Sporty baby!

Now that my wordpress app is working properly again, I can happily post pics and blog more often- short and sweet posts, that is.

Since I hardly have any time to write down and nicely scrapbook about LittlerLam’s development and milestones like I did for her big sister, i guess using this blog for quick notes would be better than nothing at all!

This little one is already 10months old and is crawling and climbing everywhere! Besides loving to stand up by holding on to the edge of her big sister’s table, she also loves to play on her sister’s old toys- the Jumperoo and the rocking moose:

Toy Story 4: Littlelam’s Round-up!

So Littlelam turned 4 last week, but not without a ‘last hurrah’ party I planned for her at a holiday bungalow. Figured I’d give her a great bash before her baby sister comes along, so I happily slogged it out getting the party theme, cake, games and stuff despite the fact that I was already 35 weeks pregnant!

Littlelam’s been enamoured by Toy Story, even though she didn’t last 20mins into Toy Story 3 (which I actually won’t recommend to young kids cos of the more ‘mature’, emotional themes and scary bits). As I mentioned in my previous post, she is particularly crazy over the Cowboy toys ie: Woody, Jessie and Bulls-eye, with Jessie being her favourite cos she’s a girl. So with this very complicated theme in mind, I had to trawl the web for ideas while adapting them to my very low budget and lack of supplies in Singapore. To reduce the need for me to yell and do active ‘crowd control’ (and to save my aching back), I enlisted the help of a friend who earned much admiration from the little boys (& parents) but scared the babies with his too-good impersonation of a Cowboy aka Gamemaster!

Shan’t go on anymore except that I’m really thankful for all the help I received from my in-laws and hubby – they cooked the food and brought it all the way to the chalet! Here are some of the pictures of the day:

According to theme, I drew and made two cardboard ‘Bulls-eye’s for the Horse Race. Basically it is a relay race with 2 teams, just pretending to ride the horse on a stick. In this case, it was a cardboard face attached on cardboard rolls (less dangerous for the kids who were all below 6 yrs old).

Bulls-eye Horse Race

Next up, we played ‘Pin the face on Mr Potato Head’, which is a simple variant of ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’. For large groups of kids, you can have them line up and hold a eye or ear each while you blindfold them, so you have less chaos and everyone’s occupied for a longer time!

'Picasso' version of Mr Potato Head!

Best version of Mr Potato Head - only the moustache out of place!

We also had pass-the-parcel, with forfeits, not prizes at each opening, but that kinda failed a little cos the kids either refused to do the forfeits, or burst into tears. Oops, my bad! Over-estimated the kids! No photos of this game. Thankfully, the bringing out of the lovely Toy Story 3 cake after lunch brought out all the smiles and eager faces again.

The super detailed Toy Story 3 cake. Obviously I DIDN'T bake it!

All the little ones trying their best to keep their hands from the cake!

The final game we played after chomping on the delicious chocolate cake was ‘Gold Nugget Hunt’. Got the Gamemaster to hide Hershey’s Gold Nugget chocolates out in the garden, and we got the kids to hunt for the Nuggets. Judging from the squeals and happy faces, I’m guessing they enjoyed themselves!

Dashing off (with their cowboy hats as the baskets) to find the last 2 'gold nuggets'!

Taking stock: Counting how many gold nuggets had been found so far!

Littlelam opening her presents...and being very pleased with her new Jessie doll!

 I’m glad I didn’t go into labour during the party. Don’t think I’ll ever do a party on such a large scale again while pregnant! But now it’s counting down to D-day for me… if I don’t update for a long time after this, you know what happened! haha!

We don’t know anything about Cowboys here

Littlelam turns 4 next week and we’re having a big party for her…kinda like a last hurrah before she becomes a big sister. Little did I expect her to choose such a difficult theme for her party! Since she (sorta) watched Toy Story 3 in the movies, and then later watched Toy Story 2 on Disney Channel, she’s been totally crazy over anything Toy Story, in particular the characters Woody, Jessie and Bulls-Eye. Thankfully, we have not needed to buy ANY new Toy Story 3 toys in the stores because if you remember, the 1st Toy Story installment came out in 1997. Littlelam’s Daddy and I had just started dating at the time, and Toy Story was one of the movies that we first watched in a GROUP DATE (we were already old enough to drink alcohol legally, mind you). Anyway, the thing is that the both of us somehow managed to amass a large collection of free Toy Story toys that were given out at fast food joints during the time, and even through to the Toy Story 2 season.

BUT, this post isn’t supposed to be about the embarrasing secrets of my past, but rather how ridiculously HARD it is to find anything Cowboy-themed for parties in Singapore! Ok, if I was willing to spend more $, maybe, but there’s really hardly any novelty stuff to find here. So I searched heaps of party shops, went online etc.. and did not find a viable, affordable, practical option, until I went to my trusty, favourite $2 shop store DIASO. There I found cowboy hats, bandanas and toy guns (which I didn’t buy cos I thought it might a bit too violent for a little girl’s party).

Cowboy hat and Bandana I finally found

Instead of the guns, I decided to make Sheriff Badges for each of the kids. The party’s not till next week, so I haven’t written the names on it yet, but basically the kids will get to dress up in the hat and bandana, and write their own name on the Sheriff Star. Sometimes I really think kids’ parties are as much for the parents as the kids! I sure am having fun thinking of Cowboy games and props … I know, I’m nuts but I actually like doing nonsense like that now that I’m totally done with my real official adult work.

So for any of you moms in Singapore or in other Asian countries that have a diurge of country Western party stuff, I’ll be sharing what I did for the party in my next post. For now, here are the pictures and steps to make your very own SHERIFF BADGE:

Materials
- Cardboard
- Cutter/ Scissors / Ruler
- Permanent marker pen
- Yellow / Gold acrylic paint
- Paintbrushes
- Gold Glitter glue (preferably in a small tube)
- Safety pins
- Sticky tape

STEP 1) Draw either a 6-sided or 5-sided star on a piece of cardboard. This will be your ‘prototype’ star.

Step 2) Using your prototype, trace out your full required number of stars. Cut out.

Step 3) Mix a batch of yellow and gold acrylic paint. I found the two colours combined to have the nicest effect. Yellow alone is too ‘cartoony bright’, while gold alone is a little too dark. Paint all the stars. Make sure you do it on newspaper because acrylic paint is permanent. Make sure kids are watched as they paint.

Kids can help to paint the stars themselves

STEP 4) Leave the painted stars to dry for at least 1 day.

Don't worry about getting the painting perfect; I find the 'raw' & scratched effect suits a worn-down look of a seasoned Sheriff's badge

Step 5) Use a permanent black marker and write the word “Sheriff” on the upper half of each star. This is so you can leave a space for the child’s name to be written at the party itself.

Oops, picture already shows the gold dots, but you get what I mean

Step 6) Using your tube of gold glitter glue, dot each point of the star, as close to the tip as possible. Just a small glob of glue will do, don’t over-squeeze. Kids would also love to be involved at this point.

Littlelam concentrating hard on squeezing out the glitter glue!

Step 7) Make sure the gold glitter globs are completely dry; then attach a safety pin to the back of your cardboard star using some sticky-tape. And there you have it!

For additional security, if you have time and if you rather pre-write the names of the kids coming to the party, then you can laminate the stars using the soft-type laminating paper.

Enjoy!

Football Fever

*Argh! Spain won!*

I seriously can’t believe I actually woke up at 2:30 a.m last night to watch the Finals of the FIFA World Cup 2010. The things I do for love. And the match was kosong (nil) – kosong at full time some more. When it went into 30 mins extra time, I prayed that SOMEBODY just score, please, and don’t let it go into Penalty Shoot-outs, or the poor footballers would be so stressed and the person who misses would really feel so bad. And God did answer my prayer because Iniesta from Spain did score and I could finally go to bed. By the way, I have been supporting Holland (for entirely floozy reasons) but I’ve also been supporting the Paul the Octopus, whom I have a soft spot for because I like marine life & have always been fascinated by Octopi (?). See, entirely floozy reasons again. I think I do have a good head of football knowledge, but that’s attributed to my partner of 12 years, and I think my little girl seems to be following in her Daddy’s (and Mommy’s) footsteps.

You see, since the start of the World Cup this year (or actually a couple of weeks before it), the 7-Eleven stores in Singapore started selling these gimmicky MicroStars WorldsStars figurines in sealed packets. On one of their Father-Daughter walks, they somehow ended up buying of these figurines just for the fun of it. It is not cheap -$3.90 and it doesn’t even come with a snack (which is what I was expecting from a gimmicky 7-Eleven toy), and the figurines don’t even look that realistic, to me.

Excitedly tearing open the packaging

BUT, the point is, Littlelam seems to get a big kick out of opening the packet and making Daddy guess the player by describing the colour of the jersey, his hair/eye/face colour, the number on the jersey, and if Daddy still can’t guess, she gives him a clue, the first letter of the chap’s name. Usually by then Daddy gets it right. She is absolutely thrilled with this special little game of theirs, because I think it’s something that the two of them share, and each time she sees a 7-Eleven, she’ll want to buy a ‘footballer for Daddy’. So far I’ve allowed them a player or two each week (maximum of 3 per week) and they’ve amazed a huge collection of strange-looking men that are sitting next to my tooth impression on the display shelf!! There are 40 in total to collect, and I think we’ve collected nearly 20… sigh.

As you can see, some of them look a little freaky. But Littlelam really likes them, and the best thing is that she can name nearly all of them. She even has this game where we’ll all play ‘Alphabet Footballers’, in which we take turns naming Footballers according to the letters of the alphabet. It goes something like this:
Mommy: A for?
Littlelam : Aquilani. B for?
Mommy: Ballack! C for?
Littlelam : Cahill! *big smile* D for?
Mommy: Drogba!
Littelam: Hey we just got him yesterday, right?
and so on…

This little girl of mine sure has a good memory. Sometimes I lose cos I get stumped and she remembers the names of the players better than I do! *sigh* If only she can memorise Bible Characters so well. We are trying to find out Bible characters according to the alphabet so we can play this game too, but we can’t seem to find any name that starts with “F”!!! It’s usually a “Ph”. If anyone can think of one, please leave me a comment! Tx! And I think when she gets older, I’ll try to introduce memory verses instead! Maybe some of you who have older kids can try this game too.

The entire freaky collection of little men!

Of Pedicures

Due to the Chinese New Year festivities last month, I got myself a rather ‘new year-ish’ (read: ang ang, or red) pedicure. I’d been super lazy to remove the remains of this pedi until recently, which sparked a very funny conversation and creative piece of work on Littlelam’s part.

I’d somehow overlooked a glob of Blu-tac that I’d left on the corner of the table after I’d removed some of the CNY decorations still on the wall, and so the lump of blue clay-like temptation too much for Littlelam. She got her hands on it without me knowing, and I came into the living room to this sight:

Apparently a new, safe for kids version of a temporary pedicure, haha! Of course it didn’t last more than 5 minutes of her walking around, but well, I think it was a good attempt on her part! She was particularly amused with herself and declared, “Look, Mommy!” very proudly, I must say. I showed her my feet and a very interesting conversation ensued:

Littlelam: Your toes [sic] are red, right, Mommy? Mine are blue!
Me: Yeah, you did yours very nicely! That was a very good idea!
Littlelam: Yah, mine is not real.
Me: Yes, little girls shouldn’t be using real nail polish.
Littlelam: Next time when I am bigger, I can, right?
Me: Yeah, sure.
Littlelam: When I am 30 years old?
Me: *choking back a laugh* er, yeah… I think younger also ok. Don’t have to wait till you’re Mommy’s age!
Littelam: How about 20 years old? *pause* I think maybe 12 years old better.

12 years old it is! I shall hold her to her promise that she will only paint her nails when she turns 12!!

On a side note, I reckon this could make a fun girly thing to do with young daughters – get more colours by using playdoh instead!!

Play-Doh creations

I’ve always loved Play-Doh. I was an avid play-doh sculptor as a kid, and I’m glad in a way that my daughter enjoys it as much as I do. But now as mom, I can finally understand why some kids are not allowed to play with it. It DOES create a bit of a mess, especially if your child is fond of peeling/plucking/shredding the dough into little bits, and Play-doh does seem to have a special affinity for sticking to clothes, the floor, chairs and worse still, carpets.

But I think the fun outweighs the mess. Littlelam got 2 different sets of themed Play-Doh - an ice-cream set and a Breakfast Set –for her birthdays, so we do have quite a lot of fun with the varieties of molds. Here are some of the pics:

Playdoh Sausage Dog (of course I made it, not her!)

 

Ice-cream and Toppings!

 

Playdoh "Wua- Ko- Kueh"

Playmobil meets Warhammer

If you’re not familiar with die-roll type games like Warhammer, or even the card-type RPG World of Warcraft, these pictures will just (hopefully) amuse you. If you are a fan of Warhammer, then I apologise for this atrocious sacrilege

This has nothing much to do with motherhood, except to show that even adults like to play with toys! heh! (And maybe that my husband and I are closet geeks…)

In a quiet pasture somewhere…

Suddenly, Grey Knights invade, with the Avatar of Khaine, the Bloody-handed god (or something horrible like that ) leading the troops..

There is total mayhem in both worlds: Notice there is a Playmobil 走狗 (literally) flanking one of the attackers, and well, the close-up shot is to show how detailed the hand-painting by my very artistic friend is.

The mortified Playmobil then attempt a rescue mission…
Saving Private Ryan (who seems to be a girl)!

All seems to be lost until they teleport in some Polly Pocket allies who serve as distractions, allowing the Playmobil to escape to safety.

Grey Knight oogling a Bikini Babe

This is definitely NOT a story you want to be telling the kids at bedtime!