Taiwan Day 3

Theme park day! We set off for Leofoo Theme Park after breakfast, just a stone's throw away from the Leofoo Resort that we were staying at. We were given 4 hours to roam the park and we finished way ahead of time because P couldn't and didn't want to take a lot of rides. This flying horse ride is the only ride she went on twice. 

She also went on this kiddy merry go round and fared a lot better than the adult merry go round. Haha, she cried on the adult merry go round because she thought she was falling off. The only difference between the two is that the adult merry go round goes up and down, while the kiddy one just makes back and forth rocking motion. 

She fell asleep in my ergo after lunch and my mom and I started exploring all the souvenir stores. Compared to USS in Singapore, prices were dirt cheap, so much so that I felt aghast at the prices we were charging our tourists. I got a few keychains at NT40, which works out to be S$1.70. Put the same keychain at USS and it will be at least $6.

The park didn't feel crowded at all for a Sunday, and it was really enjoyable strolling through the park. We left at 2pm and headed to an orange orchard to pick some oranges. The owner introduced us to a few species of oranges and brought us to the orchard to take our pick. We picked out about 6 oranges and crossed our fingers they will be sweet. 

Thereafter, we made our way to Fengjia Night Market. We are only given 2 hours to buy all the 小吃 for dinner and do our shopping. Here's what we bought:

1. 大肠包小肠

2. Grilled jumbo squid

3. Bubble tea

4. Spicy fishballs

5. Soft shell crab

6. Portuguese egg tart

7. Egglets

8. Baked potato with bacon, cheese, corn and ham

Of all these, my favourite are items 2, 5 and 8. Really yummy but super sinful!

It was another 35 min drive to our hotel for the night - Freshfields Hot Spring Resort. Our room has a personal hot spring and P had a blast in it, although we can only spend 30 min in it for safety reasons. We made plans to wake up early tomorrow morning so we can have another go before checking out. 

Day 3 completed, day 4 to go!

Taiwan Day 2

Rise and shine at 6am due to engorged boobs. The weaning is not as easy as I imagined. I thought I could leave my pump in Singapore, come to Taiwan and do some hand expression and bam, no more milk by day 3. Unfortunately, this was not the case and I ended up with rock hard boobs on day 1 plus a very wet bra (that's saying something coz I never had leakages and certainly nv invest in any breasts pads). I was almost worried I will come down with mastitis and had to be sent to hospital. It took a super long hand expression session in the bathroom to make me feel slightly better and less lumpy. Now I try to find opportunities to do a quick hand expression to prevent pumps from building up, but it's hard coz tour groups run activities like clockwork. 

Breakfast at the farm was simple - 馒头, porridge with dishes, bread with various bread spreads. We had plenty of time after breakfast to take some pictures. 

We went on an eco tour after breakfast. The tour guide was a 60 year old man and he was super humorous. He found out that we were from Singapore and told us he is JB. Turned out his name is 张新山, haha. His background is also not simple. He had a PhD and was a university lecturer. He retired and decided to work at the farm. He brought us on a tour and introduced us to various plant types, insects and animals. We picked oranges off the trees, saw some water buffaloes, fed some sheep and ended up at the DIY centre and tried our hands at making fruit vinegar. It was so easy to make and I was shocked to know that retail price for such vinegars was about $20-$30 per bottle. We made 2 bottles using lime, vinegar and sugar, and brought back $40 worth of fruit vinegar just like that. 

We headed back to the canteen for lunch (yay for 汤圆) and after that was to be DIY leaves pressed shirt/bag session. We painted on the back of leaves and pressed them down on shirts to create very beautiful patterns. The end product was quite nice. That rounded up our stay at the farm and I bid goodbye to the yummy 汤圆 :(

It was a 2 hour drive to our next destination and we took the chance to nap in the bus. We took a toilet break some 1 hour into the journey and I tried the 木瓜牛奶 that my dad raved about. On hindsight, I probably should stay clear of that because it felt like a milk booster. Very soon, the bus drove into Leofoo Resort and this is where we'll stay for the night. 

The special thing about Leofoo Resort is that the rooms are built in the zoo itself. If you look out of the window from your room, you are likely to see animals like giraffes, rhinoceros and even lions. Here's an over excited P looking at the animals from our room. She even saw a lion that I didn't spot. 

Morning call for tomorrow will be at 8am. We'll set off for Leofoo theme park at 9.30am. Day 3, come quickly!

Taiwan Day 1

My mom, P and myself are going to Taiwan! We signed up with Chan Brothers at the August Natas fair for their Little Tots can Fly tour. This tour is specially catered for young kids - later morning calls, longer meal times. The program included farm stays, farming activities, theme parks, indoor playground, all of which I think P will really enjoy. The best part is probably the Hello Kitty airplane that we were going to fly on. It was going to be P's first flight and I wanted it to be awesome. 

We received a call from our tour leader Ms Boey the night before. She told us to meet at 1145pm the next day. Our flight is at 3am, so I was kind of shocked we had to meet so early. It turned out to be quite good though. P was still awake when we make our way to the airport, chattering non stop excitedly. The airline q wasn't opened when we reached. It only opened at 12mn. 

We went to KFC for a quick bite with hubby who was so nice to fetch us there. Probably the first time we ate KFC at midnight, hehe, fat die us. P started showing signs of fatigue so we decided to get past immigration and find some spot for her to sleep. 

Who knows, there is a Mickey Mouse display that is going on after the immigration and the girl totally jumped up again. 

There was also a social tree which I thought was quite cool. You take a photo at their booths and flick it up to the tree where you see yourself floating around on balloons, haha. Cool max. 

P finally fell asleep in my trusty ergo while we were walking to our boarding gate. I sat for close to 2 hours with her in it and it was still backbreaking. EVA airlines finally did the plane boarding at close to 3am. Upon entering the plane, P was immediately awakened and asked "Did you hear that? It's jingle bells." Haha, ya, the plane was playing Christmas songs due to the Christmas season.

The few months of prepping her for the flight really paid off. She was stellar, totally not afraid of the take off and even made herself very comfortable with in flight entertainment. Her only peeve is that the headphones were too big for her and it kept slipping off. I forgot to ask if they had kid sizes, which I will do during the return flight. 

After the seat belt sign went off, the stewardesses started serving food. Kids had preordered meals, so their food came first. Check it out

P didn't have much appetite and didn't eat much. 

The adult meal fared better than the kids meal in terms of taste. 

A Hello Kitty snack was served after the meal.

We barely slept on the plane because it was so disruptive. Take off took a while, the meals were served mid flight and before we know it, bam, we are in Taiwan!

The weather was much colder than we expected. We thought we had enough for P, but the wind was quite brutal. We had to wrap an adult windbreaker over her when we are on the streets. Our tour group had 36 people and it was mostly families with kids. 

First up, breakfast. 

P made new friends. 

Lunch was at an aboriginal restaurant, and it was quite a dining experience. Very tribal and the dish I remembered most was their soup, made up of flower petals and roots and leaves. 

We went to a Museum of Tiny after lunch and it was really amazing how they managed to shrink many world monuments into tiny replicas. I loved many of the works and took lots of pics. Hopefully I can replicate some of the decor and furnishing in my house one day. 

The tour guide stopped at a Central square for us to take pics of Taipei 101 building. After that, we set off for Toucheng Farm and arrived in time for a BBQ dinner. The food was average but boy, do they make super yummy 汤圆. I look forward to every meal in order to eat their 汤圆, haha. It was 天灯 time after the sky darkens. The farm conducted a DIY session and taught us how to create a heavenly lantern from scratch. It was a lt simpler than I thought! Of coz, all 天灯 must be put to the fire test, and ours did really well. It flew way way up until the fire extinguished. I'm pretty sure heaven heard our wishes, yay!! The night ended with fireworks and we had plenty of time to unpack, bath and hit the pillows at 10pm. 

Morning call was to be at 7am the next day. Looking forward to Day 2!

6 months of joy

Dear C,

I can hardly believe you turn 6 months old today. Before you were born, I used to wonder if I can love you as much as your sister and I guess people are right about one thing: Love doesn't get divided, it just doubles. Now, I can tell you for sure that yes, I do love you as much as your sister. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing when you came along. Mama struggled with breastfeeding like I did with your sister. I was about as clueless as a first time mom where breastfeeding is concerned. I guessed you weren't getting enough from latching, but my ego didn't give in to fm until you were 6 weeks old. While other babies are packing on pounds from the richness of their mom's milk, you put on a merger 400g from your birth weight at 6 weeks old. Newborn babies can easily weigh more than you. We succumbed to fm and that took the pressure off me and put the weight into you. I started my exclusive pumping journey. I lived my life in 3 hour intervals, and everything revolved around my pumping schedule. I did everything and ate everything that could potentially increase my supply. Still, it takes 4 pumps to make up a feed for you. I was getting just 30-40ml every 3 hours. I thought I will dry up at 2 months, like I did with your sister. Your sister called me a naughty girl because I was pumping and didn't play with her. I lost count of the number of times I feel like throwing my pump at the wall. I don't know how I made it this far, but I did. 6m mark, 3 pumps a day, 360-400ml per day. 40% of your daily milk intake is definitely better than nothing. With mixed feeding, you are now thriving at 8.5kg.

You are also a feisty one. You need to drink milk to sleep and look for milk immediately when you wake up. Friends who have babies around your age tells me they are sleeping through the night. On (rare) good days, you last 5 hours. On bad days, you wake up every 2 hours. I wouldn't have survived without your grandma helping with night duties at her house. That, however, means you are away from me for at least 2 days every week. 

At 6m, you like to go out and see the world. Carrying you upright used to work, but now you push us to ensure you are facing forward. You are an expert at grabbing things, especially people's hair. Grandma almost carried you out of Mothercare without realising you had grabbed a pair of socks off the rack. Whatever you grabbed usually go through a painful ordeal. You just have a tendency to whack the item in your hand on the table. It was painful to watch the brochures crumbling in your possession. 

Your laughter is infectious. You shriek with delight at peekaboo and tickling games. You smile at strangers and brighten up their day. Everyone tells me my baby is cute. Yes, we make cute babies and we love both of you. 

Happy 6m my little one!

Love, 

Mama

Drop a pump

C is 5m19d today. In another 11 days or so, he will hit 6m and that marks the end of my bfing journey. I was pumping 5x/day on the following schedule

1. 2.20am

2. 6.20am

3. 11am

4. 4pm

5. 9pm

Decided to drop a pump today and the new pumping schedule will be 

1. 10am

2. 4pm

3. 10pm

4. 4am

The decision to stop was also propeled by my Taiwan trip which will take place 3 days after C turns 6m. P, my mom and I will be following a tour group, and I don't foresee being able to pump regularly. I expect myself to dry up during the trip. In fact, I'm deliberating over whether to even bring my pump for the trip. 

Really hope to resume my lunch time gym session soon! People lose weight when bfing, but I kept gaining weight. No more excuse to eat and eat after I stop bfing. Time to lose all that weight!

Dora Show

Brought P to United Square for the Dora show today. The kan cheong girl saw people sitting in front of the stage 1 hour before the show (kudos to their parents!) and told me she wanted to go. I managed to convince her to check out Toys R Us first. That kept us occupied for 30 min and the moment we went out of the store, she made a beeline for the stage. That's how I ended up spending 30min waiting for a show to start. 

That said, I think the show was more interesting that some of the others we watched. They had little animal characters that are very suitable for kids. My only peeve is that there was too much Spanish dialogue. P had no idea what those mean, but just repeat after the host. 

If you are keen on the meet and greet, do note you need to spend $50 in a SINGLE receipt. I had 3 receipts that added up to that amount, but alas! I had to quickly lead her away before they started the meet and greet. 

The Gentleman

Had a wedding in the family and here's our little gentleman

The Siblings

P at 6 months and C at 5 months. I thought their smiles were really similar!

CBeebies Show

Caught the CBeebies show at Plaza Singapura today! My mom and C came along too, but they were watching from the sidelines in case C gets cranky. To our amusement, C watched the action on stage in deep concentration, haha. No one's too young for such shows!

Hello Kitty show

School holidays mean it's time to hit the malls and catch all the shows! I'm really lucky coz I'm still on a 3 day workweek, which means I can bring P to most of the shows on either Wednesdays or Fridays. 

Our first show is... Tadah!!! Hello Kitty show at Takashimaya. I rushed like mad to get us there in time for the 1pm show, after a late Redmart delivery. 

Last day of school

I can hardly believe a year has flown past just like that! From a tearful toddler who cried buckets of tears when she started school at the beginning of this year, she has evolved into a happy student who tells me she will take care of younger 弟弟 and 妹妹 (students) next year! Stay happy, for that's how we want your childhood to be!

Get to wear party clothes on last day of school!

Baby Asthma

C is diagnosed with baby asthma when we brought him to the doctor today. His blocked nose was disrupting his sleep so much yesterday night. Despite hubby saying that he seems much better, I still insisted to bring him to the doctor.

Hubby had a history of childhood asthma, so it wasn't totally surprising that C gets it. My mother in law ever told me that only the boys in the family gets it - my hubby, my brother in law. The girls are safe. From the looks of it, she's right. P is all good but C has inherited those darn genes. 

The only good news is that C is still piling on weight despite being sick for a week. He is now 8kg, omg! I often end up wih numb arms when rocking him to sleep. Yes, he still needs to be rocked, and I'll do anything to get him to sleep!

Pre-Nursery Mini Concert

P woke up burning hot this morning, much to my dismay. She must have caught the virus from C, and that didn't bode well coz my mom who has been taking care of C while he was sick went down like a bowling pin. It was a strong virus, gosh. I started loading up on Vit C last week, hoping some of it will go into my bm and aid C's recovery, but I neglected P's immunity. I should have boosted her immunity at the same time. Now that both kids are down, I feel so much heartache when I see them struggling to breathe through their blocked nose and coughing their hearts out. P took one step more than C to come down with fever. Holding her burning hot body in my arms really saddens me.

To make matters worse, today is the day of her school's mini concert. I bet they had done numerous times of practice and she has been so excited, kept telling me and hubby that we have to come and watch her perform on stage. She woke up feeling so miserable that she refused to go to school. We planned to get her to a doctor first and see if she feels good enough to go to school after that. In the car and at the clinic, she became very hyper, playing and laughing with me. We finished off at the doctor at 12.15pm and decided to rush down for her concert at 12.30pm. 

Honestly, I had no idea what kind of performance she was going to put up. When I asked her, she did a rendition that resembled a ballerina twirling, followed by 拔萝卜 (plucking radish) and ended with a curtsy. It took just 10s and that was the kind of performance I was expecting. I mean, what do they expect a group of 3yo to pull off?

We arrived just in time to see the pre-nursery children enter the hall. They all had some form of costume on her. 叶老师 saw her and quickly put on her costume for her. Her class Daisy 2 would be the second to perform. 

Guess what? My girl did such a great job in spite of her high fever. Here's the videos of her performances (she's 8th from left). It turned out her class was performing "Wheels on the Bus" and "泥娃娃".

Breast milk

Pan Pacific Singapore Staycation 2014

The Tan Family had a wonderful staycation at Pan Pacific Hotel over the weekend. We were there to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, just like what we did 1 year ago. This time though, we had another kid in tow!

P was probably the most excited of us all. It amazes me to no end that she actually remembers our staycation 1 year ago. Every now and then, she will mention something about hotel room with chocolates, sweets, a bed to jump on, a bathtub that can be see through the glass panel, and a swimming pool. As you can see, she wasted no time in settling herself. 

Here's the little one, or rather, littlest one. Despite my parents' well intentions to leave him with them so we can have fun, we brought him along coz it's just so sad to leave him behind. The only arrangement we made was to have my parents fetch him in the evening, which wasn't too bad coz my dad happens to attend a banquet at Pan Pac on that same day (what are the chances of that occurring?). 

We took their staycation package which comes with 

Breakfast for two

Complimentary high speed internet

$40 dining credit

I had signed up for the complimentary Global Hotel Alliance membership last year, so I get newspaper delivery foc as well. 

We were booked in for the deluxe room, but Pan Pac was very nice to upgrade us to a Balcony room. Here's the view from our room on 20th floor

P couldn't wait to hit the pool, so off we went! This is the first time C goes into a pool. I got his swimming costume shipped in from Carters. It's long sleeved and comes with UV protection to minimise the damage of the sun. I even bought a sunhat that can be used in the water. Thankfully the weather was very cloudy and he didn't need the hat. For swim diaper, I went with Huggies, leftover from P's younger days. 

While I was bathing the kids, Pan Pac sent a surprise tray to us. A box of chocolate (which P was anticipating and devoured immediately), a slab of chocolate cake (that gained hubby's thumbs up even though he's not a chocolate fan), a jar of cookies and a tray of fruits. Pardon the picture coz they other Tans were already attacking it while I was bathing. 

We set our for dinner and I really love Pan Pac for its location. It's a stone throw to so many malls. We eventually settled for Manhatten Fish Market at Marina Square. P, who didn't nap in the afternoon, succumbed to sleepy dust. 

And so did the littlest one.