#2

Most friends that we know of who have had 2nd kids professed that they adopt a less hands-on approach towards their offspring for a number of reasons. Or rather, they display lesser anxiety and are generally more laid-back compared to being first-time parents.

That might well be true for us too going by the number of posts we have posted on our #2 so far.

Zilch, nada, zero, none.

After reaching the milestone of the 3rd month, which we could publicly inform all and sundry that we are expecting #2, I had merely updated our profile to indicated that there's a bun in the oven.

So now, I'm about 19 weeks along, or think I'm about 19 weeks cos I keep losing count of how many weeks along am I, and other than close friends, I've not really made any announcement on this blog.

So there you go. Now you know. We are expecting #2 in a matter of months.

Do we know the gender yet, do we have a preference for which and when am I due?

For the first question, we'd probably would be able to find out at the end of this month when I go for my detailed scan around the 20th week. Do we want a boy this time since we already have a girl. Well... I'm not sure. All we are hoping for, given our last experience, is that mum and baby would have a safe and uneventful delivery.

Technically, I'm due on 12 Mar 2010. Owing to my placenta abruptio from the previous time, the gynae is pre-empting that it might happen again. So, we are targeting for me to go for a scheduled c-sect around the 37th week. That would put it around end Feb 2010.

I do hope that with this post, we would be a bit more diligent about our posting. After all, we do not want our #2 to feel neglected.

Toddler toilet seat

The verdict on Faith's potty training is that it is a veritable success.

So successful that in the day, she no longer pees in her diapers even when we put it on for her for those "just-in-case" moments. Like when the public toilet isn't of desirable hygiene, or when we can't rush her to a toilet quick enough.

This week, I left her in our master bedroom for a moment to grab a towel for her shower. When I got back in just a matter of seconds, I found her balanced on our adult toilet bowl, peeing.

She was rather steady on it. She had managed to balance herself quite well on it, with her 2 hands holding on to the sides for support.

What scared me was how did she managed to scramble up onto the toilet without assistance. And the toilet seat was rather large. Large enough to potentially be a hazard as she could fall into it and hurt herself if she wasn't careful.

I told Louis that we needed to get a toddler trainer seat for her pronto. And we did it in a great big hurry.

It wasn't the most ideal but there weren't a lot of choices for trainer toilet seats. The trainer seat was merely placed onto the existing toilet seat, although its got 2 little handles by the side for little hands to grab onto. It wasn't totally stable and could shift as Faith tries to position herself onto it.

Thankfully, the little one wised up rather quickly and manages to employ a fairly effective method of getting herself up onto the toilet seat with the least precarious movements -- by stepping up onto the little stool that we placed in front of the toilet bowl with her backside facing the toilet set before inching herself up slowly.

Faith now has two options - use the potty that we placed outside the common bathroom or the trainer seat in the master bedroom if she wants to do her business like the adults.

Our new toy

There's a stronger impetus to blog more often.

We have a new toy in the house ever since the start of Comex '09. After more than 5 years of pinning, I've finally managed to justify the purchase of a DSLR. Our favourite test subject needs no second guessing. She's the key reason and most often blogged about person in this online "diary".

Dinner was at Hard Rock Cafe tonight, at the request of my elder BIL, who's recently back from a one and a half month overseas working stint.

We managed to capture Faith at one of her happiest moments -- being together with her two cousins. Her expressions in these few pictures are those of unadulterated joy and pure delight...

Faith at 2 and a half

It has been a while since I blogged. During this time, Faith has grown to be a fountain of endless surprises. At 2 and a half, I thought it is timely to recap the milestones that our little girl has reached....

Potty-Trained (fingers-crossed)

If you would recall, in one of our earlier posts in Dec 2008, we described how we had unsuccessfully "tried" to potty-train Faith. Back then, we had bought two types of potties - a modern-looking one from IKEA and a traditional "trophy" cup that mum-in-law purchased from a provision store at Toa Payoh.

In any case, after close to 9 months, as our little girl would say - "I did it!!" - all thanks to mum-in-law's perserverence. And as you might have guessed, tradition triumped over modernity and the "blue pot" proved more functional than the IKEA one.

It all happened quite quickly last week. Last Wednesday, when I picked mum-in-law and Faith from JG, mum-in-law proudly recounted how Faith was now able to pull down her pants and pee into the potty on her own. It seems Faith had also pooped into the potty - however, when she did it that afternoon, she had cried when she actually "did the deed". However, that evening, just to show that her daddy could really be proud of her, she actually, on her own accord, ran to the potty, pulled down her pants, and popped one more time into the potty and this time round, not only were there no tears, our little girl proudly said to me, "I did it, papa!" (of course :)).

All this has been really timely as Eve and I have not been able to find Pampers Dry Large for sometime now!

Drawing and Painting

Faith has been playing with her Magna Doodle for some time now. Where she was first largely fascinated with using the Magna Doodle to trace her hand and footprints, she has since graduated to scribbling things on the board on her own. Recently, she picked up drawing a bunch of grapes, using the circular magnets provided. And she now does it quite deftly - first imprinting the circles, and then drawing the "stalks" of the grapes. Given the amount of practise that she gets at Bishan, practically every weekend, doing colour painting with my parents, we are all secretly harbouring hopes that our little girl would at least be a little more "artistic" than her mummy and daddy.

Finger Dexterity

One thing I learn as a parent of a precocious baby girl is how kids tend to "rotate" their toys with seemingly no predictability. Perhaps they get bored easily. And perhaps, they never tire at challenging themselves. Faith recently rekindled her interest with the "bead-maze". Just some context to how this toy came about: When Faith was still at the Little Gym, Eve had chanced upon this toy at a store next to the LG. This was about a year back - and she was quite convinced this was a good investment for Faith, to help her develop her finger dexterity. When she brought it home, I recall that Faith got bored with it pretty quickly as she was unable to really manipulate the beads.

Things have changed. Faith has recently been keen to experiment with the bead-maze. Just this evening, she pulled the toy down (it is pretty heavy) from the console. And she proudly demonstrated how she could "transfer" a bead from one end to the other, through the most difficult maze. Imaginably, Eve and I were so proud of her :)

Piggy-bank

It just occured to me that Faith's milestones in this blog all revolve around something that Eve invested in :) Ditto for the piggy-bank. Eve had bought this nice piggy bank that gave a "oink oink" sound whenever a coin is deposited into the bank. Since then, whenever Faith sees any stray coins lying around, she will duitfully deposit them into her piggy bank. Our little girl somehow figured that there must be a way to take the coins out and she had kept pestering us to show her how. But so far we've managed to keep that a secret. Hopefully the day she finds out how to take the coins out, she would also be sensible enough to put all the cash into a savings account and not have it scattered around as toys :)

Happy Birthday to me

I didn't want any celebrations of any sort.

Absolutely not in the mood for any kind of celebration since healthwise, I haven't exactly been feeling dandy for the last few weeks. The family agreed to just doing a normal weekend dinner like we always did.

The concession was that we adjourned to Prive for desserts thereafter. Younger BIL wore jeans for the night and paid for desserts at Prive, both of which were in honour of my birthday :) Its a big deal when any of the 3 brothers in the family wear jeans cos they are perpetually clad in bermudas.

HM & E proposed to have dinner too on a weekday, which we usually do whenever one of our birthdays are around the corner. I begged off.

They gave me a great surprised on the actual day, which was Monday.

They sent a cake and a basket of flowers. Faith immediately lay claim to the teddy bear that came with the flowers, declaring that "I love my present! I love my bear!" and put words to action by smoothering the bear with wet kisses :)

We cut the cake that night. Faith lapped up the cake and the strawberries decorating the top of the cake.

Thanks, guys! I loved it!

Bean sprouts

The theme for the week was "Zhong Zi" (seedlings).

So, the little kids planted green beans to grow sprouts. Much like a science project.

Not that Faith has any concept of seedlings. Probably to her, the art & craft session ended as soon as she dumps the handful of beans into the container with the soaked cotton pads.

On the contrary, I couldn't bear to dump the contents. I left it on the kitchen counter and watched it sprout over the next few days. I would have continued to leave it alone and see what happens. Louis was of the opinion that we should not cos it would start to smell really bad after.

Nonetheless, it was a nice little art & craft...although I feel its more of a science project :)

Hong Kong (15th - 19th Jun 09)

This post has been waaaay overdue. I'm just too lazy and a little busy these days. If we have spare time, I would rather spend as much of my remaining SAHM-time with Faith, in anticipation of my part-time work arrangement in Jul.

Since its been a while ago, I shall forgo the usual post-holiday recounts and focus on some of the key highlights of the trip instead.

1) Trip itinerary - It was a 5D4N trip; the first 2N were spent in HK, specifically in Harbour View Renaissance Hotel in HK Island and the remaining 2N were spent in Disneyland, staying at the Disneyland HK Hotel. We had some Marriott vouchers which we used to redeem for the 2N stay in HK, as well as a dine-in lunch on the afternoon before we checked out for Disneyland.

HK hotels are small, and we didn't want to splurge that much for a room with a King-sized bed. So, we had rooms with Queen beds, plus a free foldaway for Faith. She spent her time in the hotel room jumping up and down from the queen beds onto her foldable beds.

2) Dining is more expensive in Hong Kong - We had dinners with friends the first two nights in HK Island. One was at the touristy cum local hotspot, Yung Kee, and the other at Ches, a typical smallish Chinese restaurant located right in the red-light district. Belying its somewhat dubious and eye-popping location, food was impeccable. These dinners for 3 adults cost nearly S$200 each night for just 1 soup (to share) and about 3-4 other dishes, one of which was meat. Nothing extravagant though, which makes it the cost unbelievable.

However, soups was consistently good in all the restaurants, including the Crystal Lotus Chinese restaurant located in HK Disneyland Hotel. In fact, we were pleasantly surprised that Crystal Lotus served impeccable and fine Chinese cuisine, similar to standards of Hua Ting @ Orchard Hotel.

3) HK Disneyland is more suited for younger children - Its probably the smallest Disneyland amongst all the others overseas. Most of the rides aren't that thrilling, except for Space Mountain. It was sufficient for Faith though cos she was rather overwhelmed by the larger-than-life characters there. She was frightened of the Main Street afternoon parade and parts of the Golden Key show too. She only acquiesced to picture taking with Mickey (her absolute favourite), Minnie (2nd favourite), Sleeping Beauty (at lobby of hotel) and Goofy (very reluctantly).

Two days was a good time for us at Disneyland. Taking on Disneyland with a toddler isn't quite the same and you can't hurry a toddler along too much.

Her absolute favourite rides there has got to be Small Small World. Well... not unexpected :)

4) Hong Kong, the shopping paradise - Not if you're there with a spouse that's not into shopping and a bored 2-year old. My only shopping was done at the H&M outlet at Central and Sogo Foodhall for the Hang Heung Lao Po Bing (old wives biscuits, literally translate). Oh... not forgetting the Disney stores at Disneyland, where Faith turned into a shopaholic cum Santarina.

5) Faith's take on HK & Disneyland - It was apparent from Day 1 that Faith is more of a homebody and she missed everyone at home.

Her favourite phrase there on a daily basis was "I go home" and "I find Ye-ye/Nai-nai/Mama/Dua Peh/Dua Erm/Jie-jie/Gor-gor" etc etc. The first phrase was always uttered when she was out of her elements and/or was frightened and the second phrase when she was tired and cranky.

At Disneyland, her 3rd fav phrase was "I buy for [insert name of family members]". She would look at a t-shirt, a toy, sunglasses, mugs, pens etc and wanted to buy them for someone at home. If she could have her way, she would bring home the bulk of the items from Disney for everyone.

Faith ate well in HK. In fact, she was mostly able to sit in her chair and finish her food for all her lunches and dinners. My best take-along on the trip was the nori sheets that I brought along. She must be a Japanese in her previous life cos she obviously likes her rice wrapped in nori sheets. With the nori sheets, she could just eat it with plain rice and no soup.

6. Overall trip rating - It was a fairly good trip. This was meant to be an "incentive" trip for me since I was going back to work -- no more taking off on impromptu trips at short notice, and a trip for Faith.

Hopefully, we'll be able to take another trip again somewhere towards end of the year. For now, we've decided not to jinx it by doing too much planning or building up any expectations, ala our cancelled Australian trip.

Till then....