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.

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
♥

Christmas 2010 and New Year 2011

24 December 2010 - 1 January 2011: Christmas Eve 2010 through till 2011! :)

Christmas Eve, we spent some family time at home. We don't really fancy squeezing with the crowds, plus, whatever Christmas shopping that was to be done, was long done!

Our first Christmas as a family.

On Christmas day itself, Blake was wearing a shirt that my mom bought back from USA. It was way too big for him at that time, but we couldn’t resist it!

That Christmas morning, while we were out for breakfast, Sean bought a dancing poodle for Blake! Blake enjoyed watching it dance so much, but a couple of days later, he got really frightened by it for some reason! It’s funny how babies can like one thing so much at a moment, and the next thing you know, they are so terrified by it.

Then came New Year! We had quite a bit of fun on New Year's day, playing with Blake and videoing him speaking baby. It was also the first time we heard him burst out laughing! :D