Improving Key Relationships Be a supportive wife. Spend more time with parents and sisters. Be a better BFF. And most importantly, give my all to be a great mother.

More passive income Get an existing apartment and get rent!

Better saving habits - Money grows money.

Learn Golf - By the order of the BFF. yawns

Learn/Do something new every month - Tall order but I’ll try and see how it goes. I’m definitely psyched! 12 new skills!

Friends rise and fall, like the tides. Lovers conquered, lovers jilted. You cannot choose your family, which is also why they are always being taken for granted. This is what I’m coming at. Always make family your priority fools. A happy family easily fills up your happiness quota. And you don’t have to worry when your mum is going to cheat on you.

So some time ago we started a tradition of having Christmas Dinner at home. At the beginning, all the food were bought from the stores, cooked and ready to be served. Over the years we started cooking our own.

However, being the kitchen virgin, I’m always in charge of peripheral tasks like ambience, music and table setting (which are very important too).

A week before Christmas, I started cooking. Oh what fun it is to cook, on a one burner open stove. So this Christmas was soooo fun for me. I made Penne a la Vodka and Pot Roast Beef. Pam made Salmon with Agrodolce Blueberries. And Pearleen made Pecan Pie and Chocolate Lava Cake.

As you can see, table setting is Zzz compared to last year.

That’s because I delegated the task to the wrong person. Men.

That’s fine, we had a merry time anyway, I hope your Christmas was very merry too!

Written on 20 Dec

You started laughing….and I’m the first and only person who can make you laugh. That achievement is unbeatable! For you’ll see, happiness is everything.

Everybody else is trying, I know.

You inspired many of our friends to want to make babies. Uncle Jason & Auntie Carol’s baby are arriving soon and a few other friends are trying. I hope they all get their little bundle of joy very soon!

We shaved your head recently because your hair has been falling due to my hormones. You finally look like a baby.

You spent the last couple of weeks with your family from Australia, they absolutely adore you! They had the funniest reaction when they first met you. Audrey squealed and bounced all over the place, Leonard poked your cheek and exclaimed “This is unreal.” He even carried you around barefooted because he was afraid of tripping over his flip flops. And I dubbed your EeMaMa “The Beanie Hogger”.

The current Beanie Hogger title belongs to Grandpa.

You lucky little one, love is certainly something you haven’t and won’t ever lack.

You’ve learnt how to sit, Tripod style.

Mummy has gotten back to the swing of things at work and the separation isn’t as bad as I thought because I get to see you using a service that my friend provides. Also, we have Mama & Yaya looking after you so we’re not worried at all.

You know how to wriggle to my side for night feeds, I always find you trying to burrow your head into my body. One time, I was facing away from you and I woke up to the sensation of you burrowing into my back, far away from where I usually put you. Wriggly little cutie!

I no longer keep track of the times you wake up at night for milk because I’m not fully awake anyway. I wish someone would record our night feeding manoeuvres so I know what is happening.

You sleep on your side, facing me. And even though I alternate between sleeping on the left or right side of the bed. I’d still flip you at least once in the middle of the night or I’d feel uncomfortable for you.

I never like sleeping. Every night, I need to read articles in Wikipedia to ease the boredom that is trying to sleep. But I now look forward to bedtime, because I can reach over to kiss your chubby cheeks whenever I want.

The best place in the world is wherever you are.

Love, Mummy.

Sorry, not selling! :x

_”The iPad mini is the best tablet to get and lets be honest, it’s way better than the full sized iPad for nearly everyone. I’d even go so far as to say that the full sized iPad is plain obscene after using the mini.

I’m embarrassed to say this because I’ve been part of the problem by not talking enough about the heft. But the truth is that we’ve all been overlooking the iPad’s weight because everything else was good about it. It’s not anyone’s fault-it’s physics and trade offs that make a 10-inch tablet weigh this much when its made of these materials with a battery life this long. It was the best tablet for most, because it was the only one to get with iOS and its amazing library of apps and great hardware. But I can’t say the heft is ok anymore. You didn’t hold it like a magazine, which is the dream of a tablet, because it weighed as much as coffee tablet book or a small telephone book. You can agree or disagree, but it’s indisputable that the mini is a better hold because you don’t have to grip it like a steering wheel or like an underpowered circus strongman. And what good is a mobile gadget if its hard to carry and hold?”_ - {Source}

Exactly! That’s what I keep saying. iPads are obscenely bulky. Unless they have the computing power of a laptop. I would never consider.

Resolution 2012 // Apartment. Wedding. Baby.

The Last month of 2012, seems like yesterday when we ring in the new year. 2012 is one of those years where I felt like years has gone by because so much happened… yet those “years” went by so fast you wonder where all the time has gone.

Still fresh in my mind, the first day of 2012, we bought a pregnancy kit in the morning and…

My life changed. And there you go, one of my three resolutions of the year checked itself out the first day. Now who’s a Go-Getter yo?!

The rest, you know. I need to stop talking about my baby so much, I’m beginning to annoy myself.

Then the wedding. We got married in 2010, but we didn’t hold a traditional Chinese wedding. Last year, we booked Raffles Hotel for April so I was well on my way to fulfilling this, then I got pregnant and I didn’t want to stress myself out in my first trimester so we cancelled our booking. Resolution Fail due to bad timing.

Lastly, an apartment. I didn’t think this is going to happen when I did my mid-year resolution check, but circumstances changed, an opportunity appeared and I took the leap. What makes it easier is that I regret all the other times when I could have should have would have put money into a property but didn’t, and missed out when the value eventually went up (up to 40%!).

Haven’t felt so productive my whole life! So what’s next?

These are merely foundations for my plans ahead. You know…

Nothing makes you manage your income better like financing a mortgage loan. Nothing makes you plan for the future like having a baby.

Resolutions 2013 in the making. Can hardly wait to get started.

Winter Wonderland. {Source}

I feel quite touched! And I went back to my old blog to see what kind of nonsense I wrote, plenty. Now I understand why my Mum always say I’m full of nonsense.

And to answer your question, I will try to write more because there are so many moments I want to capture now that Bean is here. I took many pictures and videos of him but they can never capture how I felt at the moment.

Thanks, nice to hear that I’ve changed. It’s like once upon a time, we believe the universe revolves around us, then we realised we’ve got the whole astronomical system wrong. We are nowhere near the centre of the Universe and we revolve around the Sun instead. Our perspectives and beliefs changed.

Beanie’s my Sun!

And he popped out after 12! 18 August Baby!

I had C-section and was completely out because I was under GA instead of epidural so I don’t remember him coming out and he had to wait for me to wake up before I can hold him. :(

And since I had to be put under GA, my husband couldn’t be in the room with me.

If I was under epidural, I would have been awake and my husband allowed in the theatre. In retrospect, I should have asked for the epidural earlier but I didn’t know Russ would be so fast and furious.

And yes, it’s very dream-like because I sniffed too much oxygen!

PS: If you’ve not gone through labour or is currently pregnant, I think the following post will not interest you.

I had a C-Section surgery scheduled on 24 August 2012. The date was picked after consulting the gynaecologist and a geomancer. I was supposed to go on maternity a week before and planned to vegetate at home until delivery.

Turns out Russell had his own plans.

My contractions started on 17 August evening, when I was in office writing my away from office auto-response. It wasn’t obvious, could have been Braxton Hicks, a false contraction.

Soon after I started shedding mucus plug. Another sign of labour.

By 7 pm, the contractions became mildly painful. I paged for my doctor and she told me to go directly to the labour ward.

I dilly-dallied at home, packed my hospital bag and told Bun to come back from dinner (I didn’t go out for dinner because I was feeling uncomfortable). We checked into hospital at about 9 pm.

By 10 pm, the contractions were coming in once every 4 minutes, stronger each time.

They didn’t take me seriously in the beginning because I wasn’t showing much emotions. They asked me to rate my pain but hello pain is subjective!? Nevertheless, I think I rated an 8.

They then hooked me up to an equipment that measure strength of contractions. They told me 127 was the maximum so far and confident that my contractions weren’t too bad. Turns out my contractions were going up to 120.

I believe knowing the strength of my contractions have some psychological effect on my pain experience. I decided that I couldn’t take the pain anymore and asked for oxygen. I also decided to be more theatrical about my pain so they will take me seriously.

The oxygen didn’t really help, just made me really drowsy.

Then there was a pop and water gushed out from below. My waterbag broke. I was like, “OK. Now, it’s really gonna hurt.” I started to panic and told Bun to send for the nurse. They started preparing to send me to the operation theatre. By then, my contractions were killing me, one prolong stab at a time. Yeah I imagined it’s like someone stabbing you in the stomach and twisting the knife while smiling menacingly. According to the Bible, that someone is God.

Then the following series of events happened, since I was already high from oxygen, they appear in my memory in a fuzzy dreamlike shroud.

• I put up one finger and announced to the room that I’m going to have just ONE kid.

• I remember thinking “I’m not supposed to go through labour !@#@$, what’s the point of scheduling a C-section when I’m in labour !@#$!”

• I started begging for epidural, my arms flailed around until I grabbed someone beside me and begged her for epidural.

• I heard my doctor saying it’s too late for epidural because I’m already dilating at 5 cm, which is more than halfway through and the epidural will take at least 20 mins to take effect. She said she will put me under general anaesthesia instead and I think I rolled my eyes at the obvious suggestion and went “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes…”

• They gave me oxygen with added painkillers at the meantime and I started drifting off to sleep thinking it was anaesthesia and that when I wake up, this nightmare will be over and I can finally see my baby. BUT I woke up to another contraction and felt so incredibly cheated I would have flipped a table if I could.

Then I blanked out.

I woke up in the recovery room with Bun grinning at me. I reached for my tummy and it felt strangely empty. I remember being really concerned about the time, because I wanted to give birth after 12, on 18 August.

They wheeled me to my ward and after a while brought my baby to me. I remember taking pictures, feeding Russell and not much else. Which is really anti-climax I know! But honestly, the hours after delivery were really fuzzy. Things only became clearer later that day.

This ends my delivery story. You can ask me more questions with the ask link on the left!

We all agree that the winning dish is Skirt’s Signature Skirt Steak, which is also the cheapest Wagyu steak on the menu (yay!). According to my carnivorous friends, it is comparable to Morton’s. They will go back for this steak even though the other dishes we ordered are ordinary.

Definitely recommend Morton’s! Apart from good steaks, their desserts are stunning and the service is top-notched. Makes me a happier person after dining there.

Thank you. 170cm or 5’6ft.

You smile readily at strangers and toys with smiley faces.

You love to grumble with your baby language and it is hilarious, so we let you grumble longer.

Your pout is a perfect :( . It is also unfortunately hilarious, so we let you pout longer.

You are sleeping longer and deeper, which Mommy appreciates the most.

You gravitate towards my body at night, and you sleep best when you’re glued to my body.

You’ll specific about sleeping positions and you’d squirm around until you’re locked into a position you like.

You like singing, but I have to tell you there’s more shouting than singing.

You don’t cry often and only do so when we ignore your grumbles, which we tend to do because it’s soooooo cute!

You do not enjoy tummy time. You prefer to sit.

You started grabbing things, we saw you learn that skill last night. You looked intently at your fingers as you open and close them. I touched your knuckles and you grabbed my finger, you were looking at the process with this bemuse expression on your face.

12 weeks also means that Mommy has to go back to work. This past few weeks, I was especially sad in the afternoon because I know I won’t be able to spend your afternoons with you after I go back to work. But I know you’d be in the good hands of Mama and Yaya.

While you used to sleep till 8, you now wake up when I wake up at 6.30 and refuses to go back to sleep. I read that babies can pick up on their parents emotions. Can you tell that I’m sad to leave you baby!?

Don’t worry, you now have the biggest place in my heart and you’d stay with me wherever I go.

I just hope I have a place in your heart too.

Love, Mommy.