Long nights ahead...

Louis is in camp for 2 weeks of reservist. For the non-Singaporeans friends out there, all male Singapore citizens are conscripted to do compulsory military service (or what is known as national service here) for 2 years somewhere between the age of 16-21 years old. After the 2 years of military service, depending on their rank and specific battle units, they would be required to return to the army for up to a total of 3 weeks on a yearly basis for some mock-battle retraining. Anyways, I could be erroneous in my explanation. For better clarity, check out the link to Wikipidia under the word "national service" above.

Usually, when he's around or working late, I would be pottering around the house, becoming a couch potato or just tinkering around and surfing the net. In fact, he would be grumbling at times that I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I neglect to spend whatever precious time with him :)

Today, he's gone into camp and all of a sudden, I find myself bored, lonely and wondering what should I do to occupy my time now that Faith is sleeping. Surfing the net, watching TV and pottering around the house doesn't seem as captivating as they were before. I miss my hubby terribly and he's gone for less than a day.

Wait a second... the phone's ringing...

Two minutes later...

Louis called. He's got good news, he's coming home to sleep although it would mean that he's got to wake up at some ungodly hour (in my opinion) in order to drive back to camp tomorrow morning. But yay!!!

I've gotta go now and prepare some pizza. Hubby is a little hungry -- see... lousy camp food makes him appreciate me and my cooking all the more. Am going to make him some pizza with some saucisson sec from Carrefour -- one of his favourite snack.

Faith goes to Little Gym

A number of our friends have sent their little ones to the likes of Little Gym and Gymboree around the age of 6 months and have been telling us good things about it. Call it laziness on our part or just that we are a little "bo-chap", but it was only recently that we finally decided to snap out of our inertia and bring Faith for a lesson.

Two weeks before, Louis and I made efforts to check out the facilities at both places. Both of us had a stronger preference for Little Gym. Partly becos the kids looked like they were having fun with the teachers during lessons and that Little Gym's playroom was all covered with foam/rubber mattresses and there weren't any exposed sharp edges or wooden/metal parts. Some quick poll of a few friends pointed out that all of them signed their kids up for Little Gym for one reason or another too. That sounded promising.

We decided to take a trial lesson with Little Gym first. All our prior interactions with them have been good. The staff that I had spoken to were knowledgeable, patient and cheerful about answering all our questions. They were also quite "religious" about calling up a day before to remind about the trial lesson too :) Had to postpone our initial trial lesson once almost a few hours before the lesson started, but they were so helpful and even offered to rescheduled it immediately on the spot.

And thus, Faith had her first trial lesson today. Louis and I thought she did pretty well and the lesson was great, even though she bawled once when we tried to ask her to do a somersault. Overall, she did quite a bit of crawling, climbing and dangling. Other than the incident when she cried, she seemed to be alright and had some bit of fun with the rest of the activities. I think she especially like the end of the class when the teacher blew water bubbles for them to catch and burst. That night, she was all tuckered out. Here's a video of her at one of the activities.

Louis and I decided to sign up for 7 lessons after the class. So, starting next Thursday, I'll be bringing Faith for her Little Gym classes :) I'm rather looking forward to it too :)

Second attempt at cupcakes

How often do you eat your own words? I seem to do a great job at that. Probably becos I've got the bad habit of shooting my mouth off. However, I'm glad to report that this time, it isn't something downright mortifying, nor am I that far off from my original determination.

I did swear off baking cupcakes some months ago. Only to turn around and attend a class cum hands-on session today for Cupcakes Baking Level 1 by Jocelyn Shu of Kuidaore. Like the macarons saga, I just had to prove to myself that I can make some cupcakes if I really really am desperate enough to.

S sms-ed me this early in the week just to let me know she was going for a cupcake class. Turns out that we have both coincidentally signed up for the same class. Yippee! I have company.

The hands-on that we did was for a chocolate cupcake recipe. Something easy that required only a mixing bowl and a good whisk to whip out. Jocelyn pre-prepared some vanilla cupcakes for the participants so that we had a mix of 12 vanilla and chocolate cupcakes mix to try our hands at decorating.

I really do not seem to have the knack, creativity nor patience to create intricate little pieces of artwork on my cupcakes. In fact, S & I were standing there, scratching our heads as to what designs we could draw on our cupcakes that is visually appealing yet tasty. We didn't like too much icing sugar or butter cream on ours in case it became overly sweet and creamy. Neither did the taste of marzipan gel with our taste buds.

In the end, we just did a little of each different types of decorations but left one chocolate cupcake undecorated cos we wanted to enjoy it in its simple form.

We were lucky! Ours was the first class that Shermay decided to give every participants pretty cupcake boxes (instead of those from Phoon Huat) that lovingly showcases all the nicely decorated cupcakes to bring home. Its a double-edged sword yah... ugly cupcakes are cruelly displayed for the world to mock at too ;) Mine's not too hideous looking, but neither were they stunning.

Oh well... I think I shall pass some to my niece and nephew. I don't think Louis and I can finish 12 cupcakes all by ourselves. Hopefully, they won't criticise the lack of creativity and will enjoy the cupcakes. Hee hee hee...

I'm not sure when will I make a batch of cupcakes on my own. But I know that if the occasion calls for it, at least this time around, those cupcakes would be halfway decent and edible :)

Is it better when kids learn to talk and walk later?

Faith's gotten her 1-year inoculation today for Hepatitis A and the last shot for her pneumococcal jabs today.

While at the paedi's, her doctor and I were chatting about her growth and development amongst other things. He remarked that she had a rather cheeky grin and seems to be a mischievous baby. Indeed, this little baby of ours, while petite, is big on cheek and also getting more playful as each day passes.

At this stage, Faith seems entirely contented to be crawling her way around the house and not the least bit interested in cruising nor walking. When I have tried to hold her by the armpits and walk her, she usually struggles to be put down on the floor and once sitted, will crawl away.

Given that the acceptable age range for babies to walk is quite wide (9-18 months), I am not in the least worried that she's not showing interest in walking yet. Every time I tell my mom about my observation of Faith's disinterest in walking, my mom would say that kids who learn to walk at a later stage are actually better, although she couldn't tell me the reason why. By better life, I had thought she meant that they will have good fortunes. I had laughingly dismissed that as one of those old wives' tales.

Was telling the paedi about what my mom said when he asked if Faith's walking. His immediate reaction was that my mom was right. I looked at him incredously and said, "Isn't that old wives' tale?"

"No, no... its true. They do better in life...", he said.

The reason, he said was that kids who walk later spend more time crawling, building up a stronger foundation for when they actually learn and start to walk. I didn't ask for further explanations but after some googling, I've only managed to find on Dr Sears that late walkers may be less accident-prone.

Told my mom about it when I returned home, and she was like "Yah lah! Its true what. I told you already. Your grandma used to tell me that...". Her point was that the older generations do have great wisdom to share. What they however lack was the actual explanations for these supposed "old wives' tales" to convince new generations like myself :)

Anyways, the other little tidbit of information that I got from Baby Center was that late talking babies are supposed to be more intelligent, like Einstein :) That's a relief since Faith's not keen to call me Mummy or Louis, Papa, anytime soon. Sure, she babbles a lot, mainly baby gibberish that no one can comprehend.

She loves "singing" loudly to the music that I play off my cellphone or whatever music she hears. For no apparent reason, she might start yabbering non-stop. The only word that she masters successfully is "mum-mum", which is baby-speak for food or that she wants to eat. However, its a little hard to qualify that as an accepted English word although Faith seems to know what's her priorities :)

As always, I know that different babies develop at different pace. Louis and I are confident that Faith would learn to walk and speak at her own pace. Right now, we're enjoying her very much and while she can be a handful, she's a lot of fun too. And we wouldn't have her any other way.

The above picture is a fairly recent one of her eating her first sphagetti. I was trying to introduced pasta to vary her daily servings of porridge for both lunch and dinner. She was initially rather enthusiastic about it. After chomping her way through some 10 spoonfuls or so of pasta, she started spitting it out. Oh well... guess she might still prefer her porridge for now. Nonetheless, I would still try pastas again a little later with her.

A vegetarian 1-year birthday (Part 2)

In a departure from the CSI Miami scenes of Cafe del Mar, Faith celebrated her birthday with Eve's parents in a much more tranquil and peaceful way.

A day before Faith's actual birthday, Eve, myself, Faith, my in-laws, Nell (Eve's cousin), Richard (Nell's hubbie), Nicole (their daughter), Auntie Lely descended on "Classic Lao Di Fang" - a vegetarian restaurant for Faith's one-year party celeb with Eve's family. We were also fortunate to have Auntie Catherine - Eve's aunt currently staying in the UK, and Aunt "Liz" (Aunty Catherine's friend from the UK) arrive on a flight that afternoon - just in time to join us for the dinner after a shower at the hotel. Eve's brother and sister-in-law had to make a trip back to Malaysia as her SIL's dad was in hospital.

As some of you might know, my Mother-in-Law (MIL) is a vegetarian and Eve and I wanted to make sure that she was included in Faith's one-year celeb. MIL has in the past year, showered time and love on Faith, unfailingly coming over to help Eve take care of Faith 5 days a week, every week. So three weeks ago, at the same time that we had planned the Cafe Del Mar celebs, we also managed to convince MIL to do a "simple dinner celebration". At that time, MIL was insistent that we keep it simple and that we did not call it a birthday celeb. And we promptly agreed because whatever the reason, it was good enough for us that Faith was eating out with MIL and with Eve's extended family.

Classic Lao Di Fang turned out to be quite a nice choice. Ironically, Classic Lao Di Fang wasn't our first choice, because MIL had originally given us some recommendation to another vegetarian restaurant called Happy Realm - also in the same area - in Chinatown. But as luck would have it, during one weekday, Faith, MIL, Eve and myself had a chance to do a rare dinner outside together, and we went out for a vegetarian meal at Classic Lao Di Fang. We liked the food so much that the rest was history.

One of the things about vegetarian food sometimes is the presence of 'mock meats' which are really just flour of some sort, rolled to look like ham, prawn, pork, chicken, whatever would look familiar to a 'meat lover'. I think 'mock meats' literally mean 'fake meats' but it could be taken to also mean making a mockery of one's senses. After all, can one really be deceived by the looks of something that looks like meat, but tastes like flour?

Fortunately for us, the food at Classic Lao Di Fang came with sufficient variety without us having to order much mock meat. And in fact, we had a really nice vegetarian meal consisting of steamboat with beancurd and mushrooms, fried mushrooms in cereal fried with basil, yam ring, Ee-fu noodles, fried "red-brown' rice, as well as veggies like sweet potato leaves and Sichuan french beans with minced 'meat'. Whatever little mock meat that came in the dishes, it was actually well done and not overly "in-your-face" - which was really much appreciated by everyone.

Eve and I also certainly agreed that it was probably the best vegetarian restaurant we've been to - as for the birthday girl - she was just content spending time with Mama - incessantly smiling and laughing at MIL's every move. I don't think she even knew that Mama went to the trouble of getting her a vegetarian cake (without eggs), but I think she certainly enjoyed her birthday celeb - I think possibly more than the 'loud' dinner we had at Cafe Del Mar. :)

Baby is one year

After all the celebrations we had over the past weekend and yesterday, we settled down today - Faith's actual birthday, a relaxing day with just her, Eve and I. It was a perfect way to celebrate her birthday - just having her to ourselves and she having the full devotion of Eve and myself (I hope she felt that way :)).

In all our birthday celebs for Faith (first the one at Cafe Del Mar with my side of the family, then yesterday at the vegeterian restaurant with Eve's side of the family), we were reminded of how this one year has flown by. Indeed, it doesn't feel like it's been one year. 2008 is indeed significant, come to think of it, because it is Faith's one year, and it is Eve and my 5th year wedding anniversary. Really, time just flies.

This weekend and the past, I think has been a microcosm of the one year with Faith. The past weekends have been busy weekends but they have also been weekends where Eve and I have been reminded constantly of the most important things in our lives.

In the same way, in the past one year, we've had to make a lot of decisions on how to make the best use of our time and money. Over the weekends, we've had to think about where best to do Faith's birthday celebs, ensuring that she gets to spend time with her loved ones (the extended family), and still allow us (her parents) to enjoy time with her, and yet keeping watch (and still feeling the pinch) on our budgets. I myself have had to juggle my time at work and over the weekends, as my projects have been unrelenting in their pace and with critical meetings coming this week, I've had to remind myself not to let these concerns come in the way of spending time with family.

From the time Faith was born, this juggling with time, money - essentially, our resources, has been a constant in our lives. From day one, we have had to decide on the best way to keep the family running - with Eve taking a leave from work, and me becoming the sole bread winner. And each time I get a project, I've had to make decisions on how much travel I should do. And in the past year, I've come to grips with balancing my time as a breadwinner, and a father for which there is no better way to show love, then to spend time with family. Fortunately, life has been good to us in many ways. And Faith's coming of age today has been a reassurance that we've done pretty well as parents. Not to say we have not had struggles in the past - for me for example, I've tried to work only when Faith is asleep over the weekends - and this means working past 10pm or waking up early in the morning on Saturday to work. Yet, I've also had to pull more than my fair share of over-timers - a fact that my employees constantly remind me of considering that I'm supposed to be the Work Life Balance champion in my consultancy group.

I guess the moral of the story really is that as couples and now as parents, we all need to find our way to balance our priorities. And no one apart from ourselves, can tell if we've really struck the right balance or not. No wonder they say that parenthood makes you grow up - because it certainly gives you the confidence that you define what makes you tick as a person. And when one is forced to prioritised, given no luxury in time nor money, there is no way but to be confident about the decisions you take for yourself and your family.

Our only wish for Faith is when she becomes a parent, she will feel that the experience she has is as rewarding as we've had, having her. Happy one year old, Faith from daddy and mummy who will always be there for you!

Kids say the darnest thing :)

If you'd read my SIL's blog, you would know that we celebrated my nephew, Anders' birthday on Sunday, one day after Faith's birthday celebration. Faith's and Anders' birthday are one day apart. Anders' birthday is on the 22nd Mar, while Faith's is on the 23rd. Coincidentally, Faith's original due date was supposed to be 10 Apr, which was one day after my niece, Anthea's birthday. Either ways, it worked out that her birthday was just one day after one of her cousins :)

Anyways, we had a nice meal at Zhou's Kitchen and Anders had a big 2kg birthday cake in the shape of some truck or tractor. He had been so excited about his birthday presents, knowing that he's getting 2 Transformers toys from us and his Uncle Terence/Cherry Jie Jie. According to Adrian, he's been asking and nagging about his birthday present since the week before his birthday.

My daughter did something that day to Anders that made extremely proud of her. Just as Anders was standing next to her baby chair, she suddenly pulled his shirt to drag him nearer to her and gave him a hug! All by herself, without any prodding from us. Which goes to show how much her little mind is absorbing like a sponge on the daily happenings and things around her.

After we sang Anders his birthday song and cut his cake, we were all happily tucking into the chocolate cake when Anders suddenly said aloud to me, "Aunty Eve, don't let Faith mei-mei eat my cake". That remark left both his parents feeling a little astounded and they were both asking him why not? Besides, I had already been feeding Faith a wee bit of the cake too.

So, I told my little nephew, "But you ate Faith mei-mei's birthday cake yesterday, right? Why can't she eat yours today?" However, Anders refused to explain any further despite a little more prodding from his parents.

Later, after he had opened both his presents, admired and showed them off to everybody, I had the chance to ask him more closely as he was showing his presents to me. At just that moment, a sudden thought came to my mind...

"Anders, why didn't you want mei-mei to eat your cake? Was it because she didn't sing you a birthday song?"

He solemnly nodded his head. Hahahah....he was a littled miffed that everybody sing his birthday song while Faith didn't :)

And so, I explained to him that Faith is still too young and can't really speak at all. She couldn't even call me. However, the fact that she had earlier hugged him was probably her way of wishing him a happy birthday without being about to say it outright. He nodded his head gravely at what I said, but I'm not exactly sure if he understood completely what I was telling him :)

It just so funny how innocent kids are with their actions and words, doing and saying what comes to mind.

Tomorrow, the ACES family are going to Brisbane for a holiday. I just read my SIL's blog that Anders had been having fever and she's not sure if she would need to cancel the trip. I hope Anders' fever is nothing serious and that the entire family would be able to go on the trip as planned tomorrow. Anders would be able to celebrate his 4th birthday overseas for the very first time :)

PS: This is a backlogged post as I had been busy with Faith for the last few afternoons since my mom has been feeling a little under the weather :) I actually have a number of backlogged posts that I really need to clear :)