Sophie’s finally well again – no more running around chasing her with a tissue.

This morning we went to the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden for a walk and play in the water area with her girlfriend Evan. Now that Sophie is willing to walk with help, it’s a lot more fun! She totally enjoyed the water play.

We went with Steph, JC n Luke to Sentosa yesterday. We had a great time at the Underwater World and had lunch at Coastes, a beachfront cafe.

This is our second time to the Underwater World. The last time we were there, Sophie just turned one. She learnt to say "wah" the last time. This time she was fascinated by the jellyfish.

I HATE JELLYFISH. I got stung by a huge one at Bintan more than 10 years ago, fainted and almost got peed on by my good friends then. Thank God they didn’t or they’ll not be my friends anymore. I still have the scars K? Ok, that’s another story by itself. But I really like this picture. She’s so into things. I like that about her.

Coastes was great! The view was amazing. The chicken wings were so yummy! Sophie missed her morning nap so she took a nap while we had lunch. How timely! I had a great time chatting with Steph. JC tried to make Luke nap and he knocked out for a bit after his milk.

I love this sculpture of a mother lifting her baby up high. It’s titled Joy by Ruth Bloch, donated by a friend of the Garden.

I’ve been the Botanical Gardens so many times but this is the first time I’ve seen it! So blind lah. It’s been there since 2005. !?! Maybe it never meant anything to me till now.

I decided to plonk ourselves next to it with our ever ready $1 plastic mat from Cold Storage. Note to self: Need to get a proper picnic mat!!!

Sophie and I had a little picnic by ourselves. I juggled to entertain her, she ate biscuits, played with my bag and her little bag of toys. The weather was just perfect. I just love the space. I live so nearby, must really do this more often.

We spent the whole of Saturday with Mama and Yeye.

First we went to Adam Road Hawker Center for the shiok shiok prawn noodles. Sophie had a cream bun, without the cream bien sur!

After that, we went to Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden. But it was raining so we headed to Chinese Garden and Japanese Garden to kill some time before our lunch appointment. It was still drizzling a little but at least we got to see the Bonsai Garden that I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. I always miss it coz we get there quite late. It’s only opened in the daytime. It’s so pretty.

After that we met the rest of the family for lunch at the Tung Lok restaurant at Jurong. The food was so good and everyone was happily entertaining Sophie that I got to eat and forgot to take pictures. But we took some at the end of it with Uncle Norman + Auntie Serene and Auntie Wendy, James’ cousins.

After lunch, we headed to The Expo for the Metro Big Sale. Nothing much there BUT … Sophie had her first meal from a restaurant. We ordered porridge for her. We were running late, too close to dinner and nowhere nearby we could find a supermarket. So we had dinner at Macau Express. Fish porridge. It was too watery, she didn’t eat very much. Like my friend June said, Sophie likes her food "gao" (thick). Yep, with substance, not watery.

That ended our very long but really enjoyable day out.

I really think Sophie is super travel hardy. I packed our bags early yesterday morning and both of us spent half the day out together. James had a late night so he needed to sleep in.

First stop, Botanical Gardens. We hopped into a cab and got off at the Taman Serasi Food Court. I packed some Kaya Toast to share with Sophie. We walked for a bit, round the Swan Lake. She really enjoyed watching the dogs and waving to strangers. There are so many people walking their dogs on a Sat morning. I donno how many times she said the word dog that morning. Stopped by at the Ginger Garden where there’s a nice little waterfall (man made of course, it’s Singapore!) and had a short breakfast time. Sophie loves running water. I shared my toast with her and gave her a little biscuit after. Off we went again. This time we walked to towards the Visitor Center. Quite a far walk. I was super exhausted by then. The weather is a bit crazy. We had to hide in the shade at the Visitor Center.

When I got bored (ya, sophie was happily still waving to the people around), we left and went down to Forum the Shopping Mall. I’ve been wanting to sign up for the Hip Kids Club coz with that we can have access to an indoor playground. It only costs $10 for 2 yrs! So we did that. By then, it was 10 plus, almost Sophie’s nap time. I tried to put her to nap at McDonalds. Forum has no sitting area for tired shoppers! I had to go buy a drink at Macs and try to put Sophie to sleep. But the balloon man came with the balloons. Okie forget abt sleeping. She was more interested in the balloons and the girl’s pancakes on the next table.

We left and I brought her to the playground instead. She LOVED it! So many kids and things to explore. She can’t do much except touch the stuff, climb a little but she really enjoyed watching the kids running around. There’s a little ball pool too but too many big kids around to play safely. I must come back again on a weekday. It’ll also be better once she’s started walking.

After that we went to Early Learning Center (ELC). This was my fav – it’s a toy shop that lets you play with all their toys! Sophie hung out at the kitchen set for quite a while and I had time to look around the shop. Very good for a tired mum. Erm except for one time when she protested when I asked her to let go so that we could go do something else. But she was easily distracted, not a problem.

Finally she got a bit more sleepy and I did what I should have done earlier, GO TO THE MOTHERS’ ROOM! It’s the priviledge of parents to have a room to rest your feet and rest while putting your kid to sleep/trying to feed your child. I love it! All I had to do was hold her, pat her a bit and she was off to lala land. Put her down in her pram and off I went for lunch. Had a nice Salmon Don lunch and read a magazine. When she got up, I was done with my lunch. Fed her lunch and……….

We went back to my fav shop – ELC to play a bit more, shop a bit more and then we went home.

I should really do this more often with Sophie. Sometimes I’m afraid it’ll be very tiring but actually Sophie is very travel hardy. She hardly acts up in public and she loves being out. I really enjoyed the time with her. She’s a great conversationalist, seriously and it’s so relaxing just being with her.

This is Sophie latest fav place – IMM, Jurong. They’ve got an amazing outdoor water park and playground on the 3rd floor.

Sophie LOVES watching the kids running around and seeing the water sprayed in all directions. Last Friday, we were there to run some errands and I took her there to just watch. She sat in the stroller while i sat next to her on the ground. We were just watching for like 1/2 an hour. It was so nice, out in the open, not too hot.

The playground next to it has got one baby ride too.

Simple pleasures lah, nice.

We were invited to dinner by award winning chef Anderson Ho tonite at Le Papillon! Ooooo what a luxury…

It has been more than a year since Daytime painted the mural at Le Papillon and did their website but this was the first time we had dinner there. We’ve heard so much about the food. Food bloggers and reviews all rave about the food. So when Anderson invited us, I was SO excited.

And………… it was excellent. We arrived at about 7 and we were the first dinner guests. Slowly more and more people streamed in.

The Head Chef, Steve, planned the menu specially for us (oooooo how often does this happen?!?!). It’s not in the main menu therefore I don’t have the fancy names for the dishes. But here’s what we had:- carrot soup with crab, asparagus and mushrooms (from France!) with cheese sauce, barracuda fish with spinach and seafood bisque, ribeye steak (flown in from US today!) with veggies and finally sweets (see photo).

We were enjoying the food so much that we forgot to take pictures from the beginning and the lighting was too dim to take good pictures so it really doesn’t do justice to the food.

It’s prob my first time in fine dining for a long time so I don’t have much to compare with. BUT i must say it really tickled my senses and left me wanting to come back for more.

Funny thing was that I’ve been cooking so much for Sophie that I actually recognised most of the veggies served tonite! Haha…

At the end of the evening, God even sent a friend to give us a lift home. What a blessing….

Spent the morning at the park. Got there about 9ish and left at 10 plus.

We found a nice little spot. James took a little nap, I ate 2 curry puffs and Sophie had her Gerber puffs. We looked at the swans and fish. A little boy gave us some bread to feed the fish so Sophie fed the fish for the first time. She almost ate the bread tho! There were a lot of pp, lotsa families so we did a lot of people watching. Sophie was pointing at every little kid and every dog that passed by. We even made friends with another SAHM (stay at home mum) and her 17 mth old son, Ian.

Sophie fell asleep on the way home coz it was close to her morning nap.

We took a nice little evening walk before going to our friends’ wedding at Grand Corpthone.

We spotted a really nicely designed building at a random place. It was just there, out of nowhere. Next to an old building. We really like it. The penthouse leads to a open air garden. Ooooo… sweet….

Sophie went for her first swim lesson today with 4 other babies. All of us have known each other for a long time coz we were all from the same church small group from years back. It’s amazing that our kids are all the same age, just diff months.

It was so good……. Sophie really enjoyed herself, made so much noise! Ya my little quiet one was the loudest today. She kept squealing! They did songs, swimming, leap off the edge of the pool, all with our help of course. The lesson was about 1/2 hour, just nice coz it was quite cold. We took the Sunday, 5.30pm slot which was good for everyone. The arrangement worked out really well for those who had older kids too. The older kids had their own class while the babies had their own, side by side.

AquaDucks (here’s a little promo for them), the swim sch, built a little new pool next to St James Kindy at Harding Road. It’s at the Dempsey Road/Tanglin Village area. The surroundings is beautiful – trees, trees, and more trees. So quiet and secluded. Almost felt like we were out of the country. Can’t wait for the next lesson….

Sophie was fascinated by the waterfall, the dogs, the people around.

When she took a nap on James, we took some time to read and just relax… When she woke up, we headed to our next destination for some baby play!

Sophie’s wearing a recycled t-shirt made in Thailand that Kel n CY bought her.

James and I celebrated our third anniversary the past 2 days.

Mon nite we had dinner at Prinsep St at a little Italian restaurant, Trattoria Lafiandra. Our initial plan was Wild Rocket at HangOut@Mt Emily but we went there and it was CLOSED! Argh… we had checked the website the night before and it was down. What a bummer… was quite disappointed coz I was really looking forward to that.

HangOut & Mt Emily holds lotsa good memories for us. We spent a few days at HangOut@Mt Emily (a nice little backpackers hotel) after we checked out of Merchant Court hotel (where we held our wedding dinner). He actually blindfolded me all the way to the room! I had no clue where we were going… the counter staff must have thought we were mad! These newlyweds!

We spent out childhood memories at Mt Emily, separately of course, coz we haven’t met then! I used to go jogging at Mt Emily for Physical Education lessons while in school and James used to go to that church at the foot of Mt Emily (Church of Christ Malaya). And we took our wedding pics at Mt Emily.

But dinner at the authentic Italian restaurant turned out very pleasant. The place was small, like 4-5 tables inside. But food was quite nice.

After that we held hands, took a little walk at the new Cathay and went home.

We spent Tues together with Sophie. Had brekkie at Botanical Gardens, lunch at Go Go Bambini (cafe cum baby gym) at Dempsey Road and then hair cut + wash at Yen’s Salon (Holland Shopping Center), came home, rested a bit and then dinner at Crystal Jade for dim sum.