Elizabeth's 5th birthday

Elizabeth celebrated her 5th birthday and she had one beautiful home made mermaid birthday cake which was the centre of attraction for all the kids. Grandma baked and decorated it according to her wish.

The cupcakes were within "easy reach" for the kids. They really admired the perfectly hand-crafted decorations on the cupcakes, and so did I.

Ethan picked one which was decorated with a ladybird while Nicole insisted on one which was finished with a delicate pink tea set.

Chinese Opera

Bet you have no clue as to what Nicole was mesmerised by. - Chinese Opera! She literally sat and watched for a good 30 minutes as though she really could understand it! She had to ask her grandma to translate it into English for her as it was a hokkien based opera. It was kind of a tough job because the plot of the drama was about a man leaving his wife for another woman!

Thereafter, Ethan came along to introduce more physical activities. They both pushed and pulled the baby car at lightyear speed while screaming at the top of their voice! Thank god it was an open area meant for public activities, otherwise, we would have gotten into big trouble with complaints filed against the 2 little culprits!

Ethan's 2nd birthday

One little Chubby but 3 mini birthday celebrations on 3 different days!

We celebrated Chub's 2nd birthday 3 times! Just the way we did for Nicole when she was 2.

Nicole had one Numeral 2 Barney cake (3kg), I Pooh Bear cake (2kg), and 1 mango cake (1kg). Nicole had bigger cakes because my brother, SIL, niece, aunties, uncles and greatgrandma happened to be around when we celebarated her birthday.

Learning from experience, we figured we could never have finished eating such a big cake as we only had a small family celebration for Ethan. Hence, we bought 2 smaller cakes and 9 cupcakes for Chub. Barney was the latest favourite of Chub! The happiest person was none other than the big Jie-Jie :).

See how the 2 decided to disect the cake according to their own wish! It was so much more fun for them as they could slice and dice it without any constraints :) There were no guests to share the cake with, apart from the immediate family members.

Ethan's milestones (2)

Ethan's second attempt in colouring. All his own effort. The flower, heartshape and word were the creation of Nicole. I would say it's pretty good as he was able to keep most of the colours within boundaries.



I knew Ethan could remember and articulate some 70% of what’s hidden underneath the alphabets when he was about 19 months old but when I asked him again several weeks ago, he gave me a pleasant surprise totally from a different perspective. Not only could he remember ALL of the pictorial representation for every alphabet, he also added his own creation along the way.

As usual, we started off by :

Me “ Ethan, A for ?”
Ethan “ A for apple”
Me “ B for? “
Ethan “B for ball. B for boy”

Etc etc

Me “ E for ?”
Ethan “ E for Ethan. E for elephant”
Etc etc

Me “ G for ?”
Ethan “ G for “pu-tao” ” (meaning Grapes in Mandarin)
Me “ Hahaha, G for grapes, you mean”

Etc etc

Me” M for?”
Ethan “M for mummy. M for moon”
Me “ N for ?”
Ethan “ N for Nicole” (instead of saying N for Nest which is the picture underneath)

Me “U for?”
Ethan “ Payung” (meaning Umbrella in Malay)
Me “ Wow, I didn’t know you still remember this word!”

Ethan could also add on to the objects by describing the colours such as red apple, blue car, green frog, pink shoes, yellow banana, purple Barney, orange spoon and black cat.


Ethan has moved on to doing "spelling". He is able to recognise the sounds of certain words and name them accordingly. E.g. When I spelt the word " A-P-P-L-E", he would respond by saying " Apple" "B-O-Y" -> "Boy", "C-A-T" -> "cat", etc etc. I am very pleased with him. Though he appears to be playing all day long, he has actually learnt much :).

His latest interest is - Singing! :)

He would sing the "Happy Birthday" song all day long and when he is about to sleep every night, he would sing the "Barney Song " which goes " I love you , you love me, we are happy family, with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, wont you say you love me too". With that, he would close his eyes and get on to his dream world. Sweet dreams, baby!

Mum & Dad

Mum & Dad, according to Nicole. :)

Fun learning

It was a fun Sunday afternoon.

The girls did a worksheet on pronouns and they got them all correct.

Then, they were told to count in multiples of 5. To ensure that they really understood the concept, I gave them a little quiz thereafter. They seemed to have a pretty good idea of it.

Next, I got them to do some real counting. As they both love to wear pretty dresses and high heels and so I made them "buy" their favourite items. Being the super vainpot, Nicole was quick to "settle" her purchases while Shannon needed a little help to find the exact dollar combination.

Soon, they were off to play with the new toys - the motorised bike and car! (The car comes with a remote control for the adult to really control the kid "remotely" ) All in all, we had one hour of lesson and one hour of play. The kids really enjoyed it!

Beautiful flowers

Another beautiful creation from Nicole's Art class

Super late

My cousin. Pauline was in town and we decided to meet up. We arranged to meet at the restaurant at 12.15pm and guess what. She called at 12.10pm (while we were already at the restaurant car park) informing me that she just got home from breakfast and she would be late. Well, I thought we could wait a little. She called again at 12.20pm. This time, she said she still had not prepared porridge for Justin and she would need at least an hour to prepare and half an hour to travel to town! Gosh!

So, we didnt get to meet up in the end. It was such a pity as I have not seen Justin for over a year. Hopefully we can meet up again soon.

Impatient Chub

Everyone was still in the house when Ethan was 100% ready to charge at the malls. Rose was still in the kitchen, mom was sitting on the sofa, Nicole was running about and I was still changing in the room. Ethan was shouting and shouting but all turned a deaf ear to him.

Ethan “ Let’s go shopping! Popo”
Ethan “Popo, walk with Ethan”
Nic “ We are not ready yet, Ethan”
Ethan “ Hurry up! Let’s go shopping! Mummy, hurry up!” ( he came running into the bedroom with his shoes on and pulled me off the chair)

Ethan was such a darling! I just lifted him off the ground and gave him a peck on his chubby rosy cheek!

Bee Movie?

Nicole's hairy bees! Or perhaps they were boys with wings! :)

Ethan's milestones

Ethan’s language ability has multiplied many folds within the last 3 months. He can conduct simply conversations in proper sentences. He is able to express his emotions and demand for his rights. Occasionally, he still refers to himself as Ethan though he is able to use “I” in most cases.

“Mummy, make milk for me please”
“ I want to watch Barney”
“This is not Barney, this is Dora. I don’t want”
“I want to eat cake and biscuits”
“Ethan want to drink soup”

Etc etc

More surprisingly, he has learnt to count from 1 to 20 and he has a good concept of 1, 2 and 3 numerically. He would make remarks like :

“2 nappies. 1 for jie-jie, 1 for Ethan”
“I have 3 cups”

He knows his body parts very well, so much so that I got a shock when I was changing him on the bed.

Me “ Ethan, stay still. I am changing your diaper now”
Ethan “ Penis. Ethan’s penis. Take out “(while putting his hands into the diaper)

Me “ hahaha. Hey, Ethan! Don’t touch it. Stinky urine!”
( I tried to tickle him so that he would keep his hands to himself. He did retract his hands but only to find another interesting spot)

Ethan “ Mummy, nipples! Ethan’s nipples!” (gagagaga, while giggling and trying to wriggle away from my grip)

I don’t know if this is an indication of early maturity? Ethan has NOT reached 2 years of age just yet, in case you wonder.

Quick fix

A quick to make dinner set for Nicole.

-Boiled carrots and baby corns
-Home made pan fried egg coated beef and cod fish rice cakes
-Cheese stick
-Iced milo

Ethan had exactly the same but without the iced milo.

Thereafter, we adults went out to have a peaceful dinner while the kids enjoyed their yummy and nutritional meal at home.

Residents' day

We had our yearly residents' day celebration. This year, there were many more activities for all apart from the usual refreshement served. First, there was a super big inflated shaking playhouse which came in the shape of a giant snail! All the kids had a fun time bouncing inside! They all came out with spinning heads!

Thereafter, Nicole Q for face painting. She wanted flowers on her face and she had her wish granted! She then volunteered her service to pick some dice for one of the games. The best part of the day was none other than the magic show. The 2 comedians were really good with the kids. Laughter could be heard even from my unit which was right at the other end from where the function was held. At the end of the celebration, all went home with a happy face as we all had our fair share of fun and entertainment!

Afternoon-mare

Nicole was watching some violent fighting scenes of a movie preview.

Me “ Nicole, I don’t think you should watch this, you will have a nightmare”
Nic “ No mummy, I will have an afternoon-mare first cos I am taking an afternoon nap soon”

….*faint*….. LOL

Ostrich & Giraffe

Nicole's beautiful ostrich and giraffe with a twisted neck!

Fish scooping

The kids were out on another guppy scooping excursion. This time, Chubby was able to participate. He had fun dipping his toy net into the pond and guess what? He scooped the water up and put it straight into his mouth. Gosh!

As usual, Nicole was better at giving instruction than scooping. She managed to catch one but it was a dead guppy :(. Rose had a good catch of 32 guppies! Bravo!