The little chungkin turned ONE on Saturday, over the long Easter weekend. Hip hip hooray!!!

To celebrate, we threw a lovely themed party in the comfort of our home from one of his (and mine) favourite books – THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR – and invited as many friends (another great excuse to see our friends) to share our joy of being parents for a year!

We had so much fun! 

As co-host, I didn’t have any hands or time to snap as many photos as I would have liked, so here’s some teaser snaps taken during the preps till I get my hands on more decent photos of party day.

{the centrepiece was a simple DIY caterpillar that was put together on the eve of the party}

{personalized take home favour bags}

{at my most art + craft mode yet}

{our birthday gift to Liam – a book filled with memories and moments of his first year}

{on birthday morning}

More details & visuals of the birthday party on the blog, soon!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

And now that we’ve ushered in the year of the water snake, we can all be excused from ‘eating snake’ at work this year (hur hur hur, I know, c-o-r-n-y).

‘Tis another festival to be jolly again – with lots of feasting, snacking, giving/collecting red packets, catching up with family you hardly see with for 15 days long!

My highlight this CNY has definitely got to be this:

{preparing our first red packet for our own little one instead of just preparing for others’ little ones}

And my favourite Chinese New Year photo so far (day 1) has got to be this:

{the chungkin and his por por}

I’m thankful no one has looked at the protruding-ramnants-of-the-pregnancy belly and asked when’s the next one due yet.

And that almost everyone we’ve bumped into has offered to be the 5-minutes-babysitter as much as possible so that the Bo & I could do some decent catching up and chowing with other relatives during our house visits.

And that I can sound ah lian and say “HUAT AR!” to almost everyone without sounding uncouth.

You’re always in my heart

From early in the mornin’ til it’s dark

I gotta see your sweet, sweet smile everyday

2 months ago, I received a reminder letter from ICA to renew the passport because it expired in June 2012. Now the application for passport online (or anything for that matter) is always the easy part. But producing a recent passport photo – which meant finding and making my way down to a photo studio with baby-in-tow and then scanning the photo to the computer was not.

So imagine my delight when I found out that there was a IC Photo application available for download to my phone! And instead of doing a self-portrait for legit reasons, I decided to try the app on the little man instead. I needed to make a passport for him anyway and no way was I going to pay $20 for 5 photos at a studio with the risk of getting little man in a frustrated mood or not being happy with how any of them turned out. Not when I was not desperate enough and not when I knew that I was probably the best suited to be taking little man’s passport photograph since I could make him smile or look in my direction at will. Until this happened…

{Epic fail attempt # 9}

He was looking at everywhere else except the camera because each time I covered my face with the iPhone, he couldn’t see me  (doh!) so naturally he looked elsewhere.

Didn’t help that my feeble attempt of trying to create a white background was indeed… feeble. He was into the phase of learning to sit up, and there was always the option of photoshopping it with a white background had it all gone well. Although I did come across someone posting a passport photo of her baby boy which was accepted (by ICA) despite using a messy cloth white background. Perhaps they know how difficult it is to capture perfect looking poses when it comes to our wriggly little creatures.

So project passport photo didn’t work out and was on hold.

Until 6 weeks later when Liam turned 7 months old last week.

I was capturing his monthly milestone snapshots when I realized how quickly his 2 little pearlies were growing out. I liked his toothless grin better so I wanted to capture a passport photo of that if possible.

And so I did, for 3 mornings in a row – when natural light and the chungkin’s mood was at its best. And by the 20th snapshot when I sang a song before quickly putting the phone in front of him to capture the shot, Liam started to stay still. Yay! He would fidget a little but for most of the shots, he managed to stay still for 3 seconds. I wished the application could work a little faster at capturing the shots though. There was so many golden moments when I ‘lost’ that good-enough shot because the application was counting down 3,2,1.

And because Liam’s cot sheets were whiter than the walls in my home, I decided to take all photos with him lying own in his cot. But because I was taking from the side of the cot and not above the cot, I had challenges aligning his head and shoulders without fussing him too much. Thank goodness for photo editing tools for very slight adjustments although I didn’t need them in the end :)

There were also moments he thought I was playing peek-a-boo with him and then he’ll let out a long trial of giggles and then go “oooohhh ahhhhh” as if to say “mommy, let’s play again”.

By the 3rd morning, I ended up with a bunch of photos with all sorts of expression. And as much as it was trying to nail that one shot, it was much fun to look at them over and over again! Some had him smiling waaaay too much – out (not accepted). Some had him looking too serious – out (not accepted). Some had him looking elsewhere – out (not accepted). Some had him opening his mouth – out (not accepted).

But out of the 50+ shots, I managed to find one which looked as professional as those taken in the studio. And I submitted that one.

The last 8 weekends have been nothing short of amazing. With the mil out of town and at her elder daughter’s, we’ve basically had the whole place to ourselves and have been doing a lot of family activities around the house.

We’ve spent a lot of time in the living room area, converted part of it to a permanent play space for the little one. De-cluttered and re-arranged stuff as we liked, cooked whatever we wanted, was as biosterious as we wanted to and boy, it was such wonderful moments materializing how living on our own would ever be like. If only. And though it was only for 8 short weeks – we basked in every moment of it.

Suffice to say, we also grew as a family of 3. It was a different experience managing household budgets & groceries shopping and it gave us a really good sense of how expenditure was utilized. We had transparency where bills were concerned and even managed to save some money in the process. We could be candor with each other about everything.

So last weekend, to mark the final weekend of our family freedom fun, we decided to head to the park for an afternoon walk. It was lovely to see the outdoorsy nature of the Bo surface again after taking a 2 months rest to care for his lower back injury and little Liam getting all excited when we went to  the playground – he actually slipped off the slide!

Taking care of a bub is definitely one of the fastest way to kill time.
With hours and days going by so quickly although my daily ‘routine’ evolves around 4 simple functions of feeding, changing, napping, wiping/bathing; I’ve barely time to groom the strays on my brows or catch up on my drama marathon.

The husband commented that it would be Christmas in 6 months’ time. For a moment I thought he was joking, after all he’s always quick to remind me how Christmas is another 11 months away whenever I sing christmas jingles during the car rides in January (I can’t help it, 25 days of Christmas ain’t enough for me).

Oh golly, has half of 2012 gone by already?

Meanwhile, in pictures:

{ our 2nd family photo apart from the one taken on the day little man was born }

{during one of the night feeds with daddie}

{weighing in @ 5.7 kilos at the pead’s}

{babysitting someone else’s kid for the day}

{a photo with baby K at Singapore Motherhood baby fair}

{godma comes to visit}

{drunk}

{king of mama’s world}

{the day the thumb was faster than the dummy}

Our little chungkin,

4 fridays ago, you were delivered in the world.

it’s unbelievable how much joy and love you’ve brought into our hearts & life

and even more amazing, the bond you’ve created within our cozy family.

Daddy is now on whatsapp only because he looks forward to receiving photo updates from mommy every single day.

And mommy, she has suddenly become a lighter sleeper because your coos and stirs matter more than her beauty sleep

The moment you have a wet or dirty diaper actually delights us for the time being (not the changing part though), that we know you are eating & growing well.

You’re utterly cute each time you give that orgasmic smirk of satisfaction after every feed,

and your burp, we actually mute our television and mobile phones to hear that golden sound.

Those tiny hands that seem to always find their ways out of the tight swaddle, we call them your signature move,

and that “ooh” pout you make, always tickles us.

You’re growing so quickly, our dear son.

And while we can’t wait to have future conversations with you,

thought we’d capture these shots of you…

to remind us of how tiny you once were.

the folds on your little body

the 20-sleeping hours you used to have.

We love you so much, Liam.

On Saturday, the Bo & I had a maternity shoot to capture the final moments of our pregnancy journey.

It was a birthday gift from a very special someone (thank you again), and while I didn’t think I would dare to bare the belly in front of the lens (I won’t even wear a bikini pre-pregnancy &  took some getting used to when I had my first glance of these preview photos) and the Bo thinking that it was probably a waste of money since he could have captured the belly using whatever photographer skills he possessed; we were glad we went ahead with it anyway because upon seeing a preview during our photos selection process after the shoot, we realized that we now had our very first set family photos captured. Encapsulating the joy, love, gratitude & blessing we have for baby chungkin #1 – as we progress from couple hood to family.

The Bo especially has never been a fan of posed portraits, which is why we never had any pre-wedding photos taken as we much prefer spontaneity instead. But seeing how he willingly agreed to have photos taken with us on Saturday, showing either his protective dad-to-be side or goofy little expressions in most of the shots made my heart beat faster & melt at the same time. He definitely looked every bit ready to be a dad as much as I think I am to be a mom.

To parenthood! … the beginning of a beautiful journey and to a smooth, healthy,  fantastic & blessed labour.

So yeah, I had a bad day, shitty to be exact. I woke up feeling miserable and misery was made worse with my mil’s insensitive comments.

But what finally cleared the dark clouds away and gave me that silver lining was the visit to the gynae. I got a little frustrated from trying to call to check on appointments availability. And when I finally get through on the 18th call, the nurse told me to come for a walk-in hearing how bad I sounded, and so I did.

And thank the Lord for making my day – I didn’t have to wait long. There were 3 patients in front of me when I walked in, nurses were sympathetic & did their best to slot me in (I was told that it helped that I chose to walk in on a not-too-busy day too), I got to see my gynae within 15 minutes of wait time and the best highlight – I got to see b.chungkin on the new scan monitor (gynae just opened his private practice this week), hear his heartbeat loud & clear; and got 3 shots of chungkin’s face in 3D thanks to my gynae (and the saleslady beside him who was guiding him how) fiddling with his new machine and exploring new functions – all at the usual scan price, which is really affordable. :)

Although I’m still physically sick (I was told I’d just have to sit this out until the bug leaves), emotionally I’m one happy mama. Praise the Lord! Hooray.

And instead of the usual belly shot, here’s a shot of b.chungkin sporting his daddy’s nose (hopefully an improved one :p)

{Top photo shows his eyes closed, right side of photo is covered by his hand and amnio fluid. Bottom photo shows his eyes opened}

Seeing him on the monitor for a good 7 minutes definitely made all my earlier frustrations go away!

I love you my baby chungkin. Thanks for staying strong, and reassuring mommy with your power-packed punches/kicks throughout the day. Daddy & I can’t wait to meet you & embrace you in our arms come April 2012.

{taking a picture with my lovely mom, wearing loef’s toga maxi dress which could fit me nicely!}

One for the road just before we do our party hopping on Christmas eve!

xo.

Eye candy of my little cutie of a godson that came in the mail last week…

…which makes me wonder how baby chungkin will look like (definitely none of ‘em luscious golden curls and german heritage) now that we know baby’s a boy!

p/s: the only niece in the Bo’s side of the family has expressed a wee bit of disappointment upon knowing that baby chungkin #1 is a boy, and that she will still remain the only girl for the time being till there’s another baby in the making. :x Amazing how expressive kids are these days!