Double Happiness

It’s been a while since my last update. Life has been treating me quite well with the recent return of my best friend, Huijun aka Tabi, from Holland! Have been catching up quite a fair bit. Firstly we met on Friday 9 Feb and she introduced me to a fantastic roti prata store at Blk 3 St George Road where we had a hearty breakfast. It’s one of the best prata I’ve eaten, especially the cheese prata. Must bring Tim’s parents there to try when they’re here in July. For the record, it opens daily till about 8pm. After the prata, we went downtown to Tangs Orchard and spent 4 hours just on the ground floor checking out cosmetics. Here’s where Tabi bought me a Chanel Blanc Illuminator (or what we call the ‘miracle white powder’) to help me further my cause of being a Glam Mum. After that we sat down to rest at MacDonald’s for coffee and dessert and chitchatted for 2 hours! Time simply flew by and the next thing we knew, we were late for our dinner appointment. For dinner we met up with old university friends Dejun, Xueling, Huili & Peiyun for dinner at Oishi Wisma. It was really really fun catching up and we had many a laugh over really silly jokes.

The second gathering with Tabi was for a buffet lunch at AquaMarine at Marina Mandarin with Lydia. The day began with Lydia coming around to fetch us in her Toyota, it’s such a comfort to be chauffeured around, especially with my bulging belly and the intense Singapore mid-day heat. The food selection at AquaMarine was quite amazing – from local cuisine, Hong Kong dimsum, western salads to a chocolate fountain. We stayed there from 12.30pm to 4pm and really ate our fill while reminiscing about the past when our stomachs could really handle much more! The food was enough to last me through dinner, together with an ice mocha vanilla decaf from Coffee Club.

The third gathering was with the whole gang for a Crepe Party – everyone was able to make it except John and Leewai. This time, Tim found a new way of entertaining the guys by inviting them to a few rounds of computer games in the study while we girls do our ‘girly girly’ talk. Baby Chloe and Asha have grown much bigger (and cuter!!) since I last saw them. It’s amazing how fast they grow! Jingyi came along with some floormats and Yen with a bag of baby girl clothes and shoes. Having these hand-me-downs is great! This treasury of goodies shall be handed down to Meiying and subsequently Lydia, Huijun, Ziyun… who knows? Luckily baby clothes don’t go out of fashion!

On the pregnancy front, we had our first hands-on session at Mdm Wong’s birth class yesterday. We learnt how to hold and bathe baby (paying particular attention to how to wash the head, eyes, ears, naval, hands and privates), how to soothe crying baby (have to understand what the different cries mean), how to burp baby (not stroke but hit gently with capped hands), how to swaddle baby, how to put on a diaper, how to fold the clothe nappies. All very exciting and fun to do on a plastic baby doll… I bet in real life it will be a nightmare, especially knowing after doing one, you got to do the other.

Another key learning is that we should watch over the confinement lady and maid to ensure that they are not doing something dangerous to our newborns (ie: what they have learnt from their years of experience but are not scientific). It will not be easy to correct a confinement lady given that she will inevitably have a ‘I know more than you’ attitude. Perhaps Tim is a better person to manage this kind of situation – he can be the ‘I’m a westerner and I don’t buy all these crap and I don’t wish you to use your traditional methods on my children’ kind of father. As I’m a Chinese, it’s much harder for me to denounce all these Chinese beliefs. Plus if I’m still recovering from the birth, I may not have the energy for any confrontation. Best is to leave it to Tim =)