Monday, December 31, 2012

Blake’s First Christmas Celebration in School

The day that Blake’s school celebrated Christmas was also the day Nakayla turned a month old, and ever since Nakayla was born, our baby boy seemed to be neglected. I decided to do something special for him, and decided to surprise him in school with a Christmas cake for everyone!

Prior to attending the Christmas party in school, I had prepared a gift for his class’ gift exchange.


It’s a Bear Coin Bank in there!

Every child was to bring a gift worth $5. The school even reminded us parents to avoid giving sweets and chocolates as gift. Turns out, the gift Blake chose had a bag of gummies attached to it. Looks like not all parent paid heed to the reminder. Blake was more than happy to receive the gummies though. He finished the gummies within two days.

Anyway, back to the school celebration! Haha.

After I had picked the cake up from my friend Nastash of Tash Bakes, I headed straight to Blake’s school.

Blake was surprised to see me, and for a moment, he appeared to be in a blur. He hugged me tightly, and kept trying to get me to walk out of the school. I had to explain to him that I was there to celebrate Christmas with him and his school mates. He was back to his normal chirpy self after a while, and began to play while waiting for the celebrations to start!




The t-shirt Blake wore was bought by my mom from USA about two years ago




A mandatory shot with me! Haha!

Soon, all the children gathered to listen to Christmas stories, but my boy sat with me at the side instead of joining his friends. Slowly, all his classmates were all over the place, carried by different teachers, while the older children sat through the two stories. I guess the attention span for children of my boy’s age is only that long. Haha.




This boy would rather play with mommy than join in the Christmas celebrations with his friends J

After storytelling, all the children got up to sing songs and play a game of puzzles.


After all the fun, it was lunch time!




Then they started to distribute some of the food that parents brought to contribute to their Christmas Pot Luck.




Blake liked this custard cake that a mother baked. Time for me to look for a similar recipe!
I noticed that Blake enjoys eating custard cream lately!

The school had intended to keep the cake I brought for tea time, but I had planned to bring Blake home after lunch as I still had to settle some things for Nakayla’s full month celebrations, which was the very next day. I spoke to the principal about it and she said it was not a problem, but she’ll only distribute the cake among his class. The other children will have to wait till tea time.


The very cute and yummilicious cake by Tash Bakes
It's Red Velvet Cake with Lemon Cream and Chocolate Ganache. Absolutely delicious!

When the principal opened the cake box, a few of them who saw it first exclaimed how pretty and beautiful the caked looked. The principal then said she will show all the other children the cake first before distributing. After showing all the children the cake, and they wowed non-stop, all the cameras came out. A couple of teachers wanted a photo of the cake before it was ‘destroyed’. Haha. After that was done, we contemplated on where we should cut the cake cos the cake looked too pretty! We finally settled on doing away with the trees first since it was right at the bottom. Haha.






After all the yum yums were finished, it was time for the children to shower. I decided to let Blake shower before heading home. He was in a complete mess after all the food. I don’t want to have to carry a sticky boy home!




Whilst waiting for his turn to shower, Blake took some toys out to play. When it was time for him to shower, he surprised me by keeping all the toys before following his teachers to the bathroom! Why is he not like this at home? Why?! Sigh.

After his shower, we said our goodbyes to his teachers and headed home.
To have a happy boy over the Christmas weekend? Checked!

Note: Sean had gone to the pediatrician’s clinic with Nakayla to get her vaccination done, so only I showed up at Blake’s school.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Flashback Friday #24

26 July 2011: Look, Ma! No hands!

Blake standing on his own, completely not holding onto anything. He had started cruising by then, but I never managed to catch him standing on his own, unassisted, and on camera J


Monday, December 24, 2012

Blake’s First Trip to Underwater World and Dolphin Lagoon

Since late last year, Blake had been into this cartoon, The Octonauts. Yes, the same cartoon that was the theme of his 2nd birthday celebrations at home. And, when Sean started buying the play sets online and having them shipped in from UK (it's only available there), Blake got even more into the cartoon!


Blake loves dancing to the theme song, and recently, he attempted to sing along too, which essentially means him shouting out the single words used in the opening theme song (as seen in the video above). Haha!

During this entire period of toys streaming in from UK, and Blake enjoying every moment with his new toys and the cartoon, I thought, maybe it would be great if we brought Blake to Sentosa's Underwater World to see all these beautiful sea creatures in real life! After all, we did bring him on his first trip to the zoo after seeing how much he loves playing with his zoo play sets - also from a cartoon series, The Little People.

So sometime back in May this year, we finally found the time to go! It was a beautiful day when we went. Nice sunny weather, with cool breeze every now and then. Blake slept along the way, so he was all energized when we reached our destination! Absolutely perfect! J


Upon entering, we were greeted by this delightful sight!





Blake enjoyed the most with the stingrays, cos they kept splashing water at him and they even looked like they were attempting to jump out! I was totally freaked out! I kept a distance from the tank. Haha. I suspect they were hoping we would feed them or something. If I didn't remember wrongly, there were actually food you can purchase to feed them. Do correct me if I'm wrong though!


Just look at how wet Blake had gotten from the time spent with the stingrays. Haha!




I'll admit one thing though, I was quite disappointed with the Tunnel, the exhibit where you just stand on the conveyor belt and you'll be taken for a ride, with sea creatures swimming all around you in the tank. I had remembered it to be more vibrant and colourful, when I last visited in my younger days. Oh wells!

It got really crowded after a while, so we moved onto the Dolphin Lagoon. They had it shifted from a different part of Sentosa. I vaguely remember that the Dolphin Lagoon used to be an attraction on its own in Sentosa, and was closer to the beach. But now, it's combined with Underwater World! Two attractions for the price of one! Awesome! J


Hi!



We were really lucky that when we got there, everyone was just streaming in to grab seats for an upcoming show, and the dolphin minders had allowed 1-2 pink dolphins out to swim in the pool for everyone to see! And about 10-15 minutes before the show started, the dolphins had made their way to 'backstage' to get ready for the show.


Grabbing seats before the show started




Yes, Blake wanted to take a dip in the pool with the dolphins. Ever since he got over his fear of swimming pools and large bodies of water, Blake will attempt to get into whatever resembles water play.

Just like our first trip to the zoo, we failed to watch a single show. Blake was really determined to be in the pool. And every time Sean pulled him away, he would struggle and throw tantrums. We had no choice but to leave, dragging a very angry boy along with us. Needless to say, that left Sean and me kind of frustrated as well. I was disappointed, but I should have guessed as much. It's rather difficult to sit through an entire show with a young, active toddler. So imagine how surprised I was when Blake managed to sit through an entire show on his first school excursion to the bird park! Hehe.

In any case, after the huge struggle to pull Blake away from the pool, we took him to an open area nearby to run and use up as much of his energy as possible before heading home for dinner. It was not that bad an outing overall, but it was enough to make Sean and me think twice about bringing him on such outings again. I mean, considering that it was around that period when we found out about our second pregnancy. Haha.

Ending off this post with a Christmas episode from the Octonauts! Plus something extra below! Hehe.




Wishing you an amazingly Merry Christmas!!
From us to you

Friday, December 21, 2012

Flashback Friday #23

25 July 2011: Blake saw his own reflection in the mirror and became very attached to his reflection! He kept kissing his reflection! (Read: slobbering saliva all over the mirror) Haha. It was definitely a hilarious sight, if you ask me!






* * *

Today also marks Nakayla's first month! Our baby girl is one month old today! :)

Friday, December 14, 2012

Flashback Friday #22

22 July 2011: Blake's first trip to the beach! Sean had a class gathering that evening, and we took the opportunity to bring Blake to experience the beach! We didn't let him play in the sand though. I was not very keen on it then. Blake doesn't seem to mind though. He enjoyed being in his stroller and taken for long stretches of walks along the beach J









Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Blake’s First Trip to Singapore Zoo

February 2012: We finally made our way to the Singapore Zoo! It took us quite a few weeks, from the time I declared we should go to the zoo, to actually get ourselves there. Haha.

The thought of bringing Blake to the zoo never crossed my mind, until I saw how much he enjoyed playing with all his animal-zoo-related Fisher Price toys.


This is the Fisher Price Little People A to Z Learning Zoo Playset

Blake has a couple more animal-zoo-related toys from the Fisher Price Little People series, but I only took photo of this set. Sean had gone on a Fisher Price Little People toy series shopping spree over Amazon and Ebay last year, over 6++ months. I remember during that period, there was at least one package arriving from USA, every other week!

So anyway, on the day we went to the zoo, the morning stars sort of lined up for us. We woke up early (for some really odd reason), the weather was good, and we were wondering what we should be doing as a family that day. Then it struck us that maybe we should finally get our lazy bums over to the zoo! In a way, it was a spontaneous family outing. Haha.

After having some snacks at home to prepare ourselves for the long bus journey ahead, we left! When we reached Ang Mo Kio Interchange, the first thing we did was to have a good meal at McDonald’s!


We were given a free ice cream cone, I believe it was cos they ran out of curry sauce back then

By the time we finally reached the zoo, Blake fell asleep.


After strolling around for a while, Blake woke up and the first thing he saw was otters!


He was very amused by them. We all were! The otters ran around in a group, from one camera to another, to pose for all the visitors. It was hilarious. We even went back to see them a second time before we left the zoo!

The highlight of the trip has got to be the White Tigers for me. We stayed there for quite a while. It was truly amazing, just standing there, and observing the white tigers.




We proceeded to other animal enclosures, and along the way, we managed to take a family photo when there were no crowds in sight! J





We had planned to catch at least one animal show, and we happened to be in the Elephants of Asia zone when it was nearing the Elephants at Work & Play show time. We made our way in, and managed to get really good seats! Sean and Blake sat in the front row, while I sat in the second row, diagonally across them.


But alas, this moment of awesomeness did not last. The minute the show started, loud sounds coming from the speakers scared Blake. And, when the elephants sprayed water at the splash zone (where we were seated), Blake burst out crying. We tried to calm him down, but when we failed to do so within minutes, we quickly left the show. No point ruining the show for everyone, even though I was looking forward to the show!

We then continued walking, and made our way to the Wet Play Area. Blake was still pretty much scared of water then. He would only stay on the outside of the whole wet area. He probably walked back and forth the wet play area for about 5 minutes tops before clambering for me to get him out of the area.




Once we were done washing up, we went to eat at the KFC nearby to recharge ourselves. There was still a last stretch of animal enclosures to see, before calling it a day.




When we walked out of the zoo, the sun was beginning to set, and we were all super tired. The bus rides home saw both my boys sleeping most parts of the way.

Thinking back about it, while the journey to and fro the zoo was really long, and we did not get to watch any animal shows, it was still quite a fun, spur-of-the-moment family outing J