Birthday celebration with Ta Ta and Nei Nei

Having our lovely Japanese food again!

Keziah's 4th Birthday @ Zoo

Birthday with a difference this year for Keziah. It's at her favourite spot, the zoo, with her friends! Today she also had many other firsts!

We were welcomed by the party signage at the entrance and off we went for the ferry ride - her first!

The kids were all so excited and can't wait to get on the ferry. It was such a coincidence that some of her friends from her previous school hit the ferry the same time as us. The girls just wanted to sit together.
On the ride, we were introduced to the water monitor lizard and the crocodile. The kids got to feel the the skin of a water monitor lizard which was retrieved from illegal hunters and also the egg shell of the crocodile. First experience again!
As we were early, the kids had some time to just go wet and wild in the water park at Kidzworld while we waited for the rest of the guests to stream in.
The party venue:

Here's our friends at the party:

The little girls who can't stop catching up with one another, so did the mommies
Our relatives...
Churchmates...
Friends from music school..
As it was a surprisingly crowded day at the zoo, we had our meal of KFC before going into game time of nothing more familiar than music chairs and treasure hunt. However, the kids were more interested in playing with one another that only a few were left playing the treasure hunt.
Cake cutting time! The lovely Hello Kitty with compliments from Andy Pak Pak and Yee Mei Pak Mei. Yee Mei Pak Mei's sister was the baker behind the scene for the creation of this lovely rich chocolate cake as well as the cute kitty shortcake gift pack! It was so customised that some mommies even thought that Mommy made it herself. Mommy wished she could have just such great skills!
As much we remembered to take our family pic, Mommy realised only thereafter that she forgot to get the kids to have a picture together for memory. Sorry my little dearies, Aunt will remember the next time.

We never missed exploring the zoo even today. Feeding animals was the kids' favourite and we caught the 1.30pm feeding of the rabbits and guinea pigs.

First ride on the pony! Complimentary for the birthday girl. Keziah has really grown and now has greater courage to try out things new. She had no fear going on the pony and was all smiles throughout the ride. She even touched the pony and told mommy that its hair was rough and spiky.
And for others, they ended their day at the waterplay. Hope everyone had great fun and family bonding time!

Thank you everyone for your lovely gifts! How did her friends know that she likes Hello Kitty? We had quite a number of Hello Kitty gifts of different sorts.

The day didn't end after our zoo party. We went for another party to celebrate one of Keziah's good friend, Cheryl. Fun to have a party with a playscape. The kids were literally entertaining themselves while parents caught up. Even little Abel scaled the heights after some warm up time in the ballpit. Daddy even had to transverse the structure eventually to get our dear Abel down to go home.

And we know Aunt Nat will never disappoint us with wonderful cakes at party!

Day out with Mommy

We haven't quite had time alone for a long time. Today, Keziah was off from school and Mommy also had her day off from work. We had some last minute shopping to deal with before her party the next day. Mommy has already gotten her a dress and hair ties and now it was just left with her princess heels which she had wanted so very much. We were racing against time as we had to drop Abel off to school, collect Daddy's parcel from the post office, then shop around Robinson's first before landing at United Square for our shoe hunt if we can't get any and have our lunch all before picking Abel up from school lastest by 1pm.

It was definitely a busy morning. We finally found a pair of lovely shoes albeit a size bigger for our darling princess. Just look at her smile of satisfaction!

Our simple lunch of wan ton char siew noodles of which our little gal insisted on eating with chopsticks. Hmm...wonder if it tasted better as such?

Puzzles...

How ernest are our kids in this activity, especially our little Abel!

Invites to Birthday @ Zoo

We haven't celebrated Keziah's birthday with her friends since her first. Now that she's turning 4, we decided to hold another small one as a gathering with her ex-classmates from her previous schoolhouse, cousins, churchmates and classmates from her music class at none other than her favourite hunt - the zoo. Felt that it's more meaningful as she's now fully aware of what this celebration was all about and it's with her friends and not just Daddy's and Mommy's friends. It's gonna be fun and play for the kids.

Thanks for those who're joining us for the celebration and do come early to explore the zoo and the huge waterplay @ Kidzworld. Let's now pray for a wonderful weather for this day of outdoor fun!

K's Art Piece - Leopard

So far, Keziah's been drawing all sorts of animals. Somehow she just loved them, especially this leopard which she kept asking for it eversince the next day she completed her lesson. We only picked up during last Friday when we went for her lesson.

Guess what she drew last week? Elephant! Muz say last week's work was brilliant! You guys can make your judgement when we get it back this week. Somehow she seemed to work better with peers around rather than individual class. Peer pressure?

No photography @ Public pools...you know it?

As usual we were off to our Sunday late afternoon swim at Toa Payoh Swimming Pool. For the first time, Mommy was told that no photography was allowed in the pool! Ok, protection of all human integrity.

K's Wish List

Wow, it's just less than a week to K's birthday celebration. A few friends have been asking what Keziah would like to have. In the past it would have come quite easily but somehow, this year Mommy didn't quite know how to respond.

Keziah has really grown up girl, wanting things a typical girl would like: Disney Princesses, Barbie, high heels, accessories ranging from hair to necklaces, bracelet and even rings, fairy dresses. Making her own necklaces from the beads we have had been one of her favourite pastime when not disrupted by her brother. Are girls just born naturally vain?

Of course, she has somehow grown to love doing puzzles along with her brother and now she's becoming a teacher to him, telling him where to place his pieces and even doing it for him. So far we stopped at 24pc puzzles and have yet to look out for more to challenge her.

Eversince we agreed to keeping a pet, starting with 2 tortoises, she's been asking for fish. Hmm...we still haven't gone on to that coz after all, it's Daddy and Mommy who are doing the cleaning.

She's also going green! Not that she's environmentally friendly, she's been eyeing on Nei Nei's flower pots just outside of the house and so keen on what's growing in there. She's been asking to grow something and today, she was asking our neighbour so keenly on what's he's doing when she saw him weeding and replanting his yard.

As usual with this girl, she's a very hands-on person and she loves manipulatives. We've been looking out for some to help her in her reading and math development. Fun and educational - 2-in-1.

Of course, she's very happy with the idea of upgrading Abel to bed coz she wants to sleep on the top deck of a bunk bed. It's just when Daddy and Mommy are going to expand her Flexa bed to this:

You can guess why she's so excited! If we ever do it soon, it's to stop her from "invading" Daddy's and Mommy's room in the middle of the night. There again, we might have one more "visitor" since Abel won't be constrained by the cot anymore.

After awhile, Mommy realised probably kids of about the same age ask for about the same things. Mommy's friend whose daughter is turning 5 is also eyeing at similar stuff. What are kids all about?

Learning to read..

We had been doing bedtime reading and reading as and when there's time. The kids have grown to love reading. However, eventhough Keziah is turning 4, she still can't read on her own. She had been learning the letter sounds since she was 2ish and know her letters really well. Mommy decided to start on a reading to help her. This hooked on Phonics set was bought some time last year and finally, it's out for use. Keziah was quite excited to begin reading as there's a story after learning one or two word families. We started with the "at" family and she breezed through that. Her zeal was nonetheless shortlived as we moved on the more word families ("an", "ap", "ad", "ag"). She tended to read by memory rather than blending the letters. Guess we just have to be consistent and try to take small step each time.

Airport Terminal 3

Our plan to go for a swim after the kids' nap didn't pull through as it rained AGAIN! We headed off instead to Terminal 3 for a leisure walk and airplane viewing. It's a nice place to just let the kids have some running space. Unfortunately, T3's viewing gallery was closed for renovation so in turn, we went over to T2 on the sky train. Wow, the gallery has now been done up as the Changi Aviation Gallery, giving some history to our airport's development and ideas on how to fold a paper plane. The kids were quite fascinated over the fireman model.

There's a few small playground littering the place and if your kids are old enough, there's even a go-kart ring at the carpark area.
We ran into a corner where the kids could do crayon shading craft and look at what Keziah's got!

Last but not least, parking is only $2.50 for first 3 hours! How affordable!

"Camping" when it' wet

It rained all Saturday and we were all cooped at home. Daddy struck of an idea of camping at home. So we erected a "tent" using our bedsheet and the kids had a fun time pretending to "camp", wrestling in the tent, reading in the tent and of course, napping in it!

Developmental updates

Since Mommy started back at work, there was little time for much activities to check how the kids are progressing in terms of their milestones development. Little things just surprise Mommy.

Art and Craft is the best means to develop their creativity, understanding of colours and of course, their fine motor skills. Kids love them and it's really learning through play.

Painting

Mommy dug up the rollers that were given to the kids months back by Aunt Dexun and let them played around with them. Keziah could recall what the primary colours were and we played the magic of colour mixing. They sure got their hands real dirty messing around with the rollers. Mommy just realised it wasn't really easy to create pattern prints with them as it need them to control the strength that they exerted. Abel was having fun playing around with the paintbrush.

Doddling and Mazes

Doddling helps to develop pre-writing skills while puzzles/mazes helps in the spatial and logic development.

Abel loves to doodle, especially when Mommy allowed him to get his hands on markers. Abel seemed to be able to control his pen quite well, drawing circles and even relatively straight lines across the page. Just look at him being so serious with his work. Puzzles are still his love. We managed to dig up some old 15-pc disney puzzles handed down by Daddy's cousins and both the kids simply enjoyed putting them together. Sometimes Mommy wished Keziah could give Abel time to explore on his own for she was always ever so eager to tell her brother where the pieces should go.

Keziah surprised Mommy by writing her own name! This was the first time she had done that. Surprised as Mommy had not been very diligent in training her to write her letters of the alphabet. Thanks to Ah Ma for doing that at times with Keziah after her schoolday. We have just embarked on our writing regime and to make things more interesting, Mommy got her this writing book which had a maze for each letter.

Scissors Skills and Collages

Mommy decided to start Abel off with the use of the scissors so she bought him one of those kids safe scissors made of plastic. However, Mommy realised only after that it was quite difficult to use to cut. Abel wasn't quite successful with snipping off bits of paper so we'll try again when there's time. Only upon working on this art piece did Mommy realise that it actually involved honing his pincer grip since he had to pick up the bits from the floor. He also took great heart to place them nicely within the given lines. Somehow he liked his leaves yellow.

Keziah, on the other hand, found it a breeze to snip but now it's more about getting her to cut on the lines and manoveur corners and curves. So we did a collage of a flower using yellow and green paper as well as the paper plates we had used on the previous day for paint play.

More Fine Motor Skills activities

Abel had always been able to transfer objects and pour from one container to another with a wide opening. Mommy decided to up the challenge by asking him to scoop marbles from a container with when opening to one with a narrow opening. He did it! Think the next thing we'll do is to get him transfer small beans or rice in the same manner.

Keziah did the same activity but using chopsticks. She must have been observing us how we use our chopsticks daily that she managed to clear the challenge after a few tries. Can see her frustration at some point but it was job well done. Now it's just about not falling on the easy way of crossing the chopsticks, i.e. hold it the proper way. Sometimes she does it right, sometimes she doesn't.

Eating Orange the Adult's Way

Keziah has been doing this for awhile and Abel has just joined the gang! Must say he's relatively neat even when eating the juicy orange this way, taking small bites and cleaning the pulp, leaving just the skin.

Nature and Nurture should compliment one another. What's more, when you engage activities together with your children, you bond with them - a lifetime without regrets!