Daddy's Little Girl

I absoluately LOVE this photo, don't you? It's such a great pix and shows the closeness between the two of them. They've been of course a lot closer this past month as I've been stuck in that darn (airconditioned, mind you - the only consolation!) office.

Bibou's definately has Daddy's smile. It just warms my heart.

Today has cooled down... like maybe half a degree or something! lol. Well, it has been a little bit cloudy, so the sun wasn't that hot. The Tour de France came through our little town and they had a huge carnival going at the starting point - Parc de Sceaux which is like 2 minutes from our place. Unfortunately, we didn't go as we had a brunch thingy so we missed the opportunity.

At the brunch, which was a MESSAGE event, so lots of kiddies, Bibou totally enjoyed herself with the baby. What a surprise eh? Oh yes, she went straight to the baby, and kept giving him little kisses and carresses. Awwww.

This afternoon, we had fun in the pool. Real fun! She was comfortable enough to sit and play around in the water today. Previously, she would only stand on the edge and hang on tightly. I totally enjoyed our 'swimming' session today. We were splashing around, she'd let me hold on to her and 'swim' her around the pool. She even did her backward flop onto me.

Well, a great weekend's gone. Another dreary tough week ahead! Have a good one everyone!

Hot wet Bastille Day

It's Bastille Day and we got invited to Becca and Manu's place for their annual Bastille Day picnic. Yippee. It was a very hot day, well, really a very hot week..even month! There hasn't been relief in sight for a while. We've had 2-3 nights of storm but it didn't help things all that much, except that it woke us up even more with all the lightening and thunder.. and debating whether the leave the windows opened or not. Open, too bright and noisy.. closed, too hot!

Anyway, yes I digress. We got there, and there was a lovely spread already in the garden. A nice long table was set in the shade. I'd made my glass noodle salad, ever so popular. If anyone's interested, I've included the recipe down below. .... it was a great picnic.

Ahhh, but once lunch was out of the way, Becca brought out the 'SLIDE'. It's a long water slide thingy, where you slide down with water splashing. The other kids really enjoyed it. Becca took each of them by an arm and foot and flung them down the slide. Oh the kiddies totally enjoyed it and can't wait to go back for more. OUr little Bibou? She didn't like it at all! :( Daddy said that it was probably because I'd flung her too hard or something. She started cring as soon as she went down the slide. oh no! She didn't enjoy it at all. I managed to calm her down, and she was fine. She wouldn't go down the slide anymore, but she had a wonderful time running up and down the slide, splashing water.

After the kiddies had their fill of water fun, it was ice cream time. It was sooo hot that the kiddies were either naked or just plain diappers / nappies. They were all happy to be without clothes. They all enjoyed the cool ice cream too.

Oh then, big treat. Daddy broke out the guitar. Daddy played all the usual favorties and all the kiddies were bopping and clapping and singing to the tunes. Especially our little Bibou of course. Oh she was beep-popping away as you can tell in the pix on the right. Swaying and swinging.

After dinner, Daddy played some adult songs. It'd cooled down a bit already. Then Bibou came up to me and asked me to play ring-around-the-rosy. Ella joined in the we three gals had loads of fun. They really went 'down'! After that, well, they decided it was more fun to play horsey on Mummy! And play horsey they did. They jumped and jumped and jumped up and down on me. The little rascels even took turns to jump on my back. They were playing leapfrogs. I'm glad they had fun, but suffice to say, I had difficulty getting up and had a sore back for the next few days!

All too soon, we had to leave. Needless to say, Bibou 'hit it' as soon as the car got started. She was off to lala land, having had a 'hard' day of fun and water. Thank you sooo much, Becca and Manu.

As promised, here's my ever popular glass noodle Salad recipe (oh and taking a tip from my friend Serene, a picture of it too!) :

GLASS NOODLE SALAD

Ingredients:

Glass noodle

Ground pork

Shallots finely sliced

Green / spring onions finely sliced

2-3 bird chili (small chili)

Thai Fish Sauce

Sugar

Juice of about 2 Limes

Direction

1. Soak the glass noodle in cold water first until the ‘tightness’ is gone (but not cooked), then drain

2. Finely sliced all the condiments (Shallots/onion/spring onion/chili).

3. Pour enough cold water into the ground pork and minced together so that the pork is not ‘clumpy’ but has a ‘thick soup’ consistency (this will facilitate cooking the meat later)… but it should not be liquidy….you cannot / should not see any water.

4. Boil water in a pot. Put glass noodle in when water is boiling, stir and then drain. The noodles should be soft (but NOT mushy! – so lift it out quite quickly). Run cold water so that it does not cook further (and become mushy) and also will not stick together.

5. Boil water in another pot (or same pot!). When it is boiling, gently pour the meat into the boiling water, stopping a few times and giving it a swirl. Let it come to a boil. By then, the meat should be cooked and there should not be any clumps / balls. Drain the meat immediately. Recommend that you pour cold water over it so that it cools down.

6. Once all ingredients have cooled, put them together in a big bowl and mix with shallots / onion / spring onion and chili. I normally use a scissor to mix and cut them together… so that the noodles are not too long.

7. Next, put lime juice (freshly squeezed), sugar and fish sauce in and mix well. You need to keep stirring, mixing and tasting until you get the perfect blend. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how much of each ingredient to put it as it depends on how big your dish is and also your taste.

Enjoy experimenting!

Busy busy Mommy

Right. Can anyone say 'BUSY'? As you'd probably guessed by now, I didn't fall off the face of the earth (though I sometimes feel like it), I've just been really caught up with work. It's the end of the fiscal year and so lots of work at the office. That's the reason for the silence.

So here's a very short update, with some pictures that we took in the garden with some Singapore Club of France folks who'd come over for a visit. They were really tickled at being able to 'pick some fruits' (we were meant to go to the Gally Farm to go fruit picking but got rained out), in our garden. The kiddies had fun in the sand pit. Oh I like this pix of her, even though it's her back... it shows how long her hair is right now!!

It has been very very hot here, almost unbearable at times. We've been doing lots of fresh salads for dinners, a good thing we planted lettuce in the garden. They're really yummy. Should have planted cucumbers too. Yum yum. The zuchhinnis are growing really quickly too. Too quickly for us! The other day, Daddy was saying, they'd turned chernobyl sized on us just in 2-3 days! I've gotta find a good zucchinni bread recipe soon.

Ok, gotta go. I'll try and update this quickly again.

Another fun filled day!

Well, Bibou sure woke up 'early' today... ie no lie in for us, and so we thought, shucks, why not, let's take her out to another place that's fun! We finally decided that she had quite a bit of sun yesterday, so we took her to ludimax, a huge indoor multi-storied amusement structure that is all padded and lets the kiddies climb, roll, tumble, slide to the hearts content. It is a great place to hold b'day parties as we came to learn - no less than 6 kids were celebrating their birthdays there that day.

She has a great memory! As we came out of the car in the car park, Bibou got all very excited (even before seeing the building!).

She was there about 4 months ago when Kong kong and mahmah were here... 4 months, that must be a lifetime for Bibou's age no? In any case, yes she remembered! Oh and get this, she started 'counting'... though I'm not sure if she realizes that she was counting. We were playing our little 'swing' game where Bibou's between both of us and hanging on to each of us. I started doing the 'Onnne, Twooooo and three" and then we swing her forward. We've been doing this for, ooo a good couple of months already.. and at every opportunity, I do try to 'count' 1, 2, 3. ohh la lah, did she surprise us today when she said something very similiar to oneeee, twwoooo, THREE! to get us swinging her!

Anyway, once inside, off she went. She was really excited, and we were amazed (I guess we shouldn't any more!) to see how much she'd 'improved'. She really didn't have any problems with the climbing. Daddy was behind her most of the time to spot her, but she really didn't need any help. To think that this is normally only for kids 2 years and above.

She totally enjoyed the mini merry go round where the kids had to han

g on and spin round and round. Even though it made her dizzy and she couldn't walk straight after a spin, she always wanted more. What really took me by surprise, was her fear of the slide, the huge slides that they had. She LOVED them previously and though it was obviously scary to her (by the looks on her face - you may remember in our previously posted photos on the main website), she kept wanting to go back for the slides over again. This time no. She sat on top of the slide, looked down, and our little dare devil was afraid. She didn't want to go down at all. There may be hope! (that she is after all, not that a don't care dare devil!).

We got home to another hot day, and into the pool we went. After the dip, Bibou played in her s

andpit while we lounged on our deck chairs and laid in the hot sun, catching some rays. Ok, so who says you need to go to the beach during the summer to

enjoy water, sand and sun! We got it all in the privacy of our own backyard. The best part... it was all free, and we didn't have to fight the crowd yippppee! Later in the late afternoon, the kids from next door came over to enjoy the pool too.

Exciting adventure at the zoo

I took the day off on Friday to spend some time with Bibou. The weather was just gorgeous and we were wondering where to take her. I was hoping to take her to a wading pool, but we vetoed that idea quickly. We finally decided on the zoo given how much she loves animals. The morning started really well. She was in bright spirits and even allowed me to tie her hair in pigtails! Reminded me of when I was little - mahmah always tied my hair in pigtails. She looked quite like a little chinese doll!

Bibou even took a little nap in the car on the way there (and Daddy got a 'little bit' lost ha!). We stopped on the way to get some picnic stuff, and by the time we got there, Bibou was awake and alert. Funnily, I had thought that by going on a weekday, before the school holidays started, we would beat the crowd. Ooooh boy was I wrong. I was stunned, STUNNED by the number of people there already. There were bus loads and busloads of people... mostly kids. DUH! Of course, they don't normally study the last days of school... they go on excursions! Like ohmigosh. There were sooo many people.

We found a spot in the tent and had a quick lunch. Oh yes, forgot to mention, I think Bibou's going through a big of a growth spurt recently. Man is she eating! and eating and eating and eating! We're happy that she's eating. No complains there. By the time we'd finished lunch, the busload of kids had gone in and passed us. We took our time, changed Bibou's diaper and strolled in. Amazingly, despite knowing how many people we'd saw when we came in, we didn't have to fight the crowds at all. We bumped into one or two groups occasionally, but nothing too bad. The area was just that big!

The first exhibit we came to was the piarie dog, and Bibou quickly realized that the animals are behind the glass wall. As we pointed out the animals to her, she begun to quickly look to see where they were.

As we walked further, we saw a little train turning up to take passengers further into the park. We thought why not, especially since Bibou was going 'choo choo' already! She totally enjoyed the little ride which was very short and took us to a huge playground. Bibou went shooting off to the slides etc. A little further on was the petting zoo, and this time, Bibou wasn't afraid of the billy goats (who were very VERY much docile compared to the goats at the other farm). She too had become gentler, and were quite gentle with the goats.

Apparently, the Thoiry zoo had been in the news recently as many little babies were born very recently. And we saw them! There were many little young ones there that were sooooo cute. The little monkeys clinging on to their mummy was just so sweet.

The impressive exhibit was the Tigers that we were fortunate to catch! I think the funniest part was when we approached a gibbons exhibit which had a large glass enclosure. As we were walking up, 2 black gibbons started approaching and then proceeded to stand in front of Bibou! Right in front of her. It was very funny, especially when she then went straight to them and started gibber gabber to them! oh and the bird enclosure was funny too. We went into the cage, and Bibou looked really hard at the ducks, and then tried hard to 'make friends' with them. To say that Bibou was tired on the way back home was an understatement! She fell asleep as soon as the car started rolling!

Thus she was more than ready for the pool by the time we got home. We was sooo hot, the pool water was really nice and warm. I managed to find some huggies swimmers (diapers for swimming) and she had a lot of fun! Oh and yes, she slept through the night without a peep too! What a wonderful day.