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. :)

"Play dough to go"

I just read this from Z Recommends and had to share. It's basically a do-it-yourself play dough recipe that you can pack away with your kid to Grandma's house. Sounds easy enough to do.

See here: http://www.zrecommends.com/detail/play-dough-to-go/

We're Back in Singapore

After a full year of being away, we're finally back in Singapore. Yes, home sweet home! It has been along year, yet it felt like only yesterday that we were frantically packing to leave for Denver and DD was only 8 weeks old. She's now almost 14 months old.

We arrived back in the evening of 8th Oct and haven't stopped doing stuff. There's so much to do and so little time! The day after we got back, we spent most of the day shopping for a washing machine and stocking up our kitchen with bare essentials from NTUC. Yes, our 5 year old lemon of a washing machine (never, ever, buy a Thomson washing machine!!!), which has been repaired 4 times in 5 years finally died while we were away. We finally settled on a Fisher and Paykel top loader which we got for a good deal at $560. In the evening, we made a trip to the airport to fetch our domestic helper, who had a one year "holiday" back in the Philippines while we were away. :P Actually, we are grateful that our helper agreed to come back to work for us and was willing to wait a year for us to return from overseas. I am terribly relieved that I need not train a new domestic helper from scratch.

Today, we spent the morning at the Honda and Toyota showroom looking for the right car to buy. Looks like it'll be a long process since we have not even decided yet whether to get a sedan or a MPV. Or a hybrid car or a conventional car. So, this is going to take us a long time.

Alright, off to do more unpacking while the kids are asleep. It's going to be another long day tomorrow. We'll be going to Mazda and Nissan next.