Reading is fun. Yee Sinn likes to read (I’m assuming lah). She never fails to amaze us with the things she does. Sometime when she wakes up in the morning and find her papa and mama still asleep, she will reach out to her picture books, sit at a corner of her mattress and start flipping the books quietly. At times when she is up to some mischief, I will go to the “library bag”, pick up one book and tell her its story telling time. She will drop whatever naughty things that she is thinking of doing and sit quietly beside me, anticipating a story from me.

Her favourite books so far areon animals that she can relate to. She’ll exclaim very loudly and proudly “Dog!” “Dat!” “Bird!” while pointing excitedly to them. She also likes flap books where she can participate in the story telling by flipping the flaps on the pages.

Here are some pictures of her reading.

Hubby and I will take turns reading to her. Hubby usually reads Chinese books while I’ll do the English ones. Whatever they are, I think Yee Sinn enjoys the time with us. Just see how focus she was while her papa told her a story.

We have been bringing her to the library quite frequently. She is now familiar with the place. She likes to sit at the children’s table and flip (I say flip instead of read because I don’t think she understand the words yet) the books, imitating the bigger boys and girls. Other times, she will be at the shelves taking picking out huge and colourful books. She gets quite excited if she sees books on dogs, cats or birds. These pictures were taken at the library yesterday evening.

Here is Yee Sinn sucking her thumb while checking out what's underneath the flaps.

My little girl is also very facinated with textured books.... pictures that comes with "Fur", "Sponges", "Mirrors" and "Bumps".

The family just celebrated my birthday at a nearby resturant in Toa Payoh Garden called Oasis. We decided to have dinner here instead of somewhere else in town cos we were bascially too lazy to travel and queue up for seats with the Friday crowd. We took a stroll in the park, checking out potential open areas where we can bring our little girl to run around. Hubby surprised me by getting me a mini birthday cake with a picture of Hello Kitty playing a violin. It was a nice quiet dinner of teochew porridge (a bit expensive though) in the middle of a park.

It was a happy birthday for me.

This was what we had for dinner - egg with preserved vegetable, stewed pork and claypot beancurd on top of free flow of sweet potatoe porridge. The total bill came up to $50.

A family picture with the miniture cake Hubby bought from Polar.

Another milestone for Yee Sinn - She can now pick up food from her plate and feed herself quite well. Here she is feeding herself with sweet potatoes. She kind of like her new found independence where she tries now make her point across and do things her way. She is learning to "negotiate" with her caregivers..... my baby is growing up.

Yee Sinn was trying to help me put the tag and the candles onto the cake.

I asked Hubby and Yee Sinn to pose for the camera and all I got was these 2 expressions! Like father like daughter!!!

Valentine's day...

We had nice and quiet Valentine's Day. Brought Yee Sinn to the PD for her routine injection in the morning. Took her weight while waiting for our turn and she now weighs 8.9kg. Not too bad considering she's becoming a fussy eater lately. Dr Heng told us she's growing really well and her weight and height is at the 70th percentile.

Hubby was busy preparing his lecture notes. Yee Sinn and I locked him in the TV room (we made sure he was comfortable with the air con, water etc) so that he can concentrate on completing his task. So Yee Sinn and I spent most of the day together alone. We read story books borrowed from the library, played a bit of piano, potter around the lobby area watering plants and prepared some snacks for her papa. I do cherish such moments together with my daughter, especially so when I've been pretty caught up with work lately. Sometimes I do feel a bit guilty coming home late from work and feeling too tired to entertain her. But no matter how tired I am, I will still bathe her (if I come back on time) and give her the last feed before putting her to bed.

Our Valentine's dinner was at Ikea. We figured out eating there would be quite fun as we could watch Yee Sinn at the play area while we have our dinner. Ikea was having their annual sale so we picked up some stuffs before heading home. It's a nice feeling to end the day knowing that 2 of my most important people in my life is happy and well.

A few of my colleagues and I went down to NTUC Finest at Bukit Timah Plaza to pick up some grocery. All I wanted to do was to buy some big Korean strawberries for my little girl. It has been awhile since she had strawberries and she loves those huge and sweet ones from Korea. I have been looking out for them for quite awhile but they were not available at our ordinary neighbourhood stores.

I bought a bouquet of flowers for hubby as well. He loves flowers and tomorrow will be Valentine's Day. Nope, not roses this time... they are freakily expensive... 3 stalks for $30 is CRAZY. Got a bunch of nicely mixed carnations, forget-me-nots and dunno-what-else... It was a huge bunch but cost only $20. The best part? I got it from NTUC!!!

It was nice to see that smile on his face when I gave it to him. That moment was priceless. Hee!

Our company has been organsing a series of charity events to raise funds for the President Charity 2009. One of them is a bowling competition held this afternoon whereby each department will sponsor $200 to send in a team to participate. Our department raised $400 and yours truly gamely participated.

It turned out to be a kind of joke because I have never ever played bowling before (and the rest of my team mates were beginners to the game as well). However, in the spirit of sportsmanship and charity, I became the team's captain. Hahahha. We came up with a team named "Rolling Thunder" and sure enough, our balls rolled with thunderous thuds into the gutter. We came in last in the competition with a score of 998. Oh well, we sure did enjoy yourselves though.

Below is a picture of my team. The only guy there is our boss- Yes! DIRECTOR somemore! I think he was quite amused watching his fellow team mates literally rolling the balls down the alley and into the gutters. But he was quite a good player though, getting a few strikes.... can't imagine how worse off our scores will be without him.

Hubby and I both co-own an email account. Our mutual friends will usually email us on this or we'll use it for events that both of us will be involved in. Anyway, I've been lazy and didn't check the inbox for about a week. Hubby did thoug, and he highlighted a particular mail that one of our friends sent. In it, it has an attachement with video called The Mom's Song. It's BRILLIANT! So here it is... Enjoy.

Whew! The weekend just gone by in a flash.

Saturday
We had a mini “open house” on Saturday morning. The Rover Gang turned up, together with the J family – Jon & Judy and their daughter Janice. They are expecting a baby boy in June and we had a discussion on what to name the kid – it’s Junior for now. Hahahahah. It was nice catching up. Later in the evening, we popped by Serangoon to visit one of Hubby’s friend cos we wanted to meet their not-so-new born baby. Yee Sinn enjoyed herself there because they had like truckload of toys to entertain her. After Saturday, life was back to normal as we were done with the year’s visiting.

Sunday
We went over to my maternal aunt’s place on Sunday evening. Monday was “Chap Gor Mei” – the Chinese equivalent to Valentine’s Day. It is falls on the 15th day of the 1st month of the Lunar Calendar. It has been a tradition to have a reunion dinner at her place on this date. Because Monday was a work-day, my aunt has kindly brought the dinner forward to Sunday evening instead. We went there a little earlier so that Yee Sinn could feed the fishes at the garden around my aunt’s condo.

My aunts and parents gave me a surprise birthday celebration after dinner. It has been years since anyone bought me a birthday cake… though it’s like 2 weeks early to my birthday. I guess they bought the cake because the kids just love parties. Hee hee. My 2 year old newphew and Yee Sinn were all clapping and all so happy blowing out the candles on my behalf.

Monday
I was on leave yesterday. It was “Chap Gor Mei” and it happened to be Hubby’s late paternal grandmother’s death anniversary. Grandma Lee was quite glad I took the day off so that I can look after Yee Sinn while she run her errands and prepare for the simple afternoon prayer. I drove both Grandma Lee and Yee Sinn to a nearby temple along Balestier in the morning for a simple vegetarian breakfast before we bought some vegetarian food back as offerings.

Later in the afternoon, I brought both of them to Ikea at Tampines to meet up with my friend CW for tea and to pick up a safety gate - Yee Sinn has been wondering to the yard and we caught her playing with the tubs of water unsupervised! I was so unlucky to pick up a faulty gate. (I think it’s my friend CW”s fault cos he helped me to pick out the gate!!!) Apparently, the lever mechanism didn’t work so I drove down to the Alexandra brunch to get it changed. Sigh… but I think it’s worth the trouble getting it changed in installed just for Yee Sinn’s safety.

I was wiped out by the end of the day.

We did some more New Year visiting over the weekend. Some of our friends also came by our place. On Sunday afternoon, we popped by OCBC at Toa Payoh Central to bank in some of Yee Sinn's cash from all the ang pows she received. This particular branch has Sunday banking service. It was a pleasant surprise that we (and all the other customers there) were invited to join their management in tossing Yu-Sheng. It was Yee Sinn's first try at tossing the Yu-sheng and I think she had a lot of fun making a big mess.


A few days earlier, she fell head first when she tripped over her pillow (papa was supposed to be looking after her but he fell asleep... sigh). There was a little bump on her forehead. Just last night, she had another accident and this time round, knocked her head again at the same place. It must have been really painful as she wailed very very loudly. I am very concern as knocking the same place twice on the head can be quite serious. The small recovering bump became a huge swell..... Am hoping my poor girl will recover soon. Meanwhile, we're monitoring her behaviour in case so am keeping my fingers crossed that all will be well.