5 days to Christmas!

It's just another 5 days to Christmas and I haven't even bought all my Christmas presents yet! The kids must be wondering where are all their presents under the tree heheh ;)

Speaking of the tree, my parents helped the girls put up and decorate the tree when they were here in November and now it's Heidi's favourite point of attraction when taking photos.

Lil girl with her cheeky grin :)

Christmas festivities are everywhere, but we should always remember the real reason for the season.

From our family to yours, have a blessed Christmas and happy 2014!

My little sister's engagement

My little sister Adeline recently got engaged, and this was her fiance Robert's first trip to Penang. They had an engagement party in Australia early last month, so my parents thought it would be nice if they could have a small party here as well with our families. As expected, lots of photos were taken :)

Family portrait before leaving the house:

And here is our family. Heidi seemed more interested in the food. The theme was "Batik" so most of the gentlemen were decked in their colourful shirts.

Heidi being the youngest one there was made a fuss of by both sides of grandparents. Here is my dad with his youngest daughter and youngest granddaughter :)

Heidi with both sides of grandparents:

And she had fun playing with her little cousin too!

Hannah found some friends to play with too!

We ordered an engagement cake from Jan's, the same person who made Hannah and Heidi's birthday cakes this year. It was not a beautiful cake, but it was certainly delicious!

And we had the mandatory whole family photo before the night ended. Both girls were getting tired and cranky by then, hence Hannah not wanting to look at the camera.

Congratulations to my little sister Adeline and Robert! Looking forward to the wedding ;)

It's December again!

I realised I haven't blogged much this year, due to the busyness that is life :) And believe it or not, it's December again, how time flies.

Over the weekend, we took the girls to Queensbay Mall to have a look at the Christmas deco, and I must say that the mall has certainly stepped up this year in comparison to past years. The Christmas display at the centre court was enough to set the kids off with "oohs" and "aahs", or like Heidi would say, "wow!" And what would be the use of admiring the pretty decorations without some pictures?

Later on, we had a drink and something to eat at Coffee Bean (Citibank platinum cards 20% off - good deal). The girls love their cake and hot chocolate, so they were competing as to who could be the biggest "dinosaur". Hannah is bigger, so definitely her mouth can open wider, but Heidi is not too far behind!

We also took the girls to watch Disney's new animated movie "Frozen" and this was Heidi's first time in a cinema. We were contemplating whether or not to bring her as we were not sure if she would cry or make a fuss when inside.  After all, Hannah was almost 3 years old during her first time at a cinema. Surprisingly, Heidi sat still on her Daddy's lap without making a fuss and ate her bread (which I smuggled in lol) and some of her sister's popcorn. Also I suppose Disney princess movies appeal to girls of all ages (myself included :p) so all 3 of us enjoyed it (not too sure about Hubby though haha).

You can check out the trailer here.

Smile and say cheeeese!

Little Heidi now loves taking photos. She will strike a pose, smile and wait for you to take her photo. She will then want to look at the photo and then she will say "Again!".

She has what I call the "cheeky smile" and the "sweet smile". In both pictures below, she is doing one of each. Guess which one? :)

Fun in a box

I admit as a parent sometimes I have preference towards "branded" toys which is probably of slightly better quality than what you can get in the pasar malam, but in actual fact, to the kids, toys are toys, doesn't matter whether it came from Toys R Us or the mini market down the street.

Sometimes kids even get tired of actual toys, preferring normal everyday things which they pretend are toys! Classic example below:

My kids playing in their makeshift toy boxes (maybe they are pretending it's a fort?). So it doesn't take a lot to make them happy...time to bring out my pots and pans :p

Big sis and lil sis

We realised not long ago that both our girls have really grown up. We sometimes get so used to calling Heidi "baby" that we forgot that she is no longer a baby! They can now play together and the most recent favourite game is playing "hide and seek" at home. Daddy hides and the girls seek! Surprisingly Heidi seems to get the whole concept of the game and excitedly follows her big sister around the house looking for Daddy. Sometimes she can even find Daddy on her own without her sister's help :)

Just last weekend, Hannah had her annual kindy graduation and concert so we got her all dolled up before leaving the house. I wanted a picture of her in her costume so I asked her to pose for me. When Heidi saw her sister posing for the picture she ran over and stood next to her, wanting to be in the picture too! I guess Hannah was not too happy about her little sister trying to steal her limelight! ;)

A few days after that, we were in the car and Hubby had to get down to attend to some errands. So we all waited in the car. I unbuckled Heidi from her car seat since it was going to be quite a long wait, and this is what the girls got up to in the back seat. Cheeky Heidi disturbing her sister ;)

The girls also love playing bubbles. Usually we let them play in the bathroom at home while having their baths (together) but sometimes we go downstairs and let them play in a bigger space. Hannah as the big sis will blow the bubbles (as she insists that Heidi doesn't know how) and so Heidi will have to run and catch the bubbles. She seems to enjoy it very much, though!

My girls are so big now..I miss my babies!

Post-nap smileys

Heidi has always been a smiley baby, even when she wakes up from her sleep or naps (provided she has enough sleep!). I got these photos some time ago when she woke up all happy.

She almost 18 months old, and can say lots more words now, but sometimes it's still a bit hard to understand as lots of her words sound the same, even though they mean different things! Surprisingly, one of the words she can say very well is "minion" and will bring our phones to us, asking to watch the minion videos on YouTube!

Another thing she used to do which was quite amusing is that when she wants me to sing to her, she will point to my mouth and then shake her body as if she is dancing. Quite canggih her sign language for "sing" :)

She also knows how to say bao bei which means "treasure" in Mandarin because her daddy always calls her that. Indeed she is our little treasure :)

The one where the parents are not so smart

The Astro technician came to replace our decoder on Sunday and he showed us how the new system worked. Being not very tech-savvy people, Hubby and I could not seem to switch on the sound on the TV, even though the image was there. I was huddled under the TV console for some time, fiddling with the remote and buttons on the decoder and sound system and Hubby was trying to give me instructions (Heidi was lying on him fast asleep). I was going to give up, thinking I would just call the technician and ask him how to make it work, when suddenly the sound came on. A small voice behind me piped up "Nah, it's like that! I do this all the time at Amah's house." Apparently the mute button was on. Trust a 4-year-old to know better than her parents.

Love this picture of our cheeky girl:

Mah-mee and Pa-pa!

At almost 17 months, Heidi can finally call me "mah-mee". She could say "ma-ma" but when I asked her to say "mummy", it would come out as gibberish. We discovered it last week only. Usually when I come home after work, Hannah will run and greet me, calling "mummy, mummy". So last Thursday it was the same routine, I came home and Hannah was calling me loudly like she always does. Suddenly a little voice piped up and joined in "mah-mee", "mah-mee" and she went on and on like a broken record. My mother-in-law and I were quite surprised because we had been trying to get her to say it for the past few weeks without success, and suddenly it came out loud and clear. So now she says it non-stop :)

Heidi is definitely one cheeky baby, way more cheeky than Hannah at her age. She will laugh and chuckle at anything she finds funny, and she does it so cheekily! She can call "papa" very well so we are trying to get her to say "daddy".

Me: Heidi, say "Daddy"
Heidi: Da-pa-pa
Me: "Daddy", Heidi
Heidi: Papa!
Me: No, no, say "Daddy"
Heidi: PAPA!

I suppose she knows that it means the same thing :)

Some pictures of our cheeky baby:

As for our big girl, she is growing up to be a little lady. She's now into hairdo, makeup, dressing up and all those girly things.

Dressing up in her cousin's dress which is too big for her:

She also has a very quick mind and sometimes floors us with the things she says. For example, we were driving in the car the other day when Hubby was singing along to Christina Perri's "Jar of Hearts". For those who are not familiar with the song, it's basically the usual boy cheats on girl and girl feels betrayed story etc etc. We didn't know that Hannah could actually listen and understand so I think it's probably time that we review the type of music we listen to in the car! So anyway, being a curious little girl, she asked her daddy what was the meaning of the song. Trying to put it as simply as possible, the conversation went like this:

Hubby: It's about a boy who cheated on a girl.
Hannah: What does "cheat" mean?
Hubby: The boy was naughty; he promised to love the girl only, but then he also loves other girls. That's why the girl asked him to leave and don't come back.
Hannah (after a solemn pause): The girl is also naughty.
Hubby: Why?
Hannah: Because she doesn't want to share!

We both sure had a good laugh 

Also, another conversation went something like this:

Hannah and Hubby were discussing her science lesson which she learnt in school. The lesson was on which objects sink and which objects float. So they were giving examples of objects that sink and float (mostly her toys).

Hannah: So how about a duck? Does it sink or float? 
Hubby: It floats (thinking she was talking about her rubber duck)
Hannah (without a second thought): Nolah, the duck can swim by itself!

I do want to make sure I document all this down and maybe in future when she is grown up, I can show her this and we can laugh together. Out of the mouths of babes... ;)

Taiping Zoo revisited

It had been sometime since we visited the zoo, the last time being Zoo Negara last November. This was also Heidi's first visit to Taiping Zoo. Hubby's 2 cousins also came with us, as apparently they also had never been to Taiping Zoo. The zoo has undergone some changes since we were last here. There are all these animal statues at the entrance of the zoo now.

Hannah was still quite mesmerised by the animals, even though this was her 4th time at Taiping Zoo.

Heidi was also very excited to see all the animals, and kept pointing to and looking at the different animals she saw.

She wasn't much different from Hannah when she first visited Taiping Zoo. She was only 10 months old then.

We forgot to bring the stroller, so we had to take turns carrying Heidi because we didn't want her running around. Good thing there were 4 of us to share the job out :)

And on the way home, we stopped for a yummy seafood dinner at Tambun.

Hannah enjoying her meal:

Tired and sweaty, but extremely happy! Both kids had a good sleep that night :)