An exhausting Saturday

To say that Faith was exhausted by all the events on Saturday is an understatement. In fact, it was too much of an excitement and overstimulation for a 5 1/2 month old baby, much to my guilt. And I'm feeling guilty becos I had a whole lot of fun... so much fun that I forgot that my little baby might be overwhelmed. And we did pay a price for that. She slept fitfully that night, keeping both Louis and me zonked out the next day.

We had dim sum for lunch at Hua Ting at Orchard Hotel as a belated birthday gathering for me. Till today, Hua Ting is still unequivocally my favourite Chinese dinning restaurant where Cantonese cuisine is always served refined, nicely done without the MSG-laden and overly salty dishes.

Now this is a little funny episode that I absolutely have to recount... for when my little one is older and I can remind her of how she scared the wits out of Aunty Stella. As Faith is still experiencing stranger anxiety, we let her warm up to the many "strangers" at the table before the guys started turning turns carrying her. Now, Aunty Stella was beaming with joy when Faith acquiesced to let her be carried and she happily went "shopping" with the little one. Some minutes later, as I was on my way to the ladies' room, I could hear the strains of a baby crying, getting increasingly louder. I stood for a moment to identify where the sounds were coming from and wondering if it could be Faith crying. Lo and behold, I saw Aunty Stella very soon, practically running with a bawling Faith in her arms, panic-stricken.

As the story goes, Stella told us that she was happily window-shopping with Faith when an acquaintance stopped her and started to chat. That's when Faith decided that she didn't like the look of the new stranger and cried. And since Stella was quite a distance away from the restaurant, she frantically ran back with Faith. If only I had a camera on hand, I would have loved to capture that particular scene.

After lunch, we headed to Dempsey Hill for desserts and ice-cream at the Ben and Jerry's outlet. Overall, I thought that dessert was a little pricey there. I had an apple pie with a scoop of ice-cream that cost nearly $10. The apple pie serving was generous in that they had big chunky apple cubes in the pie, along with raisins. But frankly, it wasn't worth that amount of money.

As a belated birthday "cake" -- ok, it wasn't exactly a cake and shared amongst 6 adults at that ;) -- was some mixed berries trifle. We did take a family picture but by then, Faith was exhausted and took a nearly 1 hour nap in the arms of her daddy. Hence, the family portrait only showed the back of her head *grin*

By then, it was approaching dinner and we decided to meet the family at the dinner venue at Riverside, instead of heading home. Dinner was at Liang Kee, a Teochew restaurant which served homey, comfort food, followed by a slow stroll along the riverside. Given that it was early, we decided to head to the TCC outlet, where they put us in a separated room, all by ourselves. It was comfortably furnished and we were told that we could reserve the room for functions simply by calling in advance -- no minimum number of people nor spending. Of course, we took a little more pictures and this time around, a nice one of the grandparents with the 3 grandchildren.

As we headed towards the carpark, coincidentally, we met Lynne who was on a flying trip to Singapore and who wanted to have do dinner with us, only that we saw her email too late and had made prior arrangements by then. It was a mini gathering of ex-Inseaders and since I had a camera handy, we took more photos.

Unfortunately, Faith cried a little when she saw more new faces. We hope our little one would get over the phase soon, although I'm not sure if it would be happening anytime within the next 2-3 months, with separation anxiety expected to hit around the age of 8-9 months. We can only hope that as we slowly expose her to more people and friends, she would get over it faster.