The Bub in the Belly

Some more catch-up today. This is about Ryan's birthday with the family in KL, back in January.

Richard had some business meetings in KL which coincided nicely with the weekend before Ryan's birthday so we tagged along to KL with him. Ryan had a grand weekend, as he always does when he's there.


For his birthday cake, Margaret got his favourite cake ringed with Kit Kat! Yum yum. Plus marshmallows...yum yum yum.

Before the birthday cake at home, we brought everyone out for dinner at Naughty Babe Dirty Duck in Desa Sri Hartamas. We thought that we ordered quite a lot of food but I think we still didn't get enough to feed the hungry horde because the portions were quite small. Every time a dish of food hit the table, the food was gone in seconds!


Babydoll wasn't too interested in the food at the place. She got my brother to take her out to a bakery nearby to buy a doughnut! Babydoll is wearing a dress I made for her back in September 2014, which you can see better in this post.


Here's the birthday boy in his new jacket, which was a present from his Aunty Margaret. Margaret and her family had just got back from a holiday in Japan so there were plenty of gifts, birthday or otherwise, for him (and the rest of us).


Ryan's birthday was in late January, but he is already telling people now that he is "six and a half" and he asks, quite often, whether he will be turning seven soon. Oh my, how fast it goes, huh. Happy birthday love! We love you to the moon and back, always and forever.

A quick post on what we did for Ryan's 6th birthday celebration at school. I kept things very simple this year. First order of things was his birthday tee-shirt. Last year I spent too much time making the gifts for the class that I didn't have time to finish his birthday tee-shirt. This year, I whipped it up on the sewing machine the day before. It has a large number 6 on the back, as you can see. I actually made a similar one just a few weeks prior to this one - it had his name RYAN in a curve above the number '5' at the back. He really loves that he gets to display his name and his age, so I really should make more of these things.

For his little party in school, we made crowns for his teachers and his classmates. Initially I was planning to sew the crowns but after sewing a couple, including sewing twenty tiny jewels onto each one, I succumbed to practicality - I could not imagine sewing 24 of those. So I opted for this version - I just cut out the crowns from stiff felt and sewed an elastic strip at the back. For embellishment, we used adhesive felt letters which are ready-cut from the store. The letters correspond to the first letter of the recipient's name.


Here are the completed crowns! The two green ones in the front of the pile, with the red R's, were for Ryan. I like the one with the fancy cut but he chose the other one, with the jewels which I sewed on, because that was the one that I presented first to him. The red one with the jewels but without a letter is an extra.


For the birthday cake, we ordered mini eggless cube cakes from Emicakes in six different flavours (one of Ryan's classmates is not allowed to have eggs). We arranged them on a cake board in the shape of a '6', stuck candles in them, handed out the crowns, sang the Happy Birthday song (a few versions), blew out the candles and distributed the cubes. It was so efficient and went really, really fast, mainly because there was no need to cut a big cake and plate the pieces. I didn't snap any photos though. I really should have!

Anyway, that was that for this year. Simple and easy. If you're interested, here's a flashback to what we did for last year's school party.

Ryan turned six in January and I honestly have difficulty remembering his babyness. Sometimes his little sister does or says something, and I ask - was Ryan ever like that? I've reached the stage where my memories of his baby days come to me in broad strokes, with little detail.

I cannot recall anything about Ryan's babyhood which was difficult or which stressed me out. I'm sure that there were some bad days but right now, the memories I have are only of good ones. Perhaps I'm a big picture sort of person, perhaps there weren't many bad days to begin with. Perhaps again, it's just the way mothers are wired. We forget the hard days and we let go of the stressful times. What's left is all good.

In the same way that I enjoyed Ryan's babyhood, I am enjoying the six year old version. He is as easygoing as he has always been, which is to say that he is easygoing towards other people - he is still fussy about his food! He's fun to be with, he's got lots of love to give, he's loyal to his friends and family, he listens to reason, and he can hold an intelligent conversation. Biased I may be, I think he's a great kid.

There are bad days, but they are few and far between and, to be fair, those days are only bad because I didn't handle them better. Parenting a six year old isn't quite the same as parenting a baby, eh? Ah well, the bad days are never a waste. Bad days teach us to make better decisions; they point us in the right direction. I'm learning as I go along and I'm aware and grateful that, with Ryan, it really isn't that difficult.

Just today, someone guessed that Ryan is five. It took me a second to consider whether to correct her or not - part of me is still amazed that six years have flashed past - but I did correct her. Because it's important to Ryan that he's six. He goes around telling everyone that he's six. It's his special number (until he turns seven, of course). He loves being six. (He loved being five too, actually.) Six is when you say goodbye to your schoolmates. Six is when you start anticipating going to "the big school". Six is when you finally tell your mummy, "I'm not a baby". Six is when you start believing, truly believing, that you are someone's big brother. Six is when you have thoughtful opinions about the world around you. Six is a big thing.

And yes, it's important to me too. I wanted her to know that I've had this amazing child for six wonderful years. I may have trouble recalling the bad bits, yes. Be that as it may, there are, overwhelmingly, so many good bits in those years, so much happiness and joy, so much laughter and love, so much personal growth and learning (on my part as well as Ryan's), that I wouldn't discount a single day. Six years old? Yes, oh yes.

We're back from our holiday in Mauritius. We lingered a few days in KL before arriving in Singapore this morning. We had a fantastic time in Mauritius; enjoyed every bit of it.

I'm doing the iPhone dump for today's post. It's Richard's birthday today so I want to dedicate today's post to some of the Instagram photos that he took in Mauritius. These are the ones that he has shared on Facebook, mainly showcasing the landscape of Mauritius. You can see a lot more photos, especially of the littles and what we got up to on our trip, on his Instagram. Follow him over there - he's "zeussoo".

I'll tell you more about the trip another day. For now, hopefully these amazing visuals will help you dream of your next holiday.

We spent our last day in Club Med mostly in the pool. We even had a go at the water aerobics session (yes, dancing again!).