The Bub in the Belly

This morning was the much anticipated trip to the Singapore Zoo.  It has been years since Richard and I were there and it has changed quite a bit since the last time we were there. It was Ryan's first time at the zoo so we were very excited that he could finally see all the animals that we were reading to him about.

We arrived at the Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning at Evans Road just before 9 am and got onto the big bus. The journey to the Zoo passed quickly as the time was spent singing all the familiar songs, like Wheels on the Bus, We're Going to the Zoo, If You're Happy, Incy Wincy Spider, Down in the Jungle and lots more.

The school excursion was only half a day and the programme was quick and simple. Walk through the zoo to the first tram station, get on the tram and alight at the next station and visit Rainforest Kidzworld, have some snacks/lunch and then take the tram once round the zoo and back to the bus to Evans Road by about 1 pm. We were at liberty to stay on at the zoo on our own but we decided to follow the bus back as Ryan would be needing his nap by then and we would go back to work at the office.

In our short time there, we managed to get a look at some animals - the flamingo, the orangutan, the chimpanzee, the ostrich and the zebra. At Rainforest Kidzworld, Ryan got up close to the horses, the ponies and the little goats.  Ryan missed the giraffe (we were on the tram and he was looking the other way) and we didn't see the elephant/tiger/lion. But we did see the polar bears, Inuka and Sheba! They were magnificent!

Ryan insisted on being carried most of the time except when we reached the water play area at Rainforest Kidzworld. When he saw the water wonderland, his eyes just lit up and he was so excited! He absolutely could not wait for us to change him into his swim diaper - he would have walked straight into the pool fully clothed if we let him. When we finally managed to put his swim diaper on, he ran over to the pool and went "Wah!" with both his hands up in the air. He was so happy!

The other babies didn't participate but I don't think Ryan noticed.  He was playing and splashing about, exploring all the sprays and the play equipment.  After about 30 minutes, we got him out and ate lunch (KFC!) next to the water play area and then everyone sang some action songs. Then it was back on the tram.  We popped into the souvenir shop and Ryan picked out a soft toy as a memento of his wonderful time at the zoo.  He picked a proboscis monkey (he was attracted to the big nose).

Then it was back on the bus and back to the school. In the car on the way home, Ryan fell asleep, no doubt all pooped out.  I'm sure that he had happy dreams of his morning.

This week and next week, Ryan is participating in the Julia Gabriel June Holiday Programme at Evans Road. In the afternoons from Monday to Thursday, Ryan attends a one and a half hour session of music, storytelling and outdoor activity. On Friday morning, the whole class gets to go on an excursion.  The excursion for Week 1 is to the Singapore Zoo (as the theme for the week is "Off to the Zoo").  We will be going to the beach at Sentosa in Week 2.

Richard and I take turns to take time off from work to attend the sessions. We send Ryan to the nanny in the morning while we go to work and then after lunch, I/Richard will fetch him to go to the centre in Evans Road. After that, Ryan usually hangs out with me at my office till we go home. It was my turn to go with Ryan to class on Monday and I was pleasantly surprised when Richard popped by at the class.  He said he wanted to be there on Ryan's first day of school.

Ryan seems to be enjoying himself in the class. Although he insists on sticking quite close to us (maintaining body contact) most of the time, I can see that he is fully focused on what is going on in the class. He really pays attention and he doesn't look around or wander off to do his own thing or fuss about. He enjoys bubble time the most, when the teachers blow soap bubbles into the air. Reminds me of when he was still doing classes at Gymboree -they also had bubble time and in fact, the same song is sung ("bye bye bubbles").

Yesterday was "swimming" day so there were two plastic pools filled with water and toys for the babies to sit in and play.  I led Ryan out to the pools and the moment he saw them, he let go of my hand and walked straight over. There were two babies in one pool and Ryan walked over and got into the other pool where there were no babies.  The teacher invited him to join the two babies in the first pool so I picked him up and put him in there. The funny thing is that he got up and climbed out and walked back to his private pool, haha!  In the end, the teacher and some other babies decided to join him in his pool.

Ryan was so happy splashing about and playing with the toys.  I was looking forward to seeing Ryan play with the other babies in the pool so it was slightly disappointing that none of the other babies/mommies seemed to share our enthusiasm for the water.  Two of the babies didn't even participate (didn't even change into their swimwear) and one baby got changed but refused to get into the water. As for the rest, their mommies put them into the water but held onto them the entire time, panicking and shrieking at every drop of water that landed on their babies' faces.  This puzzled me a little because it seemed to defeat the purpose of the activity and it actually "disturbs" other babies who are trying to enjoy the activity - Ryan was watching these mommies/babies the entire time with a very concerned look. Anyway, after about five minutes, these nervous mommies took their babies out and Ryan had the pool all to himself for the rest of the time allocated for the activity. Hopefully, next week's batch of mommies/babies will be more excited about the water.

With the babies gone, it was just Ryan, me and the teachers there. But of course we couldn't stay there forever, although I'm sure Ryan would have no objections to such a proposal. When Siti told Ryan, "two more minutes, Ryan", you could see his expression change immediately from very happy to very serious, which made Siti laugh. Anyway, at the end of the period, the teachers left and it was just Ryan and me so we had a little private time.

Friday's excursion is to the Singapore Zoo and both Richard and I will be accompanying Ryan on the trip.  We've decided to take the school bus with the teachers (instead of driving there ourselves) so that Ryan can have the full experience of a school excursion. I'm looking forward to it. All the soft toys and wooden/plastic animals that Ryan has are quite meaningless without a reference to the real thing so I think this will be really wonderful. Hopefully it doesn't rain!

We're back from a long trip to Malaysia.  The first weekend there was spent mostly eating and lazing about with friends who were visiting from Singapore (the Loos, the Ngs, the Leows and the Gohs).

After our friends left, it was time to get down to business - moving house! The renovation work at our new condo in PJ is just about done now and so it was time to pack up our unit in KL and move over.  We plan to fix up the KL unit and lease it out.

The movers came on Thursday so we had about two days to pack up. The move went pretty smoothly and on Friday, we spent our first night in the new condo. We had to leave for Singapore on Saturday and that was pretty depressing to do - imagine moving into your nice new home and "moving out" the next day! If only we had more time to enjoy the place!

Anyway, back to Singapore it was. Sunday was a pleasant day, we skipped swimming (it was drizzling) and spent the morning at Vivocity. After Shichida class, we met up with the Leows at Marina Barrage and then some other friends (the Gohs and the Loos) joined us for dinner at Tony Roma's at Suntec City.

Here are some shots taken during our trip to KL.

We had the usual weekend, with one exception - we bought a penthouse in Singapore!

Yes, after more than 10 years of living within a stone's throw of Orchard Road, it's time to move on.  We're still sorting out the purchase, it should be completed in August and we'll probably live in two places for a while before finally shifting completely to the new place.  Actually, we were only casually looking at places these past two weeks (each was imperfect).  Prices are on their way up and we decided that this unit would be the last unit we would view and we would wait till next year before continuing our search. It turned out to be a great place at a great price so we snapped it up.

It feels like we've reached the end of a long journey.

When Richard and I moved out from the university hostel after I graduated, Richard was still a student (his course was longer than mine). We, with our two turtles, decided to rent a place near the university, in the west of Singapore.  We found a two-bedroom HDB flat for rent in Bukit Panjang. The owner (a single lady) locked up one room for herself and kept a key to the flat so she could "drop by" whenever she liked. It took me an hour to get to work by bus and I had to stand all the way.  One day I skipped breakfast and I fainted on the bus. Still, it was our tiny slice of heaven - we had our own fridge! our own washing machine! a sofa! We could yell, "Honey, I'm home!"  Our two turtles were let loose in the master ensuite and they laid two perfect white eggs (which didn't hatch, unfortunately). We adopted two cats and felt like a little family.

The landlady wasn't too fond of our cats though so we decided to move. We found another HDB flat for rent in the west, in Choa Chu Kang.  This was a huge place that originally had three bedrooms (two bedrooms were combined into one) and the cats were delighted with all the space.

After a while, the landlord decided to take back the flat so we had to move again. By this time, I'd been working for some time and we had enough money to afford a place in Cairnhill in District 9.  The apartment was small and dark, with poor ventilation.  We had to hang our laundry in the guest toilet and after living there a while, the ceiling in the guest toilet started to leak. Plus, the neighbour had a blind Pekingnese which stank to high heaven. But it was Marvellous. We felt that we never wanted to move again. Orchard Road was a hop, skip and a jump away and commuting to work on public transport took less than half an hour.  Newton Circus hawker centre was our regular supper haunt. We would stroll there and back under the moonlight, hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart. How much better could things be?

Our male turtle died and we buried him, on a moonlit night, in the vast green space between our apartment and the hawker centre.  We gave the other turtle away to a friend who had a turtle pond, to save her from being lonely, but she still passed away, because we couldn't save her from being heartbroken.

We lived the yuppie life - we worked hard, played hard.  Days were long, nights were young. When we were not working, we were either playing pool or playing mahjong. We caught a movie every week and checked out all the malls in Orchard Road.  We started an aquarium.  We got married, after nine years of courtship, and we felt on top of the world.

After several happy years, Singapore caught the en-bloc (collective sale) fever and our apartment, the old lady that she was, was a prime target. We had no choice but to move, again.  Richard found us a walk-up apartment in River Valley, on the other side of Orchard Road.  It was on the fourth floor but the place was large, bright and airy and the balcony looked out to green grass and a huge tree with a wooden swing. Again, heaven. We adopted a dog and named him Max. One cat tolerated him, the other didn't. In 2005, we were overjoyed to discover that I was, unexpectedly, pregnant.  We were devastated when I miscarried in my first trimester.  The timing was just not right, I guess. After recovering both physically and mentally, we doved back into life, trusting that God knew best.  Those were the tough career years, when we still needed to earn our stripes and we worked hard to do so.

After four years, the en-bloc fever struck again and took hold of our apartment. We didn't know if we could afford another place in the same area and if we could it would likely be small and dark like our apartment at Cairnhill (so much for being Marvellous).  But God knows best. While we were walking Max around the neighbourhood one day, we noticed that one of the double-storey terrace houses had been put up for rent. It was just across the road from where we were living.  We called the number on the sign - the agent was actually sitting in his car just outside the house (he had just put up the sign) - and we got to view the house straightaway.  We made an offer right there and then and moved in almost immediately.

The house was empty which was great because we could move in all our furniture and kitchen appliances. Still, there was so much space leftover. I have an entire room for my wardrobe, the study has floor to ceiling bookcases which are filled to overflowing and there is a guest room downstairs. We planted a frangipani tree and did lots of gardening. We cut fresh flowers from our garden and harvested rambutans from the tree in the backyard. We built a lotus pond. We've had barbeques and meals al fresco. One of our beloved cats passed away and we gave up the aquarium. We bought a convertible and parked it in our driveway. In 2008, I fell pregnant again and we bought a bigger car, which we had to park under the big tree outside the house. Ryan was born in January 2009 and, with our careers being relatively stable, we felt that our lives were complete.

We planned to stay only as long as we needed to find a place to buy but we ended up staying for four years, now coming to five.  The huge condominium which came up on the plot where our old walk-up apartment used to be is already almost ready for occupation.  The site on which our old apartment at Cairnhill used to stand now boasts a swanky new condominium as well.

Perhaps it's the fact that we've moved five times since we graduated, that we don't relish the thought of moving again.  Perhaps it's the knowledge that, in Singapore, buying your own freehold doesn't guarantee you'll be able to stay put (we've been through two en-blocs).

The push came when we started looking for pre-schools for Ryan. While the pre-school doesn't determine the location of the new home, the location of the new home will affect the choice of the pre-school. We hope to keep Ryan in the same pre-school for all four years of pre-school but we can't guarantee that we'll stay in this house for that long. Like all leases, there is no security of tenure.  So we needed to lock down our location first. And now we have!

We do feel very sentimental about leaving our present house but we're also looking forward to moving into the new place.  I don't know if Ryan will remember much about this house but, just like Richard and I have wonderful memories of all the places in which we've lived, I know Ryan will build wonderful memories in his new home.

We skipped swimming class today, only because we all overslept! Anyway, it's Mother's Day today, so I'm allowed to sleep in with my boys!

Here are some photos from yesterday when Ryan met up with Brayden, Matthias and Crystal at The Playhouse at Rochester House.  Ryan especially enjoyed the ball pit and he had loads of fun.

Ryan took a couple of unassisted steps last Sunday (2 May).  It was over a very short distance, less than an arm's length, to get to me, and I don't think he was even thinking about it. All the same, look out! Baby on the move!

We had been told by Ryan's paediatrician at his checkup in April that Ryan was perfectly able to walk already and that it was just a matter of whether he wanted to or not.  Still, I was surprised when he casually walked over to me out of the blue. That's because I know many other babies who learned to walk by first learning how to stand up from a squat, without support.  Ryan hasn't been practising that at all.  He hasn't even spent much time standing on his own without support, let alone standing up from a squat. He does cruise quite well (walk with support) and he even insists on walking upright down the stairs (while holding your hand).

The next day, Monday, when I went to fetch Ryan from his nanny after work, Ryan's nanny proudly announced to me that "your son can walk already". When we got home, he showed us his moves.  Holding a toy in his hands (ie. without having to stretch out his upper limbs for balance), he covered five steps or so, no sweat.

There's no doubt that he can walk quite well, despite not having practised much. He doesn't use the 'penguin walk' that a lot of babies use (the toes pointing almost at right angles and the arms sticking out at the sides for balance). His gait looks fairly natural and gives the impression that he's been doing this for years already. I think he spent his time observing and visualising so he now knows how it's done!

Having said all that, Ryan doesn't seem to be very interested in walking for walking's sake.  He doesn't wander around aimlessly and he still doesn't bother to stand up from a squat.  If he's not already standing, he won't bother getting up to walk.  Well, not yet anyway.  I've received countless comments from other parents about how I should be afraid, very afraid, of Ryan starting to walk because we'll have to chase after him all the time when he does. That probably will be the case, I suppose.  But I'm looking forward to it.  A whole new world is opening up, for both Ryan as well as Richard and I.  Now, Richard and I are never at rest when Ryan is in our care. Ryan has never been put in a playpen, he doesn't sleep in a cot, he is seldom in the stroller even. He is allowed to roam free and usually we just follow his lead (to the bedroom! to the toilet! to the living room!). He may not be walking or running, but he is still mobile and fast and our house is devoid of any childproofing so we have to pay very close attention.  We constantly follow him around, upstairs and downstairs and all around the house and even when we are out. Now that he is walking and a little more independent, we can relax a little and allow him to be a (short) distance away.

Today we got together with some families at Ee Fann's and Shann's beautiful house.  Florinda arranged a skincare talk (with Mary Kay products) for the mummies, which I enjoyed very much. After that, we sat around, ate from the delicious potluck and chatted till 8 pm. Ryan especially enjoyed the tuna prepared by Shann (actually it was tuna pasta but Ryan just went for the tuna).

Looking cool. (This shot taken by Kenny.)