Sera's special present for Chloe

Chloe's special present from her best friend, all the way from Dubai.


Sera sings for Chloe from Que Sera Sera on Vimeo.

Thank you Sera! I miss you.

Happy Birthday! Our Girl is 2!

Happy Birthday Chloe!

My little girl is 2! We had her birthday celebration in school on Friday with all her classmates and she had a smashing great time.

Chloe is all ready for her party. She is soooo excited when her teacher lights up the candles. Ahem... there are like 5 candles on the cake that's why it's so bright.

'Happy Birthday to you...'

She was clapping to the song enthusiastically waiting to blow out the candles.

Chloe looking at her cake eagerly

The very yummy Magical Rainbow from 'The Patissier'.

Playtime!

This very colorful baby gym was Chloe's and now it's Raphael's. Let's see, most of the toys are still around minus the plastic butterflies which are now swimming in Chloe's bathtub. And Chloe is thrilled to see this piece of toy, not that she has any impression of playing with it when she was a few months old but it's something 'new'.

I tried explaining that this is too small for her and it is NOT for her but she thinks otherwise. Well, not only with this, even the bouncer. She wants to have a go in everything that Baby Raphael is playing with now. Everyday, she will go 'Mummy, put baby down.' till I placed Raphael on the gym mat and she will so lovingly pat him, 'Sayang, baby.' and show him the different toys or read him a book.

Raphael trying to swat the bell chimes and he did it! Yippee!

Having another go again

'Mummy, how many more are you going to take?'

'Let me show you, I can still get inside this thing together with my rabbit.'
Insist on having a go before leaving for school.

'Oh mummy, Baby Raphael crying. Mummy, mummy...'

Happy Birthday Cranston

Happy Birthday Cranston!

Chloe having a ball of a time in the bouncy castle. All the tots and kids are flinging themselves into the huge pool of colorful balls.

The castle is really hot like a sauna and why I know that cos I went in for a jump too. So fun, this in another good place for losing weight.

Chloe at the toy kitchen cooking some imaginary eggs while her very attentive dadad mops and dries her sweaty head.

'They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight. Shunting trucks and hauling freights...'

Every little boys favorite engine, Thomas. Everyone was so excited when the cake was placed on the table, all the kids were trying to take a dip with their fingers and all the mummies were calling out 'Don't touch the cake.'. Thomas escaped unscathed till Cranston cut his birthday cake. :)

Happy 2nd Birthday Cranston! Thank you for inviting us, Chloe had a blasting good time.

My Little Foodie

Chloe loves her dessert like us. Set a waffle in front of her and she will tear it apart and gobble it up in minutes. Strangely, she will leave the ice cream alone most of the time.

'Hmm... I'm all ready to tuck in.'

'Poke! I want this piece.'

'Nice! I love it.'

'I want another... 10!'

Chloe & Topaz

Chloe is an animal lover and I think if she can, she will kidnapped every single animal she sees back home. Looking into the future, I can see our place turning into a mini animal shelter. Few months ago, she met a girl with her rabbit at the playground, she tried to carry the rabbit to me and while saying 'Home!'. Then it was a toad under the slide which had all the toddlers attention and Missy here wants mummy to 'Catch!'. Our neighbor's kois were not spared either, 'Mummy, catch. Auntie, cut and cook.' How yummy, a $2000 steamed koi meal.

Topaz is our neighbor, Jo's pet and Chloe loves Topaz. Her main objective every evening to the park is to look for her good friend, Topaz. She wants to play with him and to see him pooped. Yah, the first time she saw Topaz up close and personally, he was doing his 'business' amongst the bamboo trees. And when she plays on the balcony, she is looks out for Topaz and calls out 'Meow, meow, Topaz!' when she spots him making his rounds in the estate.

Hannah holding Topaz for a handshake with Chloe

Topaz getting a good scratch

Chloe posing for Jo

Tummy rub for Topaz

And Chloe picking peanuts shells, trying to feed Topaz

Babywearing

After seeing Raphael in a sling, Chloe wanted to do the same too, with her rabbit. So I took an old shawl from the cupboard, wrapped her rabbit up and tie it around her. Tadah! My happy baby wearer smiling.

Mummy can cook so can I

This is the present from Raphael to Chloe, the one which I wanted to lug to the hospital but did not in the end. A mini kitchen with a pot, pan and oven, the stove even make a sizzling sound for the frying pan and a bubbling sound for the pot.

The chef entering. All ready to cook up a storm. She always did cos at the end of each session, 'food' is all over the place.

'Soup of the day will be veggie soup.'

'Broccoli, corn, cauliflower...'

I love my brother!

Hi! This is my brother, Raphael. I call him 'Baby' or 'Baby Ralph' or 'Fael Fael'. Hmm... it all depends on my mood but I love to call him Baby. I love to hug and kiss him cos he smells good but the thing I love most is to carry him like mummy. Whenever I say 'I carry!', everyone froze. To carry Baby, I have to repeat myself many times and must be loud too. Haiz, all these grown ups...tsk... tsk...

This is my new book from Mama and after pestering Mummy for a long time, she reluctantly put Baby down on the pillow for me to read to him.

'Four fat sausages sizzling in the pan, four fat sausages sizzling in the pan. One went pop, the other went bang. Now there are two fat sausages sizzling in the pan...' Another of my favorite thing I love to do, singing to Raphael.

'When you are bigger, I will show you how to catch caterpillars and put them into plastic containers. Real ones!'

From my Mickey Mouse collection, one of my favorite stuff and I'm sharing with my brother.

A whoopie steak burger for Fael Fael. I made it myself.

Raphael is 1 month old!

Raphael is 1 month old! How fast... it was just like yesterday that we carry him back from the hospital and he is now a month old.

We celebrated his 1 month old with a nice high tea with family and gave cakes to our neighbors. Thank you all for all the 'ang pows', gifts and well-wishes! :)

Holding on tight to his red packet from Ye Ye.

Another one from Aunt Lily. He is getting good at holding on to them now.

With Gong gong and Ma ma. Raphael staring intently at Mama, checking her out. :)

Just the 4 of us

'Mummy, last one. I want to carry on eating my ice cream cone in peace.'

All of us! Smile! :-)

Chloe helping Raphael to cut his cake since he can't do it yet. It's a really solid chocolate cake and they gave us a really long and heavy metal knife, so Chloe ended up chopping the cake.

Posing...

With Yis (Yiyi i now Yis.) ...

... Mummy is still mummy. :)

The Flirt

I always get field reports of what Chloe did in school every time they are back and I really look forward to it. Simon will fill me in with all the details from what she did and all the tete-tete he had with the different parents.

The news today is, Chloe is the official flirt in class. My 2 years old is a flirt, gosh how did that happened? She is so ever friendly and sociable and likes going around giving her classmates a pat on their back, a big bear hug or put her arms over their shoulder. But not everyone takes to this kind of friendliness so very often she will sent a kid running to their mummy in fright or crying. And nowadays, she realised that the boys are better targets or better 'huggers' cos they don't end up crying like the girls.

What she did to earn her the honor of official flirt was she grabbed hold of a boy in class, put her arms over his shoulder and then had another one on the other side. Picture this, a girl with a boy on each side walking around in class. Her teachers were laughing when they saw the trio grinning from ear to ear parading around and exclaimed, 'Chloe! My goodness, you are a flirt, man. 2 boys! Daddy, you got to watch out.'

Happy Birthday!!!

Yes! October! Chloe's birthday month! I know, 25 more days but how exciting and how much I'm looking forward to it. Magical number, they call it the 'terrible twos' and I'm sure the 'terrible' did not start at 2, it started the moment you are here. Moments of terrors but buckets of happiness.

When you were just here after spending 9 months in my tummy, you were a little lost and afraid of the new environment, there were times when you cried and wailed and we had no idea what to do. Nothing can appeased you except cuddling you throughout the day with you sleeping on my tummy at times. The familiarity of my heart beat and warmth somehow calmed you down and lulled you to sleep.

Chloe, this is here for the record :), you were a total breastfed baby for 17 months. Yes! 17 months! And you did not like the milk bottle, you hated it. You drank from one less than 10 times and that's because I'm either I'm at the salon or the doctor's. Breastfed babies are supposed to have 6% higher IQ than babies who drank formula milk but I guessed you have another extra 1% cos you drank yours 'fresh' 99.9% with all antibodies still alive.

We were there to cheer and applaud you on your first roll over, your first crawl, your first step and now your beloved dadad is also applauding your first perfect flip over from the sofa, your mummy is not clapping for this one.

Dadad and I were talking about you the other day and he said 'Chloe is only this small when we brought her back and now her kicks are so powerful.' See, you loved to crawl over in the early mornings, snuggled between us with your head on my pillow and your feet on your dadad's chest. (Missy, you don't just put your feet there, you land them there with a big bang. Ouch!)

It dawns on me today that I'm having simple conversations with you these days and sometimes even negotiations before bathe time for the extra 5 minutes of cartoons. You said 'Delicious!', (quite a BIG word, to me at least) earlier on after chomping down a cookie and I don't think I know what 'delicious' was when I'm 23 months old.

Chloe: 'Mummy, where is Mickey bag?'

Me: 'I have no idea.'

(You walked into your playroom)

Chloe: 'Mummy, found it.'

Me: 'Ok, you need my help to sling it?'

Chloe: 'No thanks, mummy. I'm going to buy fish now.'

Me: 'Ok, see you later, bye.'

Chloe, you are so adorable, ya I know I say that many times a day. You are so capable of making my blood boil one moment but sent me into a laughing fit the next. You love almost everything that moves, from cockroaches to frogs and dogs of all sizes, in fact the bigger the better, I meant the dogs. You love your food, everything especially udon, the way you slurped it up. You love climbing everything and is not afraid of falling, you rolled down the stairs once (5 steps). You love dadad, your superhero, who can fix and mend anything (including the cracks on the wall which you always reminds me), the one who lets you have your way with everything. You love Raphael with all your hugs and kisses.

And of course WE LOVE YOU! Happy 2nd Birthday!!