The Bub in the Belly

In recent weeks, we have noticed babydoll exhibiting a lot more awareness of her routine and what happens around her. She's always been very observant and now that she's mobile, she has the power to make things happen for herself. For example, when we tell her to put her shoes on, she will toddle off to the shoerack to fetch her shoes, and when we tell her to take them off, she will sit down and undo the straps on her shoes.

When she's hungry and I ask her if she'd like something to eat, she will nod and toddle off to the kitchen and point in that direction. When we turn up at her nanny's to fetch her home, she is the first one out the door because she knows it's time to go.

Here she was, shopping last week.


Haha! Love that shot!

She still loves her stacking very much and now we offer her the chance to stack with precision - like fitting rings on a rod.




Babydoll is very sociable and enjoys being with people. She does have moments when she just wants to be with her mama/papa but, generally, she is good with everyone and anyone. Here she was, outside Paragon Shopping Centre last weekend, sitting next to a stranger. This was after she spent ten minutes flirting with diners at a restaurant in the basement - she was standing outside the restaurant and reaching through the partitions to shake hands with the diners inside.

We brought her to the playground at Telok Kurau Lorong J two weekends ago. It was her first time there and she had a great time.




I chuckle everytime I see this photo of her at the bottom of the slide. I love her expression!





Now that babydoll is mobile, I am a little less strict about supervising her. Before this, she was always accompanied. Always. Just like Ryan was. Now, I do leave her in the company of her brother sometimes, while I run upstairs to fetch something or make a dash to the toilet. One morning, I left the two of them in the living room while I went upstairs to do something quickly. When I came back downstairs, all was quiet and my two munchkins were gone! I realised that they had gone to the playroom and, as I approached the playroom, I heard them chatting to each other - Ryan telling his sister about the letters of the alphabet and Rachel going, "Ah!" at the appropriate moments.


Lovely! I am looking forward to seeing them playing together more and more and, hopefully, becoming the best of friends. They do fight - oh boy, do they fight! Babydoll gives as good as she gets so I usually don't intervene except to say, "No pushing" or "Talk nicely". I also say "No fighting" but that only means no physical blows are exchanged - I still let them fight it out otherwise. They usually fight over toys - one of them will be playing with a toy and the other will want the same toy so they end up in a tug of war. And don't think that Rachel is always the one trying to snatch the toy away - Ryan is just as guilty of doing that! Never a dull moment with these two!

Rachel at Shichida class

Babydoll wasn't too keen on the ballpit. Not very glamorous, to be slipping and sliding about.


She was much happier when she found stable ground. I couldn't let her stay there long because people were coming down the slide, so we left the ball pit soon after.

Easter Sunday was a family day for us. Ryan went for swimming class with Richard while I went shopping with Rachel at Spotlight. The boys met up with us at Plaza Singapura after swimming class and we spent a good part of the afternoon having lunch and shopping there.

Back home, we just hung out and relaxed, doing whatever the littles wanted to do. Ryan wanted to try out his new stencils which we picked up from Popular Bookstore on Friday.

Yesterday was quite a nice day for Ryan too. After violin class, he attended a birthday party of one of his classmates, which was held at The City at Liang Court. After that, we went to IKEA for lunch and some shopping. Back home, Richard and I sorted our massive CD collection while the two littles played around us. Then out for dinner and back home for an early night.

A reader asked about the addition cards and counting cubes that Ryan was using in one of the photos in Friday's post. The addition cards are from this pack published by Trend Enterprises which I got for RM4.50 in Malaysia. I bought the subtraction and the multiplication packs too. I'm not sure where you can get it in Singapore although I know that you can get it online from a number of sites. In any case, the equations are really basic, so I suppose you could simply write your own! I used these because I wanted Ryan to get used to the format of vertical equations.


The counting cubes which Ryan was using are these 2 cm cubes from this Connect-a-Cube set which I bought from Growing Fun. There are ten colours and ten cubes of each colour. The cubes take a bit of effort for Ryan to connect and disconnect, which I feel is great for building up strength in his fingers. We actually have a variety of counters that Ryan uses for math; this set is just one in our collection.

We had a little variety in our routine last weekend because Richard had to take a meeting on Saturday, which clashed with Ryan's violin class and Rachel's Heguru class. We contemplated skipping both classes but I decided to bring Rachel to Ryan's violin class so that we could at least go for that. I was not sure how it would work if I brought Ryan to Heguru, so I decided to skip Heguru. As it turned out, Ophelia graciously invited us to her place for her newborn's first month party on Saturday, which meant no Heguru class in any event! Heh heh! As I always say, things always fall into place somehow.

Photo time! Here's Ryan in violin class.

The rest of the day was spent on Shichida as well as some activities at home for Ryan.


Playground in the evening. Ryan loves this climbing apparatus and gets more daring everytime he plays on it.


We walked past this house on our way back from the playground and Ryan said it was a farm. He asked me where the farm animals were.


Ryan described this hole in the ground as a "burrow". To which I said, "That's right." He was introduced to the term in Shichida linking memory and it folded neatly into our weekly visit to the rabbit pen at St James Church Kindergarten after his swimming lesson. While we admire the rabbits, we talk about what the rabbits eat, what they do and where they sleep. Over the past few weeks, we've noticed the rabbits digging burrows. Two weeks ago, the rabbits were done and, when we couldn't spot them above ground, we had fun trying to guess whether the rabbits were sleeping in their burrows. Here, he was applying what we had been talking about so I didn't want to tell him that this was a smelly drain, and not a nice comfy burrow, and take the risk of killing his interest.


Last photo for the post - my little rascal on his wheels!

Thank you all so much for your messages/emails on my last post. Yes, I'm looking forward to 2013! Now that I have the mindset of clearing out the old, I'm really looking forward to the new. I'm excited to see what loveliness is going to come into my life now that I've made space for it.

We spent the weekend getting back into our routine of Ryan's classes. Rachel had a class too! I will post separately about that. I will also post separately about each of Ryan's classes so that I have a proper record of what's happening at the moment for him.


Babydoll Rachel is crawling well, with her tummy off the ground. Although she is still a beginner at crawling, she can get to her target pretty quickly, and given that she never seems to keep still, she needs a lot of active supervision.

Teething! Yes, you can't see the teeth yet, but if you put your finger on her gums, you can feel the little hard teeth. We'll see them any day now! She is still very cheerful, so hopefully she will coast through the teething with minimum discomfort. Ryan didn't have any problems with teething so hopefully that toughness runs in the family.


Rachel can recognise people now! She is still amenable to strangers but she does have a preference for me and gets very excited when I fetch her from her nanny in the evenings. Her vocabulary seems to be expanding, hahaha, I can make out different "words" which she repeats off and on. Richard is betting that she is going to be walking and talking very early and I think he's right!


Ryan had a fantastic weekend. His classes went well and he slept well. We were getting a little worried about his food intake because he had a few days of eating very little. He surprised us by walloping two bowls of rice on Friday evening and a similar amount on Saturday evening.

Ryan got his hair cut very short! He is due for his headshots soon so Richard took him to get his hair cut because this agency insists on short hair. I do not understand that at all. Everyone we know is so in love with his curls and says he looks so good with curls ... everyone except the people who are in the business of looking good. Oh well, the curls will grow back in time for Chinese New Year!

Our weekend had a surprise ending. Ryan and I went to the playground in the evening and we bumped into Alicia and her family there! Ryan was overjoyed to see his mate, Brayden! He had been asking for Brayden (and Rou Ern) very often the last few days so it must have been like a wish come true for him. The two boys played together at the playground till the sun went down and then they rode back to our place on their scooters.


It was really nice for Richard and I to spend some time with Chris and Alicia. Having adult company is always good for adults, hahaha! We had dinner (ordered in) and the boys continued playing on. Brayden didn't want to leave at the end of the night and bawled his eyes out. When Chris drove off from our place, it was Ryan's turn to burst into tears. Aww.

Ryan has an audition tomorrow so he won't be going to school. In fact, he hasn't been back to school yet for this year! He's not missing school - he has had lots of fun over the holidays and has had no time at all to be bored!

To pen off, here's another one of Ryan's bedtime stories:

"Once upon a time, there were three little pigs. The three little pigs climbed up the tree. The three little pigs sat on the box. The three little pigs drink the milk. Finished the milk. Ameena's Milk. Dropped the milk into the water. The three little pigs hold the umbrella. It's a rainy day. The three little pigs cleaned the soap and cleaned the towel. One pig took the green soap. One pig took the red soap and the last pig took the orange soap. Then they turned the faucet and finished the water. Rachel's bedtime with me. That's the end of the story. The End."