Helene - 4 years & 3 months

As the elder two are growing up, it seems like only Helene is willing to pose for me to take pictures now. Hence this blog is starting to have lesser content :(

Still as "manja" as always, here are some recent snaps of her.

I took her to H&M and she wanted to try on the hats and sunnies :)

Hari Raya celebrations in school - but the kids could wear any traditional clothes, so these two wore Indian outfits considering that they are 1/8 Indian :)

Such a poser :)

Helene and her cousin Charlize:

This little one still loves her food, but she definitely has a more Asian taste, compared to her sisters who like fast food and western food. This was one night where she polished off a plate of nasi kandar (with a little curry) and later on half a plate of noodles in the same night :)

This was her first homework assignment from school - writing the numbers 1, 2 and 3. She can now recognise numbers up to 9 :)

And of course, the most peaceful time of the day is when she is fast asleep :) It's really cute how she rests her head on her little hand.

Don't grow up too fast, Mummy's baby :)

Peppa's biggest fan is 4!

Nobody loves birthdays more than Helene or at least nobody shows that she loves birthdays more than Helene :) So nobody was more excited than Helene to find out that her birthday was coming up!

Since she is a huge fan of Peppa Pig, we had sort of a Peppa-themed birthday for her. My mum bought a banner, balloons and figurines from Australia to give her all things Peppa! Her birthday fell on a Monday, so on Sunday night we had a small party for her at home.

We put up the Peppa banner and balloons:

My mum cooked everybody's favourite food :)

And Aunty who looks after Helene baked these very special buns for her, and delivered it to our house:

Obligatory family pictures:

We just had a simple rainbow cake (the girls' favourite) as her "main" cake would be for school the next day.

She loves to blow the candles:

And she got a card and ang pow from Kung Kung and Nanna:

The next day she wore a pretty new dress from Ted Baker which Uncle Alex bought for her all the way from the UK. She wears designer clothes and I don't haha.

And there's the Peppa cake! We gave the figurines to Jenni and they figured out the rest :)

She was definitely thrilled to see it, as were all her friends haha :)

 As it was her birthday, she got a special hat and tag to wear.

Daddy had to attend court that morning, so Mummy, Nanna and Kung Kung celebrated with her in school.

And then after school, it was off to lunch at McDonald's (where else!)

I had promised Heidi a trip to Amanville at Gurney Plaza, so I thought what would be a better time that to take all of them on Helene's birthday. As it was a Monday afternoon, they had the entire place to themselves!

They definitely had a ball (no pun intended!) Haha :)

Happy birthday our cheeky Helene! We love you lots!

Chicken poxed out

So we spent the better part of March battling with onsets of chicken pox. It all started on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year when we found out that 3 of our relatives were having chicken pox when we went to visit! It was a bit too late then by the time we found out so we decided it was no big deal since the kids had all been vaccinated.

Fast forward 2 weeks later, and one morning I noticed some red spots on Heidi's back as I was showering her. It didn't look like watery blisters which are consistent with chicken pox spots, but we kept her back from school, just in case. After we confirmed those were chicken pox spots, she didn't go to school for the next 2 weeks; it was a good thing that there was a week school holiday during that time. Helene dutifully brought back her homework for her to do every day, and I would hand it over to her teacher the next morning when sending Helene to school.

Heidi's case was very mild - she had hardly any spots (maybe around 10 only) and none appeared on her face. You can see that she doesn't look like she's having chicken pox from the photos below. I dressed them up one Saturday in matching dresses and shoes, just for the fun of it :)

Fast forward 2 weeks later, and I saw 2 watery blisters on Helene's hand one night. Uh-oh I thought to myself, here we go again. True enough, more watery blisters started to appear over the next few days and poor girl even had it on her face. Her case was definitely worse than Heidi's, even thought both of them had been vaccinated for chicken pox. She also had a mild fever for the first couple of days.

We put calamine lotion on her to prevent too much itching, and little girl behaved like a champ. She was still cheerful despite having the itchy blisters all over her body.

She's almost all better now - no longer contagious but she is still not going to school until all her scabs have fallen off. After being house-bound for the last couple of weeks, we took her to Gurney Plaza last weekend.

Oh, and someone also lost her 3rd tooth! She lost her first 2 teeth last year just before her birthday as well :)

Now one of Hubby's nieces is having chicken pox - her spots appeared just a few days after Helene's, and the poor girl got it really bad all over her face neck and body. Really a teenager's nightmare. Let's hope this is the last case! 

Update (7/4/2018) - Hannah is now having chicken pox too! So she's really the last one in our family to get it. 

Hello 2018!

We are already halfway into January 2018! I suppose the most exciting that happened this month is that little Helene is now officially a school-goer!

But let me detract a bit and blog about what we did during New Year's. So it has usually been the custom for us to check into a hotel or Airbnb to celebrate New Year's with our friends, and this year it was no different. We booked an Airbnb (our friend refers to it as "someone else's house" lol) at 68PG Sunrise Gurney which was a duplex apartment with 2 rooms and 2 bathrooms, kitchen and living. It was quite nice, I must say.

We had dinner at Gurney Paragon but we didn't stay for the countdown as the place was quite crowded. So we walked back to the apartment and at the stroke of midnight, we could see the fireworks from Straits Quay. However nothing beat the spectacular fireworks show we witnessed 2 years ago when we stayed at the Maritime Hotel.

Come the first week of January, it was back to school for the girls. Hannah is in Standard 3 this year and Heidi is in her last year of kindy. So Helene and Heidi can go to school together, just for this year. Helene was definitely very excited on her first day, despite months of protest that she didn't want to go to school.

I was expecting a lot of tears, as she is quite attached to me, but surprisingly she was fine, and still seems to be fine even now. On her first week, she even told me that she told another child (her classmate) not to cry. Okkaayy :)

She wasn't too happy however when I took her to take a photo for school as requested by her teacher. It took a lot of promises and negotiation (not bribery lol) for us to finally get this photo. She wanted Kinderjoy, which I bought for her as she co-operated to give us an acceptable photo haha. At least there was a hint of a smile :)

So my littlest baby is finally going to school. I posted on my social media that it was so exciting and so sad at the same time! I'm going to enjoy the last few years of her childhood while I still can :)

Million dollar smiles Part 2

You can see Part 1 here when Helene was 7 months old haha. So the other day I got this really nice sweet smile from her. It doesn't happen often so I thought it deserved a mention and a blog post.

Most of the time I get cheeky or mischievous smiles like this. Note that she usually has an ice cream or a sweet treat in her hand! Lol.

Or otherwise I get toothless grins like this. Actually I can't really tell the difference between the cheeky & mischievous smiles and toothless grins haha.

So what's the difference between Part 1 and Part 2? :)

Anyway, to digress a bit, the other night I had to attend a wedding dinner so being the little koala that she is, there was a bit of a meltdown when I had to leave. To pacify her, Hubby dressed up the girls in "wedding clothes" and they had a bit of a party at home. All smiles after that!