London Eye

Make hay while the sun shines. That's exactly what we did yesterday when the sun was out and everything was so bright and sunny.

Now I understand why the Londoners rejoice at whatever brief spells of sunny weather that they get in a year. Or rather, I can understand why London parents do. Its tough to be trapped in the house with an energetic kid on hand.

There was quite a bit of things that we had to do in the day, including getting our clothes laundered. Thankfully, the hotel provides a complimentary laundry room. You only need to get your own washing powder. Unlike most of those commercial or hotel laundromat that you see, this one is actually pretty good. They use what looked top end Miele washing machines and tumblers.

Becos I wanted to bring Faith out for a walk while the weather was good, I decided to try to rush all of Faith's morning routine plus put the clothes to wash and dry at around the same time. Thus, when Faith woke up, I fed her oats, took my shower, changed her and we both headed out for breakfast. After breakfast, I brought our clothes to the laundry at the basement of the hotel to put to wash.

As we had a significant amount of clothes piled up between the 3 of us by then, there were 2 big bags of washing that I had to get to the laundry. Instead of making 2 trips, I got Faith to walk/wobble all the way from our room to the laundry room. She did well walking/wobbling on her own with some bit of encouragement.

After we put the clothes in, I took her back up and gave her a bath. She's enjoying her bath time in the big tube. That seems to be what she looks forward to each day. After her bath, I hurried down with her to transfer the washed clothes to the tumbler.

Satisfied, we both came back up again, fed Faith her mid-morning milk and put her down for a nap. By the time she woke up past 12.30 pm for her lunch, I took her down to collect the washed and dried clothes back up. Again, she had to walk back on her own on the return trip cos I had both my hands full.

By the time she had her lunch and we both washed up a little and head out, it was past 2 pm. Deciding against having my lunch since the weather was just so good too pass up, I took her for a walk towards the direction of the London Eye and the Thames River, since we were just 5 minutes away from them.

It was such a gorgeous and beautiful day that everyone must have felt the same. When we reach the bottom of the London Eye, there was a massive queue of people waiting for their turns to board the observation wheel! Having had our ride on Singapore's own SG Flyer, we weren't hyped up to want to go up the London Eye, especially with the queue.

Nonetheless, its one of London's famous landmark and it was time for us to be touristy and whip out the good 'ole camera for some picture time :) Going pass the crowds at London Eye, you could see the Thames River running. To the left of the London Eye was the Westminster and Big Ben. We both walked along there for a little while.

Again, I let her out of her stroller to walk a bit. She was pretty happy to do so, but there was just too many people walking along the riverside. Plus it was a hard floor that she might fall onto. She wasn't too happy and made a lot of noise protesting her displeasure when I put her back into her stroller.

We turned back towards the direction where we came from and walk the other end. Here, there were lots of buskers plying their trade, amusing, posing and entertaining the largely touristy crowd.

Interestingly, there's a guy who is like an invisible man, dressed up in suit and bowler hat, flipping newspapers. There was a ring of people gathered around him trying to see where the busker was.

My conclusion after scrutinising him was that he/she must be a pint-size person such that the head probably reach to the shoulders of the tux. Cos the hands and ankles are quite delicate, rather like one of a teenage or a young child.

Coming across a patch of grass plot, I decided to free Faith from the confines of the stroller and let her walk around. She's definitely into walking these days... she wants to walk everywhere. Certainly, she was cheered at being given the freedom of walk around.



We headed back to the room after a while for Faith's afternoon milk and nap. The sun and fresh air did her good cos she slept for a long time. After she woke and had her dinner, the daddy and both of us headed off to Leicester Square for our dinner. Louis and I decided to take the Tube for a few stops towards Satsuma, a Japanese casual dining place that we ate before on our last trip to London.

It was late by the time we reached home after dinner. Faith was as usual, all tuckered out by the day's events.

Without realising it, so was I. The insomnia that I had while back in Singapore seemed to disappear while I'm here. Maybe cos my days are filled with chores and activities from the time I wake up :)

Faith doing the handstand

Don't know what prompted the little one to do handstands on her own. But she was doing it after we came back from breakfast.

Was also game enough to do a few more times for me to take a nice picture.

I just love when she's being cheeky :)

Wet & dreary day

Usually, I wouldn't mind a little bit of rain... if I was alone and not trying to push a stroller with Faith in it. Without an umbrella.

Thankfully it wasn't a heavy rain. I guess you could classify it as the typical dreary and wet day that London seemed to be notorious for. Still, we ended up somewhat wet and poor Faith had her feet and parts of her legs splattered with rain. I totally forgot about bringing along the rain cover for the stroller.

The reason why we still ventured out even though it was raining? We made a pact to meet Manisa and Saniya. Saniya's been eager to meet us and Faith ever since she was told that we would be in London. And I needed to replenish the woefully miserable vegetables that I'm left with for Faith's meals.

We took the Tube from Waterloo to Canary Wharf. It was a good trip. Faith had her morning nap and lunch, so she was in a fairly good mood to venture out with her mad mum. Even if it meant getting wet with the rain and all. She acquiesced to me taking a picture of her while waiting at the platform for the train. How could I resist? I needed to take a picture of Faith in the Tube, the quintessential mode of public transport in London :)

While waiting for Manisa and Saniya to arrive, we took more pictures. Being Faith's first time in London, she decided to consult the Tube map, as well as to check out TimeOut's brochure on the current summer activities that are ongoing all over the city. Hmmm.... looks like she's going to follow in the footsteps of her father, planning down to the minute details for all our overseas trip. Hahaha...

Deciding that she was bored after some time, she wanted to get off her stroller and walk around. I ended up chasing her around the station with the stroller, worried that she might wander too far away on her own and cry when she is confronted by the number of people going in and out of the station.

When Manisa and Saniya arrived, we headed to one of the malls connected to the station to take a look. Originally, we wanted to go to Vodafone to get me a pay-as-you-go SIM card. Somehow, there was a miscommunication and we ended up cancelling the line after we got it. For one reason or another, the staff cancelled Manisa's existing line instead of the new SIM. Sigh... She spent nearly an hour at the shop waiting for them to undo their mistakes.

While Manisa was waiting for the Vodafone staff to rectify the problem, Faith was squirming in her stroller. Ended up taking her out for a walk, with Saniya and myself trailing after her. Halfway through, afraid that Faith would be tired out and needed to head back for her milk and nap, I told Manisa that I would meet her at Waitrose so that I can quickly grab the few items that I didn't manage to do so the day before.


As usual, I let Faith out of her stroller to walk around as I browsed the aisles. Regrettably, my very mobile and somewhat independent toddler decided that she would like to grab, touch, pull and rearrange whatever items on the shelves that were within her reach. I ended up doing a 2-step dance of sorts -- looking for what I wanted, as well as keeping an eye on her from the side to make sure she didn't upend everything on the shelves onto the floor.

Amidst chastising her for her mischievous acts, I was also the proud mum -- my daughter is now able to trail and wobble behind me as I shop. Now that she's walking, there are times when its easier to bring her out. At least, she can be pacified and distracted by walking, instead of being confined to the stroller in the earlier days when she could only sit or crawl.

By the time I checked out my items, Manisa was done too. We decided to head to her home. Unfortunately, it was still raining. At this point, Faith decided that she didn't want to go back into her stroller. She bawled and scream and cried whenever I tried to put her in.

Finally, we decided that I would carry her in my arms while Manisa would push the stroller and help carry my purchases. Manisa had brought along 2 umbrellas. Since I didn't have one, she insisted that I took one, passed her remaining one to Saniya and she walked back the entire trip without one, getting her hair and clothes fairly drenched. I felt pretty bad about it, but Faith clamped herself tightly to me and wouldn't let go. Sigh..

After Faith napped and woke, Saniya and her played for a while. Faith took a while to get used to Saniya's enthusiasm though :) She cheered up considerably when her daddy arrived. We cooked Faith's porridge with Manisa's pressure cooker. After we were done, we headed out to Royal China for dinner.

Royal China is a Chinese restaurant that serves pretty good Chinese restaurant fare. It was Louis and my favourite Chinese place when we were there nearly 2 years ago. That time, Faith was with us too, but I was expecting her then. It would be so interesting to revisit some of these sights that we went when we were here last time. This time, with her in the picture :)

By the time we were done with dinner, it was past 10 pm and Faith was all tired out from the day's events as well as some remnants bit of jet lag. She fell asleep quickly on the short ride from the restaurant to the train station and remained in deep sleep all the way from the Tube ride to our hotel.

Through it all, the rain did not let up. It continued to fall in a slight but steady stream. What a thoroughly wet and dreary day.

No matter how I look at it, its always more enjoyable to view a blog that's plastered with pictures. In order to put some pictures online, I'm just writing and rambling about nothing and anything so that I can put up some images today :)

Partly, I feel its becos a picture says a thousand words and that it also spice up the blog and makes it more colourful. While we have not made it out of London to take any of the numerous landmarks and sights that this bustling city is famous for, we did take up pictures while in the hotel in our short time here.

Here's one of Faith and the dad, clowning around in the room and taking pictures of all the silly little things.

Like most kids, Faith loves to play in the water, be it the little green bathtub at home, the big tub in the hotel rooms or swimming pools. This hotel bathtub is no exception.

The weather in London is slightly colder today. I haven't stepped out yet, but from the weather forecast on my laptop, its supposed to be 13C and is expected to be rainy most of the day. Looking out of the window, the sky outside seems overcast too.

Strangely, it actually doesn't bother me that much, the fact that the weather is gloomy. In fact, I enjoy the cold, which is a relief from the extreme heat and humidity back home. But for Faith's sake, I do hope the sunny skies will return cos I could hopefully bring her to the park to run around.

In London

Faith is taking her afternoon nap as I'm writing this post. Hopefully, she will get to sleep some 1-2 hours as she woke up at 7 am London time this morning and didn't get to sleep at all in the morning.

Our flight to London was a fairly good one on account that Faith was mostly well behaved. No temper tantrums of any kind for being confined in the narrow space for more than 13 hours. She was entertained on the flight with the controls and gadgets found on the seats, as well her Barney VCDs/DVDs that we played for her on a portable DVD player. In between, we let her walk around near the aisles and galley of plane so that she can get whatever little bit of exercise.

There was a family of 3 sitting behind us on board the plane. I believed that the young boy in the family is autistic, cos he didn't really talk much, mainly screamed and grunt whenever he's upset or even happy. I'm filled with admiration for the mom cos even though it can be tiring to bring Faith on board the plane especially on long trips, its nowhere as difficult or tiring as compared.

What's even more admirably about the mom was that she was rather cheerful and positive throughout the trip. She didn't lose her cool but speak calmly and normally to her son whenever he was in a snit.

Even though I've been to London a few times, I've never passed through Heathrow Airport. In fact, yesterday was the first time that I arrived in London through Heathrow and I must say it didn't set a good impression. Even though our flight to London was shorter than expected, we ended up circling in the air becos there was a long queue of other flights taking off or landing.

Upon landing, we had to wait nearly an hour in the plane becos it was so crowded that there was no available berth for the plane to park. By the time we actually cleared customs and got out of Heathrow, it was past 8 pm London time, even thought we were in London slightly past 6 pm. Oh... I forgot to add that the queue at the customs check point was ridiculously long...thankfully, we were given priority clearance and managed to get out ahead of everyone else at the regular queue.

The trip from the hotel to the airport was short. After checking into our room, I quickly put Faith to bed cos she was so tired out and didn't sleep much except for a total of 3 hours on board the flight. She was really zoned out as it was 4 am by Singapore time, way past her regular sleeping time.

This morning, she woke at 7 am London time. We had breakfast with Louis before he headed off to office. We spent the morning doing nothing much in the room. Faith had the pleasure of taking out every single item of toys from the luggage and placing different bits all around the hotel room. It was almost like she was staking her territory. In no time, the living room was like a disaster zone, strewn with all her toys. Still... whatever makes her happy makes me happy :)

She missed her morning nap cos just as I was going to put her down for her nap, Manisa arrived. After we fed Faith her lunch, we headed out to have ours before circling back to the Waterloo train station to recce the supermarkets and Boots for some daily necessities. Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and Boots all had small outlets at the station. We managed to get things like diapers, toiletries and all, but not organic food for Faith.

Manisa told us to wait till tomorrow to go to the Waitrose at Canary Wharf. Cos, we're headed there tomorrow to spend the day with Manisa and Saniya (her 4-year old daughter). The Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Tesco are all much bigger outlets than the ones at Waterloo. Sounds like a good plan cos I'm certain we would be able to get whatever that we need there.

Even though there's a sale ongoing in London during this period, I only have very simple wishes for this trip: mainly, that Faith would behave well on this trip and to spend some quality time catching up with a few very good and treasured friends living in London/Cardiff area. Anything else that I can do (e.g. sight-seeings, shopping, day-trips etc) other than the two listed is a bonus :)

Trip preparation

Even though its been said that there's not much difference in packing for a 3-day trip versus a 3-week trip, for me, I feel that there's a difference. At least there are when you're packing for trip with a toddler.

Part of the reason is that we have learned from our past trip experiences with Faith, especially now that she's a toddler and more aware of her environment. Hence, it is only natural that when we travel, she tends to be more clingy and fussy becos her familiar care-takers, surroundings, toys and play areas are no longer the same.

For short holiday trips, there's just no point for us to bring most of her toys along. So, we tend to take things that are easier to bring along, which usually tend to be a block toy or 2 and mainly books. Now that we are going for a 3-week trip, it definitely warrants us to bring along more of her toys that she plays with regularly, as well as her favourite sets of DVDs/VCDs of Barney and Sesame Street. No doubt, I ought to be flayed alive for letting her watch too many DVDs/VCDs at such a tender age, but what can I say? I'm no perfect mum and am the one with her 24x7 for the next 3 weeks in a totally different environment...

Still, even though it feels like we are packing nearly half our house into 2 luggage and maybe another cabin-size one, there are some pros to packing for a long trip. For one, I don't have to lug along all X days worth of diapers (plus a few extras for emergencies), as well as worrying about what non-perishable, yet tasty and nutritious food fto bring for the entire duration. I pack just enough to last me for a couple of days. We plan to hit the supermarket(s) the next day after we arrive.

Nonetheless, our 2 luggages are being filled to the brim with lots of clothes, mini kitchen, toiletries (Faith's mostly) and what-nots though. Even though its summer, we're heading towards London and the current temperature is about 12C-22C. So, I brought along a little of every type of clothes for the cold, hot and in-between type of weather. As always, an extra of everything too. Partly for vanity sake (you don't want to be seen wearing the same few sets of clothes all 3 weeks right, do you?) and practical reason.

We're staying in a hotel and in case I don't do laundry everyday or if the clothes don't dry in time, I have [lots of] others :)

Anyways, just for the fun of it, I've taken a picture of her playthings that we intend to bring along for the trip. Just realised that there's another that we forgotten to add in -- her LittleTouch LeapPad, which is missing in the picture. Hmmm... total of 12 items altogether - which is what the cabin-size is for!

Our friend, Manisa, told us not to bring too many things cos we would have an even bigger luggage than when we arrive cos there's a major sale going on in London. I just don't see how we can squeeze in any more things!

New laptop, new lease of life

So much for all our talks about economic drive (ED) within our little household... just when we have decided to watch our budgets and all, our trusty old laptop of 4 years decided to act up. In fact, we are so afraid that it is on the verge of collapsing on our that we hurriedly got another laptop.

Well... it sounds like a drastic move, but really, its not. Being that ancient (it is going by laptop years), our old laptop takes forever to boot up and the DVD drive cannot write information onto CDs nor DVDs. Plus, we had problems connecting it to an external hard disk so that we could back up all our files... or rather, the huge amount of photos that we have amassed especially since Faith's birth.

The other deciding factor was that we are about to take a 3 week trip to London in a few days. We had every intention of bringing along a laptop so that I could hopefully communicate with the rest of the world and blog while there.

And since our old laptop has been acting up, we were afraid that it would breath its last breathe sometime during our trip. Hence, we decided to act quickly and procure a new laptop. After we have fully transfer all our files and date, we shall retire our current one, which has served us very well over the last 4 years.

Technically, we bought this laptop off my FIL. Cos he had recently bought his on a promotion from Harvey Normans. We had seen it at his place and decided to get exactly the same model as his. Turns out he decided that he didn't want the laptop now cos he wouldn't need it after all. But he had it for less than 2 weeks and its really brand new. It also saved us the trip down to Harvey Normans cos we're both pressed for time trying to pack our luggage and run any errands to get all the necessary stuff for the trip.

Now that we have a new laptop, we are also that much poorer cos we had to dip once again into our savings for this unexpected purchase. Oh well... chalk it up to life's unexpected moments then :)