Julien’s turning 18 months!

My little boy is growing up sooo fast! Too fast! In 1 more week’s time, he will be 18 months’ old!

He used to be docile, very mild, accommodating, easy-going…

Look at his big round innocent eyes… But don’t be deceived!

I mean he’s generally still a good boy but…

He does have an attitude!

He wants to have his choices (hmm… blackberry or iphone??) and once he’s made up his mind, he only wants it HIS way!

No questions about it.

And we as parents are happy about it. It’s a sign of growing up.

Julien is much more active, aware and engaging now. It’s so much more fun for us to interact with him now! Though he has not really learnt how to speak at all (rather, he does not want to try to speak), he understands words like ‘catch’, ‘let’s go’, ‘blanket’, ‘bathe’, ‘carry’ etc.

A friend of ours recommended sending kids to childcare at the age of 2-3  years only. The rationale was that kids younger than that would not be able to engage and learn anything much. Sending the kid to pre-school early just means spending alot of $$ to entertain him.

But we are just so tempted to send our active and bored Julien sooon. I am thinking if he goes to class now, he not only learn to socialize with other kids, he would pick up soft skills and might start to learn to speak faster too.

Well, we shall wait a little longer and assess the situation. Parents, what is your take on this? Should we send our kids to school early?

Pine Garden 1st month cakes

For Julien’s 1st month, we bought our 1st month cakes from Gobi (read more here). For Jensen, we wanted something different and decided on the famous Pine Garden cakes.

If you visit their only outlet at Ang Mo Kio, you may mistaken it for just another ordinary small neighbourhood bakery… except that it’s very crowded especially during peak hours.

One glance and you may think that they sell the normal traditional sponge cakes. But look carefully at the flavours available… Pulut Hitam, Apple Vera Martini and many more!

We decided to go for the half kg cakes for relatives and the package with 9 mini cakes for friends. We asked the shop assistants if cake tasting was available since we were going to buy alot of cakes… But sadly, no… We had to buy the cakes in order to try.

So, we chose their signature flavour – Lychee Martini and got the Chocolate Bailey’s and the traditional favourite Black Forest!

We wolfed down the cakes in a few minutes… They were yummy! I personally preferred the light Lychee Martini cake with the subtle hint of alcohol in it, best. The Black Forest was a close runner-up.

Well, since we were not planning to throw a party to celebrate Jen’s 1 month, we decided to give away more cakes. We spent almost a thousand dollars here!

No discount given…. Just free delivery….

Honestly, don’t expect great customer service here. Just very yummy cakes.

The packaging is quite nice too.

Note: The cute card with Jensen’s photos on it is NOT from Pine Garden. As usual, Jen’s very creative, very arty designer aunty – Aunty Val designed the card… all in just 20 minutes. She’s so good at it!

And for Jensen’s 1 month old celebration, we did a small family lunch at Man Zhu restaurant at the Chinese Swimming Club (@ Amber Road) where my bro-in-law was a member at.

The Sunday hi-tea was less than $30 per pax and the buffet offerings were not bad at all.

One side of the restaurant faced the swimming pool…

And the other sides faced greenery and another part of the pool…

(Gong Gong looked so happy with his grandchildren!)

And while we adults were happily munching our food, our little Jensen was….

Peacefully Zzzzzzzzing away……..

(Thanks Aunties and Uncle for the cool and colorful Old Navy tights… and look at the 3d baseball socks that Mummy bought me!)

Happy Belated 1 month old Jensen!

(We love our sweet Baby!)

Feeding a 6 week old baby

An active toddler who is constantly demanding his parents’ attention and discovering new things everyday,  cable TV (I subscribed to the very addictive HK and Korean drama channel), a new hobby of expressing milk, a newborn (need I explain?) … I guess you can forgive me for my long absence from this space!

A month and a half just whizzed by like that.

At 6 weeks old, my little Jensen has grown to be chubby tubby.

As you can see from the picture, Jensen has been feeding very well. At 2-3 weeks, we were already giving him 120ml every 3-4 hours. Now at 6 weeks, he is taking 140-150 ml every 3-4 hours.

During the 1st few days he was back from the hospital, he was drinking so much, more than I could express out, so we bought formula to supplement. At first, I felt discouraged about it… But I just kept on expressing the best that I could.

A note to all to-be-mums and mums of newborns:

DON’T GIVE UP ON FEEDING BREASTMILK! YOU CAN DO IT!

And yes, I kept on going and produced more and more and now Jensen is fully on breastmilk again. In fact, Jensen only drinks half of what I produce each day. I also give a little of my BM to Julien. (I replace a quarter of his formula milk with my BM and mix it with his formula milk as he no longer can take the strong taste of the BM). Still, I am facing a good problem -  the lack of storage space to keep my frozen breastmilk.

I am also very thankful that Jensen wakes up only once a night now to drink his milk. We used to try to give him formula just before midnight, hoping that it will fill his stomach better and last longer through the night. But, we discovered it was not so. Maybe just for Jensen?

So, how did we train Jensen and Julien to sleep through the night? I am not sure! Maybe because we had prayed specifically for it!

I feel blessed with my 2 boys and am enjoying the time I spend with the 2 of them. Indeed, children are a blessing from the Lord.