Helene: Almost 11 months

I have a lot of things to update on Baby Helene but never seemed to get round to doing it. She is no longer a round roly-poly baby but she still maintains some of those cute folds on her thighs and wrists. :) I am not sure what is her weight as we have not weighed her since her last checkup at 6 months. I probably have to sit her on the weighing scale at home or else wait for her 1 year check up coming up next month.

This lil one has got to be the most active and wriggly baby of the 3. She totally can't sit or stay still. She could crawl at 8 months and she does it super fast.

She is also very kay-poh (busybody). So I made this little photo collage below which shows her kay-poh face in the first frame haha.

Not so chubby anymore but still equally as happy. She's still breastfeeding so hopefully that will keep her chubby folds for a while yet! And keep MY chubby folds away hahaha.

She can babble away in baby talk, but the clearest words she can say are "mum-mum" and "nen-nen" She can now also do various signs, such as "bye bye", "no more", "hello", "catch mei mei (lantern)", "clap-clap" and "gong-xi gong xi". She can also pretend to cough when someone says "lau ah em" (old aunty in hokkien), implying that old aunties cough a lot! It's really funny when she does it - I don't have a video but essentially her face looks like this:

Here she is doing some of the actions. I haven't got a really good video of her doing all her actions, because it also depends on her mood! Like here, she was getting sleepy, so she was not really interested to "entertain" us lol.

She also recently learnt how to do the sign for "money". So small already so money-face lol. Her biggest achievement so far is learning how to stand up! She still needs to hold on to things though. This means that now in addition to the eyes at the back of my head, I probably need to have eyes on all sides of my head.

She hates being in her car seat but she loves "driving" the car!

This was after a crying episode upon putting her in her car seat:

And here's another funny video of her. She was watching her sisters playing "pop-pop" firecrackers during Chinese New Year and we thought she might like to try one. She immediately caught on to it and now when you ask her to throw "pop-pop", she can do the action.

Happy, funny little Helene!

Official wedding photos

We recently received the photos from the official photographer at my sister's Penang wedding and reception and here are some from the reception at E&O Hotel. There are not many of us, since we were running around most of the time, and we totally forgot to even get a family photo of all of us.

Here are some with us in it, and I must say that the photographer did a pretty good job! I like these 2 the best:

Only Heidi was in the pictures above as Hannah was busy running around with her cousins and Helene was being passed around from one doting relative to the next :p

Hannah with some of her cousins:

But for the most part, Helene was my little koala.

This was Heidi's first time as a flower girl, hence the perpetually worried look on her face. We were worried that she couldn't make it all the way to the front of the ballroom, but she did a very good job and there were no breakdowns or meltdowns! Hannah re-wore her flower girl dress from the Australia wedding and we cut the purple sash in half, so Heidi could have one too.

Here are some of my sister's friends who came all the way from Australia to attend the reception. Hannah was especially fond of Brie, the girl who was holding her.

And Hubby's friends came too:

And here is all of Hubby's extended family:

Bowling at Penang Bowl

Sunday afternoons are now reserved for bowling time. We took the girls there a couple of times to watch the adults and older kids playing (their aunts and uncles and cousins) and they were quite fascinated. Hubby used to be quite an avid bowler, and it seems he hasn't lost his touch! :)

Hannah, being already 6 said she wanted to try as well so we got her a pair of rental bowling shoes. Looks quite nice on her :)

She can lift the lightest bowling ball - a number 6.

This was Hannah's first time bowling but she managed quite well on her first few tries. A bit tearful at first when she kept getting gutter balls, but we encouraged her to try further. On our last trip there last Sunday, she managed to get quite a few pins and with a bit of practice, she can definitely do better!

Getting some help from Daddy: