Was on leave again today. Brought Hubby to Tan Tock Seng Hospital for his routine eye check up. Thank goodness all went well.... there's nothing more I could ask for in terms of the health of his eyes. He has very high myopia since he was a child and we hope he'll maintain his condition as long as he can. Apparently, the doctor mentioned that he is starting to have cataracts but thankfully, it'll take about another 10 years or so before he is required to change his lenses.

I scooted off to meet my friend L for lunch at Ion after seeing hubby back home. Ion IS impressive. Shops below level 1 catered more to mainstream crowd... but nevertheless, even shops like Charles & Keith looked really posh. Level 1 and above had very high-end brands such as LV, YSL and other "un-pronounceable" brands. L and I agreed that the more un-pronounceable they are, the more expensive the stuffs they sell. Hee hee. Oh yes, we did check out the famous loo as well. It's just bascially very bright with lots of mirrors and very clean. I like the nursing area cos they come with hot and cool water for mothers to make their formula milk.

My favourite part of the entire place would be the Market Place at level 5 (I think). The supermarket has a very impressive delicatessen, a wide range of dairy and organics products and very friendly staff. I bought myself a bottle of craneberry juice, bush honey yogurt and a pack of organic baby oats for Yee Sinn.

We headed down to Hort Park with our neighbour J (not really a neighbour but she lives at the next block) and her 2 kids in the late afternoon. Though it was freakinly hot, the kids had lots of fun at hortpark checking out the different thematic gardens and playing ball. I'm sure the kids were exhausted at the end of the day.

We brought Yee Sinn for her 18th month injection as well as her check up this morning. Dr Heng commented that Yee Sinn was growing up very well in terms of her physical, motor and social skills. She can easily walked up stairs un-assisted and say quite a few words, such as "Bird bird eat 米" much to Dr Heng's surprise. What suprised us was Dr Heng had to do a double take when measuring her height. She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw that Yee Sinn is now 80cm. Think there was a growth spurt since her last check up 6 months ago. Our little girl is now 5cm away from needing to pay for her own fares when taking MRT or the public buses now. Happy problem? Well, I guess.... considering both hubby and I are on the tall side and she's growing well.

Hubby and I spent some couple time together in the afternoon. We managed to catch a movie before heading down to the Ion to pack dinner home. We saw "Frozen Flowers". A Korean R21 movie about a gay emperor who had to ask his lover, his royal bodyguard, to impregnant his queen as he had to produce a heir. Sounded a bit risqué but it's storyline was actually quite tragic - somewhat between Romeo & Juliet and King Authur's. The scenes were tastefully done... much better than Lust, Caution.

We didn't have much time at Ion because we had to bring dinner home. We'll be back another time though.. maybe with Yee Sinn and Grandma Lee.

Yee Sinn turned 18 months today. To mark this little milestone, we decided to bring her for her first bus ride. She was so fascinated with the road scenes while in the bus... kept pointing to the things she saw and naming them. We took bus 56 from Toa Payoh Central to Marina Square. So when approaching the last stop, I let her pressed the door bell, after which she said "Deem Dong...Mama... Deem Dong...." indicating she wanted to press the bell again. Hubby and I are can't wait to bring her onboard a double decker bus the next time!

At Marina Square, Yee Sinn attended her free trial session at The Little Gym. The place was offering a free trial for the month of July as they were newly opened. Since it was free, hubby and I thought why not? (Hee. We're a sucker for freebies).

It was a parent accompanied class and the class that she attended was meant for children between 10-19 months. Honestly, we felt that our little girl was a bit too old for the class. Unlike Yee Sinn, the majority of the kids were either crawling or just learning to walk. We also found out she was the only one in class talking to the teacher - she kept telling the teacher "NO! No! no!" when she tried to pick Yee Sinn for the exercise bar. She was also unhappy with the teacher for picking her up without asking her for permission when doing the forward roll. She just literally walked off after her tumble. She got bored after awhile and was more keen to explore the place on her own, which we let her. She had fun climbing the balancing bars and bascially, playing catching with her Papa and Mama. think we parents enjoyed the session more than our kid. Our verdict? We didn't sign Yee Sinn up in the end... keeping it free is good. :-)

Before the class started, Yee Sinn saw a man setting up his kiddy ride booth nearby. She wanted quite badly to ride on the green elephant. We told her very nicely that the uncle was still not ready for business and we would return after the class ended. She actually remembered what we told her and immediately after the gym class, we put on her shoes and she walked out towards the elephant. As a treat and keeping our promise to her, we paid $2 for a 5 min ride around the mall. Guess what happened? Hubby was taking her around the mall when the 5 mins was up. He ended up having to push our little girl and the green elephant back. Hahahhaha. My little girl is really daddy's princess.

Yee Sinn walked off immediately when the teacher took her for a tumble.... she didn't like strangers getting too close to her actually.

And here is a video of Yee Sinn truly enjoying her forward rolls when her papa helped her instead.

Hubby and I try to bring our little girl outdoors as often as we can. We had planned to go swimming at Toa Payoh Swimming Complex on Saturday afternoon. After getting ready and all dressed up for the swim, we walked all the way to the swimming pool to find that it was closed for upgrading. Darn! This was the 2nd time it happened. The last closure was due to the Asian Youth Games. They should have put a notice by the roadside informing the public of the closure. Yes, Yee Sinn was disappointed. She even said a strong firm "NO" when we asked if she wanted to go home.

So instead of swimming, we decided to bring her to Hortpark. It has been quite awhile since we last visited the place... almost half a year I think. There's a children's playground in the middle of the park where the kids could play with sand, the see-saw, slides etc. We kind of like the place cos it has big open area and it's actually quite child friendly.

What I like most is the open lawn laid with carpet grass just next to the function room area. The lawn is nice and even so it makes it easy for little kids to run around. So to burn off Yee Sinn's excess energy, we played the good old catching with her... we took turns chasing each other as she squealed with delight. Both we adults and kid sure had a lot of fun running like crazy animals on the lawn. Hee Hee.

We drove to Ikea for dinner. Yee Sinn had her dinner before plonking herself at the corner of the toy section. What surprised me was she sat there for a good half hour, shifting the beads of the abacus and writing on a piece of paper simultanously.... like and old chinese accountant calculating his profits at the end of the day. It was a pretty cute site.. should have taken a video of her doing that.

I've been sending hubby to school every morning since school started in July. Though it means that I've got get up slightly earlier, I appreciate the time spent together along during the car ride. It only takes about 15mins from Toa Payoh to Marine Cresecent via car compared to the 45 mins that hubby usually spent on the bus. At least he gets more rest by sleeping in a little during schooldays.

Often during the ride to his school, we'll catch up on things that we forgot to mention during the previous evenings. We're always so busy with our little girl once we get back from work, so these 15mins of private time together are precious.

We also get to enjoy watching the beautiful sunrise as we cruise along ECP just after exiting from the KPE - when the days are not too cloudy and when we're not late for work. Hee hee... nice to bring back the good old romance.

Our little Yee Sinn has been really sweet the last few nights. This is what has been happening:

Yee Sinn runs to hubby

She says "Night night Papa"

She then gives her papa a peck on his cheeks

She runs to Grandma Lee

She says "Night night AhMa"

She gives Grandma Lee a peck on her cheeks.

Yee Sinn then runs back again to her Papa to give him a big hug

Yee Sinn rubs her nose with her papa's nose. (Hubby and Yee Sinn call this gesture "The Noo Noo").

Yee Sinn refuses to wish me goodnight.... instead, she'll take my hand and drag me to the bedroom. In the process, she'll say "bye bye" to her dad & grandma and telling them "Mama Orh Orh". (means Mama will be sleeping with me)

While lying down next to her, she'll give me a kiss and "Noo Noo" me before sucking her thumb to bed.

It is moments like these that makes my heart melt....

It's marking season again for hubby - for the past weekend, we didn't really go outdoors cos he has been miserably busy marking his student's scripts. I brought Yee Sinn to Toa Payoh Central on Saturday afternoon so that she'll leave hubby alone. Grandma Lee was also busy with her ironing and other household chores so I guessed that it's best to spend some mother-daughter time with my little girl. There were some performance put up by some schools in conjunction with the Singapore Youth Festival. We sat in front of the stage for quite awhile before we decided to head down to the library.

Yee Sinn just loves visiting the library. She enjoys picking up books from the shelves and sitting at the kiddy tables flipping the books. She has also been ultra friendly with other kids she meets, often waving and saying "hello".

On Sunday, we spent our time at Grandma Chang's place as usual. (Hubby lugged his script there to mark too) Yee Sinn had quite a bit of fun playing with Grandma and her Ah Yee. She was so delighted with all the attention that she refused to take her afternoon despite being tired. Eventually she did sucumbed to the Z monster in the late afternoon. That's peace for us adults... well, for awhile.

Yee Sinn's favourite animal is horse. She's now able to identify pictures of horses by calling them "Ma- 马" in chinese. Sometimes she'll try to make the galloping motion when she gets excited. So on Saturday evening, we swang by the Singapore Polo Club so that our little girl can see a close up of real horses. My gosh, she was so facinated with the real animals. Too bad we couldn't get close enough to pat the horses.


We couldn't stay long cos they were closing up so we headed down to Lower Pierce Reservior. We took a stroll along the reservior before heading to the children's playground nearby. There was an old rusty merry-go-round which our little girl enjoyed playing. Poor me and hubby had to use our mighty strength to turn the old rusty dame.

Yee Sinn also had a go sliding herself on a commando-monkeybar station at the far end. See her arm power? We're so proud that she was able to hang herself for quite sometime.

Then there's the usual playground with slides and ladders etc. Yee Sinn explored the place a little before she called it a day.

We had dinner at this place called the Braised Kitchen along Upper Thomson Road. We ordered some pig's innards and other pork stuffs. Food was bascially above average but parking there was a terror.

Time really flies. It has been 5 years since hubby and I were legally married. We registered our marriage in June 2004 and had our customary ceremony in March the following year. So yesterday marks our 5th ROM anniversary. Since school has started, hubby and I decided to have a nice quiet dinner - without Yee Sinn and my mother -in-law.

Hubby has been wanting to bring me to Matsuo at Goldhill Plaza for the longest time.... but unfortunately, when we called in for a reservation, we were told that the place would be closed because the chef had to cook for a private dinner. Instead, we decided to visit this Japanese resturant at Hong Leong Garden at West Coast called Chako. There were positive press reviews on their homecooked styled japanese food so we decided to give it a try. We also had to place our order 1 day earlier so that the proprietress (who is also the only cook in the kitchen) can prepare the ingrediants in advance as she had to make everything fron scratch (Yes, no pre-mix sauces etc).

We ordered a beef set, saba fish set and a portion of Oden. I forgot to take a picture of the Oden and by the time I remembered, what was left on the dish was the soup base. Hubby and I were impressed with the way the tofu was prepared. It was nice and fragrant in a way. The above picture is the Saba fish set. I usually do not order saba fish because it has lots of bone. The proprietress was very considerate in her cooking - she actually deboned the fish before grilling them.

Hubby enjoyed the beef set. The beef was tender & juicy and it has the right amount of chopped onions. It also came with a bowl of soup which was different from the usual miso soup. Yes, he loved the soup so much that he drank my portion.

We had to wait quite a while for the food to be served. The proprietress only started cooking the food when her guests arrives... even though we pre-ordered them the day before. Overall, the food was good. We could tell that there were a lot of sincerity put into the food preparation and the price was reasonable.

It has been a good 5 years.... hubby and I hope that we'll have many more happy years together to come.