The current 'in' toys

I'm referring to the 'in' toys for Anya. Not Arielle. Arielle has yet to know how to appreciate toys unless pacifiers, mommy and daddy's funny faces are counted. :P

Having ball of time
Balls are still very 'in'. At one point, we actually confiscated all her little balls because of a major meltdown due to her refusal to keep them after play. One week later, when the balls went back to her, she was pleased as punch. Well, me too, because she keep her balls (and other toys) without much objections these days. Cheerfully on most days, in fact.

Then, there was the trip to Hokey Pokey which further fueled her passion for them. Almost every day, she asks to look at the pictures stored in my iPhone of her basking in the ball pools.

In her kindermusik class, they sometimes get to bounce and roll balls in sync with rhythms and beats too. And that led her big pink ball (that was previously overshadowed by its smaller, plentiful counterparts) to gain popularity suddenly.

Recently,  we invented a new way of playing with her big pink ball... ...


Yes, its hide n seek the ball! The earlier few times that I tried playing hide n seek with Anya was not successful as she could not grasp the objective of the game. The recent tries proved to be a success - at least the part when she is the seeker. She understood my instruction of going out of the room while I hide the ball, and that she is not allowed to peeped. And when I yelled, "Okay!" to indicate that I am done with hiding the ball,  I usually hear her response in the form of running footsteps and excited squealing as she bounces into the room.

I'm so looking forward to when she gets the hiding part as well (where she does not reveal herself or the item she is hiding when the seeker comes along) because that will be when the Furkid can join in the fun as well. The Furkid is a great seeker.

Here comes the drummer girl
Again, it was her kindermusik lessons that sparked off her interest. She loves making all sorts of sounds and noises from her toys. A few weeks ago, when we were at Kiddy Palace with my parents, my mom asked her to choose a early birthday present. She zoomed in to the musical toys section. So, from there, we picked out a set of musical instruments consisting of a marching drum, recorder, tambourine, castanets and a few others.

Every now and then, she asks to pop in her kindermusik CDs into the player and she would beat on the drum to the songs and prance around the flat. Occasionally, when the Husband is at home, he would join in the procession too!

Puzzle, puzzle, jigsaw puzzles
I thought that jigsaw puzzles make wonderful toys from young as it trains children's concentration, patience and perseverance among other good things. And of course, when one gets the hang of it and progresses to those hundreds or thousands-pieces puzzles, it gives you hours of quiet fun and a great sense of satisfaction when they are all put together!


It took her a while to warm up to them. We started her with a 24-pieces picture of Jonah and the big fish. At first, she only wanted to toss them around or identifying the fish / man etc. Gradually, we managed to get her involved under our directions to press each piece into its correct places. From there, her interest was piqued. With our help, she could do up the puzzle several times a day, tirelessly.

Well, as she would learn - practice makes perfect. She progressed to being able to rotate the puzzles (we pick out the correct ones and hand to her) into the right orientation and piece them together. This week, she has advanced to put the whole picture together on her own. Atta girl!

Done! All by herself!

Another jigsaw puzzle! Of Barney, no less!

Thankful Tuesday: Turning 31

I turned 31 last Friday. Thirty-one years has passed since my first cry. Ten years has passed since I became a legal adult.

The Husband and I discussed extensively about the changes in my life in the past ten years. As I look back at my own life so far, I wish to give thanks for:


# Every new day that I wake up to. 


# For the Grace that saved me, and then The Husband. 

# For the major life milestones that I have crossed in the past 10 years - Becoming a Mrs., becoming a homeowner, becoming a mom, and then becoming a mom second time round. 

#  For family ties that are brought closer as we mellow in age.

# For the joy experienced in good times and the lessons learned in bad times. 

And as I celebrated the special day, here is what I was thankful for:

# For the good weather as we all trooped down to SBG for a picnic.  

# For pretty maxi dresses, made for both grown and little women.

# For the Husband who took time off work just to spend the day with me and our little ones. 

# For moist, spongy, light and not-too-sweet chocolate fudge cake.

# For the love felt in the form of well-wishes, hugs and kisses from loved ones every time I add one more candle onto my cake.

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Tuesday (or rather, Thursday): Staying at home with the children

Is it Thursday already? Golly, the week is passing so quickly; I cannot keep up.

So, in contrast, my world has been much more brighter this week than the last. Last week, I felt like I was struggling. I was up to my neck coaxing the little one to drink her milk and comforting the tod as she got all stressy over potty-training. There was a lot of fretting and anxieties. The Husband and I prayed a lot - both on our own and with our children.

Right on, things are getting more promising. Anya has been going to the potty consistently to urinate in the past few days with no mistakes. While 'big business' still needs to be done in the diaper; well, at least it is done (with much lesser anxieties). As for Arielle, we managed to create a more conducive environment for her whenever it is time for milk. What I will do is I will usually discreetly retreat to my bedroom with Arielle (where there is no TV blaring away, no Anya shrieking / jumping around startling Arielle, no glaring lights) switch on the fan (and aircon if the weather is really hot). So far, it seems to be working.

I am really thankful that we made progress. This week, I am especially thankful that I am a SAHM. Seeing my little ones going through a rough patch, I am grateful that I get to be with them every step of the way.  That I get to spend enough time with them to know how to go about working out the kinks. That I am there to observe and watch (most of the times) instead of relying on a third-party caregiver to tell me how my children are doing today. That I get to be the first person to share the joy of most of their firsts.

Thank God for His provision so that our household can live sufficiently with one income. Thank God for His wisdom and strength which I could draw from as a mother. Thank God for placing me as the full-time mom that I am. 

In all honesty, sometimes I think being a SAHM has benefited me more than my children. 

What are you thankful for this week?

Hokey Pokey Indoor Playground

I decided to bring Anya there after reading about it from MummyMoo. The outing is actually part of our potty-training as I wanted to ensure that Anya is comfortable with either eliminating in her diaper or using public toilets when we are outside. I thought choosing a fun place to go will take her mind off the anxiety and stress she has been feeling and so off we went!

Here's my two cents' worth of the place:

While this is our first visit to any indoor playgym / playground, I actually checked out a few others like Fidgets and Amazonia before. Unlike the others that I have seen before, Hokey Pokey appears to be less, well.., impressive (if I might put it that way) at first glance. Reason being: there aren't many big-scale playground sets nor structure that send children into a climbing and jumping frenzy. They have one big slide that send the children down into a huge ball pool and another separate smaller ball pool. And that's about all. The rest are really small-ish slide sets - think 'little tikes' and 'fisher and price' types that you can find for sale at Toys R'us.

However, upon closer look, I actually like what I see. You see, the thing here is they have many many MANY toys. Yes, I can't emphasize about the sheer amount of toys they have. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pics of the place as my attention was divided between Anya and Arielle most of the times. There are musical instruments (not just one set but a few! For example: They have at least 5 different types of drums and 3 sets of xylophones), rides and tricycles, a huge wooden set of transportation system (cars and trains; roads and tracks!), a set of handyman tools and work top, two kitchen sets, a burger joint, dolls and many others. There is also a huge shelf that contains smaller toys and stuff (think stackers, loops etc) as well as a Xbox / PSP (I could never remember which is which!). Which leads me to another point why I (or rather, why I think Anya) love about this place - they have a good selection of both girls' toys and boys' toys. And of course, gender-neutral toys too!

As such, it feels more like we have entered the nursery of a family with both boys and girls, albeit a very well-stocked nursery, rather than an establishment. Having only gender-neutral and girly toys at home, it was a refreshing change for Anya to lay her hands onto boys' stuff. It was a plus point that they are equipped with so many musical instruments as Anya has been really into them since she started kindermusik lessons. And of course, she went bananas in the ball pools. Which kid won't, eh?

All in all, our toddler had loads of fun in that 2.5 hours spent there. When it was almost time to go, I preempted her at the last 10 minutes. She knew what that meant and it sent her into a mad frenzy to go through everything at least once. It was a comical sight as she shuffled half-haphazardly all over the place to tinker with this and that.

In conclusion, we think the place is really fun, especially for toddlers and early pre-schoolers. By that, we meant say... 18 months old to 4 years old. Any older than that (they allow up till 6 years old), I suppose the place still offers snips of fun here and there. After all, they do have a wide range of toys. And then, there is always the Xbox (or whatever that was).

One little not-so-good experience to share though: At one point at the slide into the ball pool, one of the older kids (5 or 6 years old?) was wading his way out and placed his hand on the slide just as Anya was going down (I was waiting at the end to catch her). His hand caught one of Anya's leg and sent Anya going head down instead. I think my heart almost came out of my mouth at that juncture. Thankfully, Anya merely had a momentarily shock and recovered quickly. Thank God for cushioned ball pools! So as parents, we really gotta be vigilant that our child(ren) play safe and nice.

Still, in the end, we (as in The Husband, myself and, of course, the tod) liked the place so much that we signed Anya up as a member which is currently going at an opening promotion of $38 instead of $50. Quite a good deal if you intend to bring your kids there on a regular basis.

Looking forward to our next visit to Hokey Pokey! :)

Hokey Pokey Pte Ltd
3 Temasek boulevard
 #03-027E/F Suntec City Mall
Singapore 038983

Thankful Tuesday: Some new discoveries about my girls

In the past week, we attempted to cross some milestones with both our children. For baby girl, it was going out with Daddy and Mommy. Just the three of us. For the first time, I took public transport with baby girl alone (something that I have done countless times with the tod). It was some quality time spent with our little one before we adjourned to meet a friend for dinner.

Out with baby girl!

Thankful for a great time catching up with dear friend

Two days later, we went out again. This time, it was the entire clan for dinner with the grandparents. From these two trips, we noted a pattern: Baby girl does not feed well in public. She tends to get over-stimulated and probably feel harassed by the spotlights and the bustling crowds.

Just yesterday (today is Wednesday, and yes, I am late!), we brought both girls out again. The trip confirmed what we speculated - Baby girl is harassed by the spotlights. We were dining at bakerzin @ Suntec and eventually I bundled her to the bottom of the stairways that led to B2 carpark where there were no overhead spotlights nor noisy crowds to feed her. It worked! 

As for the toddler,this week, we started on potty training. I will write a more detailed separate post again but the point I want to make here is the discovery I've made through the process of potty-training - The toddler has a perfectionist streak in her. 

The moment she grasped the idea of keeping herself clean and dry, she refused to eliminate in the diaper. At one time, she even outrightly rejected wearing diapers which sent us into panic mode as we scurried to think of ideas to convince her to wear diaper to bed. And every time for some reason or another, when she could not make it to the potty in time and wet / soiled herself, she got really worked up and cried buckets. Till date (today is Day 4), most of the times that she wore diaper to bed, she would still be dry when she woke up. The one time that she had no qualms about eliminating in her diaper was when we went out yesterday to an indoor playground. That totally distracted her and we left the playground with a full diaper 3 hours later.

Having a ball of time

A few instances over the course of this week led us to make another discovery we about the toddler - she is a sensitive soul. Just the other day before her nap time, she nearly drove me up the walls by deciding to do the opposite of everything that I asked her. Told her to kiss her baby sister 'goodnight' and she smacked her. Told her it was time to keep her puzzles and she insisted that she still wanted to play. Everything that I asked her was responded with a resounding 'no'. The final straw came when I asked her to come to me (I wanted to give her a drink of water before letting her climb into bed) but she walked away instead. I snapped and raised my voice at her, "Stop it, Anya!". Her eyes widen for a split second while she froze in her pace. Then she continued walking away, assuming a nonchalant air. Still, I regretted for shouting and pulled her into my arms, telling her that I was sorry. 

Her response took me by surprise. 

She burst out crying as she tightened her little arms around me. In between sobs, she said, "Sorry, Mommy.". 

I was so glad that I took the initiative to apologise. Had I not done so, my little girl would probably bottle up all her feelings and who knows what will come out of those pent-up negativity. Nothing good, surely.

I am so thankful, that we get to know deeper about our children. And that God turned little difficult moments into lessons to be learned for us. Once again, I am ever so grateful to have God in my life. Had it been the old me, I probably will not think of apologising to my child. Understanding that children are God's blessings to us simply makes us even more careful in the way we treat them.

What are you thankful for this week?

Universal Studios Singapore

Last Saturday was The Husband's firm's anniversary cum family day. To mark the date, staff and family members are invited to spend a day together at USS. Being an organisation where the staff are all in their twenties or early thirties, it was unsurprising that most of them were already familiar with the theme park. But for The Husband and myself; it was our very first trip. Our excuse reason being the last few years (when USS has been set up) had been spent being pregnant and raising babies. 

In any case, we aren't fans of thrill rides so we did not think we would want to go there specifically unless the opportunity presents itself. If I really have to choose any theme parks to go to, I will go for Disneyland any day! :P But! The trip exceeded both of our expectations and it is all mainly because of ..... Madagascar!

Yes, we both dig the movies and the toddler is at the phase where she is into animals (animated or real). She was excited to be able to point out most of the animals (lion, hippo, penguins, zebra and giraffe) and was especially enamoured with the penguins. It probably had to do with the fact that we happened to catch the Madagascar mascots at noon where they did a little dance and then had photo-taking with the visitors. The three penguins probably left her with the deepest impression with their shaking booties act. Since the trip, she has been constantly telling us, "Penguin dance!" and then proceeds to jiggle a bit.

We did, however, took pictures with Alex the lion and King Julien, the wacky lemur.

Other than Madagascar, we also lingered in Far far away land. We had some overpriced fast food grub in Goldilocks' and watched a 4D animation that got Anya burst out crying, but was otherwise thoroughly enjoyed by the adults. By then, it was way past Anya's usual nap time and she was visibly knackered. She asked to sit in her stroller and promptly fell asleep after eating some biscuits (what Goldilocks served up was not to her liking). Thereafter, we took a stroll and explored the rest of the 'worlds' and then, it was time to go home.

This was an entirely new experience to Anya and it was apparent as she was tentative towards anything and everything. Most of the times, she preferred to sit in her stroller or stick close to us while she took in this strange 'cartoony' environment gradually. She was also hesitant to try out the rides. While she was curious when she saw all those furry mascots, she was apprehensive about going near one and insisted to be carried whenever one comes too near. After we took pictures with Alex the lion, The Husband prompted her to high-five with Alex. Seeing that it went okay, he encouraged her to give him a goodbye hug. It appeared that she drew the line at high-fives as she burst out crying when she saw the lion opening out his arms for a hug. Heh... Oops..

All in all, there was some tears and a lot of cajoling involved, but I do think it was memorable (in good ways too) for her because she has been talking about random things about the trip. As for the adults, yeah, we too are still relishing in the land of Madagascar. In fact, we just went to buy the DVDs for Madagascar 1 and 2.

Thankful Tuesday: Being work-in-progresses

Being imperfects, we are all work-in-progresses in some way or another. As my elder child turns two, I find myself out of the comfort zone of parenting a relatively easy-to-manage toddler and right smacked into tackling the demands of having to discipline a tantrum-throwing and boundary-testing little girl.

Every day presents new situations for me to learn to manage as a parent. Likewise for the little ones as children, as individuals, as siblings. I am thankful for this timely reminder that we are all work-in-progresses. As I meditated on it, a whole new horizon opens up: 

I learn to manage the expectations I have of my children. I learn to be slower to anger when my child is in the midst of a meltdown / tantrum. I learn to create opportunities for us (Anya, Arielle and myself) to spend time together so that they get use to playing with each other. I learn to ask Anya to do little acts of services to Arielle so she can be a better big sister. I learn to be more generous with my praises. I learn to be less disheartened when facing failures. I learn to be more encouraging when my child faces failures.

What was intended to be lessons for my children actually has a positive impact on me too. I marvel at God's way of working on us. I am used as a instrument to prune and teach my children, and I am being pruned as a result too. Thank God for such precious lessons.

Arielle at 3 months old

Hello my baby girl!

Now that you are more than three months old. I thought I should do a quick update on your progress. 

Till date, you are able to / have:

1. Slept through the night since 6 weeks old.

2. Rolled over. Thrice, to be precise. The rest of the times, you flip to your left and gets stuck on your side.

3. Smile what I call genuine smiles as opposed to reflexes, coos and even giggles.

4. Developed a strong neck. As such, you are able to do little push-ups when you are on your belly, sit in the bumbo chair, and get to watch what's going on around you when we put you in the baby bjorn carrier.

5. Reached out for and hold onto your little stuffed animals with controlled movements you are on your playmat.

6. Grasp handkerchiefs and litttle stuffed toys.

7. Drink 700ml - 750ml of milk per day. Each feed now lasts only 10-15 minutes as opposed to an hour or more one month ago. Ahhh.. bliss for Daddy, Mommy and Aunt M!

In addition, here's a list what you love to do:

1. Be engaged in a lively conversation.  You love it when someone talks to you! You would reply in 'woos', 'ahhs' and other various cute gurgling sounds while your face scrunches up animatedly. Too cute!

Chatting up a storm with Mommy

2. Taking baths. Take you out of the bathtub a lil' too early and you will yell your head off in protest.

3. Sleep. As compared to big sister, you sleep much much more. Even at this point, you are still taking naps at almost every feed cycle while Anya was taking only two naps each day at your age.

4. Be a 'Super-baby'! You love the feeling of pretend-flying where Mommy carries you and raise you above my head.

All in all, you are a wonderful baby to have around. We are all basking in your company. Right now, although it can be tough and even trying at times tending to both you and your big sister; I am hoping for time to pass s-l-o-w-l-y because I really enjoy you at your current age. Always so smiley, so cuddly. Plus, with that mop of hair of yours, you look so ridiculously adorable now. Loving you tons, my sweetheart!

Taming of the gravity-defying hair

Hugs and kisses,
Mommy