I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

My favourite Christmas tune of all time, which keeps ringing in my head this time of year, every year. Cheers to everyone reading... Happy Christmas! These past two days have been rather hectic, as Christmas always is for us. Started with a eve dinner party for Fuzzy's side of the family. What a feast it was, with lamb, roasted prime rib, caramelised carrots, roasted baby potatoes, salads, fried calamari, fried wasabi prawns and the list goes on. Chubbs loved playing with the relatives whom he hasn't seen in a while, especially the grandies. He also enjoyed his dinner of roast beef, and blueberries for dessert.

Christmas morning was spent opening prezzies with Chubbs once breakfast was over. Fuzzy's and my gift to him was a musical toy comprising of a xylophone, a drum, spinning rattles, etc. He loved it to bits because there was so much to discover and explore.

Waiting for breakfast.

Playing the xylophone from the outside...

And from the inside...

Next up, a book from Aunty S. He loved the illustrations :)

And a basketball post from Aunty J and Uncle B. Which is now the second post he has, since Fuzzy and I got him a grown up version a few days ago too :)

For little Chubbs.

For big boy Chubbs.

After his nap and lunch, we let him play with a miniature golf club that belonged to his cousins, and he has been inseparable from it since. He is now very good at dribbling small balls around the house with it.

Our first dinner of the night was at Yee's, where Chubbs had turkey for the first time. My mum cooked it just nice, tender and not too dry. Chubbs love it and ate quite a hunk of meat. It was then time to open all his presents, and he must be one of the most blessed babies around because he was showered with gifts.

Antlers and hat from Great-Grandma.

Mr Bean's bear from Niel.

Mobile phone from Grandma and Grandpa.

Hat, kiwi and shirt from Yee. Only the hat is pictured.

The second dinner was at Uncle Bob's place just down the road from Yee's. More food, more fun! However, Chubbs was rather subdued there because he was a little disturbed by the loud and shrill barks of the jack russells, and it was fast approaching bed time. So he chilled on Shan's shoulder, far away from the dogs.

As the year comes to a close, I'd like to thank you all for sharing it with us, for supporting us, for laughing with us, and most of all, for loving Chubbs.

Ramen and Kite-Flying Remedial

To right the wrong of my last ramen experience, I headed to Marutama for a bowl of zen. This is what it should be like, neh?! I couldn't be more pleased :)

Fuzzy after eating; we ordered the one with the spicy soup :/

In the afternoon, it was more kite-flying, this time with Yee in tow. She posed the question of the day, "How does one fly a kite?" To which, I attempted some demonstrations, but sadly, they fluttered to the ground all too quickly. I yelled to Fuzzy that I had a ingenious idea on how to get flying (No, I will not reveal this secret on a public medium), and lo and behold, I unreeled all the string in no time!

My flite (flying kite) and I :) It's the one on top, by the way.

Even Chubbs had a hand in steering the kite from the comfort of his stroller while taking a water break.

The kite that only cost us a couple of big bucks has proven its surprising worthiness; flying strong even after having sustained a holes punctured by Chubbs in his excitement, and another of an unknown cause. Woohoo!

Boys' Christmas Get-Together

In a bid to make Christmas fun for Chubbs, we invited some of our friends with kids over for a play session while the adults stuff their faces. Fuzzy brought the playpen down, and I set up what I called the "zone of fun", where you can't enter if you're not fun. Nicky, SH and A's son, took well to that, and opted to play in there, rather enjoying himself so.

Nicky and his Astro Boy pose.

Asher, S's darling, and Chubbs played with Nicky for a while, but soon realised that the "zone of fun" was not quite what it was hyped to be.

Asher busies himself with a spade, while Chubbs doodles.

Asher was very drawn to Chubbs' tennis racket; my baby was a little possessive at first, and cried when I asked him to let Asher have it. But he soon learnt that it was fun to share too, and Asher spent most of the time wildly waving the racket around.

Austin with racket- check out Asher eyeing it :)

Asher with racket- Nicky wanted none of the racket, and busied himself with Chubbs musical activity table instead.

I think the boys had fun, even though Nicky waned at the end from fatigue. Chubbs loved to play with Asher, who's just a few months younger, and kor-kor Nicky. Wish I had captured how he beamed when his friends first arrived. He gave each of them a hug before they left and was rather sad to see them go. But I promised that I'll try to do this more often for him, and he quietly waved and muttered bye-bye.

A blur picture of Chubbs hugging Nicky at the door.

Shan's Commissioning

Especially for Evan, Loretta, the boys, Aunt Mon, Aunt Margaret, Yee-Sook and Aunty Jan.

My younger B-I-L, Shan, celebrated one of his proudest moments this evening, being commissioned as an officer in SAF. And boy, did he look dashing :)

Pre-parade.

Hugging GrandPa.

The air was quite still, and Chubbs was tasked to fan us with the program.

I know they seem to all look the same, so I'll help you out. Shan is 4th from the left.

Shan and his Yee-Kor.

John (as the "first" to salute Shan as officer) asking for his ang-pow.

My favourite shots.

Kite "Flying"

I been told that I'm the second biggest "sua-koo" (mountain tortoise) around. Fuzzy being the biggest. Literally. Reason is, we haven't been to the Marina Barrage or anywhere "happening" for that matter. Sigh. Determined to be more "with it", we headed south with not one, not two, but three kites in tow; simply because we are not confident of the make and integrity of kites these days, and not at all because of our (lack of) kite-flying prowess. Ahem! Anyway, I attribute this current kite-flying craze to our recent West Coast Park outings and especially after hearing from Chris and Cher Chen that we can fly kites at the green roof of the barrage. I couldn't fathom it at first; sounded so foreign and bizarre to me.

A week ago- sadly looking at the kites at West Coast Park.

Reading in the car, on the way to the barrage.

Before we got there, I thought it'll be a quiet hang-out spot, with just a few small families and young couples lounging around. Wrong. The car park was full; with people even parking alongside the roads. There were teenagers having school outings, large families picnicing, lovers lying on the grass, kids in strollers, etc. Not quite what we expected, eh? Almost everyone was flying a kite, or trying to, at least :/

We decided to first launch the kite that looked most promising. Chubbs was super thrilled by the sight of it; probably also because it matched his outfit.

Helping Daddy set up.

To my surprise, it took me just a little while to get the kite up and going while being in-charge of watching Chubbs. This success was so unexpected that I didn't have Fuzzy nearby to take over the reigns.

Woohoo! Look at us go!

Chubbs was very proud of our high-flying kite.

And he did a fine job taking control of the reigns.

Unfortunately, the wind waned soon after and our kite plummeted to the ground. So super Mommy decided to launch the kite again. The winds were not so cooperative this time around :(

Chubbs grabs my legs, asking for the reigns once he sees the kite take off. I've realised that it's difficult to be a successful kite-flyer with 12-kg attached to my leg :/

Both of us watching me crash attempt no. 101.

I congratulate us on our valiant attempts, and we will definitely do this again. This is considered a form of exercise right? I feel so virtuous :) Also, the excitement and joy on Chubbs' face and the cute squeals when he flies the kite is priceless.

Till the next time...

Ramen

For special day this month, Fuzzy and I decided to head to the newly-opened Ippudo at Mandarin Hotel for steaming bowls of ramen. We are fans of the springy Japanese noodle, and often patronize Marutama in both Central and Liang Court. But for fear of being labelled boring, we are venturing past our comfort zone and trying something new for a change. Plus, this Japanese ramen chain that's very hot in their homeland and New York City looked really promising.

Ippudo serves ramen in a pork-based broth, whereas Marutama uses chicken broth and they are famous for their thin, straight, springy noodles. We made our usual orders of ramen with seasoned tamago, except that Fuzzy chose the broth with red miso and garlic oil (red bowl), and I opted for the classic milky-white broth since I can't stand anything with garlic oil (white bowl). As per normal, we had an extra serving of noodles after the first round.

My husband finds it very difficult to keep his eyes open for photos.

We tucked into the food without first taking pictures because we were so hungry, and I can never wait to dive in the minute food is placed in front of me :/ Anyhow, here's what our bowls of noodles looked like halfway through.

Bottom-line, the service was impeccable, the noodles were good, but not as good as Marutama (although the hubby begs to differ). The noodle is indeed springier and much thinner than any ramen I've tried, but the broth just doesn't match up. No umami. The tamago was not done as well, and the pork belly was not exactly melt-in-the-mouth. In times of recession, the significantly higher Ippudo bill for the exact same orders is a major boo factor too.

Chubbs met Barney for the first time after we ate.