Trip to Disney _ 20 - 24 Sept

Our last week in US was spent in Disneyworld at Florida after a day of frantic packing and moving furniture out of our little apt. Fortunately, we only need to move the furniture to my SG neighbour's place who bought over the furniture. On the Sunday morning itself, we left our almost empty apt early in the morning for the airport. After a 3 hours flight, we finally reached Orlando International Airport at around 1230 pm. We then spent another 30 minutes trying to figure our way to the counter where we can board the Disney Magical Express - a complimentary bus ride to our Disney resort. Needless to say, we were impressed by the fuss free and convienient transport and the impeccable service provided by the Disney staff that we now understand how and why Walt Disney becomes a multimillion dollar service industry.

We finally reached Disney All Star Music Resort at around 2 pm and was checked into our room swifly. The hotel room was much nicer and spacious than we thought after reading so many horrible reviews online but because we were initially on a budget constraint that we chose the cheapest and valued for money resort. Later, although I decided to upgrade to a intermediate range resort, there were unfortunately no more vacancies so we still remained booked to this value resort.

Since we have already decided to take it easy on this trip, we did not plan for a full itinerary ahead of us. For the rest of the day, we swam in the guitar-shaped pool followed by a trip to Downtown Disney and enjoyed our dinner at the restaurant there.

Our favorite activity - take a dip in the pool in the hot weather. I love the look on Br wearing his life jacket.

Borrowing the Mickey mouse ears for a shot!

The second day of our vacation was to Animal Kingdom where we get to see real animals up close. The weather was really hot and humid and the rainforest canopy there seems to make the weather more humid and unbearable for us. Fortunately, I heed the advice of a fellow SG friend to subscribe to the Ridemax program where I could plan my itinerary to each theme park beforehand and the program would plan it in such a way that we could reach each ride or place in the shortest possible time and spent the least time waiting. We just strictly followed the plan and went to each ride at the suggested timing. I think without the plan, we would definitely have been overwhelmed by the number of activities and people around and have no idea where to start going around. Our favorite ride of the day is the Kilimanjaro Safari Ride where we got to sit in a jeep and pretend that we are riding through a real Safari grassland with all the real animals roaming around minus the dangerous types like lions and leopards.

At the Rainforest cafe having lunch where we take a cool respite from the hot weather.

The third day was a trip to Hollywood Studios. In fact, this is our favourite theme park of our whole Disney trip. We got to see the exciting car racing and explosion scene that even our little toddler, Ry was memserized. There are also 2 very good musicals like Nemo and Beauty and the Beast that we all enjoyed tremendously. I am extremely happy that Ry enjoyed the musicals as well. At least, now I know who to ask to accompany me to future musicals and concerts since Daddy does not really know how to enjoy these shows and I do not have a little girl.

Our favorite show of the day!

The last theme park that we visited was Magic Kingdom. Initially, we thought we would be overwhelmed by the grandeur and the crowd but after orientating ourselves to the other 2 theme parks previously, we found ourselves pretty bored by the kiddiness of Magic Kingdom. However, Ry still managed to find himself amused by a few rides and the little playground where he can climb, roll and run around.

Overall, I would say that the Disney trip was a success even though we did not try many exciting rides since our boys were too young. I would definitely wish to revisit Disneyworld if possible when the boys are older which I believe the experience will be totally different.

Br wearing my sunglasses!

2 More Weeks to Home!

2 weeks from today, we should already be on the flight in the midair towards home! Recently, everybody around us has been asking how are we feeling to our departure from the place we have been calling home for the past 2 years. Our replies were always "mixed emotions" as we would definitely miss the people and the weather that we have come to love but lately, we have already starting to look forward to going back to our family, sort of yearning for the stability associated with it and knowing that our boys will definitely enjoy the love and pamperings from their grandparents, uncles and aunts.

Since my last entry, I have been busy selling and giving away stuff from our apt and also busy with helping a neighbour aka fellow MOE colleague settling into her new apt while she eases into her course at Harvard Ed School. I am glad that she's moving into the apt at my building, which makes it easier for me to handover the stuff and furniture that she bought from us. I am also thankful to her to let us continue using some of the stuff till the last day before passing them to her, so still making our last days at home at least comfortable.

A farewell dinner with another SG family, A and SX and their 2 adorable kids who are about the same age as ours.

Ry has been talking up a storm these days, spewing new words everyday and willing to parrot after us. However, his words are limited to single syllable types and anything with more than one syllable, he would only say the first only like "sor" for "sorry". I guessed only me and KP understand what he's saying and other people still have a hard time figuring out his hand gestures and his mono-syllabic utterances.

Ry's last second speech therapy session with M.

Ry would do anything promptly like eating his lunch or nap if I tell him that M is coming to play with him later. He just adores her.

Br on the other hand, is eating up a storm, probably in his "grow spurt" stage. He can nurse every 2 hours or so and still finish a bowl of rice cereal for lunch and dinner. I remembered Ry at the same age could only finish half or one-third a bottle of baby food at one go but our baby Br actually finished the whole bottle by himself and still wanting more. Also, he already likes to snack on Cheerios and yogurt. Needless to say, he's has put on quite a bit of weight and he now weighs at least 9 kg based on our rough estimate from our own weighing scale. Those Chinese grandmas and grandpas at the park often swooned at his fat thighs and commented how thick are they:)

K always complains that Br "sticks" to me all the time! I guessed that must be the "benefit" of direct breastfeeding!

Time Flies!

As the title suggested, time flies and swoosh past us! We are coming to the end of August and are left with less than 5 weeks time in Boston. Whenever Monday arrives, I'll just think it is the start of a week and before I know it, Wednesday comes then followed by Friday and it is another weekend. Sometimes, I try to think what have I achieved in the week and I couldn't recall any significant activity and my list of "To Do" tasks just keep getting longer and none of it is ever completed. So below is just a record of my daily on-goings.

8 am - Wakey wakey time. Usually Ry wakes up around the time K leaves for work at 730 am.

8 - 830 am - Changing the boys out of their pjs and diapers.

830 - 9 am - Breakfast time together with some light reading of SG news, checking mails, FB etc.

9 - 11 am - Either watch TV with Ry or play with him. Followed by feeding Ry and Br cheerios and cereal respectively and hoping to get baby to take his nap after his feed.

One of the rare "good behaviour" mornings where both boys can sit down quietly together and play.

11 - 1 pm - Preparing lunch, cooking, feeding Ry his lunch and having lunch together with K. It can be either a smooth sequence as stated or an extremely interrupted and noisy session from Br's crying and Ry's tantrums.

1.30 - 3pm - Hopefully, Ry will take his 1 hour nap and I can take a slight rest and attend to baby Br alone, while surfing the net and doing some urgent chores. If not, it will be just TV time / playtime again!

3.30 - 5 pm - Playground time if weather is good. This is the time I most look forward to or else I think I'll lose my sanity if Ry never get to go out.

Our favourite time of the day - at the playground where there are toys and activities that can occupy the boys.

5 - 6 pm - Bath time for the boys.

6 - 630 pm - Preparing food for dinner. Hopefully, K can come home by 630 pm to entertain the boys while I can concentrate on cooking. Sometimes, I make dinner for Ry first and feed him.

630 - 745 pm - Cooking dinner followed by having dinner with K.

8 - 9 pm - Chill out time for me when K plays with Ry.

9 - 930 pm - Preparing boys for bedtime and hopefully, they can all go to sleep by 930 pm which happens like once in a blue moon. Ry usually sleeps by 930 pm.

930 - 1030 pm - May still be trying to put Br to sleep while he sleeps, wakes, feeds, sleeps and wakes and feeds again.

1030 - 11pm - Hopefully, bedtime for me! If not, it will just be the whole s,w,f cycle of getting Br to sleep soundly.


Wonders what will happen to my day when I get home to SG?

No more, kar!

"Where's our car?" That's one question I have been asking Ry after we handover the car to the buyer on Tuesday, 11 Aug. And Ry will look along the streets where we usually parked our car and shrugged his shoulders and sometimes mumbled, "no more" - a phrase he recently picked up. Initially, I thought it will be difficult for us to sell away the car and we are already resigned to selling it at a really low price at the end of the month. But sometimes things just turned out fine, and we got a buyer on Sunday night that was willing to pay us three hundred dollars more than what other potential buyers offered so we decided to sell the car immediately. This made our car depreciation to be only at $900 for the past year, which is really cheap compared to the depreciation of SG cars. In fact, we figured that this is cheaper than renting a car occasionally.

After confirming the sale, I was thinking of how am I going to be mobile with my 2 kids here for the remaining 5 weeks or so. I do not think me carrying Br in the carrier and wheeling Ry in the stroller is good for trips longer than 2 hours so I decided to buy a twin stroller, which will enable me to be moving around independently without K. And since I could not figure out how to use the $60 Amazon voucher that K had from his work, I decided to use it to pay for the Jeep twin stroller, which costs $100, meaning that I need to fork out only $40 only. I figured that it will be worth the cost even if I am able to use it for 5 weeks only and decided not to bring back to SG.

So, today, I managed to go to Chinatown and Downtown Crossing alone with the 2 boys to deregister the car and to do some shopping. Generally, the stroller is easy to push despite it is slightly heavy to carry and is sometimes difficult to manueaver through the door as it is wide, I guessed I can't complain much as this is already one of the most compact models I can find. Most importantly, the boys loved it and the seats can even recline individually to allow the boys to sleep comfortably in it. So, I will still recommend this stroller to parents who just want a cheap and functional twin stroller.

Signing Time = Speaking, Maybe?

Here's an update of Ry's language development over the past month since he started speech therapy with the Early Intervention. Ry has began making more sounds, saying more words and babbling more recently. In fact, he has a small expansion of vocabulary over the last two weeks and is willing to parrot the adults more. We have been exposing him to this DVD series - Signing Time as introduced by my friend who has an autistic kid to let Ry learn some sign language so that he can pick up signs to communicate with us. Also, research has shown that learning signs helps a child to learn to speak earlier too.

It was really miraculous how Ry picked up hand signs as soon as he watched the DVDs. He can now sign to us to communicate to us what he wants and can even teach the speech therapist some animal signs too. The best part is that he actually starts saying words that he previously refused to say after learning the signs. So now, he can say words like "more", "dog", "bird", "goat", "cold", "coat", "cook", "wa" for water, "go", "top" for "stop". All these words are usually said together with the signs. My mum and my MIL were initially worried that he would stop learning to speak after he signs but the reality is totally different.

More recently, he even started saying "naught-che" for "naughty" when he tries to scold his little brother for being noisy or when Br touches him with his little feet and hands when lying beside him. He picked that up when I was scolding Br. It was really funny hearing him saying it while imitating me with my index finger pointing at baby Br.

I do think that signing helps Ry to speak sooner and now he has a repertoire of signs he can do and is still adding new signs to his expanding vocabulary. Needless to say, I have bought the dvds to bring back to SG. Below is a link to a videoclip of signing time series showing different animal signs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdhcH5nI45w&NR=1

It's the Blueberries Picking Season!

Despite having to deal with our conflict with our nasty neighbour over the last 2 weeks, we still managed to go out on 2 consecutive Sundays for some blueberry picking. We definitely won't miss the activity since it is our last chance here to pick Ry's favourite fruit. Initially, we thought we'll just do the activity for fun and did not expect great picking conditions since this July was the rainiest summer month for Boston in the last 10 years. To our surprise during our first visit at Parlee Farm, we saw big ripe blueberries and they tasted really sweet. Some of the biggest berries were only slightly smaller than a SG twenty cent coin compared to the usual tiny ones we see being sold in the supermarkets.

We enjoyed the two boxes of berries so much that we decided to go back again the following Sunday and this time round, we pick 4 boxes and till now, we are still enjoying our hand-picked blueberries every evening after dinner.

My little berry - picker.

Br as usual sitting comfortably in the carrier on daddy's back!

My boyz out in the field!

Ry stealing the berries off the box and popping them into his mouth!

Our 4 boxes of blueberries! Really yummy!

Sign ... Neighbours ... and Here We Moved!

About 8 weeks ago, we had new neighbours moving into the apt below us. Pretty soon after that, I heard tapping sound on our floors whenever Ry ran around the apt to remind us that we were being loud. I had been tolerating it for quite sometime as the loud tapping sometimes frightened little Br when he was lying on the floor. But always, we tried to stop Ry from running if possible.

However things took a turn when we came back from Maine on 20 July and discovered a note pasted on our door from our new neighbours requesting us to lower the noise level. In fact, the note requested us to stop the noise level and accusing us of making noises in the middle of the night at 2 -3 am. Immediately, K went to clarify with them and told them that we had a young toddler boy and a small baby and it is unavoidable for my boy to be running around the apt. Also, I had to wake up in the middle of the night to feed Br but I swear I would never use heavy footsteps and it is only a 10 steps walk from 1 bed room to the other. We were trying to tell them that we'll try to minimize the noise but this Caucasian lady was unreasonable and demanded us to stop. Since there were no resolutions, K ignored her and told her that the noise will continue, which I think infuriated her. So, she called the management and the police the next day and told them that K threaten her and we're increasing the noise level to intimidate her which we obviously didn't. The police came to investigate and did not find us at fault. In fact, I think the police were rather pissed off with the lady for making a mountain out of a molehill.

Since the police did not take any further action, our neighbour proceeded to "pester" the management and even get a lawyer to sue them. To cut the story short, the management in the end offered us two months free rent to move to a new apt on the first floor and even offered to pay for the movers to avoid long litigation and also to avoid us suing them for discrimination against family according to the housing laws here. After a short discussion with K, we decided to move last Tuesday and saved ourselves USD $4k in the event even though we were advised by my lawyer friend and Cambridge social workers that we need not move.

However, a windfall can never be too good! Just when we were thinking that now we have extra cash to pamper ourselves, K received an email from ASTAR saying that he is shortlisted for a very important interview that may boost his career on Sept 28 in Singapore. We have no choice but to reschedule our flights, shorten our Disney and Florida vacation and got to fly back on Sept 25 and reach SG on the 27th. In the process, we lost approximately $1k. Really heartache! Can't understand why the company could not be flexible with their interview dates! So now, we have to say goodbye to Boston earlier and could not get to enjoy the beautiful Florida beaches!