Mama Bear's Journey: August 2014

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Eunice's 4th Birthday

Gonna do this in chronological order....

Eunice is now 4.5yo. We let her have her birthday parties cum farewell with her friends in Penang before we left. She's too young to understand what does migration mean, and she will be sad if we keep telling her that she's not going to see her friends anymore or etc. So, we tell her the happy things - we're going to Australia (she loves Australia as she had a wonderful experience here when we came for holiday in April last year), and we're going to have a new home, and she's going to a new school, and etc.

Many times we receive the feedback from teachers that Eunice is very mature. Even in the kinder and the childcare here, many told us that Eunice is a very obedient and very mature girl. I don't know if that's good or bad. But so far, she has been a darling to us. Even though there're times when she whines and shows her moody temperament (got from her daddy!!), but she's still overall a very gentle, careful, obedient and helpful girl. There are times when we're really glad that she really behaves herself well so we can get our things done. Now she's 4yo+, she understands she needs to listen to us to help us. But also I thought, maybe because she's mature, she probably understands more. Many times we'll hug her and praise her so she continues her good behavior.

A simple minion cake for the celebration in school

Montessori Birthday Walk. Eunice carried a globe (earth) and walk around the sun for 4 times to indicate that she's 4yo already. A teacher narrating at the side on her growth from baby to 4yo. Very meaningful.

Eunice & her classmates in Kidiland. It's not easy to take pics of a bunch of active children!

Got a surprise from Eunice after the celebration. A very kind gesture from her (guided by the teacher of course :))

Yeap, it's her hand writing

And yeap, she wrote her own name

A farewell card for Eunice

All the well wishes from teachers and friends

When we went back to Taiping for CNY 2014, we celebrated Eunice's chinese lunar birhtday. Yea she's born on the 1st day of CNY in 2010. It's just a simple candle blowing, cake cutting celebration - but that's all it matters for the birthday girl since she just LOVES to blow candles. :)

Blowing her 2nd birthday cake in Taiping

On 14th February, her real birthday, that's also the day when we're leaving Penang. Before we left Penang, just right before we left to airport, we had another birthday celebration for her together with her grandparents who were there to send us off.

3rd birthday cake

All of us before bidding goodbye to our home

And finally, after we reached Melbourne, my kind aunt bought a simple cake for her and let her blow the candle again! She's such a lucky girl!!

4th birthday cake in Melbourne!

I sometimes can't believe that the baby who was so small, and kept crying and needed to be cuddled, is now 4yo already. She's going to prep in primary school here next year. How time flies! At times, I hope she'll stay as a baby forever so I can cuddle her all the time.

We love you Eunice. You're such a good girl and daddy and mummy are so so proud of you. :)

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Nat's 1st Birthday Celebration...... LAST YEAR!

I just realized I didn't blog about Nat's first birthday. Gosh! Blame it on the moving that kept my mind so busy to write. :P...

So the next few entries will all be my girl's birthday celebrations (bear with me!). I need to be fair to both my girls. :)

Natalie is a total different girl from Eunice. She was an angel when she's a baby. She slept through the night when she was as young as 3.5mo! I remember I freaked out and picked her up to latch but she refused to drink, and cried out loudly until I put her back to her cot, and she continued sleeping. Even though she slept through the night, I still woke up once a while to check on her to make sure she's breathing. Well, can't blame me, Eunice woke up to direct latch until she's 14mo! In my mind, all babies need to take their late supper or early breakfast in the mid night or early morning! And the best thing is, she slept as early as 830pm all the way until 630am or 7am. What a blessing! :)

Besides, when it comes to her solid feeding, it's easy. She eats everything that I prepared. No fuss. No matter how bad it tastes. I remember giving her a bowl of porridge with blended spinach, and I thought maybe there's too much spinach and it tasted too "green", but she still finished it! It's so easy to feed her, unlike Eunice who could be a disaster when it comes to feeding. We were all prepared for all the sleepless nights and all the feeding nightmares when planning for 2nd baby but to our surprise, Natalie is such an easy baby. :)..

I started to look around a nice venue for her birthday party when her 1st birthday was approaching. EG is a very fussy man, and said that we need to have one as good as Eunice's, and with nicer food. After looking around, we decided to have it in Irrawaddy Fine Food. We looked at the menu, went and tried the food, and had a chat with the person in charge. EG was happy with the food and the cosy environment. So we decided to have it there.

This round, we couldn't afford the famous With Love for video like what we had for Eunice's first birthday, so we decided to engage our good friend Daniel Yap for nice photos! Having 2 kids really keep our hands full. I have no time to take out my camera at all as I need to mind two children. So I could only count on Daniel for the photos.

For the cake, all my usual cake bakers are either not baking anymore, or they went outstation. So I had to look for new one. After asking around, I decided to ask TweetHomeMade to bake me a simple fondant cake with lady bug design. I wanted to have a bumble bee theme birthday but the table cloth in Irrawaddy was red & white checked, so I decided to change to lady bug instead.

We kept the celebration easy and simple. Friends love the food. The place is a little small hence we kept the guest group small, we only invited like 6 families with kids, and we have the whole restaurant to ourselves. Staff in Irrawaddy Fine Food are exceptionally helpful and accommodating in decorating and arranging the place for us. And all our friends love the food. So, Nat turned one in a blink of eye - literally! I couldn't believe she's ONE so fast. And next, I'm going to blog about her 2nd birthday!