A very lovely cake

Last Saturday, Hannah and I attended Josiah's 2nd birthday party. Josiah is my friend and colleague Alvina's son. Coincidentally, they also recently moved to a new house, so it was sort of like a birthday party cum housewarming.

Hannah was most captivated by the birthday cake.

It was a really lovely 2-tier cake, and the little animals on the cake were all hand made. Bottom tier was chocolate banana and the top tier was strawberry.

A closer look at the cake:

Some of the kids got to take the little animals home, and Hannah chose the little lion as her keepsake. She keeps asking if it can be eaten, but as of now the little lion is safe in the fridge :)

Laughing Heidi

Heidi is a very smiley baby. She could smile even before she turned 2 months old. She is very different from Hannah when Hannah was her age. When Hannah smiled as a baby, people would say that this was the day they would strike the lottery :)

Anyway, I managed to take a video of Heidi chuckling away when I called her name and made silly noises at her - the things we parents are not ashamed to do! I would have cringed if you had asked me to do this when I still didn't have kids.

Here are some pictures of her smiles:

A Foot in Mouth Moment

I think my 4 month-old baby possesses remarkable flexibility. I don't remember Hannah being so flexible when she was a baby.

Heidi has been sucking her fingers (and then thumb) since she was about 2 months old. I was concerned that this could be an ongoing habit which would be hard to break so I mentioned it to her pediatrician who assured me that this was normal. However, now she has progressed to sucking her feet and toes. I wonder if her pediatrician will tell me that this is normal too :p

Naughty Heidi, trying to eat her toes. But at the same time, it really is quite funny too. Her satisfied look once she has successfully put her foot in her mouth (literally!):



Sharing

Hannah loves ice cream. I always say it's because when I was pregnant with her I craved ice cream and was not allowed to have any :) So anyway, her grandpa indulges her quite often with ice cream and she knows that we do not approve. Nevertheless, we always encourage her to tell us the truth and not scold her, otherwise she may not tell the truth anymore. So everyday, Hubby will ask her whether she ate ice cream or not that day and she will truthfully tell us yes or no. However, the other day, her response was what we lawyers call "qualified" - it's a yes with a BUT :) Here's how the conversation went:

Daddy: Hannah, did you eat ice cream today?

Hannah: Yes, but I shared.

Daddy: Who did you share it with?

Hannah: With myself lor!

After a moment of stunned silence, Hubby tried to keep a straight face and asked her:

Daddy: How do you share with yourself?

Hannah: First, I eat half of the ice cream, and then later I eat the other half!

I posted this on my Facebook the other day and several people commented that she has the makings of a "lawyer" :) I commented further that she said it this way so that it doesn't look like she ate the whole thing by herself! Cheeky Hannah :)

Some updates on the girls:

Hannah:

At 3 years 2 months 2 weeks and 3 days, she can now poo poo in the toilet sitting on her training seat. She was off diapers very shortly after her 2nd birthday (fully trained for pee), but it took her more than a year to convince herself that she could poo in the toilet. Prior to this, she always asked us to wear diapers for her when she wanted to poo. That first day, it took her almost an hour for her to do her business because she was not used to sitting on the toilet, but hopefully it will get easier after this.

Heidi:

Heidi had her 4 month injections yesterday - 2 jabs and one oral vaccine for Rotavirus. She was her happy cheerful self, smiling a lot at the Dr and the nurses while they checked her. She could even smile after the first jab as if she did not realise that she had just been jabbed! However, she complained after the 2nd jab and the one that she disliked the most was the oral vaccine. She spit and tried to choke it out but the Dr and the nurse held her firmly so she screamed louder. After it was over she was fine again :) During the checkup, the Dr turned her on her tummy to see how steady was her head and she could lift not only her head but also her chest off the bed. She is not able to flip yet but Dr said it can be anytime now. Here are some of her tummy time pictures when at home:

She is now 6.3 kg and 64 cm long. Since she turned 4 months old, we have been taking her out more and she loves to go out. Here are some of her pictures last weekend at Queensbay Mall:

The dress and the hat are Hannah's - we hardly need to buy clothes for Heidi as she has a lot of Hannah's as well as her cousins' clothes which are hand-me-downs but in excellent condition. I guess this is the benefit of having 2 girls - they can share clothes, not only now but in future too. I hope Hannah's version of "sharing" next time will be to share things with her little sister, and not "with herself"! :)

An eventful weekend

I had a busy weekend last Saturday and Sunday. Uncle Tze Ming and Aunty Jacintha asked me and Isabelle (Uncle Kok Hsiang and Aunty Chia Yin's daughter) to be their flower girls for their wedding reception on Saturday night at G Hotel. Mummy and Daddy also attended the KL reception the weekend before so they had two busy weekends in a row.

I was pretty excited to be a flower girl again as this would be my second time. I posed for a nice picture at home before we left the house.

We dropped Heidi off at Ah Mah's house and headed to the hotel. We were there early so Isabelle and I could rehearse the walk-in before the wedding started. We also took some pictures inside and outside the ballroom. We are wearing matching dresses from Lovely Lace bought for us by the wedding couple. However, both Isabelle and I needed new shoes so we quickly bought it that morning from Queensbay Mall.

We rehearsed throwing the flower petals upon entering the ballroom. I did it quite well during the rehearsal but during the actual event, I completely blanked out, probably because I saw so many people when the doors opened. I remembered towards the end so there were flower petals on Isabelle's side of the aisle but none on my side until almost the main table :) Oh well, Uncle Tze Ming and Aunty Jacintha said we both did great :) Mummy did not manage to take any pictures during the walk-in so we will wait for those from the official photographer.

Isabelle and I had a great time that night dancing once they put on the dance music. We only stopped to come back to have a drink of water and then we were off again! We danced until 11 pm and then it was time to go home. I was pretty exhausted as you can imagine but I had loads of fun.

The next day, I attended Kyan's 1st birthday party. Kyan is Mummy's friend Aunty Celyn's son. I had only seen Kyan once before and that was when he was 3 months old. Time really flies and he is already one year old. I love birthday parties because it means I get to eat cake! Daddy looked after Heidi at home while Mwent to the party.

Mummy says this expression on my face is priceless. The other kids were busy playing but I was only focused on the CAKE(s).

Aunty Celyn and Uncle Kevin made the cakes themselves. The three tier cake was a chocolate cake made by Aunty Celyn and the other cake was a red velvet cake made by Uncle Kevin. I was eyeing the chocolate cake more because of the smarties on it :)

We later sang a birthday song for Kyan and his Mummy and Daddy helped him to blow the candles on his cakes.

I enjoyed my fish and chips, ice cream and cake - all my favourite food. After the cake cutting, all the kids got a party pack each. Mine had a crocodile sticker on the front (all the party packs had different animals on them) and inside was a box of Smarties (my favourite again), bubble solution and some other type of bubble. It's a bit hard to explain what it is, but people who are Mummy and Daddy's generation will know what it is. It's sticky and comes in a little tube and you have to put it at the end of a small straw and blow it.

Mummy and I took a picture with Aunty Celyn before going home. Oh yes, I also got a helium balloon which was a new thing for me. This is my second balloon because the other one floated up to the ceiling :)

As can be seen from my face, I definitely enjoyed myself. Thank you Aunty Celyn for the food and fun time :)

More of Hannah's artwork

When Hannah was at Gurney Plaza doing her sand and window art the other day, we also bought something for her to take home and do. She chose it herself - a photo frame which she needs to colour using the paint provided in the kit. Usually she enjoys going to her favourite places in the mall - rides, Toys R Us etc. However, that day, she asked us immediately once we left the sand art place, "Can we go home now?" This probably had to do with the fact that we told her that she could only paint her photo frame once we got home!

Anyway, that evening when we got home, she got her little table and chair ready and Hubby set up the paint for her. We also put one of Heidi's bigger bibs on her so that she wouldn't mess up her clothes :)

I must say she painted with full concentration - we could see it in her face :)

Hannah seems to enjoy artwork a lot. In this sense she takes after her Daddy as the artistic streak comes from him and not from me!

The photo frame is not finished yet, we left it to dry and told her she could continue it another day. Will post up the finished result here, if it gets finished and if it is not too messy looking! :)

Family Day Out

Hubby and I attended a wedding over the weekend in KL, so Hubby's mum took care of the girls while we were away. To relieve her, we took leave on Monday so that she could have a break. We haven't taken Hannah out for a long time, and Heidi generally has not been anywhere (except the single trip to Tesco a few weeks ago). As far as possible, we want to avoid the crowds at the malls on weekends so it was a perfect time for us to take the girls out.

We headed to McDonald's Sunrise Tower for breakfast and Hannah had a good time eating her favourite pancakes and playing on the slide.

We put Heidi in her car seat so that we did not have to carry her. She was not too fond of it though and soon tried to eat her hand.

Hannah, Heidi and I matched our outfits on that day. Hubby called us his "polka dot girls" :)

Here are some shots of us at McDonald's:

After breakfast, we went to Gurney Plaza and Hannah went to do her favourite sand art and window art. We didn't take the camera down from the car so no pictures. By the way, the kiosk has moved from the basement level to Level 4 in front of Aussino. The uncle told us that his business had dropped by 70% since he moved so please do take your kids there to support him and keep him open :) Hannah will be very disappointed if the uncle goes out of business or moves elsewhere.

After that, we went to Toys R Us to get some presents for some upcoming birthdays. Heidi was pretty alert; looking here and there at all the new sights and sounds.

After walking around for awhile, we left and headed for Queensbay Mall - definitely taking advantage of our holiday to walk around the non-crowded malls. We had lunch and then took Hannah to play her favourite rides again since it was quite a long time since we had brought her out. We also bought her some new clothes from Jusco.

We walked around until about 4 o'clock and decided to call it a day. This was definitely the longest time that Heidi has been out of the house and she was starting to get a little cranky. It was a fun family day out and we can probably do it again the next time we are on leave on a working day! :)