A day of play for Justin

Its important to dedicate a day to the child once their sibling comes along so that they do not feel that they have “lost” their parents to their sibling.
So on Monday, i decided to bring Justin out on my own and spend some quality time with him. Along with that, we have to go to ICA to collect his new passport as well.
And so, off we go for the day!!!
Took this picture before we set off. Love this boy to the max!! :D

Thank God for e-appointment. Within 15 mins, we were in and out of ICA!

After that, we proceeded to our second destination: Playful Elves

We last check out this place after reading Klessis’s blog about the place a few months back. That day we went on a sat and the place was packed. Justin remembered the place and he kept telling me that he wanted to go back there. So, we took a train to clementi and then a shuttle bus to West Coast Plaza. He was so excited throughout the journey and totally looking forward to his play time!!!

As it is a monday afternoon, the place was pretty empty.. in fact, there was only 2 other children in the play gym other than us… and so, we literally have the whole gym to ourselves!! And so, Justin could really play to his heart’s content!!

The Happy boy!!!

 

The whole place is filled with lots of colors and it just make me feel so happy in a place filled with bright colors! A good way to beat any Monday blues!! :D

We were there for 2 hours and he was almost dozing off by then… cos it was way into his naptime! Haha.. we ended the day with a sumptuous lunch at Sushi Tei before we headed home for his nap.

Looking forward to the next outing with Justin again!! :D

Gerald’s 34th birthday

On Tuesday was Papa Gerald’s birthday. This year, we have a new addition to the family to celebrate his birthday and of cos, we did not really have any big celebration as the small one is still a lil hard for us to enjoy a proper meal outside. So we just took a lazy afternoon off and I treated him to a sumptous dinner, to a place that we always wanted to visit, and of cos, ended off with a birthday cake at home with his two precious boys.

Simple design in the restaurant, calm and peaceful on a tuesday afternoon.

Picture taking while waiting for the food.

Crispy Shio Ba!

Juicy har kow! 

Meaty Siew Mai

Braised chicken feet…. a must have in all our dim-sum meals!

After the dim sum, we walked around to do a little bit of shopping. It is really so much better to shop on a weekday, as both of us are really quite afraid of crowds now.. think age is really catching up .. hahaha….. but i must say, there is still quite a lot of people hanging in Ion Orchard  
When we were ready to go for our early dinner, there was such a heavy downpour outside and in the end we have to make a detour back home to fetch justin from school before heading out to the dinner place again. :D
We always pass by this restaurant at Anchorpoint and we really always wanted to try it. If you are a beef and BBQ lover like us, then it is really a great place that I recommend. However, I must put a disclaimer, that the price is also quite… Ahem…… not that cheap lah.. So we always say that we need to find an occassion to go there. Hahaha. and the chance came!

a hot pot of charcoal is served in the middle of the table for our cooking.

 
Since it is our first time there, we were a bit suaku to be honest. Don’t know what to order as the menu look a bit complicated and we do not know what’s the best choice. So we had the waitress to recommend and she suggest that we order the set menu for 2., which basically consist a bit of all and we can try. Not a bad idea.
So i think picture tells a better story and we really enjoyed our evening much!!! :D :D :D

Horenso salad – juicy Japanese spinach with mushroom

Kimchi

Bacon

Meat platter, which consist of duck, pork and 3 types of wagyu beef

Japanese rice

Cod fish in miso and mayo

Assorted mushroom

And of course, dessert a must-have to end off every meal.

 Milk pudding – highly recommended !! Love the brown sugar that mix so well with the milk pudding beneath. Heavenly!! ~~~

My black sesame ice-cream with red bean.

And lastly, cake cutting at home!!

The proud daddy with his 2 boys!

That’s a day of celebration for Daddy Gerald !

Happy Birthday Daddy!!! Thanks for being the cool daddy and spiritual leader of the household!

May Day Holiday

One of the Justin’s fave activity is to go swimming, which he always associate to our staycations.

Now that Audrey and Edward have shifted to a rented condo at Bukit Timah,there is a huge swimming pool and we can go there for swims from now on.

And so, on the May Day holiday that just passed, we decided to name it as Justin’s special Day. Actually, it is more of to give him all our full attention for the few hours without Joash. Ever since Joash is borned, we have spent much time on the small one and we did not want the big brother to feel neglected.  So after hearing the advise of many parents and friends, we knew the importance of spending quality private time with each child, even if its just a few hours, to do their favourite activity and let them have the parents all to themselves!!!

And there we go, spent a good hour in the pool and the boy was grinning and smiling all the way that day!!  He was simply so HAPPY!!! :D

 

  

And to end off the day’s activity, we went to his all-time-favourite place!! The Macdonalds!!! A place that win the hearts of every child indeed. :)

Time to plan for the next outing! ~~~ :D

Justin’s latest hobby

Justin has a latest hobby – he likes to take my compact camera and start to take pictures of everything, including setting the timer and taking his own pictures!!! Aiyohyoh…. really dunno where and when did he learn it from, cos we have never taught him how to set the timer on the camera. Guess it must be during one of his self-exploration session that he discover this fun trick and he has been doing it rather well, in my opinion.
See his works  below and you will know what i mean….

First the objects

 

And then himself…

And he even pose in front of the camera!! I nearly died of laughing while looking at this photo…. see his serious look!!! 

And even getting Audrey Ghor Ghor to take a shot with him!! :p

I simply love the grin! ~~

Kids have the wildest creativity and I must really salute Justin for his creative and innovative ideas to keep himself occupied whilst the mummy is busy with the baby brother in times like this. :-)

Days of confinement.

Apart from the joy of the new born in the house, the other biggest thing about giving birth is none other than the 101 rules that come with the confinement month for the mother and the baby. Being someone who is constantly looking for activities outside the house, you can imagine how hard is it for me to stay within the 4 walls of the house during the confinement month of 30 days.
And I am happy to declare that I am reaching the tail end of the confinement month!! As of today, it is day 26. Officially, it will be over by this Saturday, which is the Day 30, although i will still need to observe some of the confinement rules for another 10 days to ensure that I adhere to the full 40 days of confinement.
One of the toughest rule that i need to keep is the bathing part. Strictly speaking,  i am not supposed to bath everyday. But given this horribly hot and humid weather, it is totally crazy not to bath everyday!!! If i have a choice, I will even choose to bath twice or thrice a day!! Thankfully, there is the herb that i can boil for bathing and the only thing that i give in is to at least wash my hair on alternate days instead of daily.
Not being able to go out freely to places during the confinement month is also the other painful process. The idea is for the mother to rest as much as possible during the confinement month. Seriously, I think its easy to handle with 1 baby, but with 2, its really difficult to rest as much. Thankfully, this time round, Joash is a much easier baby to handle, up to this point of time. So at least at night, i do get a few hours of good sleep, unlike the first time when I just had Justin, where i literally stay awake the whole night for the first month and only slept during the day.
I guess the one thing that I really enjoy of the confinement is the confinement food! yummy! call me crazy or what….. though after every meal i will be perspiring like crazy…. thanks to the rice wine, sesame oil and lots of ginger in every dish. But i guess this is one part of the confinement that I will always miss. <3
Whatever it is, i am glad i am glad that in another 4 more days, i will get back my freedom!!! Woohoo!! 
Ending off this entry with a picture of the little one at 25 days old! :-)

Baby Joash

Time somehow flies faster for this confinement and today is already Day 21 since the arrival of my little one on 22 March 2013. Things seems to be much more manageable this time round, and like many people tell me, i highly attribute it to the experience that we already have from the first one and this time round, we kind of know better what to expect in handling an infant. So, there is not that much things that I really get into frantic frenzy about. Baby cries already part and parcel of my life now and when he cries, i kind of already know what to look out for and what to check first in a step-by-step procedure to eliminate the various possibilities and getting to the root cause in the shortest possible time. :-)
Anyway, before I start to get busy again, I think its only fair for me to document down the labour process, so that years later, in case my memory fails, i can always pull this entry out and read about it again. =,=
This time round, I decided to stop work earlier as suggested by many of my colleagues and bosses overseas. My gynae also suggested that I do that, given that i have track record of earlier delivery for Justin, and during the 34th  week check up, she already could see that the baby has already engaged and in a kind of ready to see the world position. Got me scared and i  quickly continue and make sure that my handover will be more or less completed. Honestly, I don’t know what constitute a complete handover, given that tax and inventory are always full of ad-hoc matters and many new things are happening at work during this period of time. Even during  last week when i was doing my handover, new GST issues were still popping up. Anyway, I just did what i could and just pray that everything else will fall in place nicely, plus the fact that my finance director already forewarned me that in the next 4 months, she plans to deep dive into my functions and make lots of changes. So I think I will just let her do the necessary changes bah….. just pray that when I go back to work 4 months later, I be able to catch up on the changes bah. :-(
And so, i started my leave on Monday, 15 March, and I think I am really a workaholic. I could not stop checking my emails, though I tried not to reply any of the emails since my out of office message was already set up. And so, i waited and waited for the arrival of Baby Joash. He probably wanted to make sure that I have a good rest first before he arrives.. and so, I have a good 4 days of rest and relax at home, until the point where i find it a bit bored. . And then on Thursday evening, after dinner, I started to feel the tightness in my stomach.  As I never experienced contractions pain during the first labour, I am seriously not sure if this is just another false alarm of Braxton hicks or i was really experiencing labour contractions. Decided to wait and see.
The whole evening, the tightness came and go and i was closely monitoring the interval. Texted a good friend and she suggested that I get myself admitted to the hospital once the pain interval is about 20 mins. At 11pm, the pain kind of subsided and it only came back after every 30mins. In my heart, i somehow know that labour will be in the next 24 hours.. but i was not ready to get admitted so early to the the hospital this time round. Moreover, since next day was my routine checkup, i am hoping that still can wait till the next morning to see my gynae instead of having to call her to the hospital in the middle of the night.
Thankfully, the pain finally gone by 3am and Gerald and myself finally fell asleep. And so, the next morning, we went to the clinic and after informing the nurse of my condition last night, they also half suspected that I was showing signs of labour. After checking me, my gynae confirmed that I was already about 2-3cm dilated and immediately she gave the instructions for me to march over to the labour ward in the next building.
And that started my labour process…… without lunch!! After the epidural was being administered, i waited for another 5 hours and sadly, i was still only 5cm dilated!!!! Oh Gosh!!! In my heart, my heart sunk and I thought, can’t be got to wait till midnight bah!!! 
But out of a sudden, in the next 1 hour, i suddenly experience such strong labour contractions that even with the epidural, the labour pain was so great that I started to cry!! I told Gerald to tell the nurse to increase the dosage of epidual, because the pain was literally too unbearable!
After another hour, the nurse came and check me again and this tme, she confirmed that i was already close to 10cm dilated and they are now ready to deliver the baby……. very very excited … and by now, I did not feel my lower body at all, thanks to the effective epidural. :-) And in the next 20 mins or so, we were just waiting for my gynae to arrive and very efficiently, upon her arrival, she put on her gear and ask me to push… in a matter of less than 10 pushes, Joash was out to greet the world with his loud cry!!! At that moment, I was so moved that tears came to my eyes again.

And this is us, when we were rolled back to the normal ward.

A total of 8 hours 19 mins of labour, almost half the time taken the last round.

Welcome to this beautiful world, Baby Joash! :)

Art Jamming Session

Last Thursday, we had our post AQR celebration cum finance outing.

We decided to go visit this art jamming place, which have the rave of many on many people’s facebook recently @ Arteastiq

 

The place is quiet and cosy on a thursday afternoon and they also have a tea house for painters to rest and relax on a lazy afternoon..

This is the picture that I have chosen to draw for today and let’s see how it will turn out to be! It has been years since I have taken up a paint brush and it’s my first time doing a canvas painting!

Doing the preparation work…… 

Getting ready to put on the colors……

And after 3 hours, this is my my final art piece! :D

Actually did not manage to finish up the painting…. still got a lot of details not put in… If we wanted to go back and finish up the painting, we just need to pay $5/hr.. but too much of a hassle for me. To me, it is not too bad for a small personal achievement. :-)

The finance team! Girls’ power!

Some of my colleague’ art pieces!

Definitely a very therapeutic place and i will definitely come back here again. :-)