Judah’s 3rd Birthday

Judah 3.0! We pray you will retain your childlike and sweet features, developing leaps and bounds in speech functions and skills and wisdom. We are expecting more songs downloads in the system and auto-gratitude functions. “Thank you mama for cooking” has been one of the voice activations whenever a meal is served. Brings sweetness and joy to our souls.

It seemed like Judah knows and had been expecting his birthday to come. He did not want a party with friends, only want Papa, Mama, David and Judah. At one point, he did say he wanted the entire extended family too. 

The night before his birthday – he was so excited about it that he slept at 11pm! Before he slept, he said he want to eat birthday cake. Eh, buddy, not at 11pm. How many roofs are you going to jump off?

As soon as he woke up, he couldn’t wait to go down! He expected something. 

He had grown to like dinosaurs ALOT. So I thought a Dino-themed celebration would be nice. He also like rainbow cake and chocolate since tasting some yummy rainbow cake at Valerie’s house.

This is my first attempt at making a rainbow cake. It turned out not bad! The taste and colours turned out great. The best was the Frosting! So Yummy!!!!

 The cake base is pretty simple, it’s just taking time to mix the colours and bake the layers. I took 2 days to bake 3 layers per day as that’s all the time I have each day (in between after dinner and David’s bedtime or after David sleeps). 

I was glad I frosted the cake the night before rather than on the day itself. The frosting could set and there’s no need to rush in the morning with cranky baby who woke up at 5.30am and excited birthday boy anticipating a CAKE. 
I would bake this again anytime!

Since we weren’t having a big party, I just wanted to keep the decoration simple but surprise enough. Found some patterns of Dino balloons which were perfect!

Cheers to our Dinomite birthday! 

Singapore travels – West Side Story

The journey to the west of Singapore is one that I seldom embark on, because ‘what’s there in the west ?’ and it’s seemingly so far.

Since we have a car for one last day, we decided to check out West Coast Park. So glad we went there, there is such a huge playground for different age groups – toddlers, bigger kids, even for teenagers and adults. It caters to different needs too – sand play, climbing, swings.

As we went on a Thursday late morning, we have the whole place to ourselves, just one or two other young children and a few group of students from a school sports day. Even on a weekend, I can imagine that it’s plenty of space for children to play.

I think Judah was overwhelmed by the hugeness of it that he didn’t know where to stay and what to do. He chose one portion of the playground and ran around for a bit before stopping to play with sand, that was his original intention. He got really excited to play ‘sandy’ when he saw me packing the sand toys for him to play.

Because we were at East Coast Park the other day and he got to play sand while having a view of the ocean. He went riding towards the ocean, but only to find huge sea vessels and no sand. LOL!

We will surely be back again when we come back next year!

Since we are in the west, why not check out some good food in the west. I was in a mood for some instaworthy cafes. W39 Bistro & Bakery was just 7 mins away and again, it’s a place that if we don’t have a car, we won’t even consider going. Tee has the burger while I shared with Judah the Poached Chicken. Oh and a add on of $5 for a drink and Carrot Soup. It was twice of what we would pay in Chiang Mai but you know it’s homecooked and not some freezer meals.

Our week of learning

Hello March! Time is ticking by so quickly! We have a very busy February, with 2.5 weeks hanging out with Nigel and Dora who came to visit us and sharing their songs, 1 week of babysitting our friend’s son. The last week of February, Papa Tee was at the FatherHeart Seminar all day all week (9.30am-8pm, Monday to Saturday!!)

You are seeing this post and it’s a good thing because the kids and I are still alive!

Because we will be home all day, I have to come up with activities to keep the big boy occupied. My goal was not to use the tv or iPad only very necessary and keep it to after naptime. He usually gets to watch Disney Jr cartoons after nap while I prepare dinner till bedtime.

I have been wanting to “restart homeschooling”. Life gets crazy and we don’t end up doing anything.

So I chanced upon Simply Learning blog and the mum was going to use this curriculum called “The Peaceful Preschool“. It has activities and printables available. Simply Learning also has lots of resources, links, activities and printables available on Pinterest. I really felt like I needed to buy the curriculum and get ‘school’ going. I have tried to find my own activities and it’s hard work. I take too long to figure out what will work. I really needed something already written out and I can tweak it along the way.

I’m taking some weeks to try out, since we leave for Singapore in a week’s time and our schedule will look different when we are there.

I like it so far based on Judah’s ability and learning interests and what we have available at home.

On Monday, we started with letter A recognition. He could already recognize A and whenever he saw the letter A, he shouts it to me. He also decorated the letter and apple with glitter. He did a good job with glitter, didn’t get too big a glitter blowout. We also read ‘Apple Dumpling’s Day’ (the only A-related book we have) and ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. These books, we ended up reading almost everyday. Talk about routine.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we didn’t do much school, I was pretty tired out from caring for 2 boys under 3. We just read the books a couple of times and he watched way too much tv that day. We had to be at the doctor’s on Wednesday for my vaccination so we didn’t do much too.

Thursday we had friends come over for lunch, but before that, we did some playdough maths. He enjoyed it but he was distracted. Afterwhich we did some bike rides and songs and reading before our friend’s arrived.

Papa Tee has the afternoon off so we could go out after nap too! Phew! A much needed break from cooking and being stuck at home. Judah was so happy to be able to play at the playground and have some coconut icecream.

On Friday, I found new strength and energy (must be the shopping mall and icecream). I think he would really enjoy playing with water in the ballpit. It was kind of chilly in the morning so we had to wait for the sun to warm up the air a little more. Judah was very patient, so we made glitter Alphabets. And then decorated some popsticks that little apples will go on it later for pattern sequencing activities. Boy, he had such a fun time squeezing lots of glitter on the sticks.

I gave him a go at using kid’s scissors, it’s his first time so he hasn’t gotten that motor skills yet. He looks really funny trying to cut with his mouth opened though.

Finally the time for waterplay! The best time of his life all week! One of the activities in the curriculum was measuring out rice or water. I threw him a set of measuring cups and spoons for him to measure away. Waterplay kept him occupied for an hour!!

Review of 2016 and #OneWord for 2017

The #OneWord for 2016 was Create – I meant it to instil creativity, doing new things. We ended up creating a new life! We had absolutely no plans to have a second child in 2016, but we end 2016 off with a second child. No complains though. Things changed a bit and it is indeed better to have a child now, than later. God’s timing and providence is always good, anyway.

I think 2016 was a good year, although it feels like most of my year was spent being pregnant and figuring out my life as a mum of one, then two. Still figuring out.

 My word for 2017 is … I still don’t have a sense of what word. But I’m thinking like ‘Find’. Finding joy, finding peace, finding, finding. Searching, looking for the positive in every day things, in the mundane things, finding new things 

Thankful November

November, the month of Thanksgiving! 

There are much to be thankful for this November. 

Firstly, of course, we are thankful to receive our second-born son early. Thankful that all is well with him, he is growing strong and well. He sleeps most of the time, if not he is pretty happy lying on the rocker or in bed and I get to be with Judah a little more and do things around the house as usual

We are thankful for Judah for being such a great brother. He has not been any more fussy, except when his toys don’t cooperate or exhibit any jealous notions. He showers his little bro with 500 kisses everyday and is so understanding and affectionate. 

We are thankful for our community in Chiang Mai, who has helped in many ways in our transition to a new family figure. They brought food to us, asked if we need groceries, play dates for Judah. It meant so much to us, when our immediate families are not near to help us.

We are also thankful for many who have blessed us with love gifts during this season though they are far from us. Your thoughts of us are so precious too!

We are thankful that we can be called a family in this time. To be given this privilege to raise our 2 boys. 

It is good to be thankful and remember the good things the Lord has blessed us with.
Happy Thanksgiving!