Bangkok fun! ..and Sophie has her 1st plane ride

We just came back from a fun weekend in Bangkok. I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive bringing our little bean onto a 2 hour plane ride ..she's not even 3 months yet! On the plane ride there, Sophie was a happy bean except for the time we tried to place her into her basinet. She gave us smiles for like 5 minutes before she started her eek eeks :p

In Bangkok, we checked out a few new eats. The risotto at Biscotti's , Italian at Four Seasons Hotel rocked! We met up with Jimmy and Gail for a good Thai spread at Cabbages and Condoms. We walked till my shoulders ache (from baby bjorn-ing Soph) while looking for Crepes and Co.(the address on the website said Sukumvit Soi 18 but it was actually Soi 12!) The crepe base was good but 300 baht per crepe seemed a bit exorbitant. We also discovered pretty good cakes from Lenotre, a cafe opposite the Mayfair Bangkok where we were staying.




Our little bean was fairly well behaved..we took her everywhere..we walked the crowd infested chatuchak and mbk. We strolled the street markets of Pratunam and even paid a visit to the nursing room at Central mall. Jin and I had to do tag team for our massage sessions , we managed a massage everyday we were there :)



We spent a fair amount of time in the bangkok cabs and thus had plenty of time taking pictures while stuck in the infamous Bangkok jams.



In between all the running around, we found time to capture our little bean in the hotel.

Here's her having her tummy time



And her having sweet dreams on her make-shift bed on the hotel couch



And her attempting to hold her own milk bottle :D (with tons of coaxing from me of course..hee)




The 4 day fun ended too soon :(..Sophie was quite the darling on the plane ride home..she was mostly awake but did not eek eek..I think she was happy playing with Jin :)

Sophie to the babysitter :(

I started sending our baby bean to the sitter last week. The 1st time, I stayed the whole 2 hours just to watch how the sitter bath soph and put her to sleep. The 2nd time, I stayed a short while and came home..I thought I could catch up on some sleep but I ended up teary eye instead, missing my little bean. When I went to pick her up, the sitter gave her a little kiss goodbye and my heart felt a little tug of protectiveness..hey, who says you can kiss my little one? BUT, I can't stop it and I guess having the sitter love Soph is better than having her beat her right? :(

Each time I pick Soph up, I always ask the sitter if Sophie cried. The 3rd time I picked her up, the sitter mentioned that Sophie cried twice. Once when her blouse was being taken off (sitter says blouse too tight, mummy said, how can - new blouse ah!)..and 2nd time she cried was bcos sitter accidently clipped Sophie's nail too deep and it bled..wahh, my heart felt pain on hearing this! I was quite upset..I called Jin and told him and he was quite upset too..we both agreed that from now onwards, I will be the official manicurist for Sophie :)

This is the 2nd week Sophie has been going to the sitter..each time, only for 4 hours max as I will start missing her and will bring her home in the afternoon. From next week onwards, when I start work, she will be at the sitter's place for 6-8 hours..I feel sad knowing this and it's really hard to let go especially now that Sophie's in her smiley stage..my heart warms each time she smiles at me..sigh, am definitely going through separation anxiety :(

Here's mummy and baby bean enjoying a playful moment :)

Family portraits

Was back in KL over the weekend and took the opportunity to take some shots with both sides of the family. Above shows little bean with the 3 Ng ladies. Sophie's saying : I may be little but I rule ;)

Here's the Lim, Ng and Kwan clan having breakfast at Jaipur.

Sophie with great grandparents

Sophie with Ah Kong and Ah Ma


Sophie with her Popo

Sophie with Ku Poh and Tai Ku Poh

Sophie with Ah Yee and Kao Fu (senior)

Sophie with Ah Yee and Kao Fu (junior)

Sophie with Koko Ryan

and finally, Sophie with her mummy and daddy :)

Life without help...

Our 2nd month confinement nanny left us a week ago..initially it felt weird not having someone to pass a cranky baby to and when i washed dishes the first time after 2 months, it felt alien-ish!..but slowly we are adjusting. Jin has been a real champion! we agreed he will do the 2-4am feed since he has no problem going back to sleep right after (wherelse, if I were to wake and feed the 2-4am meal, I would be awake for the next 2-3 hours :p). Wonderfully, he has kept to his end of the bargain..when baby eeks, I give him a good shove (cos his ears somehow tunes out her eeks) and he sleepily gets out of bed, warms the bottle, feeds her, burps her, change her nappy and puts her back to sleep :)).

Her next wake-up session is usually around 6-8am, by which then, I am usually awake (since I need to pump!). While waiting for her to wake, the routine is to set the machine to wash our clothes, wash up all the bottles, pump out milk, wash up, quickly check the news and emails on internet, eat breakfast. When she wakes, it's feed her, burp her, change nappy and get her out of her PJs. Then it is usually self-play time..got her a kick piano to entertain herself and so far, it seems to be working (I think I am usually more entertained than her when she kicks the keys! ;)

Once her milk settles in, she gets her bath and by then, it will be her mid-morning snooze time. Every 3 hours, she will demand her 110ml of milk. We now prop her up on a pillow for her to drink her milk..this releases our arms from having to carry and feed her :)

In between, if she's not sleeping, she will either be happily playing by herself or getting all cranky insisting poor mummy carry her..I seriously feel that my arms have lost all feeling after 30 minutes of carrying!! thankfully, there's the pacifier when she's inconsolable ;)

In the evenings, while waiting for Jin to come home and if the weather's good, we usually go for a walk round the house. Sophie seems to enjoy this a lot as her eyes get really huge as she looks left, right at her surroundings. Here's mummy and baby posing with our neighbour's lovely flowers.

By 10pm, I am usually exhausted but I still stay awake till midnight to do one final pump before the next pump session at 7am. Sophie is most cranky between the hours of 9pm-midnight..she wants to be carried and when we leave her to cry, she really cries her lungs out and sobs for a good 30 minutes even while we are carrying her..and she refuses to sleep in her own bed!! BUT the minute we put her on OUR bed, she becomes all angelic and coos and even sleeps on her own! Here's her all so tiny on our big bed...

Anyway, I have accepted that she needs to sleep first with us..after the 2am feed, Jin will pick her up and put her in her own room and bed and there she will sleep till 7am :) and mummy gets a solid 6-7 hours of sleep..:D

Soon, our little bean will be going to the babysitter when I go back to work..feeling sad just thinking about it! so treasuring the last few days we get to spend with her and giving her extra kisses when I think about her going to babysitter's place :(.

Here's Sophie looking happy and chubby in a top given by Charmaine :)

A gathering of July 2008 babies and mummies

What started as a simple meet up between wendy, adora and our july 2nd babies became a bigger affair when we extended the invite to the singaporemotherhood.com July 2008 babies forum. Adora graciously (more like got cornered by wendy and me;) opened her home to host the gathering of more than 10 moms and their babies. Here are the pix and video from the event titled : Tea at PinkBunny's house.


> July babies lined up on Adora's couch. Sophie is 3rd from left (occupying the most space!, next to Poppy bunny :)



> the three July 2nd, 2008 baby girl bunnies :) L-R : Poppy, Rianne and Sophie



> Alicia with baby Gordon

Sophie bean's sleeping positions

Jin always says that our bean is the cutest when she's asleep...I can't help but to agree esp when I see these diff poses of hers ;)


> 2 day old

> 14 day old

> 1 month

> 8 weeks old (she was sleeping on the blue pillow and somehow shifted and landed in between the pillow and cushion)



> 10 weeks old ( we call this her spider pose..her little bunny friend imitated her ;) I say she looks a bit like elvis here..haha!

Celebrating 8 years...

Sept 3rd marked our 8th year wedding anniversary...gosh, that seems long! This year, I had no problem thinking of what to get Jin..his work belt looked like it belonged to WWII era :p..so last week, Lyn and I stepped into Hugo Boss and choose a nice belt for Jin. (actually I looked at Mont Blanc as well but belts were double the price there,.,.,why ah? )

We arranged to meet for dinner at Tatsuya - we had always wanted to try the omakase but could never find a special enuff occasion to valid the extravagence. Anyway, I figured since we did not have time to do a spa session this year, the money from that will go into our omakase meal instead ;)..Jin was as usual running late so since I was early, I decided to browse the aisles at Jason's marketplace Paragon..I love browsing supermarket aisles..it's kinda like a weird obsession of mine which Jin can never figure out..he complains all the time that I will step into every supermarket when we are travelling overseas even though we just stepped out of one like 5 minutes ago :p

I found a nice dark chocolate going for a dollar less ..while lining up at the counter to pay, I happened to glance around and notice a guy carrying a bunch of flowers walking to the same counter..and it was Jin..I noticed him before he saw me and he was soo surprised that I was there..hehehe..he actually wanted to buy the flowers to surprise me at tatsuya..sorry to spoil your surprise hon ;)..anyway, I convinced Jin that the $50 can be spent better elsewhere so we walked back to the flower counter to place back the lovely lily bouquet..well, it was the thought that counted :)

Back to our omakase..what an experience it was!! I loved the sushi esp the beef..next time round (if there's a next time!..took me some time to get over the bill!), I would def order just the sushi omakase and skip the rest of the items like soup and appetizers.

Since Jin paid for din, I decided to belanja him dessert. we headed to Bakerzin where I ordered an Opera cake and he ordered a 3 set tapas..The opera cake was truly lousy..canele's wins by far!

It was nice just to hang out together..we left sophie bean behind with the nanny (it was also the nanny's last night with us so we grabbed the opportunity to stay out late)..but I think both of us missed our cutie bean although we did not say it..we skipped the choice of watching wall-E and headed home to see our little bean instead :)

Gordon, Lyn and Ryan comes a visit...

We hosted lyn and family for 9 days! I think this is the longest we have ever hosted anyone...as the nanny was still around, we had to clear jin's projector room and turn it into a guest room for the 2 adults and 1 hyper little one. we filled the rooms with at least 10 over pillows and cushions to ensure Ryan did not hurt himself...at last, our efforts were in vain as he fell off the bed in search of his mummy one night when we were all outside watching Hancock and he was supposed to be fast asleep. the fall gave him 2 bumps on his forehead..aww :(

Tried our best to ensure our guests did not feel too bored..seeing shopping was out of the itinerary as they felt spore stuff were too ex, we did the next most interesting thing = EAT. we had tim sum at east ocean, pepper and curry crabs, prata at evans road, turf city, adam road and suntec (they love prata!), japanese skewers at shinkushiya. One day, we did the eat nonsense stuff at Taka - we had yam pie and fried squid from old chang kee, durian pancakes and from crystal jade : shrimp paste chicken, carrot cake, egg tarts. also, with mooncake festival round the corner, we did our fair share of sampling tons of mooncakes from the taka mooncake fair..and they love the snow skin mooncake version soo much, a box was bought from Fairmount hotel at $48 for 8 small round pieces! *daylight robbery!!*

We also managed to do 2 walks to Botanical Gardens. On saturday, we visited Henderson Waves and on Sunday - Esplanade to see Jin finish his Nike Human Race Run.

Nights were spent usually at the living room..exhausted from the day's activities (or more from entertaining Ryan - thankfully we had the JUMPEROO). We had most of our dinners at home as Ryan needed to be in bed by 8pm. Thankfully, we had the nanny to cook for us :). Home cooked meals with soup..yums!

Ryan had his first swim..too bad it was raining like 70% of the time they were here..otherwise, he would have gotten more pool time - we did a makeshift pool in our bathtub ;)

Our guests just left and already the house seems soo much emptier and a lot quieter..I am missing my cute nephew! Good thing we will get to see them again next week in Bangkok..yay! ( i hope the chaos in Bkk settles by then!) I love how cheeky Ryan looks in this pix..boy, is Lynda going to have her hands full with this little kiddo ;)