My li'angel.

We went for a photo shoot here in Singapore again (the same studio that did the previous shoot last October.)

The photographer captured some really great photos of Laetitia and out of the 165 that was taken, the ones in this post are three of my favourites. We had a hard time trying to select the photos in our package (we were limited to 10) and had wanted to keep so many more that it was more value for money to purchase all the shots taken during the shoot.

This is my current screen background.

This is Etienne's messenger avatar.

UMBRELLA!

YES! That's the new word that Laetitia said today, "UMBRELLA". I am so impressed and proud. It has been raining and my friend brought along a children's umbrella and as she was opening it, Laetitia said "umbrella". *eyes wide open, mouth gapping----->me.

Nothing to this post except to say that I am very proud of her. After all, she is less than 16 months. :)

Singapore Zoological Gardens.

The Singapore Zoological Gardens is reputed to be one of the best zoos in the world and we thought it will be fun to bring Laetitia there. Although it had been raining for the last couple of days and the weather did not look great in the morning, we decided to try our luck.

When we arrived, the weather was overcast but it was not raining. In fact, it was nice and breezy. We made our way to the Elephants of Asia show since elephants are one of her favourite animals. We were a little early (15mins before the show started) and after five minutes on the bench, Laetitia started to get a little restless. It was a bit of a challenge keeping her occupied before the show finally started. She was very excited to see the elephants and kept making the "elephant sound" (which basically is her going ahhhhhhhhh!) But, after 10 mins into the show, she started to fidget again. Anyways, we did manage to stay till the end of the show but realised that expecting her to be still in one place for 30 mins might be too much for her to handle. We quickly moved on as it had also started to rain. We made our way to the children's world area to look at miniature horses, cows, pigs etc. After another half an hour of pottering around, we decided that it was all too much for Laetitia and we should head home. As we are leaving the zoo, we came across a few more animals that she knows, the lions, zebras, giraffes and rhinoceros.

But the time we got to the car to leave the zoo, it was more than 2 hours after we arrived. It was a short visit considering the size of the zoo. We probably only saw less than half the animals there. Well, there's always next year when we plan our next visit to Singapore.



And some random pictures that we took of her.

Lego fun time.

Laetitia has been spending some time playing with lego bricks. My sister's kids have both the normal size lego and the bigger sized for smaller children. Her cousins who love lego have been building interesting things for her. So far, they have built three different chairs for her to sit on and many other interesting buildings and towers.

Her papa has joined in the fun in playing with the lego too.

Here's a sample of the lego creations.

The chair that her cousin Benjamin built for her. I didn't manage to take a picture of the other chair that Natasha built for her.



Laetitia playing with the "Incredibles" like robot that her papa and her cousins built together.

Fun activities in Singapore

Laetitia is having a fabulous time in Singapore. Her sleeping routine is getting more reasonable, 10pm to 8.30am. This means that we can take her out for dinners and also have some decent sleep. And the day can be filled with different fun activites for her. So far we have gone shopping and she loves to walk in the malls. The pretty marble flooring catches her attention. The loveliest ones are at Suntec City, they shimmers!

We have also filled her time with splashing time in the swimming pool (I think we have been about three times in less than a week). We also went to this place called Bambini where she met up with Auntie Michelle and the kids. She played a lot with legos and her cousins.

We're planning trips to the zoo, the botanical gardens, maybe the bird park, sentosa and the aquarium... Thanks to my good friend Jaimie, we have a car to use and it has made travelling around so much easier.

Splashing good time!


Dinner at Kallang Oasis No Sign Board restaurant with Grandma (and the rest of the family who is not in the photo)


A photo with her cousins Natasha and Natalia before going out.


An enjoyable time at Bambini with Auntie Michelle, Vanessa and Aaron.






Buidling or rather destruction time playing legos at home. In this case, she is pretending the lego is a phone while drinking on her play bottle.

In Singapore.

We finally arrived in Singapore on the 11 July after almost 18 of travelling (including 2 hours transit and 1.5 hours delay). It was a relatively tiring trip for Etienne and I as we took turns entertaining Laetitia. It was a good thing that for the second segment of the flight (8 hours), she slept for about 5 hours straight in the bassinet. This allowed us to catch our 40 winks and also eat in peace.

The tough part since being in Singapore is that our little girl is more jet lagged than the both of us for the first couple of days. On Wednesday night, she went to bed at 10pm and work up at 1am. She was hungry but even after we fed her, she did not go back to sleep until 3.30am. And on Thursday night, she went to bed at around 10pm again BUT woke up at midnight and did not go back to sleep until 4am! Finally last night, she went to bed at 10pm (I made sure she was given some nice warm cereal and milk before bed) and stayed asleep till this morning 8am. Hopefully she will soon adjust her internal clock and work her way through sleeping 12 hours straight through every night soon.

On a side note, apart from the jet lag, she has been having fun with her cousins (my sister's children) and enjoys playing with them. She loves the every other day swimming time too. We took lots of photos and I'll get to posting them when I have them uploaded into the computer.

Biker girl?

We bought Laetitia a tricycle during the week and finally managed to take her out in it when the weather was slightly more decent (a little sunshine and no rain).

She loves it and is constantly trying to get on it and then shouting "AU REVOIR" (goodbye) and pointing to the main door.

The only thing is, she is still a little short for the bike and therefore her feet could not reach the pedals. At some point as I was pushing her along, one of her foot would touch the ground and she would drag her foot along. I hated that especially when it is destroying her lovely shoes at the same time. So I was constantly telling her "Laetitia, your feet please. Lift them up!". Hopefully she will soon be tall enough to really learn to ride the tricycle by herself (before summer is over).

My adorable cookie.

Little drummer girl.

For Laetitia's first birthday, I got her a little band set. On and off she'll have some fun playing with them and just the other day, we were having lots of fun jamming together. I remember telling Etienne I would so love to learn to play the drums. Well, maybe my little darling will have a chance to do what I haven't done. I think her papa is keen to have her play the piano since that is his favourite instrument though it was the violin that he spent years learning (about 10 years or so). Anyways, I hope this gives her some headstart with drums and maybe she might want to start a rock and roll band when she grows up. :p

Check out the little rock drummer.

How will our lives change?

Or rather how will Laetitia's life change? How will my decision to go back to work affect the life of my little sweetheart? THAT is the big question that has been hanging over my head.

It's coming to two years since I stopped work. Of course in this time so many things have come to pass. We left Toronto and moved to Paris. More importantly, we had a baby! Now that Laetitia is 15 months old, it really is time for me to move on. I have always said that I will stay home for at least the first year and I have. At the same time, during this one and a half years, I realised that I might not be the material for being a full time stay at home mum. I need some form of adult interaction that DOES NOT revolves around babies/childcare etc. I also need the mental stimulation of work. In fact, I feed on it to give myself some form of personal satisfaction. I do not deny that seeing Laetitia grow up to be a joyful child is not providing me with pride but it is not the same. I LOVE my little girl with all my heart but I find I am not an effective mum if I have to be with her all day. Hence, the decision to go back to work.

Now, the BIG question is what type of work should I go for. Personally, after budgeting, family discussions with Etienne and what nots, we came to a conclusion that the pursue of a career developing job that requires me to work crazy hours is not an option. I do not want to spend all my time consumed by work and neglect the most important things/people in my life, my husband and my child. No money can substitute seeing my little girl grow up. No money can replace the closeness that can only be built through time spent together. And no, finances is not the focus of why I want to go back to work. I want to go back to work so that I can be happier, feel more fulfilled and therefore, be a better mummy and wife.

I must say that my job search seems to be going in the right direction. I have received calls (actually two) from headhunters for positions that I did not even apply for and at the same time I came across a position that I applied and interviewed for that could be the solution (fabulous vacation time offs and relatively flexible hours). Now, I just have to leave it in God's hands. I did what I had to do (the natural) and I am sure HE will do what he has to do (the supernatural). It is good, though, to know that I am marketable at the end of the day and people do find that I have an interesting profile. I know it should not, but it does make me feel valuable. :-) Yes, I know it sounds shallow, I should not be measuring my worth based on that.

As a final thought, I want to say no matter what the final job is that I take up, it is important to me that Laetitia continues to be able to spend lots of valuable time with me and that we will build on the closeness that we currently have.

Attack of the bacterial/virual infection of the stomach?

Arrrrggghhhhh...... poor baby and poor mummy.

My little pie is being attacked. Poor little darling vomitted four times yesterday. And she HATES it when she vomits. It makes her so upset that she cries more. And she had a fever to cope with at the same time.

I googled some information about vomiting and fever and from her symptoms, it seems like it's a stomach bacterial attack. But then it's only vomiting and fever with no diarrhea. Hmmmm... It did say it will pass in 12-24 hours and so far she seems to be better. We are also trying to avoid giving her milk though. She had some yogurt in replacement of milk for breakfast. I think we'll keep to light and small meals for her today.

I'm so tired as I was up trying to get her to go back to sleep till 1.30am. And she decided to get up at 8am this morning. Okay, I also know I should not complain considering that lots of mums of young children do not get 6 straight hours of sleep.