a spot of singapore

Apparently Santa has a gig at Changi Airport

June 23, 2011

Among the list of favorite indoor entertainment for the kids, the airport ranks pretty high. It’s great for us because it’s free, relatively quiet and it’s 5 minutes from our place. And they love it because they can ride the skytrain back and forth multiple times, practice coloring at the carved woodblock station, eat gummies and run from one end to the other.

Last week, at the invitation of Changi Airport, we discovered a whole load of other activities we’ve been missing out on. In fact, we ended up packing in 7 hours of fun at the airport, which is like a trip to the zoo, except free.

Here were their favorites.

1. Plane watching at the sunflower garden.

It was located next to a runway so they could get up close with sunflowers and watch planes take off at the same time. Baby girl was all “Look got flowers, OH SEE THE AEROPLANE CAN FLY!” She even found herself a nice ledge to stand on for a better view.

2. Koi feeding at the pond.

The kids are in a feeding phase now, they feed their stuffed toys, feed my mom’s dog, and from time to time, even each other. Evidently, feeding fish was right up their alley,

3. Window and Sand Art

Baby girl fiddled with the paints for a while and decided to go eat the sand from the tubs. Seeing that she’s already eaten a lot more than sand, I figured I’d let her express her creativity however she wanted.

4. Rocking the Singkids Indoor Playground

Being the playground connoisseurs that they are, they gave the newly launched Singkids an impressive rating of “VERY FUN”. It was a bit small but the activity stations were very different from the usual playgym ones that they’ve grown tired of. This one had stuff like special go karts and climbing structures and automated teddy see-saws.

5. Watching Santa at his post-Christmas day job.

I used to think that  Santa just sits around on his reindeer-mobile when Christmas is over but apparently, he has an off-season day job, which is to make chocolates by hand. We tried saying hi and humming jingle bells but he pretended not to hear us. I think he was trying to go incognito but I handed him my Christmas list anyway.

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too awesome for words

Child Label – mind blowingly awesome labels

June 21, 2011

Exciting news, y’all! I’ve been secretly pregnant and I’m thrilled to introduce our newest baby. Meet Child Label, my first real business baby. It’s where you can get awesome labels for your child. Or yourself.

Starting a business is both scary and exciting. Scary because if it flops, it’s basically an epic disaster and I’ll have to feed my kids plain rice and water for several years. But also exciting at the same time because it’s always been my dream to be the boss of me and have a fancy title like Big Boss.

It’s also a lot like being pregnant. The past couple of months, we’ve been working real hard on this, coming up with the best designs, colors, copy and making sure the quality of the labels are the best we can find. And finally, it’s like we’re giving birth to a super cute, colorful and shiny new baby – which as far as babies go, are the best kind to have.

It all started way back when I wanted to get some customized name labels for Truett. Everything we found were too tacky, boring and of pretty bad quality. I wanted something that was simple, clean, yet gorgeous enough to turn heads. And of course, something that would last so I didn’t have to get all frustrated scraping out sticker remnants after every few washes.

During this hunt, the idea for Child Label was born. Soon after, I found some insanely talented slave bunnies who got sold on the idea and we’ve been hard at work ever since.

We’re starting small – with passionate worker bunnies, a bunch of incredible designs, and a whole lot of ideas to introduce in the months to come.

The journey up to this point has been incredible and we hope you’ll love these labels as much as we do. Seriously, labeling is addictive and extremely contagious. Not to mention, very useful too.

So stop by, shop a little and have fun browsing the designs.

As is customary, there’ll be a giveaway. Come visit us on Facebook to select your favorite designs and leave a comment here on which design and size you would like to get. Contest ends on Sunday 26 June midnight and 3 winners will be selected randomly.

PS. Not necessary for the contest but do like our page on Facebook ok? Invite all your friends too!

Update: We have 3 winners! Congrats to Qiu Xian (#5), Kelly (#18) and Gina (#7). You’ll be receiving an email shortly to confirm the designs and names to be printed. Thanks everyone for joining the contest.

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seriously somewhat serious

Daddy I miss you

June 20, 2011

I’ve never written much about my dad on the blog, except for this one tribute that I did for him a while back. Partly because it’s too personal and too painful. Also because talking about it just makes it seem so real again. 5 years on and I still fall apart when I talk about my dad for more than 2 minutes so the husband knows that all conversations relating to my dad should finish within a minute or so, or he brings out the tissues.

Like from time to time, I’ll say “I miss my dad. He would have loved the kids to bits.” and he’ll say “I know. I miss him too.” Then silence. And right about the 1-minute and 58-second mark, while I still have some semblance of composure, I’ll say something like “We should watch X-men tonight…the reviews are stunning.”

This Father’s Day, I thought about him a lot. Mostly about how nice it would be to be able to give him a call to say Happy Father’s Day. And make him another of my limited edition but truly appalling personalized cards he used to love to much.

I miss how he used to be my biggest fan. He would laugh heartily at all my jokes even when no one else got them. He thought I was brilliant and got more indignant than I did when I didn’t make it into law school (even though Comm Studies turned out to be a much better fit). He told me I was beautiful when I was 15, had bad hair and an even worse fashion sense. He would give me a kiss, pray for me and say “daddy loves you” every morning before he left for work. When I was 16 and had my heart broken for the first time, he took me out for lunch and said “life is like taking buses. When one bus leaves, a better one always comes along.” It was cryptic and awkward because I thought I kept the boyfriend pretty secret but secretly, I was glad he knew and he was there for me.

He always said I was special and he was proud that I was his girl.

When I was 22, he got diagnosed with colon cancer. With 2 surgeries and several rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, he did get better for a while but 2 relapses seemed too much for him and when I was 24, he passed away on the year he was supposed to turn 50.

People would say comforting things like how he’s in a better place, and at least we had time to prepare for it and say goodbye. But honestly, none of it made me miss him less or make the pain go away. It seemed terribly unfair that he didn’t get to walk me down the aisle. Or be there to hold the grandkids who would have stolen his heart and wrapped it around their little fingers. Or be around to have dinner and ask me about my day.

Well-meaning folks told me that I should be thankful I had an awesome dad for 24 years, and the amount of awesomeness packed into those 24 years should be enough to last a lifetime. Maybe they’re right and people shouldn’t deserve to have that much daddy awesomeness. Or it’s baloney and maybe life is sometimes just plain unfair for taking away the things that make you happy. And I’d have to remind myself that even when bad things happen, God has a plan and everything is going to be ok.

It’s funny how even though I’m now a mom, I still miss being a daddy’s girl. I think that’s something that will never go away.

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