4th Wedding Anniversary

We totally forgotten about it on the 25th Feb, busy with meetings, company lunches ... However, not forgetting our yearly "ritual", I had a room booked at a hotel in town. This time it was Swissotel Stamford.

We had a room on the 50th floor, a nice view of the Esplanade and the Padang area.



Aaron really liked the big comfy bed. He had so much fun rolling around that he wouldn't stop. What a big change of space compared to his cot. We never let him sleep on our bed, probably that's why :)



With a baby in tow, there wasn't really much time we could play with. So we didn't plan for stuff like shopping. Instead, after his feed, we went straight to Marvelous Cream at Citylink Mall.

Funny, I ordered the Mixed Berries and I really liked it. However, CP like the Choc Chip Brownie. It's always the other way round ...



Nice!


Baby A yawning but doesn't he look like he's grabbing for the ice-cream? :)



Went back to our room, fed baby for another time. He didn't sleep the whole day, except for a short while in the morning. Hope he will sleep during dinner. We hurried down to Prego for a nice dinner.

CP ordered the oven-baked chicken, which was really nice. A surprise as I don't think too much of chicken served at restaurants. This was very much tender and crispy on the outside.



After dinner, baby is still awake, although the sleepy eyes are showing. However, there are still some things I wanted to get for him ... toys. Here are those that we grabbed at Robinsons, at 25% off!



That concluded the day. Next morning, we had a hearty breakfast at the hotel.



Baby even had a tiny bit of papaya.



After that, we packed and it's off to home! A nice holiday!

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Sharks Fin Allergen

I think I can be 105% sure about my allergic reaction towards sharks fins. I just had lunch from Tong Lok Classics at Orchard Parade Hotel and ate the yummy sharks fins soup. Two hours later, I developed rashes (bumps) all over my body! This time, there was no birds nests, no vinegar added to the sharks fin soup and no abalones. I can almost confirm that the culprit is mr shark's fins when someone suggested that it could also be the ingredients used in the soup making... hmm, what is it exactly?!!

And I threw the milk that I expressed away...


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Roomy Burberry

I wanted to buy a small pouch for baby stuff. From the website, it looks small and slim. However, when it's delivered, I had a shock. It's twice as large as I had imagined! I decided it's too big to cramp into my Keepall, so it would go back to the retailer ...

Burberry Haymarket Roomy Pouch, what an appropriate name. It's indeed ROOMY.



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Baby is 7 months old

In the past month, he was exposed to many new things: new wide-necked bottle, new bottle silicon teats, new milk powder, new solid food, new liquid, new bouncer and many more first time experiences... ;)

He celebrated CNY and grabbed ang pows for the first time too. It was very tiring for Mummy and Daddy to bring him out for long hours, so, we restricted ourselves to short trips only. At relatives' house, we were temporarily relieved of our duties as the relatives offered to carry him! He was such a darling and always smiling on those 2 days that he won himself lots of praises... :P

He can flip on both directions already although he mostly flip on his right side. He is so agile that every time I put him on his bed and checked on him a short while later, I see him at the other end of the bed in a different orientation. He had flipped his way there! :P However, no signs of sitting or crawling yet.

As he continue to discover his hands, he is getting more touchy too. He loves to pull anything that comes his way. My fallen hairs on his palms are solid proof of his itchy hands! :P He has also become more clingy esp when he sees us walking away and he shows his preference readily, e.g. many times when I bathed him and wanted to sit him to scrub his back, he insisted on lying on his back and of course, his milk drinking...

Talking about his milk, I'm always very amazed at how his little mind works. Ever since he was on his milk strike, he has devised different ways to reject milk! From crying to shouting, from kicking his legs to wriggling away and from using his tongue to push away the teat to spitting out his milk from the edge of his mouth... from pretending to drink, his newest trick now is this: When the bottle teat is in his view, he would shut his mouth tight refusing to drink. When I managed to find a way to drill the teat into his gap, he would quickly open his mouth wide and keep it open until the teat is taken out of his mouth! I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this!

We are now struggling to keep up with his feeding schedules. It's getting increasingly difficult to feed him on time and maintain the amount of milk he has to drink especially now when we have introduced solid to him. I heard babies who started solid will slowly wean themselves from milk onto solid and are able to withstand longer hours of feeds! This is not what we want. We want him to gain a healthy weight by pumping him with his new FM. The bad thing is he seems to dislike his new FM. He definitely prefers BM more... Even then, the frozen milk bags are filling up the freezer fast but not utilized fast enough! I fear the day I had to discard the expired milk bags!

Sleep in the day is becoming better. The bouncer really works wonder in helping Baby get his day time sleep. Although night time he still sleeps as much, it is more exhaustive to coax him at night. He would spend at least half hour to play and kick and flip before he is willing to sleep. And oh, he has changed his sleeping position, no longer on his back with both hands up... he now prefers to sleep on his side! I see with interest how he likes to do things that he used to hate e.g. sleep on his side, lay on his tummy and how he hates to do things that he used to like e.g. being carried face up. Now, he only likes to be carried upright where he could squirreled left and right. Ah, I feel I need lots of energy boost to keep up with this little active fellow!!


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ARrr...Mani Wasted!

Will you spend $140 on a cap for your 6 month baby? Well, we did...

And guess what?

The dark blue colour from the cap ran and stained its white parts just after pre-rinsing!!!

So much for a $140 branded cap! We felt very cheated and went back to the shop for an answer, thinking never to patronise them ever again.

Contrary to our expectation, the sales assistant was apologetic and readily took back the damaged cap even when we didn't bring along our receipt. We were told to choose another item in exchange for it.

On another occassion, we went back and chose a polo tee for Baby. Hmmm, maybe I was soften by the good customer service and bought over by the cute range of baby wear... I might go back again! :P


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Sing Your Way Home

What would you say to a karaoke session that was intermittenly interrupted by blank screen (because projector auto-shutdown when it's too hot), system restart (because it hangs), faulty microphones and lousy playlist interface?

No?

What if it is inside a club, room is big and spacious (the sofa is tooooo big!), price is cheap ($10 for 3 glasses of beer!)?

No?

What if it's free?

I would say no to all of the above. The NUS Guildhouse was such a disapointment, once is enough! Of course, unless it's a compulsary official event like this one!


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Lion Dance

When I saw this at Suntec, I wished I had my dSLR with me. I knew there's gonna be a lion dance in the afternoon and I love lion dance.



Well, God's with me. It so happened that CP forgot her office keys and she had to go back home to get them. So she brought me my dSLR during lunch. This is what I got:




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LVoe Charm

DC gave me this lovely charm on valentine's day. On late CNY eve, he clipped it on my Vernis Wilshire Amarante and put the bag on my table. The charm is made up of hearts, I love it very much and it goes well with my new bag.

Just beside the bag, there was this card that wrote:

"... Your efforts did not escape me. You are a great mummy, couldn't be better! ..."

There were some words before and after but it was the words above that moved me to tears. They mean a lot to me and are more precious to me than anything! :) Thanks, Daddy!




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CNY customs that I still follow

1. Spring cleaning before the year ends
2. 办年货
3. Have reunion steamboat dinner together before the Chinese New Year starts
4. Go relatives' house for a visit. When we were young, my dad used to bring us out all 3 days to collect ang baos, now DC and I limit to only 2 days of home visiting, the last day is for resting at home.
5. Give out ang Baos (only applicable to those married)/ Collect ang baos (young and single)
6. Wear new clothes and new shoes on CNY day 1 and 2
7. No Blacks!
8. No sweeping or mopping of floor
9. No washing of clothes
10. No cutting/sewing
11. Saying good words when something shatter on the floor
12. Eat abacus算盘子 on day 2 at grandma's house
13. Eat 鱼生 on the 7th day

Mum will pray and burn sugar canes on the 8th day. I will usually help out but now that I'm married, I've abandoned this Hokkien practice.

And I'm shocked that DC didn't observe/know about most of them!! But, his family does have some different traditions that I have to observe:
1. Place 年糕，葱 in the kitchen before CNY
2. Eat vegetarian at PIL's place on CNY day 1 and must 添饭
3. No buying of shoes for the first 15 days
4. Eat 7 kinds of veg on the 7th day


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Torn

DC accidentally tore up two $50 notes into two halves! And, I warned him to check carefully before he tore up the red packets loh... :P We have bandaged them up now and are thinking of a good way to use them up!


The Singapore $50 notes.


Related Tweet:
16 Feb 2010, 10:00 PM, DC: I tore an ang pow with two $50 notes in it, that's right, split right in the middle ...... :(


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Craft your love this CNY cum V-Day!

Last year was the LV gold packets, this year we've got something different too... Our vey own personalised red packets! And, we have our names embedded in the greetings! *wink* I love to process of preparing the red packets...It's such a blessing to be able to give! :)

Not forgetting it's also V-Day too this year, I folded a heart out of the red packet and gave it to him as my V-Day gift to him! :P Reminds me of the school days where we folded hearts out of bus tickets.

Inside was a love token. A $1 coin. Why? Cos it's Gold, Round and has the face value One! Gold for steadfast love, Round for completeness and, lastly we (DC, CP and Baby) are One!

Happy CNY and V-Day to all! :D


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We started Baby on solids

We started Baby on solids for a week since last Fri. Seems like he has no problem with the Nestle rice cereal. Great, we can now introduce more solids to him! :)

We find the cereal very watery with added BM, so we use FM instead to make it more gluey and easy to feed. It's actually a very good way to train patience. You need lots of it to finish each feed!





This is what happens after everytime DC feeds him. Messy messy! :P




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My baby bag

I wanted to help CP carry some of the baby stuff as it can get quite heavy. It did take some consideration before I decided on the LV Keepall 45. It's quite a nice size, not too big, perfect for weekends. It can fit all the baby stuff AND my dSLR, LVOELY. It will get its first real test on CNY when I bring it with me.







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Conditioning the legs for CNY

It's way past the time for me to maintain my tired legs. My dry and cracked legs were in such poor condition that I feel bad looking at them. Today, I finally sneaked time off work for a well worth pedicure and medicure! :) I topped up lots of add-ons and spent a whopping $95 on my feet. Now, they are clean and polished and with a new coat of colour, i'm all ready for CNY! I felt rejuvenated after the intensive treatment! :)


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Mad at Medela

The past week had been torturous for me. The soft shields for my pumps were not functioning right: there was no suction, I had to use single pumping as one shield was dead, double time was needed, less time for Baby & work, and there was the engorgement, milk supply was reduced and constant fear that lactation would stop. I was greatly frustrated and affected!

The Medela soft shields are out of stock in Singapore! Although I'm in the waiting list, I've not heard from them till now! DC knew my anxiety and ordered 4 sets from overseas. They reached just in the nick of time on Sunday. I don't know how I was going to endure further with the faulty pump!

We read somewhere that Medela has stopped the production of the soft shields and that means a shortage of the soft shields worldwide! I was utterly disappointed in the brand that everyone called good. This is the most expensive pump in the market and I cannot accept that something that is selling at almost a thousand dollars would spoil so easily. In use for 6 months and this is already the 2nd time the shields warped! It is downright irresponsible for Medela to stop supplying the parts without introducing new replacements! Think about all the mummies who like me, are desperately waiting for new stock to come in and didn't know that there weren't going to be any! I might have gone crazy and sued both Medela and its Singapore distributor if my supply were to stop because of this!

I've to thank both DC and my RO for saving me in distress! One bought the available parts from overseas and the other brought me his wife's spare parts to tie me through this period till the new parts arrive. I have to say I'm blessed. Even though supply dipped, it's good to know that people around care! :)

And, I'm not the only one who has complaints over Medela's soft shields! See Straits Times' report on 24 Jan 2010 "Steamed up over baby's items".


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New Year, New Haircut

We considered for quite a while on where to bring Baby for a hair trim. In the end, we chose the baby spa instead of our usual hairstylist cos we needed to get a tap which is found in PS. It's a right choice cos it's only $10 and Baby did not cry nor struggle this time! In fact, we were expecting him to kick up a big fuss like his first time and boy, we were all surprised to see him enjoying it throughout! He even smiled during the process!



Daddy and Mummy had a new haircut for the new year too! I left my hair to my hairstylist and he cut short my fringe. This was what I actually hoped to do but I didn't dare to order that! Hehe, although mine what DC hate but I quite like it. :P


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