It's raining babies

Rena gave birth on Tuesday 11 May to Joshua Ang, weighing 2.495kg and me and Jane went to visit her at Gleneagles over lunch on Wednesday. He's tiny compared to Natasha, who's just under 6 weeks older.



Adrian showed us Gabriel's newborn photo and the two brothers look alike, except Gabriel had more hair. Rena was already up and about, me and Jane were incredulous at her lack of pain or discomfort! The two of us went to Tanglin Mall after for lunch at Chili's.

It's raining babies this year I tell you, it's now up to 30 people I know having or had babies this year!

**Updated 11 May 2010:

Jan - Deavi (10th), JJ (22nd), Mischa (23rd), Felicia (27th), Daragh (28th)
Feb - Wilson, Samir (21st), Esther (2nd), Geraldine
Mar - Shalini
Apr - Me, Aaron M, Judy (28th)
May - Jamie, Rena (11th), Josephine (10th), Joyce
June - Vansy
July - Ming Feng, Alicia, Michael, Diane
August - Shannon, Hui Choo, Claire H.
September - Erlina, Jeannie
October - Gee
November -
December - Jeanette, Vim

Brought Nat for her 'gym' class on Tuesday, she was much more interested in participating and only clung on to me for the first 15 mins before she wanted in on the action. I also insisted she walk and climb the stairs on her own while getting to and fro the place and she co-operated. Phew!

Mother's Day 2010

Today was Mother's Day and we brought Pumpkin to church for the first time. Left her at Membina after that and brought Nat to Raffles City for lunch. Tried MOF, a Japanese cafe where she hardly ate and nearly fell and hit her head on a sharp step while I was shopping and Nick was minding her.

Capitaland were giving out carnations and Nat received one to give to me and she whispered 'Happy Mother's Day'...awww.

For dinner, Mildred and Ma came over and we tapau-ed cze char from AMK and Kevin contributed crabs from Ghim Moh. Mmmm, crabs....it had been a while!

Welcome to the world Natasha!

We threw Natasha a "Welcome to the world" party today at the Han's outlet near Nick's office. Originally we had planned to do a 1 month party last weekend but Nick and his colleagues had a NATAS fair to attend hence the slight delay.

We had considered booking the cafe at Lion City hotel which serves a Peranakan buffet but found the area too dodgy, and the other alternative was a casual restaurant in Sin Ming but Nick didn't like the attitude of the owner. Just when we had decided to hold the party at home, Nick tried asking the Han's and the menu was very reasonable ($15 nett), so we went with it.

I used pictures from Natasha's newborn shoot to design 3 invites but Nick and Swana didn't approve of any of them because they felt the baby was too exposed! They are paranoid! I liked the 3rd one...




This was the final approved invite:


We were anticipating about 60 pax including kids and even though there were a number of no-shows, the area we booked was full and the food ran out towards the end. Ordered balloons through Aunty Joyce and she helped to print Natasha's name on them and even provided animal walkers for the kids in attendance.




I ordered cupcakes from the same place as Nat's welcome party but was a little disappointed this time as the colour scheme I had requested was not really adhered to, plus some of the Nutella-filling cupcakes were missing the filling.



I didn't get a chance to take much photos, had to mingle and was in a daze most of the time! Before you know it, the party's over.





Some of the cousins adjourned to Membina but I was stuck at home. Met up with them later though at Kavi's house. We brought our own McDonald's dinner but Kavi had ordered a huge pizza from Picotin Express, it was 21 inches wide!

127 dresses!

So now that I've shed the pregnancy weight, I could finally sort my wardrobe and get rid of clothes that don't fit or that I don't want anymore. It's taken a few days and this time I was really ruthless, I doubt that we would ever have another DD Day Out sale hence there are a lot of clothes I've set aside for giving away to friends or to charity. Any US sizes 4-6 out there?

I managed to consolidate my skirts and pants onto 1 rod instead of 2. And when I finally tackled the dresses, I wasn't surprised at how many I had amassed...there were 119 hanging and another 8 folded. That's not including those I had set aside for ironing, alterations, giving away and maternity!


I thought that by clearing the wardrobe I could make space for a few new dresses but there's just no space on the rod and I would feel really guilty about adding on. Also, practically all the dresses are printed, only 5 or so are solid colour! I'm a sucker for prints!

Monkey see, monkey do

The munchkin is now 27 months and still very much a daddy's girl. She still refuses to walk anywhere or sit in her stroller so we have to lug her around, no thanks to Daddy who gives in to the habit. She's almost 11kg now!



Most nights Nick puts her to bed but ends up falling asleep before her. She's getting more assertive, telling me 'Don't pat pat' when I try to make her sleep, she prefers to pat herself and will gently smack her own bum.

She's sassy, she knows she's supposed to say 'excuse me' when she wants us to move away or step aside, but she'll cheekily command 'move!'. But she's also getting naughty - attempting to hit, pinch or scratch us whenever we take away a toy or book or say 'no' to something. She'll fling her arm in retaliation, like those cat statues in Thailand that wave one paw.

She's got a bad habit now of shoving her finger in her nose, looking for boogers. She derives satisfaction from removing them!

Whenever she spots a new toy or book, she questions, "Who bought this?" and then thanks the person. E.g. a conversation might go like this:

Nat: Who bought this? (points to a toy)
Me: Daddy.
Nat: Who bought this? (points to another toy)
Me: Mummy
Nat: Thank you mummy.
Nat: (points to first toy) Daddy bought this for Nat-nat, thank you daddy!

She's curious about everything, every little sound out the window, she will want to look out and see the source. Little Miss Kaypoh I say! But she's been very good with Natasha, no jealousy at all - at least for now. She loves lying down beside the baby, helping hold the milk bottle or returning used bottles to the kitchen. She helps me throw diapers in the bin too. The only concern is that she constantly kisses Natasha and always presses down too hard on her.





Gigi and her have started having conversations, it's too cute the baby talk that comes out of their mouths. It's also becoming a case of 'monkey see, monkey do' - whatever one is playing with at the moment, the other one will want it too. I hope we don't have to buy duplicates of everything!



While she's a rascal at home and with people she's familiar with, she's a pussycat outside. Still takes her a while to warm up to new people.

Today was the first of her 8 sessions at JWT Kids Gym which we enrolled her in to play and expend some energy. As soon as class started, she clung on to me like a koala, refusing to let go or participate in any of the activities. Her back faced the group most of the time and at one point she burst out crying. For a good 45 mins, she refused to let go, sometimes even choking me from the strength of her grip and I had to carry her for the most part. Only for the last 15 mins did she come out of her shell to sit on a rocking motorcycle and play with some toys during the free play session. Hopefully she warms up by the next lesson!



She loves to sing, she can sing almost any popular nursery rhyme you ask of her. The words aren't always clear but she knows the words and will pretend to sing them from a songbook.

Gigi at 20 months loves to sing too, she can sing the alphabet up to M and also bits of 'Twinkle, twinkle' and 'Happy birthday'. She can count to 5 and identify or say the names or most major animals and make their sounds.


Her sentences are quite advanced for her age, around 3-5 words per sentence i.e. "Mummy, go playground please", "Where is it?", "I go Nat Nat's house", "Daddy go work", "I want blind mice" (dvd). She loves 'Shasha baby' and is a lot more gentle than Nat!



She finally calls me 'Aunty Mita' instead of just 'Bita' and Nick has become 'Uncle Nick' too.

Mummy and Swana are not allowed to leave her sight, although she doesn't mind Grandpa looking after her. Her constipation hasn't improved, she's still afraid of pooping, screaming her head off each time she has to go. The problem is that she hates most fruits. She likes drinking Yakult and eating apom though. She and Nat walk around the house with their handbags, too cute!

Natzilla

The pumpkin is a month old today and my, how she's grown! My new name for her is Natzilla, she's put on more than 1kg since birth! I always knew she was going to be a fatty at the rate I was eating all the unhealthy stuff during pregnancy.

We had plans to celebrate her 1 month this weekend and introduce her to our friends and family but Nick had a travel fair so we're doing it next week instead.



To me she looks the size of a 3 month old, I don't remember Nat growing this fast when she was this age. She's outgrown the co-sleeper we use as a bed, Gigi used it up to 3mths but Natasha only a month. She wriggles so much that she slides down and dangles her feet over the edge. We caught her in the nick of time one early morning when we woke up to feed her.


Mummy keeps calling her 'Shasha', which irks me. Some others call her 'Sasha' or 'Tasha' or 'Tash'. Am still not used to calling her Natasha, I think we picked the wrong name! She looks like a Nicolette to me!

She's been a very easy baby, hardly fusses or cries except when gassy or extremely hungry. In the middle of the night, she will go 'eh, eh, eh' and pant for quite a while when she wants milk and only when it's slow in coming, will she cry out loud...otherwise we hardly hear her voice. She grunts quite a bit though. I give her a last feed at about 12 or 1 am, and then the next one around 4 am and thereafter 7am. So consider it only having to wake up once in the middle of the night?

She drinks an average of 75mls per feed, about 7 times a day. She can lift her head off my chest when on her tummy, pretty strong neck muscles. She likes being carried or rocked to sleep, forget about just leaving her on the bed to fall asleep on her own, she refuses to and then gets very agitated when she can't sleep. Which then makes her feel like sucking something but am not going to start her on the pacifier, so the rocking chair is my friend.


She hasn't pooped in a couple of days and her father is panicking. I assured him it was completely normal but he doesn't believe me and is ready to bring her to the doctor anytime. He also thinks she's super airy and jumps at any opportunity to put 'yu yee' oil on her, it's his solution for everything. I prefer to squeeze her legs to her chest or try burping some more.

She appeared to be one of 2% of babies who suffer from breast milk jaundice, her bilirubin levels were very slow in going down because of the booby milk. It's not harmful but just means it takes a much longer time to return to normal, like up to 12 weeks. But I didn't want to keep subjecting her to the blood tests and before her last 2 tests, put her on full formula for 36 hours which helped in reducing the bilirubin count drastically.

The expressing has really helped in bringing down my weight, am back to pre-pregnancy weight and Mildred is paranoid that there is something wrong with me. She keeps urging me to eat more, thinks I look pale (duh! no make up at home!), thinks Pumpkin is too yellow and head uneven (she keeps rubbing), and she's just like her son - panicking over the lack of poop.

I've caught Natasha actually laughing a couple of times in her sleep, she has a dimple on her left cheek but I think she has single eyelids. When her eyes are closed, she looks a lot like Nat's baby photos, except the eyes are different and she's a lot broader. Everyone says she looks like Nick, I agree...but then again, that's what they all said about Nat when she arrived. Her face will change anyway in the coming months, it doesn't matter who she looks like.



Nat just loves her to bits, constantly kissing her and wanting to lie down next to her. It's really sweet but I have to keep reminding her to do things gently because she presses down on Natasha too hard most of time. Can't believe I'm a mother of 2!

Mums' Day Out

Joanne and I had grand plans today to do some serious damage on Orchard Road. I was on a mission to find out Chanel 2.55 prices and look for earrings while Jo needed a dress or two for an upcoming wedding.

We met at ION and half-heartedly browsed at Prada and Christian Dior before moving on to Wisma. Checked out sales at Soo Kee, Lee Hwa and Goldheart and tried on some bling but nothing really stood out. I was looking for a pair of 0.5ct studs in a 6-prong setting under a certain budget but the ones I saw were either 4 or 5 prong or the colour/clarity of stones not so great.

Had lunch at Food Republic, shared beef noodles, char kway teow and chicken wings. Rayhan was sleepy and Joanne rocked him till he fell asleep so she could eat in peace.


We browsed dresses at BCBG and Shelli Segal thereafter and then moved on to Takashimaya. Had to queue to get into Chanel, thought there was a sale or something but apparently that's the normal crowd. Chinese and Indonesian tourists were snapping up bags like nobody's business!

Earlier this week, Germaine and Joyce had helped find out bag prices in London and Paris respectively so I could finally compare what the cost savings would be. According to my calculations, I could potentially save up to SGD 1.5K per bag, based on the low Euro now and anticipated VAT refund of 11%.

In case you're interested, here are the prices:

Classic flap medium caviar: SGD 4330 / GBP 1660 / Euro 1740
Classic flap medium lambskin: SGD 4790 / GBP 1840 / Euro 1930
Classic flap jumbo caviar: GBP 1920 / Euro 2010
Classic flap jumbo lambskin: SGD 5350 / GBP 2100 / Euro 2200

So I am leaning towards the medium lambskin...


From Taka we crossed over to Paragon. Checked out Coast and Metro before I wandered into H. Sena, the jeweller with the huge rocks in the window, while Joanne went to Karen Millen where she bought 2 dresses.

I was expecting prices to be exorbitant but unlike the mass market chains, H.Sena doesn't mark up 200% then offer a 50% discount, well not for the solitaires anyway. Prices are calculated based on the Rapaport reports so I started enquiring about studs. I had seen a 0.55ct pair of VS clarity at Goldheart for around 6K and used that as a benchmark.

The salesman showed me a few pairs and I tried on a pair of 0.56ct F VVS2. They were really sparkly and he disappeared for a long time to the back office to get his boss to quote their best price. When he showed me the slip of paper, I made an impulse decision to purchase the earrings on Nick's behalf, heh heh. It's not the cheapest, but considering the colour and clarity, the price was fair.

So here is my push present, a pair of diamonds to symbolize my 2 precious gems Natalie and Natasha. My plan is to hand them each a side when they turn 21.



Went to Tony Roma's for dinner with Nick in the evening while Ma babysat. I think his heart dropped when he heard how much I spent! He had said he had 'no budget' for a push present, I took that to mean 'unlimited' versus 'no money'...ha ha. I told him he didn't have to buy me any jewellery till our 10th anniversary in 3 years.

Overall, it was a good day. Any day with bling is a good day!