Testing the new toy

Had a gynae appointment today, brought forward from Tuesday because he had an op scheduled so since Swana was seeing him today, we gatecrashed.

Before that though, we took the kids to Botanics to scoot and feed fish. I brought my new camera out for the first time and managed a couple of decent shots at the park including Nick with his 2 princesses, just in time for Father’s Day tomorrow. 

 

 

All 3 kids were present during both consultations and got to see Tiny and Koko Krunch on the ultrasounds. Koko Krunch is all good, approximate weight now is 2.7kg. We made Dr Siow pose with the 3 bubs whom he delivered, he said they were all so pretty.

Lunch was at Brunetti’s at Tanglin Mall…so Italian, was drawn by the range of pastries on display. Had a mushroom risotto, the rice was a bit overcooked but the flavours were nice. The kids had mac and cheese and creamy penne and we shared a few desserts.

Sasha really enjoyed a chocolate ganache cookie I bought her and flaunted her ‘witch’ teeth. She did the same thing at dinner at Hans, when she got vegetables stuck on her teeth, such a clown! Bought some Fragrance bakkwa after dinner…on sale at 50% so it was $12.50 for 500gm…so cheap! Another craving to check off the list!

Tulipmania

The kids had no school today because the morning session had an excursion so I took the day off and brought them to the Tulipmania display at Gardens by the Bay.

I was quite psyched to see the tulips but it was a bit anti-climatic because there were a lot of patches of just bulbs that hadn’t bloomed…I think the crew replant new rows every few days so not everything blooms together. I was expecting to see row upon row of colourful tulips not green gaps in between.

Nevertheless the girls had fun monkeying around, though Nat remarked that she would like to go to Holland to see the real thing!

 

Lunch was at the Supertree Grove, there was a lunchtime special at some of the stalls and we opted for local food…big mistake. Service was slow and the food was even slower, with a waiting time of up to 30 mins or more. Ordered hor fun for the girls but their order came last so we just fed them from whatever dishes came first.

After Sasha’s nap we baked gingerbread men cookies, as requested by Gigi. Since we have ascertained that Sasha might be allergic to artificial food colouring, I used chocolate chips to decorate her cookies.

This girl never ceases to amaze me, she’s already trying to spell her name on the doodle board and can write a few alphabets after practicing on her own without help from anyone! 

Thwarted!

Thwarted! Went all the way to Katong during lunchtime in the hopes of picking up some apom berkuah and coconut candy from Glory but they were closed! My only consolation was indulging in a bowl of 328 Katong Laksa.

Yesterday after mass we headed to town and had lunch at Island Café in Tangs. While the kids enjoyed their fish and chips, I had me some carbonara…it was quite decent! Am in a creamy pasta mood these days, influenced by the kids who now request it once a week! 

It’s such a small world because midway through lunch, Nick spotted a Trafalgar colleague who is actually based in Sydney. She had come down to Singapore for some travel agent meetings and had brought her mum with her and they were spending the day shopping.

As we were leaving the restaurant, one of the chefs approached me…his name was Alvin and he’s the assistant executive chef I think. He remembered me from Violet Oon days, because we did meet a couple of times when he helped out Violet in the kitchen.

In the evening we had dinner at AMK but before that made a pitstop to visit Amah in her nursing home. Feel so bad, we hardly see her now because she’s in the home. Need to make it a point to go more often, if not the whole family, then at least Nick needs to find some time. 

Labour Day

Surprisingly managed to wake up early today, despite catching Ironman 3 the night before at I12 Katong. Kevin even showed up in an Ironman tee! After the movie, the boy had supper at the Hong Kong restaurant next door before we joined the rest for a drink at Chevy’s. 

It was a public holiday today so we decided to head to Hort Park to feed the fish and let the kids scoot around after breakfast. The Gomezs joined us midway and the 2 older girls had fun scooting around and making use of the playground. 

The park was quite crowded especially at the back area where we parked ourselves. Nick played ball with Sasha and the 2 preggie women sweltered under the heat. 

We took ages to decide on where to lunch and ended up at Waraku @ Central. It was quite deserted and we got a booth seat where we could enjoy the view of Clarke Quay.

The kids ordered from the kids menu, their sets are pretty worth it with noodles, salad, fries, tempura, juice and ice cream plus a toy! Nat and Sasha relished their noodles and I joked that they were ready for a Japanese holiday!

I was pleased with my choice of tonkatsu ramen with tempura…the best of both worlds when I can’t decide between tempura udon or tonkatsu ramen! Came in a huge bowl!

Sasha is 3 years and 1 month today. She’s getting really good at her drawing, I’m impressed at the standard considering she just turned 3 and doesn’t go to school yet. She drew this girl with star and bird and cloud recently.

We’ve also concluded on our own that she has food colouring allergies. Every time she eats stuff like Smarties or jellybeans, gummies, especially at night, she will cough and produce phlegm when she’s perfectly well and wheeze a little too. Even her behaviour gets a little erratic and unreasonable.

So for now, we’ve decided to eliminate artificial colouring from her diet…I have to check food labels for natural colouring and we’ve told her she can’t have coloured sweets either and she seems to understand. But chocolate. ice cream, popcorn and natural coloured sweets are fine so she leans towards chocolate stuff now.

Apparently there’s no conclusive test for colouring allergies and I wanted to experiment on a day when she was well to test for reactions but Nick wouldn’t let me. For the moment we will just assume she is.

New toy!

Sasha woke me up so early that I decided to try out the instant wa ko kueh mix that I had. Made them in pink, purple and blue but the texture was a lot denser than the kind I am used too at the pasar malams…I think I will just stick with those.

Had to bribe the kids with sticker earrings to wear what I wanted…picked out turquoise outfits for them and they complied just so they could wear the earrings!

We headed to town for lunch, having arranged to meet Ben and Wendy at Ion. We got there first and made a reservation at Canton-I as a backup lunch option in case we couldn’t decide where to eat.

Had 20 mins to walk around, and we headed to Wisma for Cotton On and Gap. Showed Nat the latest Gap-DVF collection but she didn’t like anything except for a pink wrap dress so I guess I get to save money because I was eyeing a blue print romper and eyelet dress. Will wait for sale!

We ended up at Canton-I anyway because the other restaurants in the vicinity were crowded and though prices were a little on the high side for dim sum, the food was tasty.

After lunch we had time to jalan-jalan some more, I came across an M1-Samsung roadshow and I’ve been itching to get a new phone and so impulsively I ended up with a Samsung Galaxy SIII.

The promo price was $138 with plan, but after factoring my loyalty voucher and the micro SIM card, I paid about $125. There was an instant lucky draw too and I won a corning ware set, plus helped myself to the complimentary tubs of cotton candy and popcorn!

Spotted a yellow bird perched on a tree below our block upon our return, don’t know what kind it is.

The full moon this evening also had an orange glow, so hard to capture on camera without a tripod and my digital zoom is so blur!