Friends

Parents are leaving on a cruise today.

At 1-plus, after lunch and while the cruise ship was still docked in Singapore, my mum whatsapped me a photo. It was a group photo of my parents and all their good friends. All in all, including my parents, there were 5 couples.

I felt all warm and fuzzy looking at the photo and seeing all of their happy smiling faces.

While I can't say I know each of the other aunties and uncles very well, I can safely say that I spent a considerable time with all of them when I was younger. All of them definitely saw me more often than my brother.

They all used to be members of the same country club and often went dancing or swimming or karao-k-ing together. My parents often brought me along with them...By then I was already in secondary school. On hindsight, it was actually odd for a young girl to be hanging out with a bunch of "oldies" haha...

That was some 20-odd years ago. Now the oldest of them is already in his 80s. Gosh...The youngest of them is at least 60 I think. All but one of them are retired. And each of them have their own fair share of health issues to grapple with.

What is heartwarming is that, everyone is still in touch with each other and still remain good friends. They explore places together, new shopping centres together. They go for senior citizen discounted buffets together and go for many cruises together. They lim kopi together and hog the seats at T3's foodcourt for 4 hours at a time just so they can chat together.

I think such friendships are hard to come by.

I'm happy for my parents to have such a circle of friends around them.

And I wish I would have my own similar circle of good friends too when I get to their age......

Now for another mad rush?

CNY!!!!! 28 Jan 2017.

Gosh, only a month more. Luckily I'd gotten my dress early on.
Now to concentrate on K and the girls and the stuff to get for both sets of parents....

I don't think I have the time to plan and execute a coordinated family look this year...
We went Peranakan last year :) And I'd actually hoped to do something cheena this year with cheongsams and such...but I guess...I'll have to leave it till next year haha...

Xmas 2016

It's been a long while since I'd last gone this long without a single post.
My last post was 9 Dec. It's 27 Dec today.

I guess it was a mixture of rushing to get everything ready for Xmas. Plus tending to the 2 girls. Plus tending to Nadya who was having a bout of diarrhoea. Plus attending various gatherings. Plus....Plus....Plus....

And so it was a whirlwind Xmas. From the months of preparations of all the gifts and the wrapping and the planning and research...and the flitting to and from 4 gatherings/parties. I had to miss the gathering with the sec school buddies this year due to a clash with K's family Xmas dinner.

I hope Alyssa enjoyed herself. While she may not understand the concept of receiving gifts yet, I think she had fun looking at all the different houses and she definitely had fun at my brother's place. She was shrieking and crawling and laughing and playing with balloons for a long time while she was there haha.

I think Nadya definitely enjoyed herself. She had fun opening her presents and she's gotten herself attached to several of those gifts. Namely, a pair of Frozen fork and spoon set from my parents, a butterfly bag from Ally and a Frozen storybook from my brother. I've had to go through every single picture on every single page of the book at least once, if not twice, for the last 2 nights before her going to bed. Mind you, there are 174 pages in that book. Zzzzzz... haha.

I'm happy to see the two girls happy.
I'm happy to see my friends happy.
I'm happy to see my parents happy.
I'm happy to see my parents happy when they play with the girls.

Today is Friday!

Thankful that I was part of the team to work from home today as part of my company's Business Continuity Planning exercise. We were role-playing a flu-pandemic scenario....

So yes, I didn't really do much work today. But I still had to stay online both on Watsapp and Skype as well as clear my emails promptly.

I was thankful though, for the opportunity to wrap the remaining gifts stashed away in the storeroom. And thankful to have had some time to finish crafting some of the gifts. I was wondering when was I going to ever have the time to do them up and finish wrapping the presents actually haha.

Am I all set for Xmas? I don't know. I hope so. I hope I didn't miss out on anyone's present!

Now lemme see....what should I wear for the annual Xmas eve party at my uncle's place...

hmm....mother liao but must still look nice...hmm hmm....:D

Of Songs and Classics

And so...these are the recent sound tracks we've been playing for Nadya...and....she's loving them...
I'm loving them too...:)

On occasion, we'd let her watch the videos on YouTube...When she's older, we'll definitely let her watch the movies as well. These are absolute classics that I love and I hope she would love too!

1. Shall We Dance - from The King & I 
2. Getting to Know You - The King & I 
3. Do Re Mi - The Sound of Music 
4. So Long, Farewell - The Sound of Music  
5. Spoonful of Sugar - Mary Poppins  
6. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - Mary Poppins 
7. Beauty and the Beast - Beauty and the Beast 
8. Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo - Cinderella 
9. So This is Love - Cinderella 
10. A Whole New World - Aladdin 

Things I am thankful for today

1. On hindsight, I'm just kinda glad that Nadya's sudden fever on Saturday was probably due to her teething. One huge-ass molar is cutting through her gum on the upper right corner. And it's making her cranky and painful as hell. Just glad that the fever was not due to something else. 
2. Peanut is walking already...:)
3. I'm wearing contact lenses today and my eyes seem pretty ok. Woot!
4. I had a lunch with PQ and TH. We chatted, gossiped and chatted somemore. Although talk revolved almost 90% around our kids and child-rearing experiences, at least it brought me some laughter and respite. 
5. I have a new monitor in the office. With better and sharper resolution so it helps relieve some of the strain on my eyes. 

Stuff I'm not so thankful for today haha...

1. I miss Peanut terribly.  I didn't get to interact much with her yesterday and I left the house today without seeing her because she was still sleeping. But she'll be going back to school tomorrow though...And I'm glad that we're going back to the usual routine of things. 
2. My eyebags. :p
3. My fingers are itching to do online shopping again. I've been doing too much of it recently...too much. 
4. I keep snacking!!

5 December 2016 Monday.

Peanut took her first unassisted steps on 5 Dec 2016. :)
At the "grand" age of 14 months and 11 days old.

I didn't manage to video it nor get any pictures of it but I shall endeavour over the next few days to do so. For posterity's sake. :)

She had been cruising for months and we were all waiting for her to gain just that little bit more confidence and bravado to walk on her own without holding onto us.

Voila, it finally happened.

She seems to understand that she's hit a milestone too. She seemed happier and more energetic yesterday haha.

Way to go little girl! Soon you'll be running around with jiejie. :)

It's that time of the year again

The smell is in the air...
The smell of Christmas. And family. And friends. And happiness. And joy.
That crisp air. That brings with it some tingle of excitement and anticipation.

While I've been bogged down by things at home...and by the endless amount of buying that comes at this time of the year.

I'm glad for all the Christmas songs I am hearing...they do bring a certain happiness to me...

Seeing Nadya get excited that Christmas is coming is also lovely...She's older now and more aware of such things.

We set up the tree over the weekend and she was happy and rather excited about it. We have 3 little maroon coloured birds as decorations for the tree and she has been patting one of them on a daily basis. :) "Mama! I patted the bird!" She would say haha...I had purposely placed that one within her reach.

This morning I noticed she had gold glitter on her face. "Did you touch the decorations on the tree?" I asked her this morning. "No...oo...ooo...." came the unconvincing reply...."So how is it that you have gold glitter on your face?" I only had a cheeky grin as a reply...haha.

Alyssa is too young to understand the significance of Christmas but she's loving the tree and the lights and the baubles on it haha. She gets a kick out of touching the baubles too...and squealed with delight when I let her touch the prickly tree branches for the first time on Saturday.

I hope Christmas retains its magical wonder for the girls right up till they are mothers themselves...:)

Here we go again

Nadya was fine for the last 5-6 days save for some diarrhoea in the initial few days. She is feverish today again.

I thought I would be able to have a smoother time this weekend. I thought too soon. 

My patience bucket is drying out. 

This is the 3rd or 4th consecutive weekend looking after a sick kid. 

And so the story contnues...

And so. Peanut went on hunger strike last night. She only had porridge for dinner and thereafter rejected all milk and only took some sips of water from 8pm till this morning 8am.

I was so worried.

She was also extremely cranky and irritable. She fussed from 1am to 4am. The helper and I were taking turns to look after her....and I was juggling between looking after Nadya and looking after Alyssa. Thank god Nadya was on a rare day of pretty good behavior and slept quite well, despite Alyssa's loud fusses and cries.

I brought Alyssa to the PD today again when the helper and I noticed that se had ulers in her mouth.
I was xian-half and rather worried that it might be HFMD.

Alas, the PD said she had contracted Herpangina.

What? Simi vagina? were the first thoughts in my head when the PD mentioned it to me.

Oh. Herpangina.
Mouth ulcers at the back of the mouth. No red spot on hands and feet. But caused by a similar virus as that causing HFMD.

My poor baby...When will this end??
She's suffered enough already! Her weight has dropped to below 50% percentile!

Sigh....and so the story continues...

Nadya's doing ok now and doesn't have any diarrahoea already.
I'm well.....Tired AF. Ad yet trying to clear some work because I'm on Work From Home today....not on leave hor, so I am supposed to do some work.