Something about Zhi

Its been quite a while since I wrote something about Zhi. The last few entries had been on Ning and Ning and more Ning!!! To be fair, I'll write something about him today.

He's into his 8th month today and anytime now, he should be crawling or teething. He's considered late in teething. But Ning's teeth sprouted out later than her peers too. So we're quite used to this lateness.

Zhi's been drooling a lot for the past few months. Lately, he's developed this habit of sticking his tongue out and biting his lips too. I supposed these are the signs of teething. Let's just wait.

I've taken a series of him smiling and playing with me recently. I'll share it here.

And also these three shots were taken during his feeding time. I thought he looked so adorable.

Ride a Cock Horse

This is the title of the song that Ning and her class of Playgroup '07 will perform for the K2 Graduation Day on 1st Dec. The entire class has been diligently practising everyday for the past one month. So much so that Ning will always "perform" for us back home because I downloaded the song from the school's website.

Its really nice to see her dance and sing. But of course, like what the teacher had prep us. Most likely the kids will "freak out" on the actual day when they see so many people watching them and snapping the camera away. Her teacher told us to be prepared that the kids will be so stunned and frightened that they'll just stand there!

So we took the opportunity of video taping her practice down at home. Here's the "sneak preview" for her upcoming performance.

The lyrics of the song goes like this:
Ride a cock horse, to Barnsbury Cross.
To see a fine lady up on a white horse.
Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes,
She will have music wherever she goes.




ride a cock horse.mov

What's my name?

There are bound to have some "mishap" bringing up kids. Of course, we hope that these mishaps are more positive than negative.

Here's one of our "mishap" with Ning:

We've come across a few of our friends and neighbours calling their partners "daddy" and "mummy". And we find it rather interesting since a wife is not a mummy to the husband and vice versa. But our friends justified that they call each other in this manner so as to educate the kids and to show them this is the way to address their parents.

For WF and I, we don't address each other like this. We prefer to call each other by our given names. There are times though, WF will call me "lao bor" and I will reply him back as "lao gong". Even in front of our kids.

And yep, it did "backfire" one day. This was what we found out (click to see the video)...



what is your name.mov

Mishap, you can call it. But it was more hilarious than anything. At least she got her brother's and maid's name correct.

P.S: The video was taken some time after our first discovery. It was so funny I had to take it down and show it on the blog. Until today, she still remembers my name and WF's name as "lao bor" & "lao gong".

Hot Air Ballooning

During our France holiday in Sept, we went over to Dijon for a few days. I chose Dijon as a stop because I wanted to visit the vineyards of Burgundy. Dijon is the main city in the area of Burgundy. And Burgundy is the place for good wines. The world's most expensive vineyard, Romanee Contii is located right in the heart of Burgundy too.

We did hot air ballooning during one of our days there. It was a new and wonderful experience, flying over countless of vineyards, small towns and the forest areas where we get a nice view of the autumn foliage. WF managed to capture the entire experience on video. And I've edited the clip where it showed how the balloon got inflated and how we flew up.



hot air ballooning.mov


As for landing, we can't record it down as we needed to brace ourselves for the fall. Ask me when you see me in future. Its easier to describe verbally.



If you're interested in doing hot air balloon in Dijon in future, you can contact Air Escargot. They don't fly everyday, so make sure you get the dates right before you start to plan the trip.

And in all French style, we celebrated our landing and the enjoyable journey with champagne.

Yellow Fellow

Some of you may know I teaches in Republic Polytechnic. And during the 2nd semester, I'll be teaching this module call "Contemporary Issues in Culture & Aesthetics". We're into our 8th week of the semester and usually the second half of the semester we start to focus on aesthetics issues.

For this week's problem, we talked about things that have an aesthetic value or what defines beauty given this phrase "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". Sounds so philosophical, you might say. Well, let me tell you, there is actually a "formula" that the academics had came up with that defines whether an item has an aesthetic value or not.

Anyway, I'm not going to spend another half day talking about that. The interesting part was, I was sharing with the class my liking for yellow colour and things that are in yellow, I find them attractive and beautiful. My liking for yellow is so great that a lot of my kids' clothings and toys are yellow (since I'm usually the one who shops for their stuff, I get to decide!).

I did a search at home just now. And I found, in the kitchen there are quite a number of things in YELLOW too! Wow... I didn't know I'm such a great fan of yellow.

So, here's some of the pictures I've extracted from the kids' albums in which they're dressed in some shades or patterns of yellow (inclusive of pillow cases, bedsheets). Plus my favourite yellow tulips, durian mousse cake, ladle rest etc.

And nope, you guessed it wrongly, I DO NOT like bananas, mangoes and pineapples. I bake durian cakes but I don't really fancy durian as the fruit itself.

Maybe I should named this blog "mellow yellow jean" instead...

Inactivity Explained

Some of you may wonder how come this blog had been inactive since Tuesday. Well, my kids were sick and eventually I got the virus too.

Zhi had been coughing on and off since two fridays ago and on wednesday, he came down with fever. So I've been busy during the nights taking care of him and comforting him to sleep.

Good news is, as of now, his fever is down. And the antibiotics are clearing out his throat infection.

Bad news is, I am down with stomach flu since yesterday evening and Ning is not spared either. Both of us are down, puking and diarrhea-ing.

So much update for now. I am going to have my rest again.

Pulau Ubin

Some of you may know WF had just resigned and is now taking a 2 months break from work. Which also means we have more time for family outings and activities.

Last thurs, 1 Nov, the first day of his "holiday", we went to Pulau Ubin with Ning and my parents. Its Ning's first time to this island and also taking the bumboat ride.

We had an enjoyable time there. We visited one of the residents staying on that island. An old uncle who's a teochew, rears an old wild boar and some rabbits. Ning had a good time feeding the rabbits with tapioca leaves as well as sweet potato leaves (trust my mum to identify these vegetables from the messy overgrowth in front the house) while we chit chat with the old uncle about life in Ubin.

Interestingly, we passed by this house which has a cookie monster statue in front. We were so surprised to see it that we took pictures! So lame... you can say.

As usual, I've uploaded some of the pictures to share.

Delta @ Atlantis

Last week, we went to Delta@Atlantis located inside Delta Sports Complex. A pretty small outfit, I would say. Explorer Kids at Downtown East is much much bigger. But it'll be ideal to hold the kids' birthday parties or a mini gathering.

Anyway, we brought Ning there to spend the mid-morning since we didn't really have any plans or activities to do. And I took some pretty nice pictures (as usual). Too bad, when she came down from the slide, I snapped the trigger too early. So the image of her in that picture is rather small. If you can zoom in, she had one of her most brillant smile there.

Video of Ning Singing Happy Birthday

After I posted Zhi's video, there were some good feedbacks. So I thought, to be fair to Ning, I should post something of her too.

Ning loves to sing 'Happy Birthday'. And everyday is somebody's birthday. That day, we passed by Jane's Cake Station and decided to get a durian cake to try. At the same time, we asked for a candle so Ning can sing and blow the candle, even though its none of our birthday that day.

My brother's birthday is in Nov. Thus, in the video she's imagining its Jiu Jiu's (uncle) birthday.



happy birthday by ning.mov