Blessings

Once in a while, I am reminded of how lucky we are - how lucky Faith is, how lucky we are that we have Faith and how lucky that the three of us have each other.

Just yesterday, Eve told me that another one of the mothers in the Julia Gabriel class had commented, unprompted, that Faith looked so much like Eve. The way she smiled and all. This was the same comment that one of our close friends had recently made when she was at our place for dinner - "She is a splitting image of you, Eve".

This afternoon, Eve and I had a chance to watch Mama Mia - the movie. In one of the scenes, I had thought to myself, I'd be quite sad the day Faith gets married. That same scene apparently prompted Eve to think the same - on our way back from dinner, she had asked me - would you be sad when it is time for Faith to get married?

This evening, Eve made one of her favourite culinary dishes - pumpkin soup for Faith, as a departure from the usual porridge or soup/rice combis. To ensure that Faith received more than just starch and vitamins from the potatoes and pumpkin, she also pan-fried a piece of cod - it was only slighty marinated to suit Faith's low-salt diet, but looked exactly like the ones we normally eat - slightly charred on the outside and flaky and tender on the inside. Anthea had commented "Aunty Eve, I think you are a good cook".

Just before bedtime, the three of us were as usual clowning around in Faith's bedroom - her usual bedtime ritual before we cleaned her up for bed. This time round, we played the Mozart CD- a vestige of Eve and my early attempt to introduce Faith to music when she was in the womb, and also read her the nursery rhyme book which Eve had purchased from Popular this afternoon. As usual, Faith was all laughing and amused at our actions. She also joined in, pretending to "sleep" when Eve sang the bunny song, and joining in the clapping and stamping of feet, when we sang "if you're happy and you know it".

In our simple life, in this little family, we are often blessed with so many things by so many people around us, but most of all, with what we share with each other.

Salamat Hari Raya & Children's Day

We were encouraged to deck out in ethnic wear for today's class at Julia Gabriel in celebration of Hari Raya and Children's Day.

Faith's finally able to fit into this pink cheongsam dress that I had bought in H&M in Dubai nine months ago. I had thought it would be fun. Turned out that there were only 2 kids that were dressed in ethnic clothes :)

As a result, she received many compliments on her dress.

These pictures are my few favourite that I took of her in her little pink cheongsam dress.

Life's box of chocolates

Life is never boring with a one and half year old toddler. There are many instances when we were amazed by the antics of our little one.

Yesterday evening, Louis told Faith that we'll go out to NTUC after dinner.

The time was 7.50 pm. Faith had finished her dinner. Louis and I were chilling out a little in front of the TV even though we had finished ours. My mom was at the kitchen sink washing up.

Our little one was pottering around a little in the living room when she suddenly got up, went to the corner near the door and sat down near the mat where we put all our frequently worn shoes. Her back was facing us and we could see that she had picked up her shoes and was trying to put them on herself.

Louis and I switched our attention from the TV and started to watch what she was doing. We were laughing quietly cos we knew she was going to ensure that Louis made good on his promise to go out to NTUC after dinner.

As she was fiddling about, her body shifted a little and I saw that she's gotten her shoe on on the right foot. The strap was correctly velcro-ed on and the shoe was worn on the correct side.

Amazing!!!

I didn't even knew she could put on her own shoes.

We know she could remove her shoes on her own most times. She had had lots of practice taking her shoes off sitting in the car seat, developing it to a knack that we now make it a point to remind her to sit down and remove her shoes every time she steps into the house. Sometimes, she's able to remove both shoes on her own without any help. Other times, she would grunt and cry for help to remove her shoes.

Eventually, Louis had to help her to put on the left shoe as no amount of struggling on her part could she manage to put the shoe on that foot.

After she's gotten both her shoes on, she walked over to the TV console, gathered the set of house keys that we usually leave there, jangled them in front of us in a bid to get us to move butts and bring her out to NTUC as promised.

To borrow Forest Gump's famous quote: "Life with a kid is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get".

Dinners

It would be great if all dinners that we held could be like the one we had yesterday.

Minimum time was spent in the kitchen preparing the 4-course dinner of:

- Vietnamese summer rolls (Gui Cuon)

- Avocado & tofu salad

- Chorizo sandwich

- Macha jelly, azuki beans & ice-cream

We pre-prepared nearly everything beforehand leading to the dinner. I only took less than 10 minutes to grill the chorizos as everyone were helping themselves to the salad and the summer rolls.

Even though one of the gang couldn't make it becos she was rushing to finish reading some 200 CVs, the 6 of us managed to finish all the food on the table meant for 7 persons.

Louis and I had to take turns entertaining Faith throughout the dinner. Still, Faith was on home ground and while it would be a long time before she turns into a good little host, she behaved fairly well throughout dinner.

For these same reasons, Louis and I prefer hosting dinners these days at home rather than to go outside for dinner with friends. Even though we still have to take turns eating and entertaining our little girl, at least, we are within earshot of the conversations.

The night before, we had dinner with Louis' colleague at his wife at Morton's of Chicago @ The Oriental Hotel, sans kids. Since we were all parents ourselves, we unanimously agreed to have our dinner at 6.30 pm.

As we chatted and ate our dinner, we all took turns to look at our watches inconspicuously. When the dessert took some time to show up, neither couples were embarrassed that one of us went forward to request the kitchen to hurry our order.

We all understood that we needed to reach home by 9.30 pm to put our kids to bed.

When dessert was served, we ate quickly, called for the bill and then each made our way home, glancing at our watches still with each set of parent making a call home to check if our kids were doing fine.

It would have seemed almost unimaginable and stark crazy that we would fork out so much to dine at a place like Morton's and not take time to eat and enjoy ourselves. That lifestyle of fine dinning and degustation type of meals that last at least 3 hours or more now seem so foreign with parenthood, as if it was something that happened in our past lives.

Truthfully, we did enjoy our meal. We were just more conscious about the amount of time we spent out and we wanted to balance some couple time with our personal desires to put our kids to bed ourselves.

I guess that's the trade-off of parenthood.

At the end of the day, reaching home and seeing Faith break into a huge smile, coupled with the smacking kisses that she doles out before bedtime makes all the trade-offs worthwhile.

London haul

What makes a married man & a father different on business trips is the speed in which each trip is conducted - the "quick in-quick out" type of business travels. If one had to be gone slightly longer than his preferred modus operandi, then, one would essentially be plagued with guilt.

Lots of guilt.

So much so that one would go on a guilt-buy to make up for time away from home :)

Louis was away the last week in London for training. Of course, yours truly here would forever have a list of things for him to bring back, seeing that we had limited luggage space on our last trip. Additionally, some things are perishable, so, there's only so much you can bring back.

Faith had the largest haul of stash that her daddy bought for her becos he disliked the time apart from her, even though it was a short one week trip away.

Since she's still not quite at the stage where she's able to hold a conversation with him over the phone, you can bet that he missed her a lot more than he did his wife ;)

To be fair, while she did not held up her end of the conversation, she enjoyed hogging my cellphone when Louis called. She would plaster it to her ears and scream if we tried to take it away from her. Louis kind of had to maintain a one-sided conversation the entire time. She would just smile into the phone and it takes lots of coaxing before she would even utter shyly "Papa", if at all.

Thankfully, she's capable of giving smacking kisses and she gave that willingly over the phone, bringing the cellphone to her mouth and giving it a smacking and resounding kiss whenever we told her to kiss Louis goodbye.

Aside from the many clothes and a set of Speedo swimming costume that Louis bought for her, he also hauled back a few Green & Blacks chocolate bars, 2 canister of cocoa powder (these were about 1/3 the price of a canister sold at NTUC Finest), chorizo sausages, organic sweet potato chips, organic prunes, nuts and a few other sauces.

The most precious thing that he brought back for me was the third series of Gordon Ramsay's "The F Word" DVD. Yippee!!!

As for the chorizos, some folks are going to be treated to chorizo sandwiches over the Hari Raya Puasa public holiday on Wednesday. That is if I don't screw up the simple process of cooking it!

DIY Mozz Away

Since being prone to mosquito bites is in both Faith's and my blood, it was time that something be done to ensure that the 2 disastrous incidences of Faith's mosquito-biten face do not repeat itself.

Not only do our hearts bleed to see her face covered with red ugly mozzie bites, even my FIL couldn't bear the thought of her having yet another such experience again.

Hence, the #1 DIY guy in the family took it upon himself to brainstorm and hit upon the idea of installing a mosquito netting at the window of our room. Yeap! The family's #1 DIY man is no other than my FIL. The #2 DIY guy in the extended family is my elder BIL, who's currently away overseas for 2 months ;)

Anyways, just a little digression from my main topic, these 2 men are the key guys that Louis and I can count on for any DIYs in *our* house, in that specific order ;) I am eternally grateful to these 2 men as they are always more than willing and would go the extra mile to help us out whenever we need a handyman for problematic quick fixes in our home.

Last week, when my FIL was over at our place, he measured the length of our window. A few days later, he returned to us with a piece of pliable wire mesh/netting and a cloth masking tape, saying that he would need a little bit more time to resolve the issue of how to place the netting neatly on our window so that we can open and close the window panels without any issues.

This morning, he called to say that he's popping over to our place to put in the mosquito netting. My FIL had found the solution to keep out our pesky and unwanted night visitors from the house.

Bringing along his drill bit, screws and 2 long metal bars, my FIL measured and drilled the 2 metal bars to the side panels on each side of the last panel on each side of the window. Next, we fitted the netting in between the metal bars and the side of the window panels. There's some slight excess material at the top and bottom of it, but we decided to leave it as there weren't any gaps for the mosquitoes to fly through.

Taa-daa... there you have it! A home DIY solution and it looked pretty neat. You almost can't see the netting if you don't look closely.

Most importantly, the netting should be able to keep out the mosquitoes, yet allows light to filter through and air to be ventilated.

Thanks very much, Pa!

To our ocassional nocturnal visitors: "STAY OUT, YOU UNWELCOME MOZZIES!"

Family trip in the planning

Australia! That's our next travel destination.

The flight tickets have been booked for 4 adults and 1 toddler to head to Sydney and Gold Coast in mid Feb 09. Both my in-laws would be travelling along with us.

The occasion? Partly becos our friends from Louis' Insead days are getting hitched in the bride's home city, which is in Sydney. The wedding ceremony and reception would be held at the Sydney Opera House to boot. How interesting is that!

It was timely that the email from L&A came this week. Louis and I were deciding where to go for our next travel destination. We were debating between Japan and the US becos we thought that Disneyland might be enjoyable for Faith.

With that email, it cemented and finalised our travel destination.

We added Gold Coast so that there would be something of interest for Faith. We figured themed parks would be more the kind of thing to appeal to a nearly 2-year old toddler than visiting vineyards and the Blue Mountains.

Between now and then, we'll have to do our planning. In the meantime, I'm slowly trying to train Faith to be able to eat adult food. I'm hoping that I won't need to lug my usual mini-kitchen for the trip Down Under.

If she is able to eat off our plates, we would have a bigger window to go sightseeing, instead of rushing to go out and returning back to the hotel to turn on the switch for her slow cooker to cook her porridge.

Thinking about that possibility makes me all excited for the trip :) Yippee!