Happy Holidadys!

Chestnuts roasting on an open fireplace... actually, they were roasting in a pan in the oven, but you get the drift! It's just 2 weeks to Christmas, and though we won't be spending Christmas here (we're finally going to Toronto for Christmas), Daddy brought down the Christmas decoration and this evening, we've been decorating the home. Last year, Bibou was still too young to really understand or get excited about it, so we'd waited until she was in bed and decorated everything (though she still wasn't particularly excited about it still when she saw everything). But this year, she helped Daddy with all the decorations, including setting the tree up. We can't wait till next year, when we can get a REAL tree and real decorations (this was a fake tree with all the decorations 'glued' on the tree already).

While decorating, we all burst out singing Christmasy songs, and Bibou joined in especially at jingle bells. She loves the song and can sing it most of the way. (She just came up with this hilarious song (in French) : "I love Daddy, I Love Mummy, on an Elephant!") And when she doesn't know the words, she just goes lah lah lah or pretend she does know the words! As she dug into the bag of 'goodies', she fished out a santa's hat and promptly put it on her, giggling away. When I snapped away with the camera, she insisted on taking a look at herself. Then she wanted Seraphine to share in the merrymaking, and so plonked the hat on her. She just loves to share with Seraphine, and wants her to have everything that she has. She's also concerned about her, always telling me that she's crying.

We just recently started a 'reward chart' for her. Lately, she seemed to have reverted back to her old 'self', being really whiny / moaning all day and also some 'new' 'three year old syndroms" such as sticking her tongue out, talking back, and just being sassy. Arrrgh, just as we thought we're past the terrible twos, we enter the terrible threes I guess. Anyway, the chart seemed to work a little.... just a little. We hope it'll continue to help her.

Little Angel's been waking up really frequently at night now; it's 'coz her SECOND tooth has started to appear. The poor girly. She's not too fussy though, no fever, and no non-stop crying. But I guess it just isn't too comfortable for her. I hope it'll pass soon. In any case, she is still her most cheery, giggly self, giving out explosive laughs all the time. As you can see in the video below :

The months of Firsts.

How long has it been since the last post? Too long! Yes, way too long, as there’s been so much going on with little Angel. Our cuddly little angel is still that; still as cuddly, chubby and oh so adorably cute. She’s a very happy child, always smiley and those explosive giggles she gives just chase the blues away. She’s one talkative baby too. Babble babbles away. The past few weeks are dotted with lots of ‘firsts’! So here’s a list of Angel’s feats recently,
Well, she’s turned 6 months old and this means – first food! Yup, we’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of starting Angel on solids last weekend. I pureed some broccoli which I’d mixed with lots of expressed milk. She gamely took the first few bites, though I think she was too distracted with everything going on to realize what was happening. There was Mummy making funny faces (I had my mouth wide open so that she’d imitate me), Daddy with the camera and Bibou piping up in the background. It was a long process and it a while for her to finish a few spoonfuls. I have to say that she’s not as good an ‘eater’ as Bibou. Bibou practically ate everything we put in front of her in the beginning and she gamely tried everything. We did start her on baby rice and carrots, whereas poor Angel is ‘only’ allowed green vegetables. We’ve also started her on bottled formula too. She still gets my milk (through breastfeeding or expressed in a bottle), but it’s not sufficient for her now. So she gets a supplementary bottle whenever she needs it.
What triggered the bottle was the fact that Angel’s been waking up in the middle of night and crying. Now we’ve also realized that on top of her being hungry, she’s been waking up because… she was teething. 3 days ago, she cut her first tooth! I have to say though, like Bibou, we’ve been really lucky with the kids’ teething. We don’t have a lot of the ‘drama’ that most kids go through – the fevers, pains, irritation, red bottom, diarrhea and not to mention that non-stop crying because of the pain. We had a lot of drooling, a bit of hand biting, coughing (which I assume is because of the excessive drooling). In fact, with Bibou, she didn’t have any symptoms when her molars came in in her second year! (and those were meant to be really painful). Just one day, she opened her mouth really wide and I was stunned to see it filled with her back molars! Here’s hoping that Angel will be just as lucky. We tried to take some photos of her first tooth, but it hasn’t been easy! She keeps wanting to chew on my finger (it does help give some relief).

In the last few days, she’s also started to sit upright on her own. She’s slowly getting the hang of it, as these pictures show. However, she’s not all that enthusiastic about sitting. She prefers lying on her back it would seem, as she would arc her back when I try to lean her against something so that she can sit up straight but with some support. She’ll only try to sit without support. But then she’d topple over after a while. But it’s only the beginning. We’ll continue to sit her up regularly… one just needs to be very vigilant as she still not stable and falls over very often.
Oh and finally, Angel’s gonna get her first passport! (Bibou had hers at a very early age as she travelled to Singapore when she was just 3 months old). We couldn’t find a photo lab to take a photo of Angel now. Apparently most studios are too afraid or feel that it’s just too difficult to take a photo of a baby. You need to go to a special lab that is set up for that! Bah humbug I say. Just another way of trying to charge you more. Anyway, we didn’t wanna have to go all the way into Paris, so Daddy took the pictures himself. It sure wasn’t easy! Especially with a wiggly child who’s automatic reaction when you’re close to her is to giggle and coo at you! Daddy apparently had to go back and forth to the lab as they kept commenting on the photos that this wasn’t right or that wasn’t right etc. They also said that they didn’t think they would accept her hair being so ‘spikey’ and all…so Daddy had to gel it down! It was soooo funny. I LOVE the photo of her with her hair gelled down. It’s soooo not her lol. Anyway, enjoy these recent radom photos and videos of her.

And here's a really funny video of her babbling and squealing in delight!

Another year!

Oh my. Has it been another year already? It was time for Bibou’s school picture again! I have to say that I was stunned when I saw this picture of her. She looks all grown up, like a big little girl, and then I realized, she IS a big little girl now. I’ve just been so used to the other school pictures (click here to see the past 2 years). The year has passed by so quickly; and it has been a great difference. She’s certainly a very ‘girly’ girl. She LOVES pretty dresses and all things pink or princess-y. She wants to wear these foufou dresses (the dresses with petticoats and ribbons and laces) all the time or dress up like a princess. Of course most of these dresses are so not suitable for school so we have to ‘bargain’ or make believe that her normal doing to school dresses are pretty like a princess. Actually most, if not all of her dresses are really pretty, just not ‘fou fou’ily! Apparently, every day, when she greets people she knows, like Giselle her Nanny, and everyone in school, she’d prim herself and her dress, cock her head to one side and tells everyone she has a ‘jolie ‘ (pretty) dress, soliciting for praises from everyone! Sigh.

She’s starting to communicate a lot better these days… speaking in sentences. She’s much more comfortable in French though she will make an effort in English with us. When she can’t find the words in English or is too tired to think, she’d automatically say the words she knows in French. She’s quite opinionated now and has no qualms letting you know how she feels. The other day, while she was drawing with her crayons, Daddy told her to move her book off the sofa and onto the table; without even looking up at him, she’d continued drawing and said “laisse moi tranquille” ie leave me alone! Ai! I think Daddy was too stunned to say anything, and probably biting his cheeks from laughing out loud too! She can say the sweetest things some times. I was rushing through the front door from work one day, struggling with all my bags (I have my handbag, my laptop, a ‘cooler’ with ice pack that holds my pumped milk for the day and a bag carrying the electric pump and bottles and Tupperware containing my already eaten lunch) when I heard a sweet voice ringing out from the dining room “hi Mummy! Did you have a good day?”. Didn’t matter if I had a crappy day or not, I certainly was feeling FINE then! Oh and I just remembered, I was washing up in the kitchen after making Bibou a ‘real’ (none of those fish fingers / nugget / hot dog quick meals that sometimes we resort to) meal of dark soya sauce chicken which she loves when Daddy said “come quick”. So I rushed in, and Daddy said to her “repeat what you just said Bibou” : Thank you Mummy for making me lunch. Oh man, did I melt there. She’d said it without any prompting or anything! It’s the rare times like these that makes parenting all worth while eh?

She’s still a very affectionate child. Loves her sister to bits, she just adores her; always wanting to hold her, cuddle her and hug her. If there’s one thing that would calm her down, that’s her baby sister! She gets upset if she’s doesn’t get to say good night to Seraphine. Look at all these pictures of both of them together. They are just soooo good together. Oh I love these pictures that was taken when all the 4 kids were here and Giselle. Fabulous!

Visit from Aunty Michelle

Sigh. It’s been way too long since I’ve managed to update the blog. It’s been crazy here both at work and at home. I’m also fighting with fatigue these days, trying to juggle the two, and finding a good balance between them. Something’s gotta give, and most of the time, it’s sleep…. Yes and the blog unfortunately! Boo hoo. (it’s funny though, how people often know that I’m really really busy at work when they don’t see an update on the blog. I really don’t update the blog during office hours you know…not always!)

Anyway, despite the long AND hard hours, work has been really interesting. I’m learning new things and my mind is being occupied (beats sitting at my desk staring and wondering what to do sometimes! Or just reading papers lol). The time passes quickly… way too quickly. I’m learning to be as organized as possible, but sometimes it’s not easy. What is really the hardest, is missing home and the girls. And missing out on them growing up. By the time I rush home, and really rush through the evening routine, (b/feed Seraphine while pumping at the same time, get Bibou’s dinner ready and ensure she’s eating everything (and not just the meat), get the two girls ready for their baths, bath time and then bed time), and of course, in between coaxing / telling / screaming at Bibou to do what she’s told, etc, there’s never time to really relax and really spend quality time with the girls. Daddy helps a lot with the routine of course. I’ll never make it without him. He deals a lot with Bibou, while I manage Seraphine. And the weekends now are just so shot! There is always something or other happening the past few weekends! Like for example, we had Aunty Michelle and Uncle Luc visiting us! Yippee what a treat. It was really good seeing them. They arrived on a Thursday evening and spent a long weekend with us. We were totally spoilt, as they’d bought lots of lovely yummy stuff for us, like cookies and sweets. Yum yum. We were so lucky. And the girls, oh Bibou was totally spoilt, as she received lots of wonderful books! Especially one that had a special attachment, it had a built-in ‘toy CD player’ with 4 special CDs (they were all plastic) that plays music while you read. Bibou absolutely LOVES this. Especially now that she’s gotten then hang of inserting the CD and playing. And.. and… this totally cracked us up, especially the first time Daddy and I witnessed this – Bibou starts dancing to the music. She makes up all these cute moves, has this rather intensive “look at me, I’m really pretty” look on her face, and does this ‘cluck cluck’ noise with her tongue. Oh yes, she’s her Daddy’s daughter. A real ham!! Hahahaha. I managed to snap a video of her dancing though it’s not the best one of her dancing.

Anyway, back to M’s visit. We had a really great time as we always do when they visit. I got to cook all our favorite meals, started with Beef Rendang and a sambal zuchinni stir-fry with tung hoon on Thursday. Over the next 3 days, I cooked Beef Hor Fun, chicken rice, jia jaing mein and topped it off with recellet. It was so much fun. We stayed up late (and paid for it dearly the next day – heck, the following week for me as I never recuperated from the lack of sleep) chatting and playing chor dai dee (and the three of them got progressively drunk!) Yes, it was lovely catching up with M & L! Oh and they have asked Bibou to be their flower girl at their wedding next year. Yippee!! I think she’d be really pleased… now I just have to go find a really lovely beautiful dress.

HEres the video of her dancing to her favorite CD player. Not one of her 'bestest' dance though.

Here's another one of her dancing to Angel.

My giggly angels

Have I mentioned it before? Recently, Bibou has turned into such a joy to be with. Finally, my sweet, giggly, thoughtful baby is back. Man that was a long 1 1/2 years of whining, moaning and stubborness (she gets that from Daddy!). She does lapse once in a while (she IS still a toddler too), but overall she's been great! And she's really funny, talkative too. She loves to gabble gabble gabble. She still is much stronger in French than English. Though you can tell she wants to.. but just can't find the words, so she'll make it all up. Vocab still really strong though. This evening, while I was in the kitchen making her dinner, she came up to me as said that I was really pretty tonight, that I had a pretty skirt on, and please 'spin'. lol. Yes, she's really into pretty dresses right now. She would get very excited if we say she can wear a pretty dress... she would choose the prettiest one too - her favorite right now is one with lots of petticoats underneath so that the dress is 'puffy'. She put wow once she has her dress on, and run to the mirror so that she can look at herself in the mirror and primp in front of the mirror. She'd do little curtseys and tell herself that she's really pretty and that she's got a pretty drerss. It is just hilarious to watch. Daddy and I were in stiches! Oh and she's into dancing now too. Kinda like 'ballet-ish' as she lifts her arms high in the air, and does these long slow sweeping moves with her arms. You can see some of these moves in the pictures of her in her angel / fairy dress up dress, which is now her favorite. My little sweet pea is getting all princessy on me.


She's also really sweet on her baby sister. She just adores her little sister and her favorite thing to do right now is to make her laugh... which is real easy 'coz Angel's just is soooo giggly. And she's got this infectuous squeal of laughter which we all love to hear. Bibou just loves to stand in front of her (when she's in her swing) and do funny antics for her, and Angel just often obliges, as she always does. It's so heartwarming to see the two girls together, Bibou's so sweet on her, does on her and I think quite protective over her. (It is my prediction that Angel will be the bully and Bibou the kind and gentle and patient one. But whatever the future is, it is my greatest hope that they will be really close as they grow up together and be best friends forever. It must be soooo good to have someone so close to you to love and share everything with you. And hopefully they'll guide each other.) You can tell from these pictures how caring and gentle she is with her baby sister; how she holds her and has a good hold around her. My angels looking after each other.



Angel's progress is astounding. Recently, she's been able to look at something and grab at it, and hold on to it (well, and stick it into her mouth! She sticks everything she can grab into her mouth, and when there's nothing to grab, she loves sucking her own fingers / hands). She's also learnt to grab her own feet. She's babbling quite a lot, saying vowel-like like 'mummmm'. She still does that chin jutting up thingy that I just adores. She wakes up really lovely too, she just coos and sucks her own hand until I come get her (though there are a few times when she grumbles as she's probably too hungry!). She's drooling quite a bit.. I'm guessing she's going to be teething soon. Sigh, fun times ahead! The past few months, since she was 3 months old has been just bliss! She's soooo sweet and responsive, without any problems at all. Makes one want to have another.... but then you remember that they turn into the terrible twos and threes!!


























Here's a vid of Bibou playing with Angel, and asking her to 'look at Daddy' for the picture (and she tries to pose for a pic too)!














































Here's a really dark video, so you can't see a lot of detail, but you can hear the squeals of delight coming from Angel... and who's making her so happy - her adoring sister!

I've been Meme!

No... it doesn't sound dangerous nor bad or even rude. What is it? Well, when I tried to look it up on Wiki, it came up with this whole techy non-answer (to me anyway) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme . But the best answer I could find is from my dear ole friend S of East meets West (who originally 'memed' me): It's like an internet 'tag' thingy. So here goes my first meme :

5 Things :

A. Found in my Room

1. Books, Books Books
2. Angel's smell (as she sleeps, poos, pees in our room)
3. Laundry waiting to be folded
4. Body lotions of all sorts as my skin's always so dry
5. Electric blanket as it can never be too warm for me in bed (much to the chagrin of DH who prefers it cool)

B. I have always wanted to

1. Open up a restaurant or caterering service
2. Cook and bake non-stop
3. Travel around the world
4. Spend a few weeks pampered in luxurious wonder like at a spa in Maldives
5. Read non-stop

C. Found in my Bag

1. My inhaler (for asthma)
2. Wallet with credit card
3. Phone that is always dead
4. Boutiques discount cards
5. Pen

D. Found in my Wallet

1. Credit cards
2. Picture of Bibou
3. Drivers licence
4. Health Insurance paper
5. Carte vital

E. I am currently into

1. Blogging!
2. Finding new recipes to try
3. Finding time to spend with the girls
4. Finding time for volunteer (MESSAGE and SCF)
5. Thinking about X'mas plans.

5 Candidates to Tag :

1. The daily life of a Moroccan/American family living outside of Paris
2. Little Josianne in Singapore
3. Paul Forlizzi
4. Parenting Joy
5. Latitia's site

BOO! Happy Halloween

It was a cold and dark night.... and so the story goes. LOL. Actually, it was a dark night, but wasn't that cold.... warmer that it had been the previous few nights, which was wonderful. The 12 degrees or so was most welcoming as it'd dipped down to low single digits! We've had the heat on, but not all the time as the girls have had this horrible cold which brought on this bad cough that kept the girls awake a couple of nights (and thus US awake!). It is funny though, how our ears are trained to hear what we're supposed to hear. Daddy only hears Bibou coughing / crying while I only hear Angel's!! We were so tired that we really didn't realize that the other had woken up. Anyway, yes, we keep the heat turned off some nights so that it wouldn't be too dry and cause them to cough.



So on halloween, we got the girls all dressed up in their costumes; Bibou in her Tigger cape (yes, Winnie the pooh theme) and Angel in a very adorable 'bear' nightie. Bibou was all excited when we were dressing them. Daddy had explained what was gonna happen, and I think it was the fact that she was all 'dressed up' that got her most. She was all giggly about Angel in her costume and thought that she looked adorable. She couldn't wait to get out of the door. We headed out to meet the 'gang' (our neighborhood street organizes this trick or treating for our streets, as T&T is still not quite popular yet) on the next street. However, as we got closer to the fab group of witches and ghouls (the kids were superbly made up), Bibou got really very very scared. She didn't want to go near any of the scary people and started whimpering that she wanted to go home. She jumped immediately into Daddy's arms. Things got a little worst when the other kids saw her and Angel and thought they were just too cute and wanted to cuddle them!!!!! Can you imagine for poor Bibou? Anyway, we kept her in our arms for a while (I swapped with Daddy) and tried to explain to her that it was all the neighbourhood kids that she knew, but dressed up. We also showed her that it was there was candy to get! For the first few houses, I had her on my shoulders and got the candy for her! All the other kids were really sweet on our girls (and as daddy said, we have some very maternal girls on our street. They were all so concerned about them, making sure that Bibou had her candy, that she wasn't too scared etc. They were making googoo eyes at Angel too, saying that they wanted to baby sit her!). After a while, Bibou really warmed up to it all (especially when she saw all the candy). And soon, she was shouting "les bon bons" with everyone (French version of trick or treat!). She also learnt how to squeeze to the front to get her share of her candy (I LOVE that pix on the right that shows a sea of black and then a tiny little orange cape on the right - that's my Bibou getting her candy). In fact, towards the last few houses, Bibou ran, I mean RAN to keep up with the older kids. It was such a funny sight, one hand swinging her little green bag, and the other holding on to her Tigger 'head'. My Bibou.







Oh yes, her face is all cut up, (though is much better now, is this picture of her when she first fell), because she was running around the school yard with her hands in the pockets (a new habit of sorts that we can't seem to break) and of course, when she fell, she couldn't break her fall. It looked really bad the first few days, her eyes were all swollen and I was really upset. But she was all right in the end.