The Bub in the Belly

Here are some snippets of the weekend just past. It isn't a complete account of what we did, just some glimpses here and there.

We started our weekend on Friday, because the nanny was on leave. It felt exactly like a weekend, except that Richard was working. He joined us for lunch though.

Here are the littles enjoying playing together. They are painting here. They do squabble and sometimes, when it seems like one is disturbing the other's work, we will offer a new activity. For example, if Ryan is focused on building his train tracks, babydoll may come along and mess things up. I usually let them try to resolve things on their own but if they can't, I sometimes offer babydoll another activity. This only works for about three seconds - Ryan will then hurry over and join in! Well, at least they know that being a duo is more fun than going solo. More and more frequently now, they manage to resolve their little squabbles on their own, because they do want to keep playing together.

Here's babydoll being babydoll. I always get asked if my children are not pure Chinese or if they are some other race/blend. I think it must be their round eyes?

More water time.




Sitting at the sink, brushing their teeth. Up till now, we do not have a fixed teeth-brushing routine! The kids actually love to brush their teeth, they just need me to give them the signal. I must try harder to make this stick!


 Okay, that's all!

Our week, and weekend, was a strange mix of getting back into our routine and, at the same time, saying goodbye to parts of it. That is actually a good representation of our life in general at the moment. It's a carousel of hellos and goodbyes right now, and "adjust" is the catchphrase of the day.

I am still missing my cat very much. Life at home without Tiger is significantly different and this has been an adjustment that I have not been willing to make. I have not touched his things at all - everything is exactly the way he left them.

Let me share some updates on the littles. Before we went on our trip to Mauritius, Ryan's swimming coach (at Tanglin Village) told me that Ryan could graduate to their big swimming pool at Turf City. I was really happy to hear that. Firstly of course, because Ryan is progressing in his swimming. Second is because, for the past couple of months, when Ryan was having his class in the small pool at Tanglin Village, there was another class being conducted at the same time in the pool. I felt it was a little noisy and distracting to have so many people in the small pool.

There was no school on Friday and we went to Mita's house in the morning. Mita is a talented photographer and she shot some photos of the littles (free of charge!). Will share them when I receive the copies. (These photos you see here are my own amateur phone photos.)

I've mentioned our *very tiny* swimming pool before, so I thought I'd show you some photos of it today.

It is long enough to fit both Richard and I sitting stretched out, one at each end, with plenty of space leftover between and beside us for the kids to romp around. Of course, it's not meant for adults to swim - if we wanted to do that, we would go down to the proper swimming pool at the condo. For us adults, this is meant to be a chill-out place where the kids can also have fun. Richard and I usually have long and meaningful conversations in the pool, even with the kids splashing about around us, because we are so relaxed and comfortable.


We've been using it once a week, almost every week, and usually, it's the four of us in the pool at the same time. The kids absolutely love it.


A side note on babydoll's water skills. Babydoll is not doing any swimming lessons yet, but she does have a lot of water time. She goes swimming in the public pool with her nanny's family once every fortnight (one of her nanny's daughters is a swimming instructor) and she has lots of water play at home. As you can see from the photos, she has a lot of water confidence and, although not a swimmer, she is independent in this pool.

We made some inquiries last year with Aquaducks to enrol her in a time slot near Ryan's lesson time, but didn't have any luck. Our plans for the family's routine this year are still a little uncertain, so we are holding off for now. We do still hold the view that swimming is a critical life skill to have, so that is definitely on the cards for babydoll in the near future.

If you're wondering, Ryan started lessons when he was one year old, mainly because we did not have access to a swimming pool at that time. I didn't expect him to learn to swim at that age; I simply wanted to ensure that he retained his water confidence. Now, four years later, he can swim pretty well. I am forever grateful that we did expose him to the water at a young age because there's been so many occasions where he's been able to go into the water independently - birthday parties at swimming pools, trips to water parks like Waterbom Bali, holidays with swimming at the beach or in the hotel pools, etc. Quite apart from the fact that I don't worry (too much) about him, he also gets to enjoy himself and have fun, instead of stressing about being in the water.

Babydoll's hair is curly, curly, curly. I'm looking forward to seeing it go past her shoulders - I'm sure it will be gorgeous.






Richard and I had a peaceful and satisfying dinner at Crab in da Bag at Big Splash. This was after our parent teacher conference at Ryan's preschool last week and before we went to fetch the kids from the nanny. It was our first time at this restaurant and it was good - we'll be back!.

I'll tell you more about the parent teacher conference in another post. For now, let's focus on the crab! This is the "before" photo.


And this is the "after" photo. As you may notice, we don't eat the crab roe so next time we'll ask for the male crab.



When we got back to the party, the kids were already in the pool. Ryan had a blast there! He was the absolute last person to leave the pool and only because he thought we were leaving without him (actually we were just walking back to the bowling area to find his shoes). It was a fabulous party - Happy 5th birthday to Leila!


On Sunday, we overslept and missed Rachel's Shichida class, while Ryan barely made it for swimming. For lunch, we visited the farmer's market at Pasarbella at The Grandstand. After a disappointing experience at the farmer's market at Dempsey, I was looking forward to much better offerings and this time, I was not disappointed. Worth the trip - do go if you can. We ate at Oceans of Seafood which is towards the back. It serves a wide Japanese seafood menu (the sashimi is supposedly very good) and a limited but good Western seafood menu (go for the fish and chips).



And yes, it was Rachel who spotted it before any of us did. She pointed to it and said "papa". Errr... she doesn't know how to say "Ryan" or "korkor" (big brother) yet, so we'll accept that! If you see Ryan's poster in Cold Storage, give it a secret wink, won't you?

That's all!