Day 1 : Singapore - Perth - Sorrento

My biggest worry about this entire holiday was the plane ride. I mean, how many times have you had to stop yourself from throttling the screaming kid in 38C? We must have done something right in our lives because on our way to Perth, DN slept for the first 2 hours of the flight and on the way back, he slept for the last 2 hours. On the way back, I even managed to watch an entire movie! WAH!

As far as possible, I've created links to the places we stayed at / visited. Click on these places if you're keen to find out more about them. ;)

0930 :: Plane takes off and DN takes his morning nap
1130 :: DN wakes up and has lunch. On his Kids Tray, there's fish fingers & chips, a pack of juice, Yan Yan strawberry dip & sticks, chocolate covered jellies, cheese & crackers and fruit. Gee. I'm requesting for the Kids Meal the next time I fly.
1645 :: We arrive in Perth, declare all the baby food we brought over, collect our car from Hertz (we got a Hyundai Elantra) and drive to North Beach. DN takes his 2nd nap in the car.
1745 :: Check into the Sundowners Ocean View Motel. It's not a fancy place, but we figured it'll do for one night. We were going to check in late and leave by 10am the next day after all.
1830 :: Drove 5 minutes to Hillarys Boat Harbour for a walkabout and quick dinner. All the shops are closed though, humph. Walked around for a bit, then decided to go to a supermarket instead.
1945 :: We have dinner in the room - fish & chips takeaway for us and Pigeon instant porridge and chips (he nicked some off us) for DN.
2100 :: Story time and bed for DN.

Groceries :: AU$19 (apples, plums, apricots, water, raisin bread, chips)
Dinner :: AU$11 (fish & chips, salad)
Accomodation :: AU$125
Car Rental (8 days) :: AU$500

The minute we got into the room, DN started exploring, opening all cupboards and drawers, taking things in and out.


In one of the drawers he opened, we found these! We thought it was the motel that left them for us (we asked for a cot), but it turned out that they were left behind by another family. DN loved the books so we took them along for the trip.

Parenthood makes you more responsible. Ish.

Here are 4 holidays I will never forget.

1. Chiang Mai with PF, Nov 2005 : The flight was at 6.45am. After packing, we slept at 2am. "Just a short nap," we said. We woke up at 6.35am. I swear, I lost 5 years of my life just by looking at the alarm clock.
   
2. Phuket with Dawn, Dec 2001 : I planned this whole holiday - flights, accomodation, activities. What I didn't plan on though, was my sister discovering at 4am on the day of departure that her passport was missing. (She thinks she threw it away.)
   
3. Vietnam with PF, June 2001 : We booked a flight into and out of Saigon, but the 9 days in between, we didn't have any plans. Well, we had a rough one, but no transport or accomodation.
   
4. New York with Funny Bee, June 1998 : The original plan was London-Aberdeen-Backpacking in Europe with PF. In London, we changed it to London-Aberdeen-New York (w/o PF!) and I had to change my franc and lira into USD.

Scary, but it's these funny ones that you remember forever, not the ones where everything went according to plan.

Okay, back to DN's first holiday. Now that we're parents, we cannot pull this kind of stunt anymore, so I think this is the most prepared we've ever been for a holiday. Granted we've had one or two heart-attack moments...

• applying for DN's passport 10 days before flying off
• confirming all our accomodation 5 days before flying off

... but it's all good. DN has a passport (collected it yesterday, phew!) and we don't have to sleep in the rented car. We've got "prepared" coming out of our ears!

1. Perth is 2 days away, but we've started packing! (A feat in itself.)
2. We've got medicine for fevers, coughs, colds and allergies.
3. We're bringing over some Pigeon instant porridge meals.
4. We've printed out the contact details of the hospitals near us.
5. We've decided on the farms to visit - Landsdale Farm School and Sunflowers Farm.
6. And of course, our accomodation's all booked. :)

In Margaret River, we're staying at Bussells Bushland Cottages, 5km from Margaret River town. We booked a self-contained 1 bedroom cottage and the property promises "colourful bird and animal life, and walk trails that provide easy access to delightful Australian bush." Heh.

The cottage costs AU$120 per night and DN stays FOC because he's still an infant. We got a special deal for this cottage - stay 3 nights, pay for 2 - so it actually worked out to AU$80 (SGD$103) per night.


A bird house! How quaint!



I hope a wombat walks into our cottage. Hee.



















In Fremantle, we're staying at Harbourside Apartments, a 5 minute walk from the Capuccino Strip. We got a 1-bedroom apartment with a view of the Port of Fremantle. It's got a kitchenette, washer/dryer and FREE INTERNET ACCESS! Wooooo! I can blog!

This place is costing us AU$180 per night, no special deal. :( So that's about SGD$230 per night. AH! After paying SGD$103 per night in Margaret River, everything else is expensive.


We're on the 2nd floor, so I wonder what kind of view we'll get. -_-


Wah!



Oooh!

Going to the doctor's is... FUN!

DN is sick again. This time it started with a cough on Saturday, runny nose on Sunday and fever on Monday. A sick kid is no fun. He is extra cranky and he can't sleep well. This means we are also extra cranky and we can't sleep well.

Going to the doctor's is fun for DN because it's like a playground over there! While waiting to see Dr Keoy, DN usually busies himself with the slide and see-saw. (You can hear him say "up" in the video.)



DN never complains when he sees Dr Keoy. Dr Keoy can prod his tummy, peer into his mouth and jab his butt, and DN won't even whimper. That's because Dr Keoy ALWAYS gives him a biscuit. He's got all sorts of kiddie bribes on his table - milk biscuits, sugus sweets, stuffed toys, rattle toys... he's even got an activity table and a little scooter in a corner of the office. I wonder if there are other parents who think, "Me leh?" when Dr Keoy hands their kid a biscuit / sweet.

I hope DN gets better soon... we're flying to Perth on MONDAY!

Hai Yu's Blog

I used to be a regular "viewer/reader" of Little Hai Yu's photoblog... then I lost the web address. :( But because I met her mom again during CNY '08, I have it again! :)

I've added a hyperlink to her photoblog and you must check it out. Emmeline takes these amazing photographs. Look!


Taken in Chinatown


Taken at the recent air show



DN on CNY '08 Day 1



DN & his cousin, Hailey on CNY '08 Day 4


Awww...


And this is Hai Yu! She's about 4 months younger than DN.

18 months old

At 18 months, his personality, likes, dislikes, abilities and quirks are quite obvious, and I think I have a fairly good idea what kind of person he is.

Personality

• Short-tempered : He flys off the handle when he doesn't get what he wants. (alamak)
  
• Friendly : Unless he's just woken up from a nap or due for one, he can be very friendly with people. He'll smile and wave at strangers and if he knows you a bit better, he'll interact and play with you.
• Independent : He doesn't need us around all the time. At playgroups, he's usually off playing on his own or with other kids.
• Gung Ho : He's game to try anything, even a dark and narrow tunnel at the Julia Gabriel playground.
  
• Observant : He can spot things that we can't! (like the narrow & dark tunnel which was under a Little Tykes pirate ship)

Conclusion : If there's an Amazing Race for toddlers, DN will join it. He'll eat grubs and leap off playground slides, but if he doesn't win, you'd better siam! (leave quickly to escape from the exploding toddler and his tantrum)

Likes

• Eating : DN really likes eating. Even after his own dinner, he'll want to join us at the dinner table and eat, instead of play with his toys. During the day, we often see him dragging his high chair to the dining table and pointing at us to put him in it.
  
• Grapes & Kueh Belanda : He will give up his parents for these.
  
• Bathtime Peekaboo : One of his 2 favourite books now. He likes lifting the flaps and discovering the duck, penguin, fish etc. I like this book too because it's very baby friendly - board book, huge flaps, huge pictures & few words.
  
• Goodnight Moon : His other favourite. For the longest time, he couldn't sit through 4 pages of this book. Now, he'll sit and listen from beginning to end. These are the only 2 books he'll read in their entirety.
• Slides : Short ones, tall ones, straight ones, curly ones.
  

Conclusion : When he's older, I can just see all three of us hanging out at a cafe having tea/coffee/hot chocolate and cake and reading books. Lovely! I can't wait!

Dislikes

• Wiping his face : He likes washing his hands with soap, but hates us wiping his face. Go figure.
• Finger Paints : Strangely, although he doesn't like the feel of paint on his hands, he has no qualms smearing my carefully-cooked-on-the-stove-for-2-hours porridge on the table.
• Sitting in the stroller : I'm like, "Do you know how much this monster stroller cost us? SIT DOWN!"
• Sleeping through the night : -_-
• Bittergourd : Can't blame the guy, but trust the chinese to eat, and like, this awful vegetable.

Conclusion : A nightmare for him would be being chased by a giant face towel.

Abilities

• Signing : He's building up his signing vocabulary and recently added the signs for - carrot, umbrella, stand up (he made this one up himself), grumpy, grapes and vegetable. He's also more precise with his signs now. When signing 'more', he now uses his fingertips instead of his knuckles.
• Language (1) : He's definitely physically dominant and not linguistically dominant. He can only say "mama", "mum-mum" and "up", but he understands 95% of what we say. Like if he overhears us talking about going home, he'll go get his shoes and start waving bye to everyone, even though we're still sitting on the couch. He's been doing this since he was about 14 months old.
  
• Language (2 ) : He understands 95% of what we say, in both English and Mandarin. Woah nelly. I think his understanding of Mandarin is better than mine.
• Physical Development : He started walking at 12 months and it's been a whirlwind journey since. It wasn't long before he started running (13 mths) and walking backwards (15 mths). He cannot sit still. I think that's why he's not fat even though he eats so much.
  

Conclusion : In primary school, his whole world will crash when it's raining and he cannot have PE.

Quirks

• Eating medicine : He eats his paracetamol medicine and shows us the 'good' sign! And he'll open his mouth and receive other medicine willingly. Amazing. I love it!
• Fish Lover : He likes fishes so much that whenever he hears running water, or sees a pond, he'll run over to see if there are fishes in it. One of the first few signs he learnt was 'fish'.
  
• Guttural Sounds : None of us can do it, but DN can make this strange guttural sound from deep inside his throat. He started doing this just before he turned one, whenever he saw a dog or cat (like a growl!). Now he also makes this sound when we ask him to call 'gong gong' or 'gu gu'. It really does sound like it, haha.
  
• Smiling : At about 14 months, DN finally understood the concept of "smiling for the camera". Because he's seen me shove my phone-camera in his face so often, he started smiling as he held my phone-camera and pointed it at his face. He also accomodates when we bark at him to "smile", and he gives us his trademark squinted-eyes-scrunched-up-nose smile.
  

Conclusion : Strange taste buds? Vain pot?


Feb 2007


Feb 2008

Bon Voyage!

Some adjectives to describe our holiday next week.

• maiden
• last-minute
• a long time coming!

This holiday has been in incubation for a long time. When DN was 4 months old, it was supposed to be a weekend trip to Malacca with my family. We first talked about it when I was in my third trimester and blissfully naive. A baby in a car seat for 3 hours? Why not? They sleep all the time what. (Prrrtfh!) Then it became a trip to Perth when he was 10 months old, but that was shelved because I couldn't find time away from school. From then until now there were the odd discussions about quick trips to Bangkok / KL / Hong Kong whenever PF had business trips.

But nothing ever materialised because deep down inside, I think we're both wibbly jellies about the whole thing.

Personally, I'm afraid of...

• becoming public enemy numero uno on SQxxx coz my toddler won't stop screaming
• feeding DN when we're out coz he's a chinaman through and through... nothing can come between him and his porridge
• having to deal with a cranky toddler coz he couldn't nap well in the stroller
• not being able to shop properly (sob! sob!) coz Mr. Emperor has an attention span of a fly and his bed routine must start at 730pm (that's why we chose Perth... retail is just not one of their strong suits!)
  

Anyway, we talked about it and we're finally going. Booked our tickets last week, and applied for DN's passport today, which is an adventure in itself.

We initially wanted to take passport-like photos ourselves and apply for his passport online... but with photos like these???


NG 1
(plus, we'd have to photoshop the background white)


NG 2.
(if the immigration officer doesn't laugh, I will. And the background is not white.)










NG 3.
(The background's white but I don't think ICA would approve coz you can't see his right ear. Go figure.)


NG 4.
(I actually thought this was THE ONE, but no... he's not "facing the camera" coz his chest is not directed at it. Bah.)








So what's a desperate mom to do? Get the "experts" to do it themselves. So I brought DN to ICA to get his photo taken.

In the photobooth, DN had to sit in a bumbo perched on top of a high stool. He's not really IN the bumbo. It's stuffed with a towel, so he's sitting on top of it actually.


Wah. Relak brudder!


















Now, there's always a queue to take photos and the "photo people" usually only take 1 photo of you. Didn't smile? Too bad. One eye big, one eye small? Sorry, long queue. So with DN, the "photo girl" probably thought she was being generous by doing it 3 times. (which, if you ask me, doesn't really count coz the first take, he turned to look at me, and second take, he looked at the camera sideways... all rejects anyway!) So the minute she got a picture of him looking at the camera head-on, she finalised and printed it.

This is what the 1st pic looked like.



Humph. (NG in my eyes!)
















She refused to take another picture even though I begged.

Me : "Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Let him try again! He wasn't smiling. He looks so shocked in this picture! How can I use this for his passport? Cannot lah!"

Stupid cow : "Sorry miss, cannot. Babies very difficult to take picture one. Once they look at the camera, we got to take already. You see? All these cannot use coz he not looking at camera. This one ok."

Me : "But he looks funny! Please? Can I try again? Just one more! Only one!"

Stupid cow : "Sorry ah. Cannot. Long queue! Otherwise people complain."

Me : "PLEASE??!"

Stupid cow : "Sorry, cannot."

Me : "What if I pay again?"

Stupid cow (after a short pause) : "If you pay, okay."

So I did! The first shot was another NG. Horrors! I only have 2 more shots at this. So I started ... singing, and bouncing coz the song called for it. Ya, and just my luck that our booth was the one right in front of the entire queue of people. -_-

"Hop little bunny! HOP! HOP! HOP! Hop little bunny! HOP! HOP! HOP! ...Der Nen, PLEAAASE smile!"

So there I am singing and bouncing and begging and what does DN do?



He smiles!

On a bus

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a terrible traveller, literally. A bad dream for me would be to sit in a cab, and then on a ferry. A nightmare would be cab - ferry - HELICOPTER! I will shoot myself in that dream.





Strangely enough, I'm okay (sort of) on buses. As long as the bus is not too crowded and the bus driver is not having a relationship with the brake pedal, I should be okay. Taxis are another story.

So when I had to pop into town today, I decided to take a bus with DN and not a cab. He was really quite good on the bus. He sat on my lap 80% of the time and busied himself with smiling and waving at fellow commuters and looking out the window. Whenever we passed a construction site (which was quite often coz everyone is en-bloc-ing their lovely old condos -_-), he would point and start shouting. He really likes those excavators and cranes! The only challenging thing was carrying him, the diaper bag and the stroller up and down the bus.

PF sent us home.


DN's famous "SMILE!" face

Chinese New Year Day 1

Standard happenings on CNY Day 1:

• Visiting both sets of parents and grandmothers
• OD-ing on steamboat
• Farming DN out to excitable relatives
• Melting in the sweltering CNY heat
• Giving out ang pows -_-
• Receiving ang pows :)
• Taking photos with CNY wall decorations at PF's parents' place

The Ongs in 2007


The Ongs in 2008 (decidedly older, with more lines and more chins!)

DN's "how-can-you-not-give-me-another-ang-pow" face








Chinese New Year Day 2

DN demonstrated his eating prowess on Day 2 when my aunts, uncles and cousins came over for breakfast. DN sat at the dining table for about 1.5 hours and was fed egg mayo sandwiches, bak kwa and chrysanthemum tea, AFTER his breakfast of raisin bread. I think he was very pleased with the buffet breakfast. Everyone was very amazed with his bottomless pit.

Number of times DN pooped during CNY (his norm is once a day):

• Day 1 : 3 times
• Day 2 : 4 TIMES!!!!!
• Day 3 : 3 times
• Day 4 : 3 times

He was crapping like a newborn!


CNY is all about eating...



... and drinking...


... and more eating.

(that's his Great-Grandma Wee)


DN's face when told he cannot eat anymore.




The first thing he does when we arrive at someone's house is check out what's in the lacquer boxes.

Chinese New Year Day 3

We took a break from all the visiting and went to the Botanic Gardens with Katriya and her parents. We couldn't have chosen a better day. :)

Katriya and DN