All I want for Christmas...

IS YOU!

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Still rated my best impulsive shopping loot! :) 

And I can never thank Santa more for my little bundle of joy!

We brought him out to the BBQ on the eve as Santaphy!

HOHOHO! Being the man that he is, he OF COURSE refused to step out of the house looking like that. There he is, looking glum in the 1st picture... Mummy had to drag him out of the house!

Fastracked 4 hours later, his energy was flat. So we brought him home before heading back to countdown to Christmas with MAHJONG!

HOHOHO!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We are becoming gambling addicts!

Dont Stop Movin'

To neutralise our horrendous pig-out sessions that claim at least 50% of this space, here is one of our active weekends!

A virgin experience - lack of which denies me right to exclaim my pride of being Singaporean!

I dont know why I have never had the chance to venture into this island that is only a 5 min (or rather, a S$2.50) boat ride away...;p Additional S$1 if you BYOB (bring your own bike)

The ride was a lil bumpy, a lil muddy (i was whining about the new adi shoes!) and with a lil bit of mozzie attack and a lot of killer upslopes! But it was all worth the bumps and burns and bites cos it feels soooooo good after! :)

Feels so good. FEEEEEELS soooooo good to have the wind in my face! And to be sooo close to nature!!! :) It's good to do this in a huge group. Witnessed the one-people team spirit. ;p

We spotted a cute lil furball..

Awwwwwwwwwwww!

Awwwwwwwwwww Awwwwwwwwwwwwww

Evolution

Baby steps into adulthood.

Before heading out for N's cuz's wedding dinner on Saturday. I was in my NEW pretty salmon dress with butterfly sleeves. But you dont do no camwhore when you have a baby in your hands. Come thing of it, I have never seen any camwhoring mothers! :p

 Went to see the littlest addition to the maternal family before that. These are awesomely cute rattling baby feet! I am officially a biao yi now! Forgot to take her pictures!

Even the parents are going on trips more often, cos we are all so big already...

Mummy made a pot of bah kut teh soup before she left with the dad. 

But I believe in a balanced diet...(that's positive influence from N, btw)

SO I whipped up a simple dish in the kitchen on Friday evening - Spicy black bean french beans with minced meat. Lee Kum Kee is really a god-sent!

And before I left the house on Sat for the wedding and for a sleepover at N's, made some Fried Rice - that should take my sisters through Sat's dinner and Sun's luncheon! Marinated the remaining minced meat for the sister to steam with tofu on Sun - you know, kids cant really cook. But steaming should be easy peasy la. I m kinda big on kitchen planning like these :)

-Home made pork loin charsiew-

It was a first attempt at Char Siew making. I toasted them instead of oven grilling them cos the oven is spoilt. Wonder if that's why the sauce didnt 'glue' on to the meat.. hmmm... must ask mummy later..

Stirfried the charsiew with the luncheon meat before frying the rice - they call it bao xiang ;) sounds very pro hor?  *wriggles eyebrows*  

Oops! And we forgot to take pictures of the end product!

And on Sunday, meetup with the jiemeis ended at 3ish. So, I had some more time to play in the kitchen for Sun's dinner after bathing the baby (Poor N was stuck at home the whole day!) I wish I had more time for everybody :(  

Had some luncheon meat leftover from fried rice on Sat, and mummy had 4 tiny potatos left in her kitchen inventory....

I decided to make one of my favorite caifan dishes! Stir fried luncheon meat with potato in Ketchup! Add in chilli for that extra taste!

And the veg - did it the post pregnancy style. Spinach in double boiled herbal soup. I dug out my mother's dried food collection in the fridge - Ginseng, hawthorn (? - the red color seeds), and 2 other sliced herbs that I dunno the name of but has to be good stuff la! Cos the price tag told me so.. hee

And over to the upbringing my own furkid, Murphy has been a really good boy! :)

-Homegrooming-

I know. I am cute, Mummy. But I really want to sleep already..zzz

Brainstorming II - Sidetrack

In the midst of planning, but all the beautiful distractions taking me off the track! :p

NOW, wouldn't THESE make the perfect bouquets for a beach wedding?

And this, is so pretty!

But the thing is, we are not going to have a beach wedding! *heh*

But I sure hope to come up with some DIY stuffs for The Big Day! :)

Brainstorms

Been trying to do up some interior planning for the house to see what kind of extra expertise we may need to seek and Murphy's definitely in our plan. :)

It might be a little troublesome to transport him back to my house every morning though...but that's what most human babies' mothers do, no? Alternative is to get another tiny terrier to accompany him, which at the moment, doesnt seem too appealing.  x_x

I just lost a war to that little imp who refused to pee on the papers at home for CONSECUTIVELY 30 hours!!! Can you imagine he held all that pee so that he can go downstairs for a pee-walk?!?!?! Can you imagine my heartache for him to hold his pee any longer?!?! So I gave in. Pee-walks, back to normal. O_O" *sigh*

This is him early this morning, after holding his pee for 24 hours and looking very pitiful.

HOW NOT TO GIVE IN?

So back to my happier plannings (of cos Murphy is still included cos I still love him very much), I have many great ideas for our balcony! (yeah. only the balcony at the moment. haha! I gather I still have 4 months to gather our keys, and another 7 months to get it up, so I still have time)

Home will come with one helluva big piece of land-area for the balcony, in comparison to the total land-area ratio anyway. It ll be an open concept - no top grills, window panes, and with a sink-in planter across the far edge.

We can either:
1) pebble it up and plant some fake flowers (like showroom pic below)
2) Rear those tiny fishes for foot therapy (and charge all my friends $xx for coming for fish massage)
3) Board the floor up up

Of which, I found the 3rd option more desirable.

I like this! Can sit and nua with a cuppa and my book/mag/Ipad. Looks so cosy!

Or this! We can sit there and sip wines till we grow old, and our teeth drop and my boobs sag. Yeah, you roughly know the idea.

Or this! We can still sit there and sip wine, but this time with sunnier colors and ROCKING chairs!

Of course, our view will be different..

We will not be looking at mountains nor rivers nor the greens. Instead, we will be looking over a built-up concrete jungle.

So maybe we might just leave things simple back there. We can sip wines in the living room in front of the TV instead. Not to forget that anything we wanna place in the balcony has to be weather proof (no windows remember?)

Maybe we will just get a portable BBQ pit like this and have our family and friends over. And also leave a space to set up a MJ table right there.

Not to mention that soon laundry load will be too much for that pathetic few steel poles in the drying ledge beside the yard (see 1st pic for a 1:100 scale of how 'long' that will be), the balcony might even end up as a bamboo pole area for sunning the clothes.

Now I am back to square one.

It's here!

After a splendid fireworks date at Vivo last night to mark the start of this wonderful month, we had another wonderful news last night! N got home to The Letter! Letter from The Love Loft that we have been saving up for, and it is gonna arrive muuuuuch soooooner than we expected! :):):)

This whiz shot was snapped on 23 October while we were transporting Murphy to the groomers. I thought they would at least need another year to finish up the interior for all the units - painting, cementing, flooring, carpentary, toilets, plumping, tiling, windows...

It was already a good delivery on their part when they pushed forward the TOP date from May 2012 to Dec 2011!

Gosh! The workers are indeed efficient! Now, they are going to give us the keys by the FIRST QUARTER of 2011!!!

Now that the deadline's drawing soooo near, we will be busy in the months ahead prepping our household search for our little nest. Have pushed it away long enough! Cant wait to conceptualise out the ideas for the whole house now! We will be financially verrrrrrry tight though, cos we sorta planned our finances according to the intial deadline. Pray Lord bless us through this journey! :)

Another good news is - The cousin's due TODAY!!! I wonder if she knows about the letter already! :) That'll be DOUBLE joy when I see her and the Little One tonight :)

Have already conceptualised what I wanna make for her baby shower :):):)

OMG soooooo excited!!

December's gonna be a fab month! More happy posts ahead!

Learning new responsibilities

The (dis)advantages of being in the good age - The reality that is unknown to a kid's aspiration to be grown up.

The aspirations of financial independence, breaking free of curfews, late nights fun, exciting (aka dangerous to parents) hobbies and a more permanent break from studying! What we didnt know was the growing responsibilities, diminishing hours, automatically upgraded status when the people around u start to pop and the multiple things to learn (both at work and in the household!).

I ve been realising all of that responsibility part too soon when I decided to become a dog mama.  Got to make sure he gets fed and walked on time TWICE daily. Often, I have to sacrifice some sort of gatherings or turn up late cos there's no one else to help me fulfil the 2 most important chores for taking care of this baby. I also soon realised I cant fit everything and meet everyone as much as I used to or would like to!

But I am not quite complaining about this set of new responsibilities because I ve got quite a darling of a furball baby. And he keeps me grounded enough to make me adapt a fair bit to the future reponsibilities that are going to come. 

What I cant accept at the moment is the upgraded status to that of an Aunty O_O"

Who are we trying to kid when we insist that kids still call us jiejie?! Maybe in the initial few years of our adulthood, the kids from friends still can call us that...we can still live in denial. But it becomes a totally different story when someone in your family starts to pop..

You know you are something different when you wake up at 7am to this on weekends..

I was naturally known as Aunty Shuling to him for a while until N's mum realised I m too young to be called an AUNTY. She tried to switch to Jiejie Shuling last weekend.

YAY! Can still live in denial for another year before I legally get married to his Uncle Nigel and get an auto upgrade again. Holy Christ!

BUT!!! A conversation I had with the cuz brought me back to Earth last night. *WHO WAS I KIDDING?!?!* We were discussing the different pains of popping in different ways. She is going to pop THIS very week! OMG!

So naturally, I will be an aunty again, soon.. :S

Luckily someone's sharing the same status as me.. :) So it doesnt feel as bad..

Here, Uncle Nigel is trying to teach his nephew how to be a musician..

They played "You Are My Sunshine"! That's no ordinary song okay?! It's THE song that I learnt can pacify this baby! :) THE song that shuts him up while Uncle N was trying to drive through the din created at the backseats. THE song that makes him drink his milk silently. THE.SONG.

I am gonna pack this song + some evil tricks I learnt from a mama-collic to that wedding which we are going to attend with N's parents and the baby. It's coming. In December. I hope we get out of the dinner alive. 

And so, I have had my fair share of real baby parenting these few months. Doing quite badly though... He didnt finish his cereal on Sat morning... And we didnt know what to do :p

Also to my ultimate shock and horror, I have been finding joy in shopping for household products!!!

Luckily they got this garlic chopper in hot pink. Neutralises the Aunty association with this kinda products :) heh

I am quite conscientious when it comes to food-learning.

I used the chopper that very weekend!

Because I know I got to learn from somewhere, I get verrrry inspired by what I eat in restaurants...

And I have previously learnt how to identify a salted egg

So I went to the NTUC consecutively for 3 days to hunt these down! (These beans are somehow very seasonal. NTUC doesnt stock up everyday, just in case you might want to know)

Still didnt quite make it to restaurant standards. BAH! How do they make the salted yolk glue on to the french beans????

I think I have been asking N alot these days whether he thinks I have become an Aunty.. :S When the man doesnt answer you.....

Treasure Hunts

Never knew a separate community of lives existed in NTU.

N chanced upon it from an online snap forum. Details werent very precise, and the map got us to this herb garden at the Jalan Bahar entrance to NTU.

The attendant was rather surprised to see visitors there and asked where we are from.. Of course we werent there for a herb educational tour. We had other things in mind.... :p

While the man sets up his gear, I headed out to find some entertainment...

The calm of nature...

Lovely flutters settle on a leave

Dirty fellow

I swear by my point-and-shoot: It does a good bokeh, no? Although I had a hard time holding my breath and stabilising myself while I take these macro shots! No luxury of a stand and a remote control! But it's good right?!

Plant and insects community

Look up close - what I really see!

Abit overexposed but me like the color of this plant!

And snails climb trees!!!

Aching from that 2-hour ride under the sun yesterday. I almost forgot how tiring it is to work out in the sun O_o" and how it is to ride a moving bike. O__O"

Catching Up

I have been too caught up with some personal entertainment till the wee hours this week.. By the time I hit the sacks, Murphy will just be zonked out on his mattress like that.

 Makes me want to cuddle him in my arms but cant bear to wake him up from slumber.

He is too cute!

I always find the relationship he has with niuniu abit ai mei. I wonder what their doggy brain is thinking up there. Tell me. Dogs know how to flirt?! We were on N's CANDID camera!

If someone at home was near the door, she would 'tell' the person to get the keys and open the door already! I have seen that body language of hers too often! :D Shihtzus seldom bark, you got to learn to read them. :)

**2 years 5 months and still a proud mommy**