2 Spots and 2 Steves???

In one of the previous posts, it was highlighted that on one occasion, Gwendolyn accidentally discovered that she has 2 Spots! Without further mentioning of the existence of other Spots and Steves in the house, she has further discovered their hiding place - her cupboard! Sunday morning, after waking up, don't know what has triggered her curiosity in opening the cupboard and bringing a stool from the bathroom to dig behind her piles of bathing towels, she discovered the existence of another pair of Spot and Steve! She excitedly brought all 4 of them to show Papa and Mama! This time, instead of quickly hiding them again, it's too late and her memory stayed! She refused to let go of the other pair and keep looking for them whenever only 1 pair is in sight! Papa and Mama didn't see any point in hiding them again...But 1 secret remained intact, is that, a 3rd Spot is still hiding safely at the corner of the cupboard!

How long can this Spot remain in hiding for?

Farm Visits

It's been getting harder and harder to find weekend activities that will not bore Gwendolyn from...Papa and Mama tried very hard to look for some activities relating to the countryside and decided that it's time to bring Lyn Lyn for some farm visits! FARM? You may ask: are there farms in modern day Singapore? YES! Most of them are located around the Choa Chu Kang and Lim Chu Kang area, in the north western section of the Island Nation. Follow from Lyn Lyn's first experience to the Hay Dairies earlier this year, Papa and Mama have decided to bring her to a fish farm!

Qian Hu Fish Farm

Papa and Mama didn't know much about the farms and just followed the information sheet that they've gotten from one of the weekend newspapers some time ago. There were 2 fish farms featured on the information sheet and Mama just randomly picked one. After a long drive, finally we've arrived at the destination and Lyn Lyn goes : Yeah, I go fish farm! Initially, she couldn't relate herself to the fishes at all and was rather reserved when being brought in front of the fish tanks. After a while, Mama tried telling her one of the Spot VCD episode on Spot's outing to the Aquarium to see different fishes and started singing the song, her memory ticked and started to relate to that! She was walking around, looking at different types of fishes and she didn't like the stingrays : I don't like the round round one! When we reach one of the tanks with the sign "These fishes are sick and not to be sold" and Mama told her that the fishes are sick, she looked really concerned and keep asking to go back to see them again...so adorable and caring!

She wondered around the fish farm for a while and we started to find the place a little boring. So we decided to leave this farm and explore further for other farms. After driving away for about a minute, she started asking for the fish farm again and even started crying...we had no choice, but to bring her back to the same fish farm again. She was all jolly and happy again when we reach there and she's specially requested to see the "sick ones"...after seeing the sick ones for a second time, she's more relieved and is willing to go!

For more information on this fish farm, please visit - http://www.qianhu.com/

After a second visit, we started looking for another farm again. Since Lyn Lyn was asking for the goat farm that she's been to, but it's not around the Choa Chu Kang area, Papa was trying very hard to locate the exact location on the map. Whilst driving out from that area, we noticed a sign : FARMART CENTRE. We thought that there's no harm in taking a look and it was a good decision!

Farmart Centre

This is actually a central farmer's market, where farmers from the surrounding area can bring their products for sale! In addition, there is this section with an educational theme, where members of the public can see different types of animals, e.g. rabbits, hamsters (huge ones), frogs and even goats! Anyone can just spend a $ to buy some food to feed the rabbits or goats and Lyn Lyn was so excited seeing a Gor Gor and a Jie Jie feeding the goats. She's asked to feed as well! She wasn't scared at all, but enjoying herself so much! She's a fair person and will not keep feeding the same goat. Instead, she will ask to feed the other goats that haven't gotten a share previously.

This is really a very different experience for her and to cultivate her love for animals and be a more caring person!

For more information on this fish farm, please visit - http://www.farmart.com.sg/

After feeding the goats, it's time for us to be fed too...it's already lunch time! We've found a restaurant and sat down for our lunch. Lyn Lyn was so hungry and tired that she just wanted to fill her tummy and kept eating plain rice without anything else! After a quick rush of rice-scooping, she's all tired and Papa brought her to walk around the place. When they return, she's already fast asleep! This ended our quest for farms today!

Vivocity

After Lyn Lyn woke up from her long nap, all of us went to Vivocity to find new eating places! Wrong choice...absolutely a wrong decision, as everywhere was packed! It's already 7:30pm and we can't see the possibility of getting a table anywhere by 8:00pm...we were on the verge of leaving, but we noticed that this place called the White Dog Cafe, with no queues at all! We quickly walked over and noticed that they serve pricier western food and immediately understood why. Without further queries, we have asked for a table for 3...Lyn Lyn was so excited when we ordered pasta, pizza and potato wedges! She must be really hungry, as she's finished 3 slices of pizza all by herself! Yum Yum!

After the tummy-filling "exercise", Lyn Lyn was all energetic again and tried looking for other interesting things! As Mama wanted to eat Haagen Daz ice-cream, we went straight there afterwards and this time, Lyn Lyn has asked for a single-scoop cup of strawberry ice-cream!

Eating her ice-cream and feeding Papa and Mama at the same time

After the yummy ice-cream, it was close to 10pm and we went to the last available shopping place : Toys R Us. It was freezing cold in there and we just dashed by the first section quickly...NO, it's just too cold! To avoid Lyn Lyn from catching cold, Papa and Mama quickly brought her to the exit and saw a lot of kids jumping in a circular area and shouting at the TV in front of them! Oh, there's a camera somewhere, capturing the activities of the kids. Mama asked Lyn Lyn to stand there and look at the TVs...she goes : How come? How come Lyn Lyn's on TV? She repeated this sentence over and over again...

She's too much adventure today and it's time to call it a day...we all went home and on the way home, she fell asleep!

Ice-cream...AGAIN

Following from the previous ice-cream experience, Gwendolyn starts to enjoy eating this "cold cold" delicacy. When we went for dinner on the Hari Raya public holiday, she asked for a "strawberry ice-cream" again! Well, she's willing to share with Mama, but she was only sharing the non-strawberry portion, which she is not interested in...why strawberry though?

Yum Yum Ice-cream

Gwendolyn had her first ice-cream cone all by herself at Andersen's Ice-Cream at Marina Square. She chose the flavour, asked for a cone and monopolised it all to herself, sharing a few mouthful with Papa and Mama only. See how satisfying she is!

Bubble Gun

In the Barney CD titled "Baby Bop's Play School", it featured a "bubble machine", where bubbles generated from there can be of a circle (standard), a square, a triangle, a star and a heart, whereby, it aims at teaching pre-schoolers about shapes. However, Gwendolyn has taken this further to ask for the same "bubble machine" to do exactly the same magic! However, Mama has been trying to educate her about the existence of this "bubble machine" is only possible in the VCD and Barney is the only one who has it! She persisted for quite a while until one day, during shopping, she saw this promoter, with a hand-held something in her hand, was able to generate a chain of un-interrupted bubbles! To Lyn Lyn's amazement, she shouted: BUBBLE MACHINE (she's not entirely wrong, but instead of a "bubble machine", it's a bubble gun!). Without thinking twice, Mama just bought it and promised Lyn Lyn to play when we go outdoor. However, the weather's been bad and with the problematic haze, the play was "delayed" until now!


Lyn Lyn was so happy to see the chain of bubbles gushing through the "machine", but was a little upset when she couldn't catch them at the same time. To minimise her disappointment, Mama play "catch the bubbles" whilst she was busy with the "machine"! Everything was fine until another child came over and tried to play with her, but she was not very pleased with "someone" blocking her bubbles at such a short distance and shouted : HEY, THAT'S MY BUBBLES! The child's parents had no choice, but to distract the child by bringing her to the swimming pool...sigh...

Joyce & Ryan's wedding dinner

Auntie Joyce, Uncle Kelvin's younger sister, got married on 14 October 2006. Gwendolyn, together with Grandma, Papa and Mama, went for the wedding banquet at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. The first thing that Lyn Lyn saw were the balloons hanging at the reception area and she's already asked for them! Since we're the last few guests that they're waiting for, we quickly rushed into the ballroom...but when Lyn Lyn saw Joel Di Di, the two started playing and it was rather difficult to get Lyn Lyn to sit down. Finally, she sat down when she was satisfied that Uncle Kelvin has gotten her 2 balloons...


Wedding dinner always start later than Lyn Lyn's normal dinner time and she was already very hungry. When the first dish came, she was all set to EAT! She ate the first few dishes and was exceptionally excited when the shark fin soup came (she loves soup)...she requested to drink by herself and Mama just made sure that she's appropriately covered, so that she'll not dirty herself and ask for a "change"!

Queenstown Community Library

As Gwendolyn was sick last week, we've missed one round of "library hopping". This week, we continued our quest for another library, as recommended by Mama's colleague, the Queenstown Library at Margaret Drive, near to the driving range where Papa and Mama used to go during the weekends before Lyn Lyn's arrival! Since the Children's Library is right next to the reception, subsequent to the previous incident happened at the Jurong Regional Library, where we got to know we're not supposed to take photos within the library, Mama didn't take any snapshots of Lyn Lyn inside the building...we just took a few on the way...

As usual, Lyn Lyn has chosen all the Spot books and trying to go through one by one. In the end, she find that she's in fact taken too many and she's ignored a few and focussed on those with more words than those with flaps: implying that she's older and wanted to read a real storybook? Not too sure though...at least, she can sit still and read for about half an hour...not bad!

Lantern Festival - Chinese Garden

This year, the Mid-autumn festival falls on the 6 October 2006, Friday. Since we didn't buy any mooncakes or did anything to celebrate, Auntie Adele and Mama decided to bring the two kids to Chinese Garden for the annual Mid-Autumn Festival Event on Saturday, instead of the actual day! This year, the theme is on the man-made wonders! It is not as crowded as the previous years, as the weather hasn't been very good. Lately, the haze has been very bad, affecting many people, both adults and children alike have fallen sick. That night when we visited the Chinese Garden, the PSI reading was at a 9-year high of 150! We can actually smell a bit of burning smell. At least, both kids have already recovered from their haze-induced cough and running nose, leaving the adults still being sick!

When we enter the gantry, we walked across a "rainbow" bridge before hitting the main garden, where some cartoony structures of bee, butterflies were located. Unlike other kids, Gwendolyn didn't take any interest in those, but were more interested in the koi pond, situated behind the first building. We went round the Chinese Garden and noticed a few familiar lantern structures: The Eiffel Tower, The Pyramid, Taj Mahal, The Blue Mosque, The Pisa etc...Gwendolyn was expressing her particular likes and dislikes to the various structures and apparently, she liked the one in the middle of the lake, with a "jie jie" standing on top of a lotus bud structure, where she'll emerge and sub-merge from the structure and turn around when she's appearing! Lyn Lyn kept asking for that particular "jie jie" and was kind of worried when she didn't appear for quite a while...so cute!

Carrying her cinnamonroll lantern, which "fu fu" bought for her last year

Sick weekend

Poor Gwendolyn was sick from Thursday onwards...

28 September 2006, Thursday: First sign of sickness

When Mama pick Lyn Lyn up from school, Miss Angeline told Mama that Lyn Lyn is having unusual amount of discharge in the eye, which makes her eye all sticky and gluey after waking up from her nap. Mama wasn't too worried, but knew that her eyes have been having quite a bit of discharge and lump up her eyelashes into causing difficulty in opening her eyes...thinking that it was due to the length of her lashes in trapping all the mucus from her tears...since Mama is rushing on work and needs to meet a deadline tomorrow, she's left Lyn Lyn with grandma and went off to Jurong Point McDonalds to continue working. When picking Lyn Lyn up at 10:45pm, grandma was telling Mama that Lyn Lyn's been grumpy and upset during bathing time and didn't eat much. She slept quite early too. Whilst bringing her home, Mama was thinking of bringing Lyn Lyn to see Dr John before sending her to school...but once arrived home, Mama continued to work until the wee hours.

29 September 2006, Friday: Development of a fever

Morning! Wake up...Lyn Lyn was all jolly and singing after waking up. Thinking that she's fine with such a good mood, Mama threw away the idea of calling Dr John, but send Lyn Lyn straight to school. Then Mama just kept working through lunch, etc...until she received a call from the school that Lyn Lyn is running a high fever of 38.5 degrees celsius! Though work is very urgent, Mama quickly gathered help from other team members, settled with backup arrangement and set off for school to pick Lyn Lyn. Poor girl, when Mama saw her in the office, she was stoned and was sitting in front of the computer, watching her favourite Hi-5 show! Even though Lyn Lyn loves running around in Dr John's clinic most of the times, this time, she was very clingy on Mama and refused to be touched by anyone...Dr John quickly diagnosed her with an infection in the eye, gave her anti-biotics, even invited her to play his new piano, but Lyn Lyn insisted on playing the old one and kept crying at irregular intervals. When Lyn Lyn is home, Mama quickly feed her medicine and gave her a fever "ice-pack" on her forehead. She's even told me that she's "same same" as the baby on the "ice-pack" box which she's holding.

Once she's home, she's much better, watching tv and playing with her "ice-pack"...she's even asked for ABC pasta with sausages! Since Papa is coming home tonight and Lyn Lyn's been waiting, even though she's already very tired. Mama kept attending to all her demands until Papa reaches home! Lyn Lyn was so happy that she ran over and gave Papa a very big hug...not even that. Throughout the night before she finally slept, she'll initiate to open her arms wide and keep hugging Papa...so sweet....

30 September 2006, Saturday: Diarrhea...pain pain

This morning, Gwendolyn woke up fresh and was fine all morning! She's asked Mama to cook ABC pasta with 10 sausages, but only ate 2 mouthfuls. Before we set off for our usual weekend grocery shopping, she's asked for "sh sh", which is uncommon at home. Instead of "sh sh", she meant she's poo-ed in her pampers...it didn't look anything alarming at all, until she woke up from her nap and is about to go out to feed the fish with Papa, which she's asked to "sh sh" again...this time, it's more watery and she doesn't feel comfortable at all! This time, Papa and Mama suspected that it's diarrhea...until dinner time, where Mama cooked whilst Papa and Lyn Lyn went to feed the fish...she only wanted soup, with no rice, not even her favourite broccoli! She drank a lot of soup and asked to sleep rather early! Before she sleep, she poo-ed for a 3rd time...when she's asleep, Mama called Dr John to consult his view and he said that this is normal, as the anti-biotic is taking effect...her eyes doesn't have any more discharge and her fever subsided! The only thing is about the diarrhea which is making her uncomfortable. Mama quickly went to Dr John's clinic to collect some medicine, just in case her diarrhea continues on Sunday! As expected, she poo-ed again in the middle of the night and refused to be changed, as her backside is painful...poor gal...it took Mama quite some time to settle this and fed her milk too before she fall asleep again!

1 October 2006, Sunday: Children's Day

Lyn Lyn woke up at 9:15am, and was talking to herself in her room! When Mama went over to see her, she was all cheery and bubbly! Mama thought she's fine with no more diarrhea...Mama brought her over to see Papa and let her drink milk at the same time! She ended up playing hide and seek behind the curtains! She seemed ok...until we're about to go to West Coast Park McDonald's again, for her favourite breakfast...she asked for "sh sh" again! This time, when Mama started wiping her backside, she was screaming and shouting out of pain! Poor gal...Mama decided not to wipe her, but to wash her directly off the shower to minimise the pain! It's just so undesirable to see her suffering from the diarrhea...Mama pacified her by telling her that we're going to fly a kite and she got distracted into thinking of her kite...

Whilst eating our breakfast, Lyn Lyn saw other kids having balloon and wanted to ask for one as well. Mama asked the "gor gor" there and Lyn Lyn asked for 2...1 blue and 1 yellow! She's so happy with her 2 balloons!

After breakfast, Papa brought her to the grass patch to fly her new kite! She sat patiently with Papa to prepare for the flying session. She was really enthusiastic in the beginning in trying to pull, etc, hoping to see her "butterfly" fly in the air! However, after many rounds of trial, the kite refused to fly and she was disappointed and began to feel tired! She told Mama that she doesn't want to fly the kite and wanted to go home! Well, nevermind, maybe she's sick and she's impatient...we can try again when she's recovered!

After that, we went home for a short while, hoping Lyn Lyn would take a short nap, but she was all excited, with grandma's maid coming home with us...asking her to play her toyw with her! Since she refused to sleep after drinking her milk, we've decided to go out shopping...in the end, she fell asleep in the car and the shopping trip was abandoned! She napped for almost 3 hours and woke up fresh again! Even though she poo-ed again, she was not as grumpy as this morning, with terrible shouts! This time, Mama lured her by telling her that she can play her new Hello Kitty fishing toy after washing her backside...she jolly well cleaned up and started trying out her new fishing game! She mastered the game quite quickly, but in the end discovered that it's faster using her fingers instead of the "kitty scoop"!

Dinner tonight is angel hair with chicken and sausages + chicken wings, which Lyn Lyn used to like! However, her appetite wasn't very good and only had a bit of chicken wing and a few mouthfuls of angel hair...she asked for biscuit later in the night, as she was hungry! The good thing about her is that she'll always ask for water whenever she feels thirsty...and lessened Mama's worry about her probable dehydration from her diarrhea! See, she even posed for Mama with her favourite water bottle bought from Disneyland HK!

Look at her feet...she is showing off her modelling qualities at such a tender age!

Mama changed her for the last time with slight poo before she finally fell asleep...poor gal, diarrhea-ed for 2 days...it's so painful to see her screaming and shouting in pain, where Mama cannot help her at all. All the Mama can do was to give her big hugs whenever she screams in pain...she only wants Mama and no one else...hope that her diarrhea will stop tomorrow, as she's stopped her anti-biotics after the last dose this morning...she happily threw the box away, as she dreads drinking that bottle!