Part 3: The birthday party

We had a lot of leftover food from Bryan’s first birthday party. Lesson learnt – this year, I prepared less food for this year’s party. Also, my aunt who is great at baking/ cooking is out of town, so I am short of a chef. Anyway, this year, I decided not to trouble my MIL and my mom so much – so I have decided that I will either prepare the food myself or I will buy. Of course, my mom helped me to make the jelly as it is quite easy to make.

My mom helped me to take care of Bryan on the party day so that I will have the time to buy & prepare food and to decorate the house for the party.

I prepared tuna and egg sandwiches, fried chicken and pop corn chicken. I also bought fried teow chew noodles and fried pineapple rice. Oh ya..I also have really yummy sambal that I bought from the market in the morning.

Party was scheduled to begin at 5pm, to make sure that Bryan and my niece Jasmine will have adequate rest before the party.

And boy did they have fun. Bryan did have fun showing off his toys to his cousins. But his tricycle is off limits to cousin Jasmine. When Jasmine sat on his tricycle, he brought his car to Jasmine and ask Jasmine to sit on his car instead.

Bryan, Jasmine and Melannie also had a lot of fun with Bryan’s new tent that hubb put up just before the party. So the tent was also new to Bryan. At first, he was kind of possessive of the tent. He refused to even let any of his soft toy into the tent. Hubb would place one in and he will go in and throw it out immediately.

But luckily he enjoyed having his cousins in the tent with him. The 3 of them had fun just going into and out of the tent, and of course pretending to sleep in the tent. It was very hard to catch their photo with their faces on my camera because they were moving around so much in the tent.

Bryan was very happy to see the candles lighted on the cake but he was quite overwhelmed by the crowd singing birthday song for him. When the song singing session is over, Bryan refused to blow the candle. He enjoyed looking at the candle light and refused to blow it out. So hubb and I had to blow it out for him instead.

Bryan loved the cake, but towards the end, he had a too large mouthful of cream and nearly choke on it…ooopsie..lesson learnt. Make sure don’t give a slice of cake with too much cream to a small child to self feed.

If you think this is the end of Bryan’s birthday celebration update…hehe…you are wrong…there’s more.

Part 2: A party spoiler….almost

The theme of the party is Barney. I have Barney party streamers, Barney party hat and of course a Barney cake!

But I was terribly disappointed with my Barney cake.

I picked up the cake – Longan & Lychee flavour on Sunday morning after breakfast. Then I went to my SIL to pick up her deep fryer, which I am borrowing to prepare for the party foods. Then I went to Tesco to pick up some last minute shopping items for the party.

All this pusing-pusing resulted in the cake melting and I have a Barney with disfigured mouth…BoooHooooo……

But luckily Bryan can still recognize that it is Barney and wasn’t complaining about the way Barney looked. I am not going to post a full pic of the cake as I am still sad over it. But u can see from the photo below how the icing had run around / below the eyes. Well the mouth is many many times worse. One corner is clearly disfigured.

I am quite upset with the bakery. When I went there to order, I had enquire about the Barney designs available. The lady told me that it is just one… hand drawn frosting. But today, I accompanied my fren to the same shop to order birthday cake for her daughter. And she showed my fren a whole catalogue of cake designs. And there are other Barney designs. These are not hand drawn but is actually a piece of sugar drawing that will be pasted on the cake. If she has shown me that last week, I would have ordered that too, and the designs may not have melted!

My only consolation was that the cake was delicious. There was hardly any leftover cake after the party.

Part 3 coming next…

Part 1: Going on 2…

Gosh, it was a busy weekend! Bryan will be turning 2 this Friday and we decided to have his birthday party a little bit earlier.

Initially, hubb wanted to just go out with our family for a nice dinner. But if we will need at least 2-3 tables to accommodate both his and my family. And since there is a split, it will be hard to socialize. Besides this will be the last year for Bryan to celebrate his birthday in our apartment, so it is a good idea also to have the birthday celebration at our apartment instead.

I would love to invite my friends with babies/ children to the party as well, but as our apartment is not very big, only family members are invited. My mother helped me to prepare the desserts – pandan layer jelly & fruit jelly. I prepared/ bought the rest of the items.

Stay tuned for more info on Bryan’s party….

Zoo Negara

The trip to KL was planned with Bryan in mind. So it is not surprising that the 2nd itinerary after Aquaria was the National Zoo.

I was told that the National Zoo is pretty far and that we should leave as early as possible as the animals tend to get drowsy after noon.

We left the hotel after breakfast and with some directions from a taxi driver outside the hotel, starts heading towards the Zoo. To our surprise, we took less than 20 minutes to reach the Zoo from KL. No traffic jam…this is the best part of being at KL during raya holidays.

We arrived about 10++ am and I think that is still early by Malaysian standards. There was still plenty of parking spaces and the queue was bearable.

As soon as we entered the Zoo, we noticed the free tram parked nearby and without further delay, hopped in so that we can get an overall tour of the zoo. That was a good idea because we noticed that later in the day, there was a really long queue for the tram ride.

After the tram ride, we went to the amphitheater for the animal show. We were about 20 minutes early for the show, so I bought some steamed corn for Bryan to enjoy before the show. It was the first time for Bryan to try the steam corn and I am happy to see that he almost finished the entire cup while dancing away to the music between spoonfuls of corn.

Bryan did not really enjoy the animal show and keep asking us to get going and leave the place. He would be interested for a short while when a new animal comes but quickly lose interest.

After the animal show, the first stop we walked to the giraffe and elephant area. Bryan was a bit overwhelmed to see the real life animals and he said that he was scared. That’s why he had this weird look on all his photos.

The tigers and lions were all lazing around and were quite far from where we stood. So I guess, Bryan did not really see them. But he did notice the lion/ tiger statue (cannot remember) and pointed that to me as we approached the caged area.

I wish they had a petting zoo like some of the overseas zoo, but then again, I am not sure how Bryan would react to it. He was quite scared of some of the animals up close. I tried to get him to touch the phyton but he refused. Don’t worry, the phyton is the one that they use for taking photos with and it’s gamekeeper was there as well. In fact, he was encouraging Bryan to touch the phyton.

The zoo got quite boring after a while. There wasn’t any good food around too…just overpriced (under-taste) fastfood *bleargh*, and plus the weather was turning bad.

So we head back to our hotel, and Bryan dozed off almost immediately,…with a half eaten bun in his hand…hahaha..too bad I forgot to capture that pic.

KLCC Aquaria

We took Bryan to KL for the Raya holidays. I told Bryan 2 days before we left that we will take him to KL and he was very excited about it. He kept on asking for KL and was very excited when it was finally the time to go.

As usual, we took our sweet time when we go for holidays with Bryan. We left the house for breakfast and then straight to KL about 10++ on Saturday morning. Initially Bryan was quite well behaved in the car. He kept saying, “KL, KL, KL,…” in a sing song manner. Shortly after we past the Juru toll, he realized that the drive to Kl is very long and started to get agitated. I guess he thought that we were bluffing him. So we had to calm him down because he was demanding to be taken out from his car seat and demanding to go to KL. So hubb told him to be patient and we will go to KL where there are lots of McDonalds *roll eyes*. And that calmed him down almost immediately. Bryan was then humming…”KL, tua-tua (a lot) nenenno”

Luckily not long after that, he fell asleep. And was asleep all the way until we reached KL. Husb and I did not stop for lunch because we did not want to wake Bryan up. Besides, I brought sandwiches along. When Bryan woke up, I gave him some bread and cheese, and that miserably was his lunch too.

As soon as we reached KL, we decided to look for the famous Pan Mee at Chow Kit area. After pusing pusing many rounds we found the place but unfortunately they were closed. Fortunately, Bryan was not annoyed by the endless driving as he indeed saw lots of McD along the KL roads.

So we checked into our hotel, freshen up and then took the LRT to KLCC.

Bryan was very happy to see the LRT train and kept saying “hua che, yau yau” ( I want train).

We arrived at KLCC and were very hungry. So we stopped by the first place we came across for food – Delifrance. I ordered lasagna, soup and fish fillets to share with Bryan. After dinner, we decided to go to just walk around a bit then head to the KLCC Aquaria. I was expecting a long queue but to my surprise, there was none. But on the way there, we saw groups of students leaving the place, so I guess we just missed the crowd…Yippee!! I guess we are lucky that we came in the evening instead of early in the day…Psst parents, note this tip. But do note that the Aquaria closes at 8pm and the last entry was 7pm.

Bryan was enthralled the moment we entered. He stood by the aquarium where there was a small shark with a school of fish and refused to leave the place. And he said, “Fish,yiu yiu” (swim).

The only thing that could make him move from the spot was the promise of more fishes ahead.

He also loved the turtle section because we used to keep tortoises at home and my parents still have tortoises at their house.

The section that all of us loved the most is of course, the tunnel…

I know it is not as impressive as the Singapore aquarium, but to Bryan, I think it is good enough.

And what did Bryan learn from the trip to KLCC Aquaria….How the fish’s mouth looks like…

He saw a big freshwater fish opened it’s mouth right in front of him. So now when ever, we asked him, “What does the fish’s mouth looks like?” He’ll do this….

ABC Recital

Bryan can recognize most of the alphabets now and can name the words beginning with the alphabets. Hubb caught this video of him reciting partially of the alphabets until he lost interest…

Pay attention to E. E is for Egg and Elephant but he has problems pronouncing Elephant, so sounds pretty funny…. his own pronunciation.

Anyway, it takes a trained ear to pick up what he said. Here’s what he has said..

A: Apple; B: Boy; C: Cat; D: Dog, E: Egg & Elephant; F: Fish; G: Girl; H: Horse; I: Ice cream; J: Jam; K: Kite; L: Lamp; M: Moon & McDonalds (Nenenno)

First TT session

I took Bryan to a Tumble Tots free trial class last Saturday. The program was pretty interesting… The whole area was converted into different “stations” of gym activities. Some of the activities Bryan did there was – climb the ladder, balancing & walking on narrow planks, walking/ sliding down a slide, crawling through boxes, walking & balancing on little blocks of wood, doing somersault (with the assistance of a ball) from top of a soft block. It is actually a series of activities, and children are guided to complete one before moving to another…

But knowing my Bryan,…he didn’t really follow instructions…don’t want to listen to teacher…etc. But the teacher said it is OK and at his age, we should just let him do whatever he likes.

Then there was a sing song session where the kids had to sit in a circle…Bryan refused and ran away to the other corner to play other things. One teacher chased after him and tried to carry him back to the circle…Bryan tried to “attack” the guy’s face, coz he was wearing specs… I think Bryan is one of (or is) the most notorious one in the class. And this is just his first class. I am surprised he wasn’t shy at all.

And then there was a bubble blowing session. The kids were all excited of course. When the session was over, all the kids was all ok, except Bryan. He wanted more so he asked the teacher, “hai yau ball ball” (still want ball ball). The teacher said “no more”, and of course he was upset. So he tore the sticker that one teacher had gave him moments ago and crumple the sticker in anger… *pengsan*

So am I signing up for the course?

At first I was undecided. There was an Astro promotion that gives u a month of free class when u sign up for 3 months. And I think the registration fee is waived too. So I only have to pay 3 months for 4 months class. Good deal right? Then I couldn’t locate the voucher and the center do not accept the printed voucher from the web.

Then yesterday, I had to fetch my friends back after our trip to the market. So had to clean my car a bit la… :-p . Guess what, I found the Astro pamphlet at the back seat. Bryan likes to play with pamplets, so he must have taken that from my mother’s house months ago. And it has the Tumble Tots voucher! So maybe I will give it a try.

Besides, it may be a good idea to introduce him to instructions & rules. It may ease his entry to day care later on, not that I am sending him there soon.

Little artist

Hubb had to attend a collegue’s wedding ceremony in Kedah a few weeks ago. And it was just me and Bryan at home that weekend morning till lunch time.

Since the weather is not very good, I decided to let Bryan color using the new set of oil pastels and a coloring book that I just bought.

We do not have a child size table, so I let him draw at the dining table instead, sitting on his baby chair.

Hubb came home not just to a colorful rabbit pic, but also to a colorful dining table. Hey, we should give room to a child’s creativity right?