My Oh My ... When Will She Start Talking

Ally will be 19 months this October and I'm getting a bit worried cause it sounds like her verbal skill is taking a bit longer to develop compared to Callie.

To make sure, I've been checking out my past postings on this blog trying to find out when Callie started talking ... managed to narrow down to around Nov 2009 ... which means Callie was around 2+. So, I suppose I'm worrying for nothing.

Though it's not like Ally is not saying anything. She's quite good with her ma-ma, yeh-yeh, poh-poh, yi-yi, meeee (for mummy), deeeeeee (for daddy), jie-jie .... and her favourite .... mum-mum and nien-nien ;-)

At least this blog is good for something. Quite glad that I'm keeping this blog alive for both my girls. And for myself since I'm getting forgetful nowadays.

Here are pictures of Ally in the playground. Compared to Callie, she's much more daring. True to her animal sign, she's a feisty little tiger cub.

At the playground in our condo

On the horsey ride at shopping mall

Family Photo Session in Studio

One fine day ... right in the middle of a work week ... we had an appointment with a studio a family photo session. Jan managed to purchase a session using Groupon. And being a Groupon promotion, the studio was very busy and we could only manage a weekday appointment.

The studio was located in a new commercial area in Kota Damansara. The place didn't look terribly impressive ... further worsen by the fact that it was raining ... thus the overall mood wasn't so good. In fact the room in the studio where we had our session looked extremely run down. However, as you can see, the end result was surprisingly good (albeit at lower resolution for this blog). Well, that's the magic of proper studio lighting and an expensive camera.

The session was moving along quite slowly at first. We were just posing around randomly ... and the photographer wasn't much help. Basically just snapped our photos ... he hardly chipped in with any ideas for pose nor backdrop nor accessories. In fact, I was the one coming up with the ideas and the accessories, such as the teddy bears, inflatable pool, balloons, bean bags etc.

At the end of the session ... we snapped more than 200 photos in total. While I entertained the girls, Jan had the tedious job of selecting the photos that we wanted. Eventually, there were some confusion about the photo package ... so she decided to pay extra for all of them.

As the photos below show, it was quite worth it just for the memories alone. God knows when we will be doing this again :)

Callie's 4th Birthday

My baby is 4 today. And what a celebration we've been having for her.

Started off with dinner with the family and which ended up being an impromptu party. We celebrated at the Marmalade at Bangsar Village 2. And thanks to the people at Marmalade, they put us in a quiet corner right next to the playground.

So the kids (and also the adults) ended up having a great time ... with the entertainment and the food. Ooops, just realised I didn't take a photo of Callie's birthday cake. Never mind, will post later.

And on her big day today, we went out kai-kai at 1Utama and also bought her a cake for another candle blowing session at poh-poh's house. This time a much smaller cake from the cake shop at the newly renovated Jusco.

Here are some photos for your enjoyment.

Our 2 girls with their party hats ... Ally's didn't stay on for long

Callie in her new princess tiara

Callie's special Smurfy Birthday balloon from mummy

2nd round candle blowing session

I'm 4 today

Smurf-tabulous Movie Outing

Today was the opening day of The Smurfts movie at the cinemas. And since it was the holidays, we took the girls out for a show.

We managed to buy tickets the night before ... and for the "love seat" as well. Though, it was less of a love seat for us ... rather a convenient seating arrangement for the 4 of us ...

Fyi, we only needed to pay for 2 adult tickets, although later I noticed that kids above 3 are chargeable. Oh well, the ushers didn't stop us, so no worries.

So this was Ally's first movie outing to the cinema and Callie's .... eh .... 3rd I think. And how did it go ... SMURF-TABULOUS :)

Callie was well behaved and surprisingly, so was Ally. In fact, we think she enjoyed herself immensely throughout the show. In the first part of the movie, she was engrossed with the packet of popcorn. And when that was done, there was always mummy's secret weapons ;-)

And guess what, she was also humming /singing along to the Smurfs tune ... you know the one ... la la, la la la la, la la la la la ...

I think we will be la-la-'ing for these couple of days. Smurfy ...

Making Cakes

It seems that we've discovered a new source of birthday cakes which is inexpensive, personal and a whole lot of fun for Callie.

There's a shop in Tropicana Mall which provides a bare cake template, i.e. a standard cake covered in cream and nothing else. Previously, they provided the cream various custom colours but now only provides in white.

So anyway, in addition, the cake shop will provide several "tubes" of coloured cream and numerous types of colourful sprinkles. With these tools, we can decorate the cake to our heart's content. Here are a couple of Callie's masterpieces.

p/s Of course, not all the credit goes to Callie ... if you know what I mean ;-)

Birthday Cake for Poh Poh

Birthday Cake for .... eh .....

We just gotta use up all the sprinkles this time ...

This has gotta be our best effort to date.

Backdated Updates

Hi all,

Long time no blog. Over the next couple of days (hopefully), I will start to blog about stuff and events which happened over the past couple of months.

Most of them will be for Ally and some of both girls. Been thinking about it ... I've been rather unfair to the little one. Seems like I've blogged more for Callie than her little sister.

So to make up for it, I've decided to set things right somewhat and will be posting some historical events with pictures and some videos (hopefully). Don't want the little one to complain to daddy later on why so little postings about her.

Therefore, do come back and visit as I try to keep this blog alive and interesting for fans of Callie and Ally ;-)

Lanterns Lanterns ... I Love My Lanterns

You know moon cake festival is coming soon when stalls selling moon cakes and tang-loongs start popping up in the shopping malls.

Another year and another round of moon cakes with exotic and fancy fillings (or innards). I just dunno ... whether we can still get the "traditional" lotus seed with egg yolk or not la. As usual, we didn't buy much due to the ever increasing prices of these moon cakes.

I mean I just cannot understand how a single moon cake can cost the same as say a main course meal from TGIF. Don't know about you ... but I would rather go for my super large burger with fries or seafood marinara spaghetti anytime over a "green tea-lotus seed-custard-triple egg yolk ping-pei moon cake".

Ok ... back to the topic at hand ... as usual this is something which Jan would buy for the kids. Somehow I just don't get in the mood for these type of things. Furthermore, Jan also takes the trouble to pack these up every night and bring to the car every morning so that the girls can play with their tang-loongs when we walk back to our house from the carpark every evening.

As usual, in this day and age where lawsuits are prevalent (not to mention less of a fire hazard), we went for the safe battery powered LED type tang-loong. Sitting here as I type this, I could remember fondly back in the good OLD days when we had lanterns catching fire .... be it the paper sping-type or the glass paper type with wire frame.

Back then it was just plain fun to have a couple of lanterns lined up on the wire (where mum normally hang clothes to dry), and the excitement when the lantern catches fire one after the other until all that's left is the naked wire frame of what was earlier a pre tty rooster, fiery dragon or a sports dragster ... no Spongebob or Barney the purple dinosaur for us back then.

So here are a couple of pictures of our girls with their 2011 lanterns ...

Jan, Callie and Ally posing (taken with flash)

Jan and Callie only ... Ally is standing right beside me (taken without flash ... as the flash overwhelms the light from the lantern's LED)

My Little Tiger's Pawprints

If you recall, when Callie reached 12 months, we went to make a 3D print of her hand and her foot (http://thelittlemunster.blogspot.com/2009/06/little-prints-3d-sculpture.html).

And when Ally reached 12 months, Jan also brought her to make her 3D prints. Unfortunately, I was in China during that time ... so Jan went with her mum, sis and Callie to Desa Park City where Melisa is now also operating from.

Though I was expecting otherwise, Jan told me that our little tiger was easier to handle compared to Callie previously and her hand and foot were moulded in record time without needing a second attempt. Wow ...

So here are her pawprints mounted right next to Jie-jie's.

Here's the link to Melisa's page : www.littleprints.com.my

Callie In The Hospital

We had quite a scare over the last couple of days. Callie was having high fever and bad coughing for several days and despite medication the fever kept coming back. Furthermore, her appetite was bad and she was throwing up her milk due to the cough.

Late one night when her fever was extremely high, Jan brought Callie to the emergency ward of Damansara Specialist Hospital for a checkup and blood test. Fortunately, it was negative for dengue but then we admitted her into the hospital based on the doctor's recommendation. Eventually, it was diagnosed as a lung infection and needing some serious treatment with a couple of antibiotics.

So, after admission, Jan came back to the house to look after Ally while my parents watched over Callie at the hospital. And I then left for the hospital to spend the accompany her during her stay at the hospital. Admittedly, it was my first time staying at the hospital as well. The first night was quite rough ... imagine sharing a single bed with Callie and not able to move about much as she had a drip on her right hand.

Furthermore, our girl was not enjoying the strong and foul tasting medicine and on the first night itself, we had to change bed sheets about 2 times due to her throwing up ... and a couple of times on me as well. Sigh ...

To make a long story short, the chest infection cleared, fever receded and she eventually recovered after spending about 5 days in the hospital.

And a word of thanks to the staff of Damansara Specialist Hospital and our paediatrician, Dr Soh.

A sure sign of recovery ... Callie enjoying Subway sandwich with mum

Callie with her "thank you" cake to Dr. Soh

Holiday At The Beach Labour Day 2011

During the labour day weekend, we took a trip down to Port Dickson with my buddy and his family for a short holiday. We stayed at the Thistle Port Dickson resort, formerly known as Guoman Port Dickson ... I think.

It was a pleasant drive down to PD, and as usual for a long weekend, the road down south was somewhat congested approaching Seremban town. We didn't have problem with the jam as I showed off my navigation skills to Jan by taking the "scenic back road" through Bandar Enstek and Bandar Baru Sri Sendayan to PD.

Of course, the GPS on my Nokia N8 came in handy ... along with some prior knowledge of this route as I've taken this same way back from our project site at Sendayan Tech Valley just a couple of weeks earlier.

The resort was quite nice. It was crowded as expected due to the long weekend. Didn't spend much time at the beach ... Callie and Ally's first feel of the sand between their toes wasn't to their liking. Nor the feel of the lapping waves from the sea. Suffice to say, we didn't go to the beach anymore after that first experience.

We spent most of the time just lazing around the hotel ... enjoying the facilities, the swimming pool and other stuff. As expected, Callie was cautious and took time to enjoy the pool. Ally as usual was warmed up and eager within minutes. Such is the difference in character of these two girls .... almost polar opposites ... more on this in future post.

On the way back, we went to Seremban town to try out the famous beef noodle. Managed to find our way thanks to our GPS .... the wonders of technology. Coming back, we took the scenic route again as it looked fairly congested on the Plus highway heading back to KL. And since the route eventually took us back to the junction at Sepang F1, we took a quic k detour to LCCT and to the end of the KLIA runway so that Callie can watch planes land ... which was mostly returning Air Asia flights.

Callie and Leanne (SC and Sharon ... did I spell her name correctly?)

Callie at the playground

... where she finally overcame her fear of the tube slide

Ooooh ... it's so windy ... I believe I can fly ;-)