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.

Happy Birthday Bibou

Where does the time go?! It's been almost 3 weeks since my darling Bibou's birthday and I've not been able to post anything on the blog at all! It's been just crazy at work. I barely have time to breathe! What little 'extra' time I've had has been spent on trying to catch up on much needed sleep actually or just spending time with the girls. They've changed sooo much, but that's another post :). Yes, this post is about little Bibou's 3rd birthday which was a couple of weeks ago. We were very very fortunate.... the weather was just gorgeous! It was clear, sunny and not too cold. We were able to hold it in the garden! Which was good as we had a number of kids, rowdy ones too, and I don't think our little home would have appreciated it (if it could have spoken of course... the little old creaky crooked house).



The day started out well. She woke up in great form (as she does most days now), singing "happy birthday to me" all day. I'd spent the whole morning baking baking baking. She even helped me a little. It was great fun. She even went down for her nap without a problem and woke up just prior to the first guests arriving. She was a little grouchy upon waking up, but cheered up really quickly after that I brought her to the window and showed her the garden, which we'd decorated while she was napping. I'd gone out and bought loads of party stuff... all in the theme of "Winnie-the-pooh'... this was to accompany some of the many stuff that mahmah and kongkong had bought for her while they were here last. We had Winnie plates, cups, paper napkins and goody bags. I'd bought more, noise makers plus table clothes, banner (that said "The party is here" = and we hung it up on the front gate). We'd blown lots of balloons and hung it all over the garden. The only thing that wasn't Winnie was her birthday cake for the day! That was a Mickey Mouse, and generously done by our great friends the Molas! They made a great mickey mouse cake, and some cupcakes. I'd also made some brownies, little rice crispies cakes and also little honey cornflake cakes, and A. bought her famous chocolate chip cookies. talk about sugar high :). Oh but they were soooooo good.



Bibou was all excited to see her good friends, especially Emma and Kealan who arrived first with the cakes. She sat down nicely with them to have her fav cupcakes. And then everyone arrived soon after that. After the great suggestion of K., we quickly made up the 'pass the parcel' game for the kids. (It was funny, with K and K and me sitting in the dining room trying to wrap paper over and over again!). Bibou hadn't played the game before but she got the hang of it really quickly. Daddy had a hard time trying to make sure that all the kids got a prezzie (ie that the parcel landed on each kid). We broke for the birthday cake, which I had a hard time getting the sparklers going... and when it did, it burned down very quickly! But Bibou managed to 'blow' them out, together with her Mickey Mouse candle on her cake. Everyone had a great tea. Then came the prezzies. She loved that part..... and was really good at tearing at them (and saying thank you to everyone nicely). She was really sweet though, at my point, I saw her going up to Dan and giving him a present (a small one though lol) to open as he wanted one too. Everyone was very generous; she received great prezzies. The theme this year seems to be Barbies - she got a number of dolls, and some dress up fairies that she absolautely adores. A hit with all the kids was... the TMX (Tickle Me Extreme). An Elmo doll that laughs hysterically. (Mahmah and Kongkong gave that to her).



Next, we wanted to distribute the goody bag (which I'd placed a few small toys, plus the usual candy, and balloons) so we had all the kids sit in a circle and promised them a goody bag if they sang a song. Bibou wasn't the first, but she put her hand up after the first song! and sang too! We were soooo surprised... but she was in top form that day. All too soon, everyone had to leave, but we all had a great time.



The next day, Bibou brought another big cake to school, to celebrate her birthday with her classmates. I made that cake! Wasn't as nice as her Mickey Mouse one, but she liked it too... and so did all her classmates as there wasn't any left!



Happy birthday my precious girl. You're growing up way too fast for me.