kristin talks...

She's been quite chatty recently. Just about time, 2 months into school. After four months of nursery Bryan attended in Singapore, not only was he talking at at the speed of a bullet train, he was also performing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars on keyboard. He was about 27 months old then. He did have the advantage of starting school a month earlier than Kristin did. And of course, he enjoyed much more adults' attention since young.

But I find Kristin's speech pretty advance too. E.g. I wanted her to go show Daddy her tongue. (Side-track: She has been having ulcers in her mouth since Saturday. Think trick-or-treating almost dehydrated her.)

She came back to me and she said, "I did (it) already!" Past tense! Wow!

This evening after dinner, Kristin was tugging at a cushion, dragged it across the living area and laid it down on the floor. When she realised that I was observing her, she explained her intent: I need to sit on the pillow, Mommy. See! And there she was, sitting on the cushion.

Ok, I wasn't going to argue that it was a cushion and not a pillow. I was very impressed that she sensed my curiosity and offered me an explanation for her silly antic.

More on her language to come...

happy halloween!

It's our first trick-or-treating altogether, ever: Daddy, Mommy, Bryan and Kristin!

We joined Bryan's friends from school within the American Community for a whole afternoon of fun! It first started with children's costume parade and costume contest. It turned out that the judges were swooned by our interpretation of an Indian girl, and Kristin unwittingly came in third for the "Best Costume Title"! Haha... finally our claim to fame! Doesn't she look cute in this costume?

Of course, it helped a little when she refused to walk with the rest of the children, dawdling all the way behind the line, and then as if it wasn't enough, she insisted that her Dad should carry her into the building where the judges were all seated. Daddy's height definitely made her entry among the last few kids grand!

But these kids were really cute and original, weren't they?

We have a headless man for the Scariest Costume, a girl on the table for the Most Creative Costume, and girls dressed up as horses as the Funniest Costume. 1st prize of the Best Costume went to the beautiful Princess and the 2nd was the Crooked Old Man with the crooked stick!

Our son didn't do too bad either, though he was a little disappointed that he didn't get a prize for his costume. Bryan was the only fire-fighter in the whole estate, while there were like Batman and many of his clones running all over the place. Spiderman was also a favourite outfit for the day.

And we didn't do too bad for our trick-or-treating too. Here's the children's stash.

Looks like we've got enough sugar to last us till Karneval!

But the day did not end on a good note with two very exhausted kids. They hardly ate dinner. Bryan even threw up during dinner (He had too much junk food the whole day - good excuse not to give him any more candy bars!), while Kristin was so tired to have anything in her mouth. In the end, we sent her off to bed at 8.15pm and Bryan was tucked under the cover by 8.45pm.

problem sums, problem PSLE maths!

This year's PSLE Maths Exam apparently caused a huge hoo-ha in Singapore. Wondering why? Check out this article here.

And if this is not enough, pick up a pen and some papers and work these challenges out! Bear in mind that it's not expected that these 12 year-olds should know anything about algebraic equations. So simple question, simple answer is key!

How does it fare with you? Drop your comments please!

Frankfurter Buchmesse

This was our annual pilgrimage to the "Mecca" of books - Frankfurter Buchmesse. Just like last year, the weather was fabulous! It was again a warm October Sunday, and we managed make it to the book fair no earlier than 3pm, as always. Yeah,we were quite pressed for time since the book fair was ending at 5.30pm.

We really did try hard this time to make an effort to be early: We left church immediately after the service ended. When we got home at 12.55pm, I found myself frantically getting lunch ready that I even forgot to take off my jacket. Got the kids fed by 1.45pm. Well, if only they could eat faster... if only they could eat on their own.... Then in between, Alan had to go change a soiled diaper for Kristin, and finally we had our lunch. And since it was such a brilliant day, we left home at about 2.15pm and thought, hmmm, why don't we let Bryan cycle there so that we could tire him out a little and he wouldn't be whiny by bedtime??

So we did. Instead of hopping onto the next U-Bahn, which we are by the way only a stop away from the Trade and Convention centre, we took a long leisure walk, while Bryan cycled and Kristin was sitting happily in the pram. So by the time we made it through the ticket office (yes, we had to pay 10 Euro per adult for entrance), past the entrance and up onto the shuttle bus and across the many halls in the whole Trade and Convention Centre, we finally arrived at Hall 8 at 3.15pm. That's where all the English books were housed. Ok, we were a tad earlier than last year, since we did not stop by the German Children's books section in Hall 3 this time round, and we also did not make the mistake of getting to Hall 8 on foot!

By about 3.40pm, we only managed down the A, B, C aisles, and there were plenty more to go. I think we were barely 1/4 through the hall and we got only a magnifying glass at 8 Euro (yeah, we came to a book fair to get Bryan a magnifying glass), a poster on learning about time (the Malaysian exhibitors were so friendly that they also gave the kids posters of the Malaysian states), two more posters on numbers from another Malaysian exhibitor (the kids received a pack of colouring pages, puzzle and stickers from them again) and two Christian books on Love from 1 Corinthians, and a Time for Everything from Ecclesiastes 3 at 4 Euro (we really didn't want to appear that we were bargaining. They wanted 5 but between Alan and myself we only had two 2 Euro coins. And we didn't want to break our 50 Euro note.) By this time, Bryan had gotten himself another free book on Pirates from another exhibitor. What a lucky boy, was the only thing I could say in an attempt to hide my embarassment! Then at this particular stand, I saw these Write and Slide wipe offf books for Phonics, Spelling and Maths. Now I couldn't resist. I knew I had to get them. They were at 8 Euro each! I thought, that's awfully cheap, considering they all had a sticker on one corner that read 7.99 GBP! So I got all three of them. Then when we got home, Alan discovered that it said 15.99 GBP each at the back of the book! Yeah, you can see the proud smile I was wearing on my face.

Ok, it was almost 4pm and we still hadn't got much in our bags, unlike last year. I was fretting when I reached Harper Collins and Sterling. Bryan and I picked up 3 Berenstain Bears and 5 People You Meet in Heaven from Mitch Albom at Harper Collins and I was about to pay when I realised I had to get some cash from Alan. So I told the man I would be back and went back to Alan when he was hanging around the Sterling booth. Then he pulled me aside and showed me the piece of paper on the floor: Free Books! The peace didn't last long when the Sterling people started shouting, Free Books! By this time, there were 30 odd people at the stand and they were grabbing whatever their eyes fancied. I went through the children's books and cookbooks briefly and twice I was pushed out by the crowd. Haha... looks like Singaporeans still have a long way to go when it comes to being a world-class kiasu freebie grabber!

Anyway, we were quite happy with the giveaways at Sterling and we called it a day since people were already ripping off the carpet in the other part of the hall. Yeah... we still didn't make it half way through one hall, just like last year, but we went home with a lot of books. At first, I was still fretting about how late we arrived at Hall 8 and how cash low we were - we did try to get cash but the ATM at the entrance was out of order. Now I finally know things happened for a reason. And Sterling was the reason!

Just a look at the free books we gathered:
The left pile was given and the right pile was bought.

And this is my ecstatic find at Sterling:

Yes, Bryan loves the rhymes here!

And the hero of the day was Alan! Imagine he carried back most of the books in one huge blue Ikea bag. How many times did we swear last year that we would return this year with a suitcase? Why didn't we learn our lesson?

Here's one with Daddy enjoying his hard work:

Oh I conveniently forgot about Harper Collins. Look, we wouldn't want to add on to Alan's burden, right?

fancy food fad... food fad fancy... fad fancy food...

My new cupcake recipe book arrived this morning through the post! Hurray!
Now you can definitely see more pictures of cupcakes filling out this dull blog. :) Can't wait to try out a few more recipes... but gotta hit the book first and start my research.

Baking is as much a science as it is an art. Don't you think? Gotta weigh out each ingredient with accuracy, take extra caution not to add in fluid unnecessarily, beat the mixture at the correct speed to the correct amount of time. Then come the various pretty cake adorning techniques. Oooooh... what labourious effort! But the whole process is really FUN! Especially so when you see the smiles on people who're sampling your bakes. :)

By the way, I knew I had to get this book and take advantage of the free delivery service by amazon because for this same book, I would have to pay SGD 55 at the store Bake-it-yourself. 12.95 EUR was quite a good deal, wasn't it?

a sahm finally...

Yes... this is what I've been wanting to live out!

I'm staying at home so that:
- I can drop off and pick up the kids at preschool.
- I can follow my children on field trips. This morning, I had my first debut as a chaperone for Bryan's field trip. It was a short walk to the duck pond and we collected leaves in the wonderful golden fields of autumn - nothing much to boast about. But yes, I want to be that mom who enjoys school experience with her children!
- I can experiment with recipes and bake as many cupcakes and muffins as I want.
- I can bring muffins over to another mommy friend's place and share them with her kids! Haha, so taitai now!
- I can sneak out for a lunch break with my husband and his colleagues (for some adult company) while the kids are at school and then back to being a sahm again when I pick them up after a decent lunch.

And now, while the kids are napping, I can steal some rest from my biking exercise this morning. I overestimated myself and attempted to bike to the kids' school within 15 minutes for my volunteer work. The uphill route proved to be a near heartattack experience. I came into the hallway looking all flustered, just 5 minutes before the class was about to leave the building and Bryan's teacher asked me how I was doing. It was so embarassing that I could only murmur a soft ok while I was still catching my breath!

I really should be going to the gym more often and bake less at home! Anyway, I don't bake when the kids aren't home.

apple picking at Appel Happel...

We knew that the weather would be fabulous over the weekend. So Daddy dug through his collections of restaurants and found the address of Appel Happel. Apparently, he was there at the end of October last year for a meal and discovered freshly squeezed apple juice and the apple orchard by chance.

We planned for a whole day of fun, starting out with lunch at the restaurant by the apple orchard, and then apple picking. But much to our disappointment, the restaurant does not serve lunches on Saturday! So in the end, we decided to go for a quick round of apple picking and head off for lunch at Ikea - what would we do without Ikea?

15 minutes of apple picking was just about right for the kids. I think any longer would either mean very tired children, or too many apples picked!

As with all our fruit picking excursions, Kristin must have a taste of farm fresh fruits. So there she was nibbling away on her freshly picked apple. More photos here.

We picked about 16 apples, with two tiny ones given to the kids at the farm store while we were weighing out the apples. All in all 1.89kg, so 1.89 Euro! The kids then finished off their excursion with a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice each on the house.

Ikea lunch was pretty good. Kristin finished her whole portion of lasagne on kids' menu, and had most of her jello. Bryan as usual ate pretty well because he couldn't wait to scoot off to the slide after his meal.

Really, Ikea is a huge playground for kids. We had to persuade the kids to leave the place in peace just to get across the street to Toys R Us. And we finally got a bike for Bryan.

I think we did very well this weekend. We gave alot of our time to the kids, as usual. If I were my kids, I would have nothing to complain about and strive to be as obedient as my mom would want me to be.

cupcake craze...

This was my third attempt, experimenting with pretty colours.

As you probably can see here, I'm running out of ideas at 1 am in the morning!

I kind of like these two best tonight! What do you think?

more cupcakes...

It was the Day of Unity yesterday. The Germans remember this day of reunification back on October 3rd 1990 when there was no longer a division of the East and West. So... it's a bank holiday and there's no school nor work for the kids and Daddy respectively. But there's still lots of work at home for Mommy. Hmm, when is MY bank holiday ever gonna come?

Anyway, I'm not complaining because we had some fun in the kitchen yesterday creating these mini cakes. Now, armed with advices and tips from Wendy, I returned confidently this time with a rojak recipe (well, not really rojak, but a recipe put together from many different ones to yield the optimal results). The rojak recipe really didn't turn out too bad! :)

Bryan was again a great help. And of course, this time we only started after Kristin had gone down for a nap.

This was my very first attempt of the day to frost:

I made this one especially for Alan and it turned out that he picked this one as his favourite design! Yay... I do know my man well!

This one was initially a flop. But I managed to repair the damage enough that it didn't look to bad to me after all:

Now this one was a design painstakingly done by Kristin throwing in the pistachio nuts in between the circle of almonds and chocolcate cream:

In the end, we ran out of frosting (the basic white ones) - only managed to frost 9 out of the 12 cupcakes baked.