Lucas turns ONE!

Lucas turns the big ONE today. As usual, we opt for the low-key celebration with immediate family.

Lilian ordered mini buffet from Yum Cha Express. The friendly uncle helped us set up our table. Excellent service. And the food is pretty good as well.

Some family shots and happy shots.

Getting ready for the cake and candle blowing. We chose baby Bugs Bunny as Lucas was born in the year of the rabbit. Xavier seems more excited for his brother.

And everybody sing...


We have a tradition where we would lay items for the one year old to pick and what did Lucas pick first? $Money$. Xavier picked that first too when he was one.

Wishing Lucas grow up healthy and wealthy. Happy Birthday Lucas.

Xavier's New Ride

We thought Xavier would find it fun to ride on a bicycle so we bought him one with training wheels from this neighbour bike shop call Scootz. The Ang Mo Kio store house the children biking stuff.

Here's Xavier going around on his "Police" bicycle. His helmet is also pretty cute.

Posing with En-En jie jie on his new bike

ye-ye teaching him how to power the bike with his legs

Xavier getting the hang of it and gaining speed. Police bike, don't play play

Except for one time when he turned too sharply and toppled the bike, he seems to be doing pretty well. He could even power up slopes on his own. Hope he will gain confident to ride without the assist wheels soon.

On Your Marks...

Get Set... STAND!!!

Well almost. I think Lucas is getting ready to stand without support soon. He has been positioning his butt upwards, getting ready for the big moment.

Mummy got him his first pair of shoe in anticipation that he will be walking about very soon. No worries Lucas, take your time, no rush. I just hope I'm around to capture that moment when you stand on your own without support.

Father's Day weekend with Bubbles and Owls

I booked tickets to the Fan Yang Gazillion Bubble Show for the Saturday show without realising it's the Father's Day weekend. Thought any kids would love the bubble show, I mean, we are talking about bubbles here, heaps and heaps of it.

It's an interesting show. Seeing how Fan Yang makes bubbles within bubble with ease, how he combined and split bubbles with a flip of his hand, and even saw a square bubble. Xavier seems to enjoy it too, though there were some section of the show where we have to highlight to him what Fan Yang was trying to showcase.

My only regret was I should have gotten the stall seats instead of the circles seats. There were activities like passing and pushing giant balls around during the interval and the flooding of the whole stall area with what else but bubbles. Sadly there were none for us, as we are at the circle seats and its too high up. And Xavier keeps asking why we do not have bubbles at our area.

Took a bubble photo for memory sake. Pretty unique experiences of what is life like inside a bubble.

On Sunday, I brought Xavier to an English play.

It's call Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. Danny recommended it saying how his son enjoyed it and its a must watch since they extended the show days.

The venue is a pain as we can't park at the place itself and cisco were hardworking at the lane outside. So I had to park at Balmort Plaza which is a 10mins walk.

The play fortunately was very delightful and enjoyable, even for adults. There were many interactions with the crowd , like throwing soft toys (supposingly baby owl's poo) at them, spraying water at them, teaching them how to make sounds and actions to resemble the different fireworks.

In fact I dare say its one of the best kid's play I have been to. The three artists from the Blunderbus Theatre Company are a real fun bunch. I hope they come to Singapore again. It's a father's day treat to myself.

Braun BET1000

One of the most essential tool for parents with babies and young children is a thermometer. You have to have at least one at home in the event the young ones run a temperature.

Back in our time, the most common thermometer widely used is the mercury thermometer. You know, the versatile thermometer that can be used under your tongue or under your armpit? Well it has come a long way.

We been using the Braun ThermoScan 6022 ever since Xavier was born. Its an in-ear thermometer that give you the reading in a matter of seconds. It can be a pain to use especially when you are trying to get a reading from a sleeping child. Imagine someone trying to poke something into your ear while you are sleeping. And I find it annoying when it gives you a reading of 37.5 degrees which is mild fever and the PD would say "Oh the in-ear thermometer? its a +- 0.5 degree so he's not really having a fever." It's almost like the device is only giving a ballpark figure.

Given that it recently started to give us some issues, we decided to get another thermometer. We were considering the forehead scanners but those are pretty expensive. Then I came across the Braun BET1000.

BET stands for Behind Ear Thermometer. And that's basically where position it to take the temperature. Press for 1 sec and the reading appears in the LCD screen complete with coloured backlight. So it's almost fool proof as the colour will indicate to you if you are not having a fever (green), having mild fever (orange) or having fever (red). As you only need to position it behind the ear, it would be able to take an accurate reading without the thermometer touching the sleeping child.

The thermometer is manufactured by Kaz USA Inc. Strangely when I tried to Google for more information via the Braun sites, I could only find it under Braun Korea. Braun USA does not seem to carry it. Kaz.com has a similar product on their website but its marketed as another brand Vick, the company behind the famous VapoRub.

Anyway from the site, it explains that "the measurement site in the hollow behind the ear is very close to the carotid artery, which carries blood to the brain. This is an ideal external site to measure temperature."

I seen these for sale at Robinson and heard that Courts also carries this. For us, we are just happy we found this lovely thermometer.