Hello Kitty frenzy

As we know, Hello Kitty fever hit Singapore recently. I didn't join the craze, nor did I consume MacDonald's during this period. The report stated that some people got into tussles and fights and unhappiness in an attempt to secure themselves the Hello Kitty.

Well, I also have fights, some unhappiness and tussles with my very own limited edition Hello Kitty, singing version! I wouldn't trade this for anything else in the world because she's truly a limited edition gem.

The best Hello Kitty one can ever have! 

Evening at the beach

So this evening, the husband suggested going to East Coast Park and I was happy to oblige. It was rather late by the time we went so we didn't prepare too much (sand/water play). We had time for a short ride, some quiet time on the beach and a lovely family picture.

This was the first time we rented this monster-on-wheels and it was truly a disaster. The kids didn't want to sit upfront, both wanted to steer which was impossible because this machine is rather heavy and moves quicker when two people are peddling and the steering wheels are located right where the peddlers need to be... so anyway if you didn't get all that it's fine because the point is, we abandoned riding too far and parked to lay out our picnic mat on the beach some metres down the road. This pic was taken on the way back to return the monster vehicle and as you can tell, it was K (steering on the dummy steering wheel) and the husband controlling it. Jake and I had aborted riding in it because there was no space and it was getting dangerous for him to sit in it! (I didn't see anyone else have such problems man, geez.) 

This was us, trailing behind the husband and K. Someone was obviously in a good mood and I whipped out my camera asking him to "smile" and smile he did! This picture was taken on the first try! Amazing. #pincheshistoocutecheeks #icansmotherhimwithkissesallday

Frantic calls

So it seems like little miss K called 8 people in a span of 4 minutes yesterday morning. I only found out when I returned a call.... and all I could think of was thank goodness it was already 8.20am!

Dear Jake, happy 16 months!

Dear Jake,

Happy 16 months!

Where do I begin? Truly, in a blink of an eye, you have turned from a baby into a toddler – A TODDLER!

Moving about like a very active boy

From walking 6 months ago (SIX MONTHS ago!), you have begun to run lately, and it is the cutest sight to watch you run with your orbs arm swing (I don't know why but your sister used to do that too. Perhaps it helps you balance yourselves?). Though you are generally great in walking already, you do seem to tumble over occasionally. This bit of clumsiness is so endearing. You don't get too bothered about falling over/bumping yourself really. When it hurts, you cry though cease once we show you some concern/distract you with something (so truly, it can't be that painful). Or if it's not even painful (by your own, rather high standards), you just continue with whatever you're doing. I like that you're quite a manly man, rather fuss-free!

Talking like a baby 

You speak quite a lot now, some words more accurately than others. Unless the words are very clear, most people don't get what you're saying unless it's us. My favourite words are Mah-mee (Mommy) and I-rur-ooo (I love you). Important words that will get you everything you want in life… for this time being anyway. Your vocabulary is not bad, though you can improve on your pronunciation. Just for the record… Ball, nor-neeng (morning), Jak (Jake), nartt (night), brad (bread), murk (milk), oh oh (oh oh), NO (no), yeahs (yes), Papa (Papa, usually said in the sweetest voice!), che che (cheche), Tare (Tess, our helper), ee-eeee (yiyi), yeah yeahhhh (yeye), ngai ngah (nainai), book, car, war-tee (water – and you say this in a very cute sing-song repetitive manner) poon (spoon), tarch (touch), nare-not (cannot), WAAHH (wah, at things that you fancy such as when you see the ball pit in the indoor playground/ when you lift the interactive flap books, soo cute)… You just really mimic everything that we say to your best capability and I am very pleased at this development! You're not as chatty as your sister, but I don't expect you to be really, given how your personality is not as loud as hers. Your comprehension level is good and you know how to point to what you want/whinge and you also know how to pull/push us towards your target. 

Teething

You now have 4 teeth on top, and 3.5 on the bottom (that 0.5 is still peeking out a bit through the gums, not fully sprouted yet!) and I also spy 2 halves of molars on the bottom right of your gums. You gnaw at everything and anything, just like your sister, much to the annoyance and exasperation of us. 

nomnomnom

Eating

You are truly my son, and like your sister, have no problems with food at all! Nothing to say in this arena – top points! You are beginning to wanna exercise your independence and create a mess feed yourself and we try to oblige.

nomnomnom (told you he eats well. Eats everything well.)

Behaviour

You are strong and throw a lot of things. We call you "Jake, the destroyer". I don't think you do intentionally, more like you do so because you can. While we do reprimand and spank you, you do not flinch and that's quite astounding. You merely cry or shrink back when you know you're going to punished. You have thrown several things out from the balcony, must to our dismay, and we really need to keep a tighter watch over you! You observe and pretend to cry to get our attention, and you fake-laugh when you see us playing around. Cliché as it is, you really are a BOY and you well, are Jake the destroyer.

Loving you 

You are undeniably, a very adorable boy and continue to charm all around you. Your easy-going and chillax demeanour (when unprovoked/un-angry) is so amusing to watch – a marked difference from your sister who is a typically girly girl who requires maintenance. It is so easy to love you and I wish you will stay still so that I can hug and love you more. Your favourite people are definitely your Papa, cheche, nainai, Aunty Tess and me. It is very easy to love you, my boy. 

You are the best thing I can ever gift your sister, and vice versa and I really hope that you both keep growing closer, loving each other and be there for each other for life. 

Best friends

I am so thankful that I have you in my life and you and your sister really complete the lives of your father and I. Occasionally, you have your clingy moments where you want me to carry you and I really am happy! I'm not shy to say that I'm probably the more needy one in this relationship. I really hope that you will sleep through the night though, you're a big boy already, sleep properly please?

He who doesn't sleep well. Please do baby, please do! And you love your pacifier. Should I be concerned? Maybe... maybe not.

Happy 16 months my dear son. I love you to the moon and back.

Jake, 16 months old.

Love always and forever, Mommy

Midweek ramble

Because of the haze, our family of four has been squashed into one room for the past week. (Actually, come to think of it, we can still split sleeping into two rooms ... but this is more economical anyway.) So this means that I go to sleep rather early with Kate. My desire to stay up and watch TV and do nothingmuchatall has not materialised because I become so lazy and well, fall asleep with her. I think the husband was startled that I went to sleep with K before 9pm on Monday night! (I was too, really.)

With the haze, I have also stopped running. And my body is slowly, but surely, degenerating.

It's the last week of Kate's school holidays (GASP. WHERE is time?!) and thankfully, her schedule is pretty packed this week. The MIL stayed over for two nights; the cousins and aunts brought both monkeys out to the library yesterday, and tomorrow they will be going out with their Godpa, and Friday is family dine-out night. We also have a wedding to attend this Sat, plus a birthday party for Sun - her holidays are coming to an exciting finale!

The husband and I have discussed and are making an effort to have dinners together regularly on the weekdays. At least one night every weekday. I like such homely arrangements.

The kids are growing up so quickly. I look at kawaii Jake and marvel at how he's such an able-bodied active stubborn little monkey. Kate has also grown to such a mini adult, exercising her independence and announcing proudly "I did ______ all by myself, you know?" 

Truly, I got a mini fright yesterday when I looked at the calendar and realise that its the end of June this week and this means that we are halfway through the year. O.M.G.

So anyway, this midweek ramble is just that - a ramble. And as always, I love to end off sweetly with (what else?) a pic I took of the kids this morning.

K had woken up grumpily and she dragged herself out of the room and found J snoozing in the other room; she immediately laid down beside him and in typical J fashion, he was up and about in seconds - and this was that moment. Somehow, them cuddled up together in their snuffly pyjamas reminded me of hamsters. Hah! 

My favourite men

Precious moments

New hair, new man

Look who got some bangs - changed his look entirely and this is really too funny not to share, a friend commented that he looks like Rain and did this comparison montage #teeheehee #koreanboys

Saturday

No thanks to the haze, we were trapped home. Dug out this tent (yay "new" toy!) and this kept them partially entertained for a bit.

Brought K out with us on the grocery run

Naptime in her new hood

He was doing a great job of dirtying himself and everywhere, so the husband stripped him to minimise the mess on himself

The haze condition improved so we went ahead with our planned playdate. Here's K with her good friend, Janelle.

And a decent group pic of all 5 kids!

Same, but different

Been ages since I did this, and it again amazes me how same but different my two children are. Look at them! #burstingwithlove

Previous same, but different entry here.

Blur

Everything looks a blur.

For posterity's sake, I'm putting on record (along with my fellow country mates) that the highest PSI record dated 20 June 2013 is 371 (as at 5pm). I remember the haze some months ago (don't recall when exactly) and the husband and I were amazed at how bad the air quality is. Actually scrap that. Amazed is the wrong choice of word. More like, dismay. We had to switch on the aircon and kept the kids indoors but it was nowhere as bad as this round of haze attack. 

So since yesterday, we shut the windows and turned on the air-conditioning. The kids seem fine for now - K is coughing slightly (though that may be due to the ice-cream (sneaky) treat she received from yeye yesterday). They are both hot and bothered and their rashes have flared up slightly because the air is so dry. As for me, my throat is scratchy and dry, and I want to scratch my eyeballs out. Hm, the kids probably feel the dry throat too but are unable to tell me. The husband complained of a sore throat this morning and he had to rush back to work last night (when the PSI read 290 - he thought it was a typo!) to settle emergencies that cropped up no thanks to this haze. 

On a lighter note, I kinda feel like I'm walking about with really dirty glasses. You know, cos everything is a blur. 

(No) view from my balcony

Kate the fire-fighter

Last night, out of the blue, Kate started leopard crawling. I was startled, then amused and asked her what she was doing. She was mimicking hi5, who must have done an episode on fire-fighters. Too cute!

"Drop, roll, crawl!"

She was hosing me down cos I was on fire! (That's the rubbery bit of a manual pump hah!)

Staycation: The Seahs hit RWS

We had planned a getaway with the kids because it's the school holidays. But because it is the school holidays, it was near impossible to book anything (largely because we only started on this one week ago; thus the unavailability). So we made the best of what we had and made it across our own mini link-bridge and headed to Sentosa!

Too much (& probably too boring) to type much, so here's a pictorial chronology of our staycation last weekend, 14 - 15 June 2013.

14 June: We hit the much talked-about Aquarium at RWS. 

Myriad of beautiful colours. I really enjoyed the aquarium too!

Lunch: it was so crowded but we were patient and scored ourselves a table and queued for food.  The yummiest thing I ate was the Assam Laksa! & yes, Jake was obviously enjoying whatever he was eating *licks bowl

Check-in Hotel Michael. It was a cosy room for 4 of us and the kids always get a kick invading the clean (for not very long) bed. Just for fun, I decided to dress them up in match outfits - these cotton elephant outfits were souvenirs from Krabi, the first time the husband and I went away on a couple trip sans kids. Don't they look cute!

While favourite-nainai didn't stay over with us, she joined us to check out the lovely aquarium. I cannot say enough how lucky the kids are to have nainai in their lives. 

After freshening up, we headed back to the aquarium again! This shot is hilarious. Jake was being his usual sweaty self and that day must have been the start of the bad haze and the husband just let him go topless #toocute #checkoutthatstrut

Our one and only family shot inside the aquarium. Behind us is the ginormous open sea segment. I really loved it! Imagine a quiet, zen-like environment (except when Jake was squealing - oops sorry) where instead of watching a movie, you're watching all these graceful live creatures swimming about in the waters #awesome 

We came out of the aquarium at 6pm. And allowed the kids to conquer the world and run amok, well, just space to their hearts contents.

Very rare occasion where I allowed K to take some chocolate before dinner 

K was very cute - when taking this pic, she said "Mommy, I hold the hand you know?"

After dinner activity - Kate went ballistic with joy at running through the water! "Mommy, I can wet my dress?" I think she really could not believe that I would let her do something so spontaneous. Really makes me think that I ought to chillax more and be less of a boring Mommy #idontwannagrowupeitherbabygirl

This is just a funny pic of my big-bellied boy #1yearoldwithbeerbelly

15 June: Morning milk #siblinglove

We headed out for breakfast #ghetto #kidsinpyjamas #sentosawasourhome #theentireisland

Visiting the merlion - I love watching them both walking side-by-side

All suited up and ready to go!

Pool-time

And because they loved this so much, we went back to let them play and play and play

Nothing beats spending time with the family and I am happy that we did this with the kids. It's also kickass that we have a holiday to look forward to... whee!!!

Time with my man

The husband is a busy man. He's busy with work, helping out at home when he can, his studies, and now that he's on school break, he's still busy with work. Truth is, we really have little time to spend together, much less even talk to each other on a daily basis.

Our days can pass like this.
7am: he's up and ready to head out the door (or grouching "I'm late" while rushing to get out) and that's about the time the rest of the household slowly/hurriedly gets a move on (Jake is the only one who's rushed because he's truly UP and ABOUT the moment he's awake. Kate is the snoozer who actually lies in bed and stretches. I'm in-between. & just for the record, the husband is the born snoozer but he cannot because circumstantially his work starts earliest.)
7.30am - 7.45am: Jake, Kate and I hang around the dining table having breakfast.
8am: I'm preparing to go to work.
8.30am: I head off to work.
7pm: I reach home from work.
8-9pm: The husband comes home from work.
8.30pm: Jake goes to sleep.
10pm: Kate goes to sleep... along with either the husband or I.
That's when either of us goes to sleep along with K because we're tired like that.

So based on the above, you can kinda make out why we seldom have time with each other. I mean, there're just things to do. 

And I have missed his company.

The last weekend being Fathers' Day weekend, the siblings made a date to go hang out together and I was really looking forward to being with him. And the siblings. And just do adult stuff.

Saturday: the night we headed out to not one, nor two, nor three, but FOUR places in one night! #maximisingtimeout
Thanks to the sister for organising this night out where we all got to hang out together; and just for the record, we went to Bitters & Love, then Naked Finn, Ann Siang Hill (a failed stopover) followed by PS Cafe. 

Sun: movie date - the new Superman is pretty cute

Sun evening: running together

I felt so happy being able to do adult stuff! Together with the husband! And from one night out, it amazingly became spurts of activity through till Sunday. Yay! Am thankful that we have help so that we can even think about having adult time. We are blessed.

Sheer joy

You know that feeling of pure joy. When you have confirmed your air tickets. And you are going to go on a holiday?

OMG! I'M SO THRILLED!

*jumps around for joy

My running experience with Jake and his new ride

So, a month or so ago, I started jogging in the morning with my lil buddy. It's truly made a difference to how I feel because as we all know, exercise releases the best kickass hormones and besides these feel-good endorphines, I love that I also get to bond with Jake.Along the way, I'll point out birds or cats or trains... and I know he really enjoys being out of the house.

Running with a stroller is a first for me, and it does make the run more challenging because I'm pushing an additional 10+kg; I also need to be mindful of my route - the less roads/wobbly roads, the better it is. This brings me to how important a good, sturdy stroller is.

So very aptly, here's introducing Jake's new plush ride - the newly launched Capella 2013 stroller! I had shared how the boy was rather taken with this new ride when we first received it, and he's gotten very comfortable with it over the past two weeks.  

Here's Jake and I, on the day we took a run with the stroller for the first time

We took a relatively easy route, and here's how we fared.

We crossed a few roads, covered some straight roads with no interruptions and gave the stroller (and my body) a pretty decent workout

What rocked about the stroller for a running Mommy:

Mesh handles
Running makes you perspire and having the option to hold onto mesh when you run is a big plus. I also love how this can be easily removed for regular washing.

Smooth ride
The run may get slightly bumpy with uneven roads - the pic below will be a common sight on our uneven cemented paths, but with this sturdy stroller, the ride is generally smooth.

Wonky roads don't daunt us because with careful maneuvering, we breeze right through them smoothly

Sturdy feel
I always worry that I'll trip and Jake will fall out on a flimsy stroller, but because the Capella stroller falls within the mid-weight category, it is easily manageable for regular use yet a safe ride for the baby. When I run with both hands firmly on the stroller, I feel that it's firm and sturdy and not unsafe and flimsy at all.


And these are the top reasons why I think the ride is amazing!

There are a few things that I need some getting used to; such as how much wider the pram is and how I need to exert more strength to lift the front two wheels when we encounter a step because it is heavier than my current stroller; but these are minor adjustments which I know will become negligible once I'm more familiar with it. Every new vehicle requires some breaking in.

Oh yes, I must also mention these extra reasons why this stroller rocks:

1. Lovely shade of colour blue - not only does it make us more visible when we run when it's not totally bright (before 7am), it's also such a pretty blue! The rest of the colours are pretty awesome too! You can check out the full range of colours here.

What you see is what you get - a striking gorgeous coloured pram!

2. Spacious seat - Jake used to be so squished up in our old stroller, and this is totally an upgrade from economy to business!

3. Adjustable handle bar - this is so handy (pun intended) because while I prefer a higher hold on a regular day, running with a medium-height hold works better for me due to the pounding on the cement. This nifty adjustable handle bar feature also works very well for my firstborn, the little big sister, because I can adjust it to its lowest and this makes it easier for her to push too!

Proud little big sister pushing the pram with easy because the handles are at a comfortable height, "just for me", she says

There are also other features that I have not elaborated on such as a spacious boot (below the pram), a handy pocket, a fully-covered shield that can cocoon your baby safely, a reversible handle so you can look at your baby if you prefer and an easy one-hand system where you only need one hand to close/open this stroller.

If you're a running Mommy who's looking for a good run partner with your lil buddy, I'll recommend you check out the new Capella S230T, for all the reasons I've cited! (Or even if you're not a running Mommy, you can also check the stroller out of course, heh)

Capella is available at Isetan, Metro, John Little, Robinsons, BHG, OG, Kiddy Palace, Cheri Kids, NTUC Xtra AMK and Toys R' Us.
There's even an introductory price if you make your purchase now!

Have fun shopping for your new stroller!



Disclaimer: TaiMe Pte Ltd  has kindly sponsored a Capella S230T for me to trial. No monetary compensation was given. All opinions are on my own.

Happy Fathers' Day!

Rainbow with fluffy clouds

Papa I heart U, Kate Seah

I love doing craft with Kate, because what started out as little random projects has become bonding sessions where I get to explore my girls' imagination and watch how she enjoys dabbling with art. She's quite hands-on and enjoys doing as much as she can herself. With these cards, I provide her with the idea and guide her, but she's really the one who pieces it altogether. Insisting on applying the glue (everywhere), tearing the cotton and this year, after she's started learning ABCs in school, she's started writing the content herself too.

Most of it is her copying what I write on a separate scrap paper (right now she knows the letters A, H, E, T, K, O), and she still has to learn about spacing between letters/words, but she's improved so much in how defty her fingers are with things, learning how to use a scissors and she's also well-versed with doing craft that I really think the time spent with her is so rewarding.

And of course, no better way than having a final piece of artwork that is made with love, all by herself.

Happy Fathers' Day to the best Father in our family!