New Blog

But still keeping this one. Decided to try to organise my posts a bit more and put all LV and mummy-related posts to a new blog @ beingmummy.wordpress.com. Seeing as that most of my posts these days are about LV and being a mum, chances are I'll be posting there a lot more than I would here. Who knows? This blog might die a natural death, but one can never tell. Not in this age where multi-tasking and e-space hoarding seems to be the norm and order of the day. I think anyway.

Random bits of my life

We celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary yesterday with a simple dinner outing. All 3 of us. And instead of taking pictures of us, I ended up taking pictures of our food. KM thought I was nuts. But why not? Heh, heh, heh...

We wanted to have Japanese and ended up at Ichiban-Tei at Quayside (along the Singapore River). It was our second visit, and we remember it being not-too-bad the last time we were there for my sister's birthday last year, so we thought, why not?

All of us ended up ordering ramen. LV had her kiddy portion that came with a tempura ebi, a couple of pieces of chicken karaage and chips.


KM and I basically had the house specialty - some kind of pork ramen, except mine was in spicy soup stock.


And we attempted to share a serving of soft shell crab,

and kakiage.

And here's why the restaurant ended up being a "not" for us. Too oily. Can you imagine oily Japanese food? I could not, until last night. Like "urgh!" The ramen soup stock had oil globules in them, and the soft shell crab batter felt like it had soaked up all the oil in the pot. I think we felt quite ill after the ramen. KM even refused to eat the soft shell crab after the first bite. We never even got to the kakiage (which cost $16!) and got it packed home. My nephew had it for lunch today - baked, and probably came out a bit better after it got zapped in the oven - and liked it. And oh yes, I must not forget to add that it was salty! Ick. Oily, salty, Japanese food. *gag* All in all, a nice evening, but the food scored a 3 out of 10 for me.

And while I'm still being rather random here, look what my ingeneous hubby has decided to use his seat belt guard thingamajig (what do you call these things??) for:
Not only do the cables now look neat, we'll never lose our controllers again. Brilliant.

Sleeping amidst a bed of kitties

Every weekend, LV gets to sleep in our bed with us. I say it's a treat for her, but really, I think I look forward to cuddling with her more than she does with me. I remember when she first started sleeping on her own, I couldn't fall asleep!

Tonight, once again, she gets to sleep on our bed. With her ever-growing kitty collection. No thanks in great part to me, of course. But oh, what fun it is, to go to bed with so much cuteness!

I need to keep a record before I soon forget

She's growing so quickly, I can't keep up with my updates and records on how much she's changing and learning each day. My scrapbooking of her is totally not caught up, and I'm just blogging in the hopes (and plans) of putting them into her album one day. I just don't want to forget all her milestones and achievements. So for my own record, here are all the things she has managed that I don't want to forget. Ever. As it is, memories are beginning to fade...

1. LV made her first flip when she was 4 months old. I remember this quite distinctly because I had just returned to work and my dad was watching her at that time. When he messaged me that Lauren had made her first flip, I was in school, and in tears.

2. She was able to sit upright on her own quite steadily at about 6 months. Very shortly after that she started crawling and by 7 months, was able to haul herself up to a standing position. Her first tooth also started to appear round about this time.

3. LV ate her first real adult food at about 9 months - crispy roti prata with fish curry!

4. By 9 months, she was cruising (i.e. walking as she held on to support structures) and at 10 months, she was able to take short walks in the evenings with us while holding my hand.

5. At 11 months, she was able to walk independently and was running by her first birthday.

6. She started signing independently around 9 months when she first asked for milk! By about 11 months, she was combining words to make 2-word sign sentences. Today, at 16 months, she can her sign vocabulary consists of:
verbs: want, eat, play, can, sleep, potty (as in, "to go to the toilet")
adverb: please, sorry, yes
adjective: good, thank you, happy
nouns (nature/environment): flower, tree, sun, star, moon, light, butterfly, spider
nouns (food): cake, cereal, milk
nouns (fruit): apple, orange, watermelon, grapes, strawberries
nouns (things to wear): hat, diaper

7. She can say most of the mono- and bisyllabic words she can sign, and her longest 3-word sentence to date is "Where Daddy going?". She can also say, "Mummy", "Ah-ti" ("Aunty" in Tagalog), "please", "bear", "kitty", "Kit-kat" (the name she, just today, gave the stray cat that visits our house), "nana" (for "banana"), "cookie", and a host of other things. Just too many to record. Her first word, for the record, was "Kitty!"

8. She still breastfeeds at 16 months, and in order that she might not be demanding for milk just for comfort, she's been taught to ask for milk when she wants some instead of tugging on my blouse. She will patiently repeat word for word in sign and voice, "Mummy, can I have some milk please?"

9. Just 2 nights ago, she developed an allergic reaction to lavender oil and broke out in rashes on her left arm. At the doctor's, she was able to respond (with prompting) to the question, "What's wrong?" with "I have rashes."

10. She loves Hello Kitty for some bizarre reason. My friend puts it down as the "kitty-DNA" which I presumably passed to her. But truly, while I like Hello Kitty lots, I could not have been the one who influenced her into liking the mouthless cat, 'cos KM was adamant that there be no Hello Kitty items in the house. Any Kitty item I owned had to be inconspicuous and inobtrusive. It is only now that because LV has an obvious love for the Sanrio icon, that I finally am filling the home with Kitty plushes. All because of LV. But of course. *grin*

11. Her pre-molars started to show at about 14 months and seems to be taking a long time to make their full-appearance.

Surely there will be more to come of her achievements, and indeed there is more to note even now, like how she's beginning to show a strong love for dance and has learned how to tip-toe as she boogies and hops across the floor. Or how she's not afraid of cats and has bitten Cobalt on his tail before when she was about 10 to 11 months old and trying to relief herself of teething itches. And she has finally learnt what it means to kiss someone! She gives a nice, cute peck now when asked for a kiss!

I don't ever want to forget, and I'm so afraid I will.

Shopping in Style

Lauren loves flowers. And it would seem, pink bags too. We took her down for a walk this evening after dinner as we sometimes do when time permits. This evening, she picked her pink bag from Nai-nai to carry with her, and put in it the Strawberry kitty which KGB gave her for Christmas. Then off we went for our walk. We stopped by the florist to get her a long-promised flower - she picked a yellow gerbera that matched her outfit, and paid the florist a dollar for it. All by herself. Armed with her flower and pink bag, she wasted no time in checking out the shops that were still open. What a girl she is!

Silly Nursing Room Designs

It must have been a male who designed this. Or more likely, a non-parent. For sure. Just look at where the soap dispenser is. In between the changing bed and the seat for breastfeeding mums. And where is the sink? Out of the frame to the far right. Because parents must have arms as long as Mr Tickle's that can reach some 1m away for the tap. And this is not the only silly nursing room layout at Vivo City. Another one has no changing bed, but a diaper bin right next to the chair for nursing mums. Imagine nursing your baby next to a diaper bin! This on top of the fact that the supposed Parents-cum-nursing room is within the ladies' washroom because men can't be parents taking their kids out, and in need of a place to change their babies' diapers. No wonder Singaporeans aren't having babies. The basic support structure isn't even there.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Isn't life just meant to be taken easy? Ah... To be a baby, enjoying Sunday afternoon cartoons on Mummy and Daddy's bed. Nice.

So tired!

My little sweetheart was so tired this afternoon, she fell asleep sitting in the shopping cart! Poor little cutie patootie.

Serial Stalking of Cereal Stock

Went to Cold Storage at HV last Saturday to get some avocado and crab sticks to make california rolls for lunch, and decided to walk down the cereal aisle just to check on the cereal stock as I always do. As you know, because of the cereal conspiracy going on, the walk down the aisle has been a disappointing affair for the last many months. But that day, I SAW FRUITY PEBBLES ON THE SHELF! YES! I quickly helped myself to 3 boxes. I wanted to take the remaining 2 boxes after the 3 I removed revealed them hiding at the back of the shelf, but KM said that that was what cereal conspiracies were made up of - cereal stockers. Humph. Well. I didn't think that was a valid argument, but I left the remaining boxes behind for the other Fruity Pebbles fans out there. Thank me.

KM thought it was crazy having 7 boxes of cereal at home - 1 Apple Cinnamon Cheerios (LV's favourite), 3 Honey Bunches of Oats (KM's favourite and under threat by cereal conspiricists at the Cold Storage chain of supermarkets; we've been getting ours from NTUC) and 3 boxes of my Fruity Pebbles (which LV rather enjoys too). That was some 5 days ago now. We're already down to 4 boxes of cereal. We do go through them very quickly. Time to stalk the shelves again.

First Photo of 2009

Dad bought us a table at the Civil Service Club's New Year's Eve Dinner and Dance, and as much as I would have preferred staying in on New Year's Eve (being the New Year Grinch that I am), I was indeed counting down to 2009 at the Fairmont with a crowd of horn tooting, mask wearing, conga line dancing people I did not know. And this was the first photo of 2009 that I have to document the madness of a countdown which I shall forever never comprehend, but took part in anyway.

Happy New Year to all.