The Bub in the Belly

Sunday, February 20, 2011

What we did at swimming class

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 7:25 PM

This morning, Ryan had his swimming class. He was still asleep when we arrived at the pool, so it took some time for him to wake up and process that we were going swimming but, once he did, he was all smiles. He refused to wear his neoprene wetsuit again though, so I think we may need to get a new/different one for him.

There was a new exercise in the pool today - swimming through a tunnel.

Ryan's favourite activity is doing the jumps. He has yet to take a flying leap into the water though. Right now, it's a slow plunge off the side of the pool.

Ryan has made good progress in his swimming and he's pretty much mastered the baby exercises. In the past few months, Coach Dave has started introducing more advanced exercises and to be honest, I think that Ryan needs more water time, not just 30 minutes once a week, to master these advanced exercises, otherwise he'll be stuck at this current level for a long long time. So I'm thinking that I need to swim with Ryan during weekdays after work in our pool at home. Problem is, the water will be really cold - maybe I need to get a neoprene wetsuit for myself!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Taking it easy

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 11:53 PM

On Friday evening, I joined a group of mummies for dinner at Hanabi. With the end of Chinese New Year, it was time for some non-Chinese food! There were 13 of us, and we ate and chatted non-stop. We discuss the same topics everytime we meet up: children, husbands and sex (making more babies) - hahaha! Well, I guess parenthood brings so many unique experiences, no matter if you have one child or five, so there's always something "new" to talk about.

On Saturday, we brought Ryan for PlayClub. They had Parents' Chats this week. This is our third Parents' Chats and we really didn't have anything to ask. As usual, the class photo was taken after the chats, so that was the only thing we were interested in!

Class photo - we are standing in the middle
(my mum is standing next to me, wearing red)

Something different this session - I got my mum to accompany Ryan in class! I think she was quite curious as to what the class was about so I suggested that she attend the class with Ryan. She seemed quite keen so Richard and I went to have some tea nearby and left her to it. After the class, Richard and I went to pick them up and my mum was quite happy with her experience, although Safina said that Ryan bullied my mum during class! Apparently, Ryan was dancing up and down the classroom the whole time! My mum just let him dance and dance and dance, I think she was amazed because she'd never seen Ryan so hyper before!

Anyway, it was a good experience for Richard and me too - we got to take some time off and have a little couple time.

Back home in the evening, we brought out the sprinkle mat. We haven't had it out for a long time - we lent it to a friend for her son's birthday party and when we got it back, the rainy season was upon us. Now that sunny days are here again, we're going to pack on that Vitamin D!

Dinner was at Crystal Jade Kitchen in Plaza Singapura and we did a little shopping after that (Spotlight, Daiso and Carrefour). Ryan was yawning away at the supermarket, but the sweetie didn't make a fuss at all. He fell asleep on the way home (he hadn't had a nap the whole day) and I managed to put him down in bed quite smoothly when we arrived home, he was so tired! I think he had a good day though!

Friday, February 18, 2011

The last day of the Chinese New Year

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 12:21 AM

My mum arrived in Singapore on Wednesday night, so we were able to spend the last day of the Chinese New Year (Thursday) together. Of course, it was food and more food!

My mum spent the afternoon in Chinatown while I went to work. My partners and I treated our team (associates and secretaries) to lunch at Si Chuan Dou Hua, which is on the 60th floor of UOB Plaza (Tower 1). The menu was quite good, but frankly speaking, after dining so well over the past 15 days, I thought there was little that could really impress me. I was therefore pleasantly surprised that, of all dishes, their yee sang (or yu sheng) was the best that I have tasted in all the restaurants I have been to over these past two weeks. They served it with fried enoki mushrooms and crispy salmon skin, aside from the usual salmon, abalone, mandarin peel, pearl onion, etc.

Usually when there is yee sang, the guests lose interest after the first small helping and have to be persuaded to take further helpings to help finish the dish. In the end, the service staff will simply transfer the remainder onto a smaller plate to make space for the next course. None of that was necessary today. Everyone was fighting to have more!

Long Spout Tea Performance

The view from the restaurant on the 60th floor of UOB Plaza 1

For dinner, we (together with my mum) went to Red House at East Coast Seafood Centre. Had a relatively simple dinner - chilli crab, roast chicken, steamed teriyaki cod and scallops with broccoli.

See the silhouettes on the upper floor at the left?
That's Richard carrying Ryan in his arms, with my mum sitting across the table.

The moon was full and it was bright and beautiful. The sky was so clear that I couldn't resist the opportunity to take some shots. Here are some of the (unedited) photos I took with my 18-105 mm lens.

Well, that's the end of Chinese New Year for this year. Let's hope that the year of the Rabbit brings good health, prosperity and happiness! Kong Hee Fatt Choy everyone!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Food food, glorious food

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 12:44 AM

Tuesday and Wednesday passed by in a blur of Chinese food and yee sang.

I had lunch with clients on Tuesday at Yu Cuisine, a new restaurant at The Shoppes at Marina Bay, which is a short walk from my office. This is opened by the same group which opened Bosses at Vivocity. The decor was refreshingly modern - not a red lantern in sight.

The 11 of us sat in a private room, which felt like an underwater cave to me because of the blue fish studded on the stone-clad walls.

We had the usual multi-course Chinese meal and, by the time we were willing to leave, we had already spent more than three hours there. The service was great and the food was quite good in general so we decided to switch our lunch reservation for Wednesday over to this restaurant, when we would be bringing another group of clients out for lunch, with a few tweaks to the menu.

For dinner on Tuesday night, Richard and I, with Ryan, met up with our mahjong friends for dinner at Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck in Paragon. We were quite pampered there - although the restaurant was full and there were only 8 of us, they put us in a huge private room and stationed an excellent service staff there for us. We lingered there for more than 2 hours.

Wednesday - lunch at Yu Cuisine again, this time with only 9 of us. They sat us in the same room, with the same service staff as the day before, and the food was, again, quite good.

Wednesday's dinner was a get-together with Richard's ex-colleagues at Long Beach King Seafood (Kallang). We ordered from the set menu but added another crab, a veggie dish and half a roast chicken.

Tossing the yee sang

Black pepper crab

Chilli crab (with fried buns in the background)

I literally had two consecutive days of 10-course meals for lunch and dinner - and I'm having another one for lunch on Thursday! I'm not complaining but I'm thinking that, after this week, I'm going to stay off Chinese food for a while.

Ryan was with us, as always, during the two dinners. He slept in my arms for most of Tuesday's dinner, because he tired himself out at the playground just before dinner started. For Wednesday's dinner, he sat on Richard's lap and quietly got down to business with the fried rice and the soup. He wasn't interested in much else after that but was quite contented to sit in our laps for the remainder of the dinner.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Oval Rabbit

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 1:15 AM

This was put together on the spur of the moment, while we were doing some other arts and crafts one afternoon during our recent holiday in Malaysia. Ryan has been doing a lot of hopping and saying "hop, hop, hop" so I thought that a bunny theme would interest him. It's also inspired by the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit.

How Ryan did it - click here!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Our Valentine's Day

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 12:25 AM

We turned down some social invitations for Monday night and our friends were surprised to hear that our reason was because we celebrate Valentine's Day.

Of course, Ryan is with us but that does not lessen the celebration, in fact we would not have it any other way. Having said that, we don't do anything big - we just have dinner together after work. Some years we cooked at home, some years we go out somewhere. There was one year we didn't manage to have our cozy dinner - that was the year that Valentine's Day coincided with Chinese New Year.

This year, we had dinner at timbré (the branch where Fat Frog once was). The owners are actually clients of Richard's firm. I suppose, if we were younger, we might have stayed on for the live music, but we were pretty tired from work actually. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves. The ambience was casual and comfortable and the crabmeat aglio olio and the thin pizza was delicious. The fish and chips - the fish was not so great, but Ryan enjoyed the chips.

Richard tucking into the spaghetti, Ryan in the background giving his pasta a good chew.

For as long as we have been together, including during our dating years, Richard has bought me flowers every Valentine's Day. If it's a working day, like this year, they are delivered to my office.

Richard and I get each other presents as well and this is one of my presents from Richard this year - it's a big terrarium!

It was delivered on Saturday. Apparently, Richard secretly went down to the shop a few weeks ago and the shopkeeper helped him to select the plants for the terrarium. He told me that there was a cactus called "Leona" which he wanted to include but the shopkeeper said cacti don't do well in terrariums, so that idea was scrapped.

Everytime I look at it, I notice something new. Maybe one day, a little fairy will appear?

Love you hubby! Happy Valentine's Day!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Back to normal

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 1:37 AM

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's our weekend update. On Saturday, Ryan went for his PlayClub class. His teacher, Safina, moaned, "You cut his hair!!" Oops.

There was swimming, which is more like splashing. It is nevertheless Ryan's absolute favourite activity at PlayClub. He is always the last to leave the pool, long after all the other children are gone and all the water toys are put away. This week he literally lay prone in the pool as the water drained away. All his classmates had left and gone back to class for music. Safina had to come back out to the pool to ask Ryan to get back into class!

In the evening, we went for a cozy gathering at Trevor and Florinda's home. There were five families altogether. Ryan hadn't taken a nap the whole day so he fell asleep on the way there and continued sleeping when we got there. He woke up after the yee sang was tossed - probably woken up by our rowdiness!

It was a warm and relaxed evening for the adults. The children had a good time too. One of the mummies, Alicia, brought some balloons and the children had tons of fun playing with them.

On Sunday morning, we went for Ryan's swimming class. Ryan was not wearing his neoprene wetsuit. He doesn't always wear it, sometimes he wears swimming shorts, sometimes he wears only a swim diaper like on Sunday. The pool at Dempsey is heated so when he is in the water, he is fine. However, there was a breeze so when he was out of the water doing the jumps, he was shivering.

Coincidentally, Alicia asked me on Saturday evening whether and when Ryan wears his wetsuit. Well, generally, if he's in the water, Ryan is all right and doesn't really need a suit if he's going to be actively moving about. However, if Ryan is not going to be moving much in the water, not generating body heat, then, if the water is cold, I will put him in the wetsuit. A wetsuit is also good if the water is warm but the outside environment is chilly, like it was on Sunday - breeze on wet skin is not fun!

Ryan's nanny's daughter, who teaches swimming, told me this interesting fact - she said that if the weather is hot, the water in the pool will likely be cold, and vice versa. If the pool is above ground though, the water will always be a little chilly. Of course, if the pool is heated, then all this does not apply.

The afternoon was taken up by Shichida class (Ryan's sensei also moaned, "You cut his hair!" Double oops). Then it was back home for a rest. Ryan concussed for more than 4 hours - woke up at 10 pm! We went out for a late dinner at Mr Teh Tarik Cartel at ECP. Here he is enjoying Coin Roti Prata - long strips of roti prata/roti canai spiralled to form "coins".

After we filled our tummies, we went for a walk along the beach. This is truly one of the best things about our new home - its proximity to the beach. I love the late night walks - everything is serene and peaceful.