got her home, I had to rush through the final preps for Munchkin's birthday which turned out very different from other events we had. It was a lot of catching up on cousins-in-law and long lost pals who've got babies and little kiddos. Thanks for coming, people.

Class Birthday

I couldn't resist getting them the Drum cake from Coffee Bean.

3 days at Aloha Loyang













Special thanks to mybakingtray for the complimentary tarts and puffs.

Other sources:
Venue - http://www.aloharesorts.com.sg/

Drum Cake - http://www.coffeebean.com.sg

Image icing birthday cake - http://myssaliana.multiply.com/

Helium-filled plain and foil balloons - http://www.harvestwell.com.sg/

Mickey Mouse Theme partyware -

1. Heartlink Trading
116 Middle Rd #01-02
ICB Enterprise Hse
tel: 6294939

2. Chia Nephews Toys Pte Ltd
5 & 6 Tan Quee Lan Street
Singapore 188094
tel: 63340509

3. THE GIFT BOX (http://www.harvestwell.com.sg)
10 Sinaran Drive
#01-K01 Novena Square2
Singapore 307506

Treat Packs - Various pasar malam

Munchkin's Art Digitized

I finally managed to scan some of Munchkin's art to manipulate and animate them. Wanted to practise a bit of action scripting but all that I tried applying failed to work so I only kept to the basics of basics. Gah.. I'm not a programming person. Guess will just have to stick to visual art. Have a lookie.

Potential Makcik's Hangout

From my mobile blog:

You know you are becoming a member of the makcik\ah-soh community when you squeal upon seeing a big green neon signage that reads "Giant" on a nearby newly-renovated reopened mall.

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So Mister and I dropped by this evening, being the huge fan of beef that he is, of course his sole intention was to check out the halal meat counter inside Giant itself. And we met another expectation, Banquet, which is not open yet but already listed on the directory. And to top it off, good news for the kids, a Splash Park too, soon.

Weekend hypermarket date anyone?

Pooling About

My cousin's condo has the best pool cos they're under-utilised unlike other condo pools that I've seen which seem congested on weekends. Best thing is, her place is only a 15mins drive away and yesterday was the 2nd time I took Munchkin there to play in the pool with my cousin's daughter, Sophie, who is a year younger than Munches. Only regret is, Munchkin now keeps saying "want to go Sophie's house".

video via facebook

Munchkin's New Toy

The Mister showed her a dollhouse and she had no reaction. He showed her the drumset and she went wild so he got that for her. She could hardly wait till we got home, even told a stranger who was taking the lift with us, "i'm going to drum!".

This was my brother fixing the set for her.


I got it video-ed here.

and here for facebooksters.

Question on Parenting

Often I see new parents asking questions such as "When to wean baby off pacifier?" or "When to toilet-train children?" but I've yet to come across one that's been bugging me - When do we stop talking to our kids in third person? We've been talking in third person with Munchkin so much that sometimes, she still hasn't used 'you' and 'me' correctly. Come to think of it, up till now, I still speak this way with Matriarch but then it sounds pretty normal in Malay.

Jalan Raya

The bigger reason why I don't take that many photos of Pumpkin is because she's always sleeping. Which I'm truly grateful for, syukur alhamdulillah, that she's been sleeping through the night since three weeks old, pretty much the opposite of Munches both in behaviour and ermm.. size (just look at her).



Munchkin, now approaching 3, is still waking up at night, ok?

Guess What?

We found a new Elephant!

The family went shopping at Causeway Point last night and we decided to take a look at Kiddy Palace (I didn't see it here the last time I checked) and there it was, only two pieces, almost hidden by the bigger toys on the rack. We showed Munchkin and she beamed but we wanted her to know that it wasn't her old one (though I bet she could tell) and that we had to purchase this so she should be aware that not everything she lost can be retrieved.


We did this while our man tried out a new shirt.

Before heading home, Mister suggested we get the other piece (did I mention before we like to over-react?) without her knowledge. It was after all, only $4.50. And the best part was, the twin brother elephant saved the evening. At the payment counter, I was flustered not being able to find my discount card (we bought other things as well lah.. not that I die die must get discount for a $4.50 item) when another sales person came and asked if I bought the same elephant earlier. I showed her the receipt and lo and behold! They kept my card cos I had left it there earlier.
Phew.

Desperately Seeking Elephant

HELP!

I bought Munchkin this elephant from Kiddy Palace the last time Pau and I went to Marina Square. She had grown so attached to it ever since, they were practically inseparable. Yesterday afternoon, I took Munchkin out to Causeway Pt and before heading home, we loitered around Sunplaza while waiting for the crazy rain to simmer. At this point, I realised Elephant was missing from her stroller. The 1st time I asked her about it, she threw me a blank expression. When I told her she might have dropped it, she acted like she didn't hear and tried to change the subject. When Mister came home, I made him ask her so as to make sure she knew what was going on and that she wouldn't be screaming her lungs out asking for the Elephant. Again, she seemed nonchalant and tried to divert our attention to something else. After much analysis, we concluded that she might be feeling upset especially so that it was her own fault that Elephant is missing.

It broke our hearts more to see her taking the loss so maturely so we went back Marina Square the same evening in hopes to get her a replacement. As I had presumed, they don't have it anymore. But I'm still keen on getting her a new one therefore if you were to come across this elephant being sold anywhere, PLEASE alert me. I remember the tag was a copycat of TY beanie's. Munchkin took very long to fall asleep last night, tossing and turning, but it made me proud that she didn't utter a single word about the Elephant despite her hot-tempered nature.

The one and only photo she has with Elephant taken last weekend.

Daisy

The Brangelinas are so overrated and everyone knows how cute Suri Cruise is. The one that stole my heart is Meg Ryan's adopted daughter, Daisy.


She looks like a Japanese doll likely to rock out to Shonen Knife.

Feeding Time Recorder

I used to forget Pumpkin's last feeding hour until I found these magnetic numbers among Munchkin's toys. Problem solved!