Our Professional Photo Shoot

After deliberating for almost 4 years, we finally decided to fork out the money to get a professional photo shoot of the family done. And what can I say? We should have done this ages ago!!! We have been putting it off because we didn't want to spend the money on it, but at the same time, we knew that to have many good pictures of the kids taken, we'll need to pay a bit more for that.

We shopped around a bit before deciding on the photographer who took our wedding pictures 5 years ago. We are familiar with the photographer and knew that he would put in the time and effort to get good pictures of our kids. We also like his style of photography. The photo shoot itself cost only $150 (supposedly for an hour, but it went on for almost 2 hours), but the CD compilation of all the photos taken (107 photos in all) cost us a whooping $400. This is in comparison to some other photo studios who charge much less but also take fewer pictures during the photo shoot.

We are very happy with the photos taken and wish we had done this earlier to capture more memories of DS when he was younger, or of me when I was pregnant. :) For anyone contemplating whether to spend the money taking some family pictures, I would say, "Go for it!". The kids grow up too fast to be deliberating about this for too long! :P

Here are more of the photos taken.

DD Trying to Go Potty

I had to post this. I found it too funny. Once in a while, DD has a spur of inspiration and finds the energy to wake up at night to go potty. On this occasion, she tried, but fell back asleep on the way to the potty, and wet herself instead. Hehe.

DS - Painting in Our Bathtub

Oh, how DS misses our bathtub at home! DS loves playing with water in the bathtub and when he was old enough, we have been letting him do painting in the bathtub - finger painting on the sides of the bathtub or on paper, or using a brush. Unfortunately, when we were in Taiwan, the apartment that we rented had a bathtub with a rusted bit on the floor of it. It seemed like the previous tenant had dropped the heavy shower head onto the floor of the bathtub and chipped off the paint as a result. Over time, the chipped part probably started rusting away. Because of this rusted bit, we didn't allow DS to play in the bathtub, so he was missing all his water toys and painting (which I don't allow him to do elsewhere because I dread to think of the mess that will be created!).

DS Giving DD a Ride on their "Train"

These pics and video were taken soon after we returned to Singapore in October. DS with his favorite ride-on toy, a train, giving DD a ride. It was a tight squeeze for both of them to be on the "train" at the same time, so I think they probably don't fit on it together by now!

Interesting Holiday Crafts

I came across some wonderful holiday craft ideas using junk mail, so I thought I'll share it here. Definitely something that I can with my 3 year old, who's crazy about using the scissors to cut up paper recently.

http://www.thetranquilparent.com/detail/holiday-crafts-from-junk-mail/

What Have I Been Up To?

In DH's words - "I've never seen you so stressed before. You weren't even so stressed when you were doing your Masters (and at the same time being a full-time stay-at-home-mum to DS with no domestic help)". Yep, I think I should get a PhD for this. :)

Since arriving back in Singapore on 8 October, we've had so much running around and "projects" to do. Besides these being part and parcel of settling back into our home and back into Singapore, some "projects" had to be undertaken because we need to fit 2 children into our home. When we left Singapore a year ago, it felt like we only had one child because DD was barely 8 weeks old. She didn't take up much space at 8 weeks - yes, literally! As such, we had to re-arrange the furniture in the house and also re-organise our wardrobes to fit a 2-child household. Also, since the children grow so much in a year, we also had to pack away all the clothes that they have since outgrown.

Here are some home improvement projects that we did in the last 5 weeks:

- added shelvings to both utility room and built-in wardrobes

- packed away all baby stuff including crib, clothing and also maternity clothes

- custom-built a gate to keep our cats out of the bedrooms (we previously had sort of a home-made one, thanks to my handy daddy)

- installed blackout curtains in the kids' room (DS and I would love to sleep in but DD wakes as soon as the sun rises)

- installed insect screens on all bedroom windows

- got someone to service my oven

- packed up our storeroom

- bought a new TV console and cabinets

- bought new cordless telephones (I can't live without cordless phones!)

- bought new stainless steel hanging dish racks to replace those cheap rusted ones that came with the apartment

We also bought a car (woohoo - we ended up with a 7-seater - the Toyota Wish), bought the kids to catch up on all their jabs and brought DS for a thorough eyesight check. Oh, and we also checked out the preschools nearby since we'll like to enrol DS in Nursery 2 next year (he'll be 4 years old next year) and also registered DS for Yamaha's Musical Wonderland, which starts in January. DS has been so excited about his music class and asks me almost everyday when he can start his music class.


Oh, we also re-employed our domestic helper who used to work for us before we went away for a year. We brought her back as a direct hire rather than going through an employment agency and had to do the legwork (eg medical checkup, paperwork with MOM, etc) ourselves.


So, that's some of what we've been up to in the past 5 weeks. The tidiness of our home is still a work in progress and there's still so much to be done. I hope to get most things out of the way by end November, so that we can spend December catching up with friends and family since DH has a week of annual leave then.

Am I Still Blogging?

Just the other day, DH asked me if I was still blogging. His question took me by surprised because I never intended to stop blogging on this site. It was then that I realised that I haven't blogged in 5 weeks (yes, the longest it has ever been). So yes, in case anyone was wondering, I do still intend to continue updating this blog. We've just been really busy lately. :)