Mini-Renovation Part 1

I guess it was a losing battle to fight the onslaught of global warming and my dear decided to fight against her fear of the ceiling fan falling down instead. As such, we went on our usual elaborated research for the ceiling fan to be placed in our living room.

The fan model was initially inclined towards Franco, however, the high quality of KDK seemed to permeate through the comments of the forumers and as such, behold our newest member of the family...

The KDK fan from Ban Kim Chuan

The installation was done amazingly quick and all was done within an hour. Unfortunately, we had to remove our beloved dining lights for aesthetic and functionality reasons. My dear somehow can live with that. My only peeve was the indiscriminate drilling in the ceiling by the installer, which resulted in an additional unnecessary ceiling hole. And he did not even attempt to patch it up. Luckily it was hidden from view by the casing. I just hope that nothing will happen due to that hole.

Though we were $400+ poorer but our room was much cooler. So far so good...

1st Year Wedding Anniversary

Thinking back about the moment at this time last year, we were probably standing outside the ballroom thanking our guests for their presence at our wedding banquet. Since then, five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes later, so much had happened in our lives. From the status of single to married, from a simple couple of two to a happy family of three. It is indeed a milestone in both our lives and I am blessed to have my dear, giving me all that.

Originally we wanted to visit Punggol Waterway after the visit to Motherhood 2013 at Singapore Expo, however, in view of Ran Ran's state, it was in her best interest that we do not tire her out too much and thus we decided to postpone the exploration trip. After all, she had a crying incident at MBS just a few days ago and we simply did not want a repeat of that. Also because of that, I had to make the trip to collect the baby carrier today instead. Well, I took this chance to buy some flowers for my dear, something which I had not done for a very long time.

The dinner was a surprise for me by my dear and I guess both of us contributed in making this day a special one for both of us. To the many years of anniversaries in the future...

The Thai surprise

The dinner with the baby breaths

Ran Ran's 3rd Month Immunisation

Yesterday, my dear and my mum brought Ran Ran to the polyclinic for her first 5-in-1 jab. I was unfortunately held up by my lessons in school and thus missed the entire session. As usual, Ran Ran has a slow reaction towards being poked by the needle, as she cried like a second or two later. However, being the strong girl she is, the cry lasted only slightly longer than her reaction time.

This time round, she got a slight fever on the next day, which got my dear terribly worried. Thank goodness that it lasted only a short while otherwise my dear will be panicking right now.

Awaiting the next jab and hope that the side effects are milder. 

Iron Man 3

In view of the rare day off on a weekday, we decided to seize the chance to watch Iron Man 3 on the day before (and at a cheaper rate too!). Ran ran was entrusted to my mum for care-taking.

As always, we love Robert Downey, Jr. His obnoxious personality and witty comments simply made up the soul of the entire series. In short, he was targeted by some terrorist this time round, who bombed his place of residence (again). He fought back and this time with his army of iron men, much to our amazement. In the end, he destroyed his army in a spectacular display of fireworks to signal his intent to shift his focus to his love interest. As usual, there is the end-credit scene to inform us of the next movie.

A short trip, a short outing and a good break.

4 years on...

4 years ago, little did we know what our future lies. We just got together and we were just newbies in our careers. 4 years later, we are now a family of three. It was simply amazing that everything fitted in perfectly and I am grateful for everything that she's done for me.

To celebrate this milestone in our lives, we decided to have a Japanese buffet and watch a movie. After all, we had not had a real date since 1 A.D. (after delivery). We got my mum to help us take care of Ran Ran after we cleansed her at home. We quickly made our way to PS to get our movie tickets for "The Croods" before proceeding to our lunch location at Senki. The crowd that was already inside despite only 10 minutes after its opening indicated its popularity, however, its sashimi quality perhaps dropped slightly since two years ago, though there were some food items that instead became better.

We took a short walk back to PS and had a short walk around the new extension of PS before settling down at Starbucks for a dose of the usual caffeinated frappucino. The drink unexpectedly quenched our thirst after our lunch. It was also there that we noticed a extremely long queue for a dim sum restaurant there. I guess we will wait for the hype to be over before we will try their food.

The Croods was a movie about a family in the prehistoric times, with a conflict between the daughter and her dad. The dad wanted to ensure the family's safety by following rules but the daughter wanted to explore the unknown and do things beyond the rules. Then came along a guy who predicted that the world is going to end and the land is splitting up, which resulted in the Croods' home being destroyed. Thus, they had to embark on this journey with that guy to somewhere safer. That guy sort of won over the rest of the family with his cool and innovate ideas as the journey progressed and eventually the dad broke out of his old thinking and embraced the new.

The movie was funny with its jokes, especially the dad's explicit desire to have his mother-in-law dead. Though there were several sad instances in which some characters were thought to die, but being a Disney film, characters do not die and indeed that was true. It was nevertheless enjoyable.

We continued our date with some shopping at Daiso and soon time called for us to return home and pick up our Ran Ran.

4 years. And there will be many more 4 years to come. Bliss can be just so simple. Thank you dear!

New Toy for Ran Ran...

We were just doing our number one hobby (A.D. aka after delivery) of snooping around the Facebook pages, looking at the baby photos posted by our friends when we came across this toy. It was a cheaper replica of the Baby Spa and we were reminded of the long forgotten cheap deals available on www.qoo10.sg. As such, we made the uncharacteristic decision to buy it on the spot. I wonder if that constitutes to impulsive buying. Anyway, as if to match our impulsiveness and remind us that efficiency and reliability do exist, the toy reached our doorsteps the very next day, much to our surprise.

So that was the story behind the plastic tub. My first attempt at setting up the bath tub was hilarious, for I had been blowing air into the water outlet (the one used to drain the water in the tub, aka the wrong one) in order to inflate the tub. No wonder the diameter of the hole seemed a bit too big for familiarity and the tub never seemed to become bigger after some minutes. Maybe fatherhood does have some impact on intelligence.

Other than that small hiccup, the rest was more procedural, just that filling up the tub with warm water takes quite a long time. And after dumping Ran Ran into the water to fend for herself for 15 minutes, I guess the $60 was simply worth it.

Equipment checked... No nudity checked

Ran Ran with her fending device

The small plastic tub for her swimming pleasure

4 weeks of Ran Ran...

Time flew when you least expected it and soon we had went through a crash course on parenthood with its steep learning curve.

The diapers module taught us that babies assumed that diapers drop freely from the sky, for with every change of diapers, Ran Ran could be peeing or pooping almost instantly thereafter. A potential cleanliness freak in the making, we both concurred. Flying poop or pee had not occurred to us yet, as warned by fellow parents. Probably girls are not as playful =)

The milk module educated us on the precise temperature babies like their milk. Too warm or too cold, the delicacy would be deemed as foul liquid and it would be flatly rejected by Ran Ran with her mighty tongue. This also resulted in her inconsistent intake of milk with unequal time intervals. That naturally got us worried, but our fears were allayed by a visit to the pediatrician today. She mentioned that as long as there is weight gain, everything will be alright.

The cleaning module offered us some rewards on parenting, for that were the few periods which Ran Ran would calm down and smile a lot. I guess she enjoyed the wiping and the floating around in the lukewarm water.

Meanwhile, the secret of juggling of work, house chores, taking care of Ran Ran and personal time remained rather elusive to us. Hope that we could unravel that secret soon.

RR's Caught-in-Action

The cheeky look

The dozing off look

The why-are-you-taking-my-picture look

The hamster look

The drunken look

The eyes-don't-want-to-open look

The satisfied look

Close to 2 weeks...

Since I'm taking the night shift while on a low sleep mode (this means disaster if I start marking my five stacks of tests now), I might as well update on the lives of the two piggies.

Much had happened since then: RR had the "privilege" of returning to Thomson Medical for a deluxe sunbed stay as a result of her high bilirubin level of 14.1 mg/dL aka jaundice. My dear was deeply saddened by this as it was the first time that she was separated from our baby for so long. Fortunately for us, Ruo Ran's 3D2N vacation brought the bilirubin level down to 8.4 mg/dL, which coincides with the lowering of our cash level.

A few days later, much assisted by my mum's sudden faint, we visited Bedok polyclinic for a checkup, after giving up on the appointment system of Pasir Ris's outlet. It was then that we utilised the priority queue, courtesy of RR and we saw the doctors fairly quickly. The laboratory testing, however, was the bottleneck, with patients expected to wait up to 2.5 hrs. Fortunately, our wait was a fraction of that, but bad news was that the level was raised to about 10.8 mg/dL.

The weather wasn't exactly helpful as well, as clouds loomed in the skies daily, as if part of a sinister plot to slowly get us used to not seeing the sun and therefore easier to kidnap it later. Nonetheless, we brought her to the top level of the multi-storey car park and RR was stripped to her Huggies while the two parents appeared to be some comical psychos to our neighbours in the neighbouring blocks by holding a towel to block the sun's harmful rays from reaching RR's eyes and dancing around to stop the wind from touching RR's tender body.

Despite our actions, we could not stop the level from rising to 11.7 mg/dL a few days later. My dear, in her own words, was reprimanded by the pediatrician for not feeding RR sufficient milk as passing urine does help in lowering the bilirubin level. Not that we were born to torture our offsprings, but I guess we are still newbies in this new profession and it doesn't help either that RR somehow has a small capacity tank.

Two weeks on: one little one living in her own world with her own rules, haphazard sleeping and random eating habits; three exhausted adults, trying to understand RR and figure out a schedule to maximise the human resource to take care of her.

Our little princess with her cheeky smile

Xiao Xiao is Here!

My dear first felt regular contractions in intervals of 10 to 15 minutes early in the morning and we were thinking whether we should go to the hospital. In the end, we opted for the lunch at her place so that she can replenished some energy before proceeding to the hospital to get a confirmation. It turned out that it was sort of a false alarm as her dilation was less than 1 cm and the interval of a contraction every 5 minutes was too far apart to be admitted. The nurse also agreed that we could have our reunion dinner before coming back to the hospital again. And she was like saying that our baby could be the first "snake" of the year and that we could have a chance in appearing on live television. My dear was not very keen on that, though I was quite interested in knowing the goodies that the parents of the first baby be getting.

Our next trip to the hospital was instead on the next day, when my dear realised that there were fluid constantly coming out of her as she quite hesitant about returning to the hospital when her contractions were becoming less regular. The suspicion was that the water bag leaked and that suspicion turned out later to be true. She was soon put on a drip to increase the intensity of her contractions. My dear fought the early part of the battle strongly with only the laughing gas, but that really wore her out and her dilation was like increasing at a rate of less than 1 cm per hour. Towards the end, she opted for epidural so that she could have enough strength to push Xiao Xiao out.

Once the dilation got up to 8-9 cm, the process became rather smooth and my dear was starting to push Xiao Xiao out. The nurses were like shouting so enthusiastically to encourage my dear along. We waited a while for Wendy to come after Xiao Xiao's head was like partly visible and after that, with a few more pushes, Xiao Xiao burst into the world with a loud cry.  

I still cannot fathom the stories about how fathers faint at the sight of the birth of their child when it was so miraculously wonderful. I still cannot believe I am a father of a child already. It was quite interesting and amazing to see Xiao Xiao looking at my dear's direction, even though her sight was not clear yet. Maybe that was the bond between a mum and her daughter. Anyway, her pretty face below:

Her first cry

Her first smile (sort of)

The three female leads (the nurses are missing though)

Welcoming the newest member of our family =)

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

Probably this shall be the last movie date before Xiao Xiao is officially out in this world and in order to suit my timing, this was chosen over "From Boys to Men II".


The movie started off with a death of a villager of a water village and a priest catching and declaring a stingray to be the murderer. The protagonist stepped in to warn that the murderer was someone else, who later swam into the scene to kill off more people, which coincidentally happened to be the dead villager's wife and daughter. With his knowledge of physics, the protagonist got the villagers to jump onto one end of the see-saw to get the murderer (a fish demon) out of the water. He later then tried to subdue the demon by appealing to the inherent kindness of the demon but his attempt was halted by another demon hunter, the female lead. This incident caused the protagonist to question his master's beliefs and teachings as well as his own capabilities.

The show then progressed to another demon, this time the pig demon, and how he managed to kill off many people by luring them to his lair with finely roasted pork, ironically made with the flesh of the humans. The male and female lead then came to tear down his disguise, but the pig demon managed to get away and injured the female lead. The male lead helped her dressed her wounds and from there, the female lead fell in love with the male lead and tried to deceive him into copulating with her, but with no success.

There were also other demon-hunters trying to catch the pig demon as well, but they had no luck. The male lead then proceeded to find the monkey demon to seek his help in subduing the pig demon. In doing so, he accidentally set the monkey demon free and the other demon-hunters were exterminated. The female lead perished too and with that loss, the male lead attained enlightenment and managed to subdue the monkey demon. Together with the pig demon and fish demon subdued earlier on, all four of them proceeded with their quest of getting the scriptures from the west.

The show by Stephen Chow was a long wait and indeed there were elements of his style imbued in the story.  Perhaps the only difference was that there were much gore this time round. Other than that, the show was very enjoyable and had its fair share of funny and sad moments.

Progress on Xiao Xiao 11

As the EDD drew nearer, the checks became more routine, the scans less clear and Wendy focusing more on Ruo Ran's stomach to estimate her weight. However, the bad news was that my dear was diagnosed with urinary tract infection (UTI) after she queried about her immerse pain during the process of passing urine.

Antibiotics were given then, but somehow that did not ease her pain. In fact, the pain actually worsened at some point in time, and it became a double whammy when we learnt about Wendy taking urgent leave (we have yet to ascertain whether it was her or her daughter who was in hospital) and we had to search for another gynecologist to access my dear's UTI. It was also a bad timing as it was in the evening and many clinics were either closed or having full bookings. It was upon the advice of one of gynecologists that we eventually went to a GP.

We went to the one nearest to us and it was interesting to see many young patients there. Looks like Ruo Ran's medical help is just a stone's throw away, if required. And the doctor seemed to be very patient with each patient, which is a good thing, thereby lengthening the wait for our turn, which was the bad thing. After the consultation, we got another set of antibiotics, which my dear eventually did not consume, for fear of the side effects it may bring, even though there were much assurances from the doctor that the antibiotics are suitable for pregnant ladies. I guess the visit was more of an assurance of the heart and mind.

As Wendy was still on urgent leave and my dear got her kite flown by the replacement doctor due to him having to deliver, my dear went to Wendy's friend's clinic nearby for a re-assessment of her condition. The gynecologist gave her some effervescent tablets and advised against taking any antibiotics. My dear was also surprised to have her cervix checked, for which she was grateful that the male replacement could not see her previously.

Another surprise for her was that she finally managed to see Ruo Ran's face again after so many months since the detailed scan. My dear was saying that Ruo Ran has her nose while having my lips. I guess we will be highly anticipating her arrival =)

So here she is:

Top: we were clueless too
Bottom: the routine cross-
section of the stomach

Top: Ruo Ran's pretty face
Bottom: the same cross-
section of the stomach

Progress of Xiao Xiao 10

My dear was thinking aloud about the availability of Wendy for consultation when she had so many pregnant patients. Don't she need to deliver the baby for her patients? And as if it was to answer her question, Wendy did receive a call for a delivery case and the nurses informed us that our consultation would be rushed. We were lucky that we went there an hour early, otherwise we would have received a call from them to postpone our visit.

Anyway, it was the usual scans of Ruo Ran's tummy to estimate her weight and a fast visual of her growing legs. It had been a long time since we saw her alien-like face and we were thinking whether we should ask Wendy to scan Ruo Ran's face in the next visit. Some questions related to my dear's itchiness were asked and soon we were done.

The scans of Ruo Ran:

Top left: Side view of body
Top right: blurred cross section of body
Bottom cross section of body

My dear is getting worried about the popping of Ruo Ran. I wonder about the circumstances in which she will annouce her arrival.