A special dress

My mother recently gave me a little dress which was mine as a baby. She preserved it all these years and now it is for little Heidi to wear. This is me at 3 and a half months old wearing the dress. Looking back at the old photos, I realise that I look very much like Heidi now.

The photos are a bit blurry because I don't have a photo scanner so I took a shot with my phone camera. I still have that rabbit too, somewhere in the house.

This is my mother and I, still wearing the same dress.

Quite hard to imagine that these photos were taken more than 30 years ago and I was that little baby who now has a little baby (and toddler!) of her own.

Here are some clearer photos of Heidi wearing the dress:

As you can see, it's quite old-fashioned with the smocking in the front. Nowadays it's not common to find these type of smocking dresses being sold in stores and if you do, it can be pretty expensive. Nevertheless, our little Heidi looks sweet in it :)

Hannah loves her little sister very much, although she does get jealous at times, which is normal. However, they generally get along quite well and Heidi will always give big smiles when she hears or sees Hannah. My mother says that when she was in the womb, Hannah's voice was probably the voice she heard the most often, and the loudest too!

Our little princesses :)

June birthdays

This is another outdated post (since it is now mid July!) but better late than never :) We celebrated quite a few birthdays in June, the first being Hubby's. In fact Hannah was supposed to be a June baby too (her expected due date was 7 June), but she was 12 days early otherwise her birthday would be one day before her Daddy's.

Anyway, since I was still on maternity leave, Hubby and I managed to go a few places to "jalan-jalan cari makan" to celebrate his birthday. We discovered this place:

This is a Japanese restaurant called Matsu at Lone Pine Hotel, Batu Ferringhi. Hubby read a review about it on an in-flight magazine on board Malaysia Airlines so we decided to go and check it out. Not too bad and not crazy expensive either. Since this is quite a long post, more pictures of the place and the food are posted on my Facebook.

A few days later, we had dinner with our friends at Western Spices, Green Hall. This was my meal and probably the highlight of the whole dinner too - check out the giant squid :)

And as usual, we had our group picture taken. Some folks were missing, but I am sure they were there in spirit :)

On Hubby's real birthday (8 June), we went to Thirty Two The Mansion for lunch. The executive set lunch is really good and well worth the money. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we went back the following week for lunch again :)

The price may be slightly more than what you would pay for a set lunch at a normal Western restaurant, but for the amount and quality, I don't mind to pay a little extra. We were extremely full by the time it came to dessert (which was my favourite!). Again, more pictures of the food on Facebook.

The next day, we had a small gathering in our home for Hubby's family and also for my parents to meet up with them since they were still around. My mum and Hubby's mum each cooked a few dishes, so we had a nice home-cooked meal. We told them not to cook so much, but in the end it still ended up like this:

My mum's speciality was her grilled salmon - obviously there was none left by the end of the meal :) (Hint: Salmon is really fresh and cheap at Tesco - 1 kg (about 8 quite big pieces) is only around RM25.00. Hint 2: You need to go early in the morning otherwise it will sell out really fast).

Food aside, we had 3 cakes! I didn't know there was going to be so many cakes otherwise I wouldn't have ordered the strawberry marshmallow cheesecake from Secret Recipe (which finished, by the way!). Our insurance agent gave a chocolate cake which she brought the day before when she dropped off Heidi's policy. Then one of Hubby's friend also gave him a specially ordered pandan cake. Plus my strawberry marshmallow cake, we had 3 cakes. So Hannah helped him to blow out all his candles. As you may guess, it was a very happy 3 year old with so many candles to blow out and cakes to cut.

It was good we chose to celebrate at home so that Heidi could join in too. Not very conducive bringing a newborn outside.

A couple of weeks later, we had 2 birthday celebrations on the same day. The first was our relative and neighbour Sarah who turned 4. In actual fact, Sarah is Hannah and Heidi's aunt, but I won't go into the details of that (too complicated!). So we are happy with the fact that they acknowledge each other as friends and it can remain that way!

Sarah had her birthday party at McDonald's Greenlane. It was quite fun with party hats and things for the kids.

We had to leave early for the next birthday, but not before Hannah caught a glimpse of this:

We then really had to leave as we were already very late, and Hannah was promised a "pretty princess cake" as well for her next birthday. As her birthday is not for many months yet, we were sure that we would not need to keep our promise since by that time she would have probably changed her mind and want something else :)

We then headed to Italiannies at Gurney Paragon to celebrate our friend Steven's birthday. Hannah found some friends to play with there too.

After lunch, the kids went outside to play and the nice folks at TGIF next door were so kind as to give them balloons to run around with.

Believe it or not, we were there until almost 5 pm and by that time there was no other table occupied in the restaurant except ours. I think the waiters wanted to ask if we were going to have dinner there as well :) We finally left, but not before Hannah took a picture with her favourite "Uncle Steven".

Birthdays are always fun, and I think if Hannah had her way, everyday would be her birthday! :)

Heidi's first time out

Little Heidi turned exactly 3 months old yesterday. Prior to this we have never taken her "kai-kai" anywhere except to her grandmother's house on certain weekends. However, yesterday we wanted to do some household shopping and we also had a RM30 voucher for Noodle Station at e-Gate which we needed to utilise otherwise it would be expiring very soon.

So we decided that everybody could go - we would go early to Tesco before it got too crowded and then for brunch at Noodle Station (from past experiences it is usually quite empty). Heidi was the model of good behaviour - she looked here and there probably wondering what were all these new sights. After some time, she fell asleep on my shoulder until we got back in the car to drive to Noodle Station.

Daddy took a picture of Heidi's first trip out "kai-kai" :)

We were at the toy section because the smart people at Tesco put that section right at the very entrance so we have to pass by it, and of course Hannah won't let us go anywhere else until we have thoroughly browsed the aisles of the toy section. She was pretty excited to be able to go out as well since she too had not been out for some time.

It was a good first family outing for all 4 of us - short and productive, and I think both our girls enjoyed it. Looking forward to when Heidi is bigger so that we can maybe take a family vacation :)

Registration for Kindy (the 2nd time)

I blogged here about registering Hannah for kindergarten some time back. I wanted Heidi to go to the same kindy as well, so I thought I had better register early, since this kindy is very popular and furthermore, many dragon babies born this year is cause for competition! Even for Hannah I registered her for the 4 year old class when she was only 1 1/2 years old and even then, there were only 3 places left.

So, since I am very "kiasu", I asked Hubby to enquire about the registration for Heidi now itself, even though she is barely 3 months old. True enough, when he called, the 3 year old class for 2015 (2015, mind you!) was already full and the 4 year old class for 2016 was full as well. They said we could try to come to the kindy and register, but it did not sound very promising.

I thought of other alternatives, other schools that Heidi could possibly go to, but deep down I knew I really wanted the same school for both my girls. So I decided last night that I should have faith, pray and believe that there would be one more spot for Heidi in our chosen kindy.

This morning, Hubby told me that he would pick me up from work for an early lunch and we would go there to see if we could get Heidi registered. However, I had a feeling that I wanted to go early, before work, since the kindy is nearby my workplace. I was there when the children were all arriving for school and was informed to go to the office to enquire about registration.

As an answered prayer, there was only one more place left for the 4 year old class in 2016. The principal informed us that if we had waited a few hours later, the place may not be there anymore, so I was glad I did not wait until lunch time! It was truly a blessing and Hubby said it was meant to be for our little Heidi. We were very glad and happy that we did not have to be on the waiting list!

Here are a few recent photos taken of little Heidi:

Heidi's Birth Story - Part 2

After the stressful episodes of spotting at 7 weeks, the triple A blood test that showed “high risk of down syndrome” and the amniocentesis test, Angeline’s pregnancy had progressed smoothly until the beginning of 3^rd trimester when we were hit by another episode of spotting! We immediately rushed to see the OB. After a thorough examination, the OB told us that the spotting could be from the placenta or could be purely external and since the scan did not show any ruptured of placenta, there was a high possibility that the spotting was external which would eventually stop in 2 or 3 days time. The OB advised us to come back if the bleeding persisted and THANK GOD the spotting had completely stopped the following day after the examination. Thereafter, baby was progressing well week by week. 

However, at 37 weeks check up (Tuesday, 3^rd of April), the ultrasound scan indicated some maturity of the placenta, which would cause resistance of the blood flow to the baby.  In such circumstances, the OB had expressly told us that the pregnancy should not be allowed to proceed until the full term of 40 weeks and had to be induced. Since it was only 37 weeks, the OB advised us to wait for another week (38 weeks) as the successful rate of inducing the baby at 37 weeks was rather slim and could end up in C-Section instead. The OB also said that hopefully the labour would ensue soon to avoid the inevitability of inducement. Angeline was worried that she had to be induced as she heard from friends that such a procedure was very painful. So she kept telling the baby to come out any time within that week. We even bet on when the labour would occur and Angeline told me that she preferred 8^th of April as it coincided with Easter Day but we both consensually wanted the labour to come within that week to avoid the process of inducement.

We were semi anxiously waiting for the labour to come day by day within that week but there was no sign of labour and it was already Saturday (7^th of April)! That Saturday night we went out to have dinner with our friends at Tan Jetty Thai Food and it was a farewell dinner for one of our friends, Teera, who was moving back to Miri, Sarawak on the following week. We told them about Angeline’s condition and Teera  half jokingly told the baby to come out tomorrow so that she could still see her before she left for Miri.

Around 9pm after the dinner, Angeline and I went to my mum’s place to fetch Hannah. Instead of going home   straight away, we ended up staying there until 1.00am chit-chatting with my sisters. By the time we reached home it was already 1.30am and Hannah had fallen asleep when we  were on our way home. At around 3.15am, I was awakened by Angeline who complained to me that she had stomach pains. The first thing that I asked her was, “Is it contractions?” She described to me that the pain was like having minor cramps around the abdominal and she then asked me back, “Is this contractions?” I told her half-jokingly that I wouldn’t know as I never gave birth before but I remembered I read somewhere that a real contraction will also cause backache and she told me the pain did go until her back. I told her to get ready to go to the hospital as we still need to send Hannah to my parents' house first. Hannah was way too tired and she didn’t wake up even though we were carrying and moving her here and there, which we were glad as we definitely did not want her to wake up and make a fuss at such moment!  After we sent her to my parents' house, we headed to Adventist Hospital. Her contractions at that time were still mild and were like 5 to 10 minutes apart. We also stopped at 7-Eleven to buy a bottle of mineral water and some biscuits in case we needed to wait long before the cervix was fully dilated. We completely forgot to bring food and water before leaving the house!

When we reached the hospital, it was around 4.15am. We headed to the emergency department and Angeline was sent to labour room while I was asked to proceed with the registration. I think at that time back in our minds we still have the thought of what if it was a false alarm since Angeline’s contractions were still not building up. In the labour room Angeline was strapped with a device called CTG to monitor the contractions. Our minds were finally settled after the nurse had read the CTG report and examined her cervix and told us that “It is real contractions” and “she is already 7 cm dilated”. At that moment we both knew that we would meet our 2^nd princess very soon!!! I was definitely excited and I think Angeline was also excited but at the same time terrified of the whole process, which was natural. Around 6.30am her contractions had started to build up and getting more and more intense and to the extent that she had to use the laughing gas to soothe the pain.

At about 7.10am, the nurse finally asked the other nurse to call the OB as the cervix had fully dilated and thereafter the pushing sessions ensued and finally with a last gentle push, our baby Lim Heidi (2.82kg) was delivered and her non-stop loud cries “WA...WA...WA...WA...WA.........” brought beams to our faces. It was 7.26am when we both became 2^nd time parents on Easter Day! We were really thankful that the whole labour process did not drag long and both mother and baby were safe. This time I did record the moment when Heidi was delivered and as usual snapped photos of the baby in her birthday suit ;-) Here are some of the photos which are appropriate to share: -

Looking back at the ups and downs for the past 9 months really make us appreciate more of our lives together with our 2 princesses. Like most parents, we vowed to give the best to our children and it is indeed a blessing to watch them grow up healthily each and every day. Also because we are parents now, we certainly know it is not trouble-free to be parents and what’s more responsible ones! A BIG THANKS to our own parents!

As for me, it is still a sweet dream which I won’t trade for anything in the world that I have from 1 person became 2 persons in 2008, from 2 persons became 3 persons in 2009 and from 3 persons became 4 persons in 2012 and my family is still growing .......J