Good mood yakking

Winter wonderland ?? Only if you stay indoor

As the temperature is getting colder, the clothes / jackets are becoming thicker too. So so, folks in Sg, pls dont complain about how expensive your baby's clothings are... think about my gal's wardrobe cost !! Haha but i am enjoying the process of dressing her up too hahahahah.... So this photo is from last week when temperature was above 0. Doesnt she looks like a little teddy bear?? It is like a dream from my childhood that my teddy bear grows with me... so now i am growing a little stuff toy

Heehee this little cuddly overall is compliments from my SIL. It made its debut this weekend as the snows fall. Yesterday afternoon, when we saw that the sun was shining, we immediately dress her for a walk. But only 5 mins outside and the snow came so it was a very short walk.

As more snow fell today, it starts to accumulate and so instead of dwelling on the cold, I went out to play hahaha.... not far, just on my balcony. Yoohooo My ski jacket is again proving its worth!

View from our window after we play on the balcony :)

Hmm... suddenly thinking about our Harbin trip last yr... will post some photos if i can find it

What is your race?

When I had to fill up the forms for Kirsten's application to become a Singaporean, I had to ask this question to Sander. However, it sounds like a very strange question to him and he just said he is Dutch, but is that nationality = race? I am not sure of the implication so I left the column empty.

Well, I just realise that whatever I fill in there, the kid will take that as her race as her record in Singapore. So should I fill in Dutch or Cacuasian?

Then again, both of us think that if I am an Asian and Sander is from Europe, shouldn't Kirsten be consider as a Eurasian? But seems that MY identity is being left out from the equation in reference to my kids record in MY country!

Then, in Holland, the law is such that all offsprings from any Dutch person will automatically be of Dutch nationality. So Kirsten is automatically Dutch. Then in Singapore, it is such that it is by application. So, Kirsten will be Singaporean only IF we apply. I am just wondering if Singapore is hard up for people and trying to invite so many foreigners into the country, why don't they make the regulations easier so that any kid of any Singaporean can easily be a citizen. If they make this easier, then at least the kid will have an easy link and may one day choose for herself to make Singapore her home.

We have already fill in a lot of papers as stated on ICA's website, and then now they need the translation of her birth certificate to English. The belgium embassy directed us to get this from our local city hall. The city hall may not not have this service, then we will have to go to an official translator to have it translated and then to get it stamped as certified true copy in various agencies! That is a lot of effort and money required to get the paperwork for my daughter to be a Singaporean, is it worth it ?

I don't know.
I totally embrace my Singaporean identity but having to go through so much for her, at the end of 18 years, she might just choose to give it again. hahaha.... anyway, the Baby bonus is my answer, I will definitely try harder to establish her links to Singapore for now.

Home alone for the entire week

Today is the start of another scary week. Sander is off to Denmark for a week of training. After sending him to the Schipol airport in Amsterdam, I drove home alone with Kirsten for 1.5hr. This is not her first long journey but its my first with her. Fortunately she was very cooperative.

Kirsten has really been an amazing baby. She has her difficult moments but when we need to go out, she is often very cooperative. So far we managed to stay over at my MIL, attended a halloween party and the last weekend we also managed to stay over at a latino fren's place for games night. She is quite a charmer when we are out and managed to win over the heart of quite a few people and thus allowing more names on our nanny back-up list :)

Aiyo but for my lil gal who loves milk so dearly, she has not been drinking much over the last weekend. Each feed has become shorter and yesterday evening, she only drank half her usual and puked out half of whatever she drank. But she was in fairly good mood and managed to sleep on her own and didnt wake up in the middle of the night. Aiyo so 'ma fan' , on one hand I am worried that she is too 'pang pang' but on the other hand worried when she has such unusual behaviour. Urghh.. really not looking forward to tonight's feed. Especially without Sander home this week, I really dont hope for surprises.

Anyway, since the ang moh way is to let the kid sleep in their own room, as per last weekend, we shifted the cot to her room. Surprisingly Kirsten managed well on her own. In fact it was us who felt a bit empty in our room when she 'moved' out. Wondered how my mum felt during those numerous times when i moved out, to the hall, to shanghai n now here... Really strange n mixed feelings.

Kirsten is now able to smile more frequently its easier to identify her mood /expression. Her motor skills are still not developed though. She can kick very very well but still too lazy to use her hands at all, thus not a slight interest in reaching out for her toys. She kind of settled herself into a routine, sleeping from 11pm -7am with a small panic attack to search for her pacifier at 3+am each night. With the quick feed at 7am, she can then continue sleeping till 9+am before the entire day routine starts. We are really quite pleased with this pattern as it allows us to be quite rested on weekend especially. Aiyo but time really flies and almost 3 months since I stopped working and don't feel that I have 'done' anything sort of feeling. Have listed some things I hope to do before the year run out and hope that I will be successful.

Answer to the previous post

From the left, 1st, 2nd and 5th are gals. For some reasons, all the boys in this group doesn't seems to have a lot of hair.

Yup, the 5th is Kirsten!

7 lumps of things

This was taken a month back when we attended the pre-natal class gathering. Here's a little quiz
- Can you identify which is kirsten?
- There are 3 gals amongst the 7 babies, can you tell the gals from the boys?
(Clue : The amount of hair)

Kirsten is the youngest and even being half asian, she is not that smaller that the rest :) anyway it was super funny making that photo. I hope some one else will have a better version and I will try to upload it if I receive it.

I miss my friends...

Reading Jocelyn's blog today really really make me miss my friends... In fact as people are getting older I think we are all getting more n more sentimental. We recently had a conversation with a friend and discussing about home trip and he was saying he doesn't really feel as if he has a hometown anymore because only his parents n the house is there but everything else is different as his friends had moved all over the place. Sander's situation is similar and whenever we return to Alkmaar, we only have his parents to visit and all other friends have moved out and we don't have someone that we can just call up n meet for a cuppa coffee.

I'm thankful that I have a larger pool of family n friends in Sg that I think I will at least for a very long time still feel that Sg is a Home that I look forward to returning to !

9 more weeks to go!