Sherlyn alerted me to this - Nestlé's advertisement and promotion in the November issue of Mother and Baby featuring Ryan! It's so exciting for us to see him in a magazine!
Learning a New Game
1 day ago
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
So, three weekends ago, we went to Legoland, Malaysia. We stayed overnight in JB city and the next day, we drove to UK Farm in Kluang. The last 5-6 km was on an sandy/stony/untarred road bordered on both sides by tracts of green, with the occasional group of cows grazing or lying in the shade.
UK Farm is Malaysia's largest goat and sheep farm. Apart from the various businesses related to goat and sheep farming, they do passion fruit farming and they also have a healthy tourism business (eg. farm stay, farm tour).
We bought a farm tour and our group of three families were driven around in a small open-air bus. The tour took about 3-4 hours. The actual duration depends on how long your group spends at each stop - the bus will wait patiently for you. For small groups, there is an option of taking a horse-drawn carriage, which will take slightly longer to complete the tour.
The first activity was feeding the goats/kids and sheep/lambs. The children took to this quite naturally!
Watched the goat herding. You can get as close as you want to!
In this next shot, we were listening to a presentation by the guide on ... something about how they prepare the hay ... I think ... actually I have no idea. I wasn't listening. I just wanted to snap photos.
Next stop - the goat pens for more feeding! The children enjoyed the goat feeding very much, especially as the kids (the goat babies, not the human babies) were let out of the pen and everything was up close and personal.
It was off to feed the ostriches next. Before that, we stopped by a small farm patch where they served us organic tea - very refreshing and very much needed! Just like the day before at Legoland, the weather was hot hot hot!
A brief respite from the hot weather. In this area, there were some attap huts, supposedly to show us how the natives live. There was also a blow-pipe demonstration - a guy dressed as a native used a blowpipe to shoot at a balloon high up in the trees.
Next stop was a rest area, shaded and cool. There were a couple of shops there and I bought some passion fruit jam and passion fruit snacks for Ryan to bring to school.
After that, it was the mushroom farm. A few different varieties were growing in the sheds.
There was also an organic vegetable patch. I let everyone explore that while I hung back (in the shade) and looked around the area.
There was a large wishing tree - you write your wish down and they put it in a little mesh bag and hang it on the tree.
There were also some wishing boards for people to write their wishes or good thoughts.
So that was the end of the tour. We went back to the lobby to rest and cool down. Rachel the babydoll spent the whole tour asleep in the carrier and woke up refreshed for this lovely photo.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
It feels like I was just posting a weekend update and here I am posting another one! And yes, I will get to writing about our trip to the farm three (!) weekends ago, I will, I will.
Anyway, this weekend was quite a fun one, although we didn't go anywhere special. A few interesting highlights - first of which was that Ryan got called for another audition on Saturday, his third in a week! This one was for a print ad and he did very well at the audition - he was able to strike different poses, show different expressions and he wasn't camera shy at all. Hoping for good news!
Apart from that, much of our weekend was spent on Ryan's Halloween costume. Have you guessed what it is yet? After finishing the hat (and the feather), I sewed the top and the belt. Then, on Sunday, we went to Vivocity to hunt down a pair of leggings and a toy dagger. I didn't find leggings in the colour I wanted but came across a pair of jeans in the right colour which I happily snapped up. Richard's task was to find the dagger but he had no luck at Toys R' Us or Daiso, so we might have to conjure one up from our craft cupboard. The party is on Thursday so stay tuned to see the whole costume!
Let me give a shout-out here to Marie - Richard told me that he bumped into you at Toys R' Us! Thanks for taking the time to say hello! We should get together for a chat sometime!
In other news, I had a bit of a shock this weekend as I realised that Rachel, my babydoll, has gone past the 0-3 month mark! She is 4 months now, which means that she's not eligible for all those lovely newborn and 0-3 months clothing anymore. Not to mention all those itty bitty sewing patterns I pinned on my Pinterest boards which I meant to sew up for her - too late now! This realisation has caused me to go into sewing superdrive - you shall be seeing a lot more sewing projects from now!
Anyway, hope you enjoyed these photos of Ryan taken this morning. We were trying to get him to show us different expressions! He always asks to do "worried face", although I think his "worried face" doesn't look very worried at all! Never mind, all good fun!
Friday, October 19, 2012
Richard went to Jakarta for a day on Tuesday. The man has been busy busy busy. As he also left us for two days last week in Shenzhen, I told him that I will teach Ryan to call him "Uncle Richard", hahaha. I'm joking, of course. Ryan loves his papa very much!
So on Tuesday evening after work, I picked up the children from the nanny and drove us all to the airport. We got to Terminal 3 about 8-ish and had more than two hours to kill before the plane arrived. We wandered around until we came to Singkids. Ryan hasn't been to one of these indoor playgrounds for a very long time. In fact, I think the last time was one year ago when he was at a different Singkids outlet (see this post).
Anyway, Ryan was happy happy happy. He spent nearly two hours chasing balloons.
There was a younger boy there (about 2 years old) who kept wanting to hit/scratch Ryan. He would come up to Ryan and simply start hitting/scratching him - and his expression while doing it was EVIL, I'm not joking, ok. His father would go "No, no ..." from the side and the evil boy would go all innocent and surprised and doe-eyed. Then his father (and grandmother and grandfather) would laugh and chuckle. And then that evil boy would go for Ryan again.
There was once, ONCE, that Ryan nudged the little boy obviously thinking that this physical to-and-fro was a game that the little guy liked to play. The father immediately got off his butt and stepped in and told them (or told Ryan?), "No fighting!" Sigh. Sir, even though your son is certainly asking for it, my son is not going to fight with your son. In fact, Ryan was so friendly, he insisted on chaperoning the little fellow and followed him everywhere. Like I mentioned, Ryan just thought all that hitting and scratching was a game - you try to hit/scratch me and I'll try to squirm away. The little boy also kept pulling balloons out of the wind chamber and Ryan dutifully went around the place to collect the balloons to put them back where they belonged. Ryan did try to tag along with a pair of older girls but they were a little too strong and fast for him.
I didn't say or do anything as Ryan wasn't actually getting hurt and I didn't want to remove his illusion that it was a happy game. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the boy's father and grandparents knew who the bad guy was (ie. NOT Ryan).
I didn't say or do anything as Ryan wasn't actually getting hurt and I didn't want to remove his illusion that it was a happy game. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the boy's father and grandparents knew who the bad guy was (ie. NOT Ryan).
Little Rachel chilled out and practised flipping and leopard crawling while all this was going on. My babydoll is 4 months old now!
After all that exertion, we went to have a quiet snack at McDonald's before strolling over to the gate to welcome Richard home. Ryan had such a good time that now he keeps saying, "I want to go airport airplane".
Happy weekend everyone!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Ryan is on holiday from school and he has been following me to the office in the mornings on most days. He loves going to "Mama Office" and understands that "holiday" means that he doesn't go to school. Here he is at the water feature near my carpark in the central business district.
Today was an interesting day because Ryan got called for another audition! The role was supposed to be for an older child but they requested to see Ryan, so we drove over for them to see him. When they saw him with Richard, they asked if Richard would mind doing an audition too! I guess they were looking for a "father"? Hopefully, they both get the parts that they auditioned for! Here they are at the audition!
In other news, I've started working on a Halloween costume for Ryan because Shann invited us to a Halloween party next week! I've only just finished the hat - see if you can guess what he is supposed to be dressed up as!
As for Rachel, she has been flipping back and forth like a roti prata. After her first flip, she didn't flip for a few days and I was wondering if she'd lost interest. Now she is (literally) on a roll!
She is not contented with just flipping now. After she gets on her tummy, she wants to get going and has already started leopard crawling (very very slowly of course). Looks like she will be crawling very soon!
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
The first thing I wanted to mention is that the drive from Singapore to Legoland is very smooth and straightforward. We went in three cars and we had absolutely no problems, even though none of us had been there before.
The next thing I want to mention is the heat. We got there just after 10 am and the sun was already at its best. I dressed Ryan in long sleeves and tights to prevent sunburn. Rachel was well protected in her stroller and had a small battery-operated fan blowing at her all the time, so she was happy. Shann also bought battery-operated fans for each of the older children. The women and the older children had their hats on (Rachel had her little bonnet) and some of us had sunscreen. Believe me, all of it helps. Of course, the husbands went without hats and all, but that's only because guys don't want to look like their wives. To paraphrase Baz Luhrmann, "If I could offer you only one tip for [Legoland], sunscreen would be it."
Legoland is the nucleus of a development which is still being constructed. At the moment, there is only a pedestrian mall and Legoland, but in time to come, there will also be a hotel and some other community features, like housing, international schools, etc.
Here we are, walking through the pedestrian mall to get to Legoland.
Legoland Malaysia has seven themed areas of attractions: The Beginning, Lego Technic, Lego Kingdoms, Imagination, Lego City, Land of Adventure and Miniland. It is quite a large park although it can be covered in a day, especially if, like us, you skip most of the rides.
There are about 40 rides. The first ride we attempted to get on was this boat ride. Unfortunately, it proved to be the most popular ride in Legoland - the queue was horrendous and, while we didn't mind queueing up (in the shade!), we knew it would be impossible to keep the three children entertained during that time. So we had to skip this.
We went across to a small driving circuit, where each child could drive their car around. There is a "senior" circuit and a "junior" circuit. Our three year olds were only good for the "junior" circuit. In fact, it was the first time Ryan had ever operated one of these cars. (If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you'd know that, when Ryan gets on those coin-operated rides at the malls, he is happy enough just to sit there without it moving!) He understood that he needed to step on the pedal to make the car go but he didn't use enough strength to keep the pedal down, so he didn't make it around the circuit even once! His pal, Brayden, on the other hand, was a pro! Sorry, no photo but I have it on video and will share when I edit that.
After that, everyone (except Rachel and I) went on the Legoland express, which is a 12-minute train ride around the park. Sorry, no photos again but yes, I have a video of it - will share when I edit that.
After that, we had lunch - pizza, pasta and fruit for dessert. The men did a great job of organising everything for us - one guy got the table and seats ready, one guy queued up for the pizza and one guy queued up for the pasta. As usual, the camera didn't appear until the food disappeared, so no photos.
There are a lot of Lego sculptures dotted around the park. I was curious enough to try to pry some bricks off them but, nope, I'm happy to report that they are solidly resistant to vandals.
The children went for a ride on this little train three times. Ryan was almost delirious with happiness.
We tried our luck at some rides meant for taller children and got duly turned away. Oh well. This one with the horses seemed pretty interesting for the children. The boys went two rounds on it.
After a short break for ice-cream and fries, we took a walk through Miniland, which is where they have miniature versions of Asian landmarks. You can see some shots of the Miniland structures in yesterday's post. This was the most interesting part of the park for me and I wish I could have lingered a little longer. Also, the sun was less oppressive at this time.
As we walked out of Miniland, we came across this fellow walking over to his phototaking spot! What great timing!
We ended the trip with a whirl through the very crowded souvenir shop.
The theme park certainly has something for everyone, enough to make the drive there worth it. There are loads of photos on the internet and on other blogs, so do check those out if you are interested to see what the park looks like. There is a lot to entertain you, little Lego surprises here and there to see, the staff is generally helpful and friendly, and the place is very clean. A couple of not-so-good things - there could have been more seating areas for people who are waiting for their friends/family taking the rides and I wish the restaurants were less crowded. Nevertheless, all in all, it was a very enjoyable trip.
The theme park certainly has something for everyone, enough to make the drive there worth it. There are loads of photos on the internet and on other blogs, so do check those out if you are interested to see what the park looks like. There is a lot to entertain you, little Lego surprises here and there to see, the staff is generally helpful and friendly, and the place is very clean. A couple of not-so-good things - there could have been more seating areas for people who are waiting for their friends/family taking the rides and I wish the restaurants were less crowded. Nevertheless, all in all, it was a very enjoyable trip.
