Playing at Marche, 313 Somerset

After the most harrowing and horrendously tiring Christmas shopping at Robinsons, Ethan and I are having a nice pit stop at Marche.

Mummy is sick so just us boys went out. Lunch was at a jam packed food in Centrepoint after which we went back to Robinsons where Ethan slept all the way through the 30 min queue to pay the cashier and was a good boy all day. We found a great lunch set at Marche. This is a much needed respite after all my emotional energy was taken up battling crowds, watching Ethan, and gawking at high prices! This Marche has a great play area and being right at Somerset MRT with great $7.90 meal and drink, I think I will come back here...

Ethan "Armstrong" Liew

Ethan is really getting into cycling and is thus becoming more and more like Daddy! It's funny how he is scared to climb high things in the playground but he is undaunted by speed, balance, and steering. He's taken to his balance bike really well so much so that 2 year old Talia is really keen to have a go even though she's too short! Daddy is looking on eBay for a good quality 16" bicycle (pedals this time) preferably with pedal brakes. Trek Mystic 16 anyone?

Mr Preppy

Ethan looks ready for some British prep school with this shirt and his studious look! He had just finished writing DADDY and is now drawing a daddy.

Goo with Gumption

Cousin Josie is in town and the kids are having the greatest fun with home made "play-dough." It really is true that the cheapest home made stuff is the most precious and memorable which makes the extra effort required most worth it!

Good Boy & Good Girl Chart

Here's the latest addition to our efforts at Toilet training! Been tired of washing pee-filled pants (& socks & shoes) so we have put up a Good Boy & Good girl chart to reward Good boys & girls who pee & poo in the right place! They get a star for each successful pee & after 5 stars they can get a little snack reward! Fortunately they love it and we have already had 15 stars for Ethan in 3 days! Big change from the horrible tantrums some pple threw when it was time to go toilet.... only to pee in his pants minutes later......
Hopefully this will be the beginning of a wonderful new chapter ofless diapers & happier toilet experiences! Thanks to Roy for helpingto print the nice colour photos of what Good Boys & Girls do!

Gong Gong's 70th Birthday

Gong Gong is 70! We celebrated with the family with Auntie Ruth & Josie, (Grand) Uncle Donald & Auntie Junie, travelling from Sydney for the birthday dinner.
Then we took a week off in Phuket for our own celebration time together! This was one of the nice dinners we had on a (steep!) cliff overlooking the sea & sunset.
The cousins had a nice time together too. Ethan took this photo of the girls while they were engrossed in picking leaves.
They loved the nice beach just in front of our hotel and spent half a morning building sandcastles in the sand. Ethan particularly enjoyed the building and made an "Octopus Castle" with his favourite octopus sand mould.

The girls enjoyed it too although it took a little warming up for them to get into it.....

Fortunately grandparents are very patient people and helped the little ones to explore the beach.....

.....but the pool was the main highlight of the holiday! EVERYONE enjoyed splashing, jumping, playing and even swimming! Here is Ethan as he catches her sister in the "Crocodile Game" where she jumps into the water and into one of our arms (without her floaties). It was great to see Talia's fearlessness, Ethan's confidence in catching his sister and the sisterly trust she had in him. We were also amazed to see the fruits of Talia's swimming lessons as she paddled effortlessly around the small pool with her floats & occasional face in the water! Was nice to see her love of water & fearlessness rub off on Ethan and a little on Josie as they decided they could do it too! (well, without the face in the water bit!)

All in all, it was a great week of family bonding and catching up with family & cousins we don't often get the chance to spend time with. What a great way to celebrate Gong Gong's Birthday!

Kid's Birthdays

Ethan and Talia are now 4 and 2! This year, Ethan articulated that he wanted to celebrate his birthday with his classmates "with a cake, and then everyone will stand near me!" So we had a simple celebration in his class and he clearly enjoyed the princely treatment for the day! All his friends crowded around him to admire his cake and wish him a happy birthday.....no wonder he is looking forward to his 5th birthday already!
We decided to celebrate both their birthdays together as they are only 2 weeks apart, and share mostly the same friends at this stage. Here is the birthday Boy & Girl looking very focused on their birthday cake lovingly and freshly baked by Ah Mah (it was still warm when it came!) It's in the shape of a horseshoe so both got their own corners to blow out their own candles!

Daddy was away on Talia's actual birthday so we celebrated simply at home with some candles on birthday muffins followed by a fun-filled outing to West Coast Park. Sometimes the simple things are often the best and the kids had a great time playing with the sand and each other there. After playing out in the hot afternoon sun, they got a special ice-cream treat to cool off! Daddy happened to call us from the US while we were having ice-creams and Ethan was so excited he called him "Ice-Cream Daddy"!

Discovering Our Backyard

We've been exploring our new neighbourhood and found that One Fullerton & the Marina Bay area is a short 5 min bus ride from our home! It's a really nice place to stroll around with the kids or just sit and have a nice coffee or brunch.

We didn't think we would be living this close to such iconic symbols of Singapore!

Talia's a little more appreciative of the scenery than her brother is. He looked quite unimpressed -- until we found some amazing automatic doors in the underpass that open & close once you step into the range of its sensor...... You should have seen the glee on their faces when they realised the power they now unleashed on the auto doors! Best backyard in the World!

Little Tiger

We have a little Tiger in our lush jungle. She is small but can roar quite sweetly.

Tigers have been quite popular among our critters of late. They had a great time watching the tigers at the zoo some weeks ago and Talia 'chatted' with them by roaring cheerfully back at them! She seemed to be amazed with how big the real ones were and said "Big!" with outstreched arms to emphasize her point!

We also took Tiger Airways for our recent family trip to Phuket and the kids were thrilled to be in an airplane with a tiger on it! Now every plane they see is "Tiger Aeroplane!".......They probably think that Tiger is the best airline in the world!!!

Swim Classes

Most kids enjoy the great fun of splashing around in pools but when I saw the sparkle in Talia's eyes when we brought her swimming, I just knew she was a natural water baby! Here she is splashing around in Goo Ma's nice pool......

So we signed her up for Swimming classes at Jane Marsden's Swim School and she's really taken to it very well. In fact, the lessons are the highlight of her week and she loves going swimming every Monday! I was quite amazed she was hardly fussed about getting her face wet or even going "under" the water. (although we had to remind her to close her mouth!) Even her swim teacher is quite amazed at how fearless she is with water and its really a joy to see her in the water. Here she is happily "lying down" on the water (which is not easy to get most kids to do!)

I'm really glad we brought her for these lessons..... will have to work out some time to do the same for Ethan soon. He enjoys the water but is a tad more cautious about water than his sister!

Sausages and Rosti

We had a surprisingly nice evening out recently when Ethan accompanied me to the office in the evening. We visited a friend in the evening and I asked him whether he wanted sausages for dinner. "Yeah sausages!" came the enthusiastically affirmative reply. So off we headed to a small stall in Woodlands that serves great sausages and rosti. We had french fries for an appertizer and a great father-son time for both of us!

First Time at the Dentist

It has been quite some time since we've been to the dentist...about one year overdue. It was also due to the fact that we were looking to change our dentist as our previous one wasn't very child friendly and we wanted Ethan to have a good visit. At just the right time, we found out about one of Renata's church members so off we went...

Mister Dentist was really good! First, he met Ethan in the waiting room where the little fella was playing with all the cool toys. There Mr. Dentist "counted" his teeth using the familiar 1 to 10 that toddlers know so well. Of course he wasn't really counting, but making Ethan feel comfortable with something familiar. After this was done, he brought Ethan and sat him in the dental chair. It was a fascinating world for Ethan with the myriad of gadgets, lights and various computer screens around. He was allowed to press the buttons to lower the chair and down he went into the lying down position. Ethan got kids sunglasses to protect his eyes. "Hands up," Mr. Dentist said. Ethan stretched his hands above his head which were promptly held and used to pull him up to the right position. He looked so funny in that big chair we were stifling our laughter.


The firm yet sensitive-to-toddler instructions continued and we were amazed at how readily Ethan opened his mouth and let Mr. Dentist examine all his teeth. When it came time to polishing, he let Ethan press the button so that he could "control" the sound and not let it frighten him. He allowed Ethan to choose which toothpaste he would use. "Cars" was the final selection after which Mr. Dentist used it to polish Ethan's fingernail so he could feel what it was like before it went into this mouth. "Taste it now" he said, and Ethan did. "Does it taste good?" A quick nod was sufficient affirmation and the dental visit continued!

So it was a superb visit overall and so much better than we imagined! We can certainly recommend this dentist for your kids. He was gentle yet also firm at times so there was no nonsense from Ethan throughout! Ethan even left with a toy. "That really was fun Ethan!" I said. "Do you want to come back again?" A grin and a nod signified that was indeed an unqualified success!

Friends of the Zoo

We are now Friends of the Zoo! And so is Goo Ma too! This means we get to go to the Zoo unlimited times for a year. It's a great place for a family outing and the kids love going there. We also get free tram rides on weekdays which is great on the legs and lots of fun for the kids!


There's nothing like getting up close to the animals and here they are happily watching the turtles swimming in the tank......

Talia was thrilled to see the monkeys, butterflies and bats in the rainforest enclosure.......most of the butterflies she had seen before were on the pages of her books!

And here's the latest addition to the zoo's impressive bat collection!

Of course the main highlight of most kids visiting the Zoo has got to be the water playground! It's one of the best water playgrounds around and no one ever gets tired of it. Here is Talia flashing a spunky grin before changing up into her swimsuit for a splashing good time.....

Our Friends of the Zoo card gets us a discount on the F&B outlets there too. Look how far a little Ben & Jerries goes in making a holiday feel complete!

Father & Sons of the Zoo

We're having a great time at the zoo this afternoon. I roused a sleepy little boy from his post-lunch nap to bring him here. We watched the elephant show, rode the tram and played in the water playground. After the water fun, I bought popcorn chicken for him and he said, "Mmmm... Yummy food!" about 5 times while eating it. He was so happy, and he didn't even know i was saving the french fries for last...

Just before i took this picture of us he was sitting in my lap, turned to look up at me and said, "I like daddy time with me." it was so sweet and solicited that I asked him to repeat it just to make sure I wasn't imagining things!

Lots of Learning

We sometimes don't really know what Ethan does at school (he's still in nursery class) and often wonder what he actually gets out of spending so much time there as he can't really tell us what he is learning and we only get to meet his teachers & see his work much later in the term. Sometime, though, we do get clues into some significant progress in his learning progress -- here is a funny clip of Ethan breaking out exuberantly into a recent Chinese song he learnt from school......




While he was in the mood, he also discussed some of the recent Mathematical skills he had accomplished. Quite entertaining.......maybe we can get him to tutor his sister too!