Friday, September 28, 2012

Life of a Model


We updated Ryan's agency portfolio four weeks ago. The first shot is the chosen shot. The session was very smooth - Ryan didn't need any warm up time! Looks like he is a pro already!

Here are some more from the session!









Thursday, September 27, 2012

Celebrating Richard's birthday


Richard had a birthday on Monday and the two of us had a lovely dinner at the incomparable Jaan at Swissotel the Stamford. The photo above shows the view from the restaurant (which is on the 70th floor). The food was amazing and the service was impeccable. There were only three tables of diners in the entire restaurant so it was very private and just lovely.

Of course we celebrated Richard's birthday with the children as well - on Saturday, we went over to Shann's place for a simple celebration plus an early lantern walkabout for the upcoming mooncake festival.


(By the way, this is the ONLY photo of me. Richard - please take note and take remedial action.)

Ryan was absolutely overjoyed to be reunited with his pals. We arrived around 6 pm and, as we were walking towards Shann's door, Rou Ern (who was inside) saw Ryan and hurried towards the door. When Ryan realised it was Rou Ern, he started running as fast as he could towards her! It was as if he didn't want to waste a single minute! It was incredible to see how much the children missed each other, and I even felt a little guilty for not meeting up more often with Shann and Alicia so that our children could be together more often! When Brayden arrived, the club was complete and they played and played up till the very last minute.

Okay, nothing much else to say. Time for photos! 

We didn't buy a new lantern for Ryan because his nanny usually buys one for him. Here he is holding his SpongeBob Squarepants lantern from two years ago. Rou Ern is holding a traditional paper lantern with a candle inside, which she subsequently passed over to Ryan.






Having fun with sparklers!


The fun continues indoors! As usual, Rou Ern leads the way, Brayden is next and Ryan brings up the rear.

Baby Rachel and Baby Zi Ern (Shann's younger daughter) took turns in the rocker and waited patiently for attention. They were both very happy babies, I don't recall either of them fussing. Hmm... no photos of the two babies, so here's one of Rachel that was taken at home!


Happy birthday Richard and many more to come!








Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Learning at home continues

I haven't posted about Ryan's home learning activities for a while now. We are in the midst of figuring out how everything fits together now that he is attending pre-school (and sleeping much earlier) and we have not found our rhythm yet. Nevertheless, we are doing what we can and the fun continues rolling on.

Here's a little snippet of our Chinese language activities.

Revising numbers from 1 to 10.



Matching Lego bricks with the Chinese characters for colours.

 
I haven't got any photos of our other activities, so this is all for now. I'll try to get photos before I update again.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Swimming update

Here's a Youtube video of Ryan at swimming class last Sunday. It's less than a minute long. In the second scene in the video, you can see the coach chuckling at him. The children were supposed to choose a toy from the basket and swim across with the toy. The coach was chuckling because Ryan, who is the smallest swimmer in the class, very enthusiastically chose the biggest toy!

 


Here's another video (about 20 seconds long) - Ryan is "surfing"!




The coach is teaching them to do the butterfly stroke in the second video - you can see her guiding Ryan into the motion after he gets off the "surfboard". And yes, you may have notice that Ryan's coach is no longer Coach Dave. The change happened a few months back. We are still at the same time slot; the school just changed the coach. Anyway, we think it's a good thing because Ryan is ready for more serious pool work now so having a change in his coach helps to signal a change in the pool activities too.


Monday, September 24, 2012

Posterboy!


Yup, that's Ryan on the poster! A mummy in Ryan's violin class told the class that Ryan's poster was up in NTUC. Richard and I rushed down to an outlet near our home and searched high and low for it. Richard eventually found it!


The photoshoot for this was done separately from the film shoot for the TV commercial. It took about half a day. I think that there may be other formats that may be going around, plus they may have used other photos too because the people from Nestle mentioned that the shots were intended to be used in a few countries (with different requirements). Let us know if you see it!

In other news - today is Richard's birthday! Happy birthday my dear hubby - muacks! We all love you very much!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Button Turkey


Just popping in to share something I hand-sewed for one of Ryan's friends, little Brayden. It's a turkey! It's to help the child learn buttoning - the feathers button on and off! I stuffed it as well so it's like a little cushion.

I copied the design from some blogs - there was no template/pattern but it's pretty simple to go on the photos alone. A few differences - I left the turkey's wattle loose instead of stitching it down, to give it an extra bit of fun. Also, this dude has only four feathers - I didn't have any more suitable buttons except for boring black (I wanted to colour-coordinate the button with the feather). Anyway, four is enough!

Here are the links to the other blogs where this button turkey has made its appearance:

My Montessori Journey
Itty Bitty Love
Counting Coconuts

Friday, September 21, 2012

Shichida term report

At last, the work week is closing! I will be very glad to stay away from the central business district - the traffic around my office has been a nightmare for the past few days due to the road closures for the F1 race this weekend. We are looking forward to meeting up with friends and eating well - you can't help but be happy when hit with good company and good food!

On Sunday, Ryan will be having his last Shichida class for this term. Next week will be term break and he will start another term in October. Ryan has been attending Shichida for three years already!

We got his term report last week. This is what Teacher Hirin wrote:

"Dear Ryan, you are extremely motivated and always give your 100% participation in class! :) You demonstrated superior performance in fixing IQ blocks, reading words or short sentences during literacy games, and have mastered addition as well as subtraction activities too! ;) You also demonstrate responsible behaviour in caring for the immediate environment for example helping Mummy to pack up materials once you are done with a particular activity or helping Teacher Hirin to clean the table with the wet wipes! ;) Love your positive energy you bring in class every Sunday afternoon, my dear! ;) "

Wonderful job, Ryan!

In other news, Rachel's hair is standing up again, hurray! I think she knows the weekend is here - getting zesty! Happy weekend everyone!


Thursday, September 20, 2012

"I love my Moses basket...













and so does my brother..."




Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Rachel's newborn photoshoot at 11 days old





  








These were done by Dan at White Room Studio when Rachel was 11 days old. Alicia and Shann had very generously bought a session for me as a birthday present back in April. It was the third newborn photoshoot we had done with Rachel and I was honestly not expecting anything different from the first two. However, when Dan showed me the photos, they were so beautiful that we just went, "Wow...". We bought nearly all the shots which he presented! It was so tough to choose my very favourites for this post. The first few ones of Rachel in her little lace romper are so tender and serene - you can really feel the innocence of a newborn. I also love the family shots! Of special mention is the last shot in this post because Rachel is holding her head up on her own (which is unusual for an 11-day old) and looking straight at the camera. Looks like we've got another model in the family!

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