Estelle Estelle Little Star

Estelle loves her playdoh.

For the first time today, she requested that “Amelie gingerbread man” be created after Daddy, Mummy and Estelle gingerbread men.

She’d place them in a circle, all holding hands and she’d sing “Ring-a-ring of roses” until they “all fall down”.

And I was beaming from ear to ear.

It seems that all the books we read, all the stories we told and the Estelle-stories I’ve been telling her have been quietly taking hold in her mind. It’s taken her a while to digest it all… I suppose now is a great time to come to terms with the baby’s arrival! (I’m ONE week away from delivery.)

Yes, I admit, I’ve been rather stressed about how Estelle will react… she didn’t even seem to acknowledge my ballooning tummy. Ethan, on the other hand, has been a real trooper. He’d ask me about my tummy, who’s in there, feel its movements, etc. He seems rather keen about the new addition. (Ahem, Wenz…)
Oh, Jason bought this book from the US and Estelle loves it. She’s been making me read it again and again since she saw it yesterday.

To say that getting some sleep has been a real problem for us since Estelle was an infant… is truly an understatement.

We used to spend HOURs trying to get her to sleep… we rocked her, sang her numerous songs, played her soothing music, drove around Singapore…  routines were established, schedules were created…  all in the hope that she will catch some much needed Zzzzzz.

And so, when the day comes when she slept until 1030 in the morning, followed by an afternoon nap from 130 pm to 330 pm, I was at a complete loss as to what to do!

She kept telling me “Estelle very tired you know”!

And gladly, the whale of a mother kept her company every minute of her naps.

Estelle somehow managed to store all her sleep from last week, and yesterday… till this afternoon!

For the very first time, she slept nearly FOUR hours, from 1 pm to 445pm.

With less than 2 weeks to go before the arrival of MONSTER TWO, we thought we’ll try to get sorted out…

It proved to be a harder task that previously imagined!

With most of the baby gear in storage for the last 2 years, some have turned yellowish… that is despite packing them in airtight boxes and chucking a dehumidifier in the box. But most survived and made it into the clothes cupboard…

Estelle’s clothes are now on the left and Amelie’s on the right.

And with SSAY’s recent trip to the US and AhYee’s return from Germany… Estelle’s half is just about to explode!

Ah Ma, Ah Gong, Ethan and Aunty Eka came for a visit this morning!!!

The kids had a great time… and so did Ah Ma and Ah Gong, especially after a session of mahjong when the kids were having their afternoon nap. sigh… Kinda knew they couldn’t resist after hearing that SSAY was staying at woodlands…

And after they left, the baking continued! This time SSAY gave in to Mummy’s numerous requests… and got down to baking her famous butter cakes! Yummy!!!

And after dinner…

heh heh… A Day of Indulgence….

Shark Shark Ah Yee stayed over last night, much to the happiness and delight of little Estelle, we have no idea what she was doing, but she finally crept into bed at 330 am… And Estelle woke up about 4 times since then, just sitting up in bed, pointing to her left and saying “Mummy”, and pointing to her right saying “SSAY”.

And in case you were wondering… this is SSAY at 12 noon…

And this is SSAY at 2pm

By the time the day started for SSAY… the day was really over for a lot of the normal adults in this part of the world. She even failed to get up when her favourite niece begs her… “Wake up SSAY, get up! Beautiful morning!” sigh.

After a quick dinner at CWP and supermarket shopping, we were treated to the famous SSAY baking session! MUFFINS!!! Yay!

Now our house smells of yummy muffins baking… can’t wait to sink my teeth into one.

Want to guess what time Estelle finally slept?
1145pm.

And SSAY?
430 am.

This morning…

Yipeee

More of Estelle’s friends from the other playgroup also moved on to the older class on Wednesday! Estelle was quite pleased to see Gaileen and Caitlin.

Didn’t manage to take any photos of the water session… But YES, once again, she was the first one to get in and the last one to get out…

THE Jinz is here! Estelle was very happy… contributing to the much later afternoon nap… “dunwan to sleep! Shark shark Ah Yee, lie down here!” Apparently the Jinz hasn’t seen Estelle for 22 days! Anyway, the LQ will be pleased to hear that Estelle has been asking for her the whole morning.
“Where’s Ah Yee?” and “Ah Yee go home” (which is Estelle-speak for “come home”).

We’re off to dinner at Hanabi tonight with the Wenz too. Yipee. Kaz couldn’t manage to find the time to get up here, so we’ll pop by her place before dinner. Got Audrey this from Aussino.

Angelheart started a rather interesting thread over at the Admiralty Forum about the children’s favourite things… which was also something we (the girls) talked about at our gathering on Sunday…

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Here’s a list of Estelle’s favourite things at the moment.
Cartoon Characters:
Pooh and gang (esp Roo and Lumpy - new characters from the 2005 Disney Heffalump Movie)
Maisy Mouse
Barney (at grandma’s house)
Dumbo (at my mum’s house)

Pink Colour

starting to enjoy:
The Little Mermaid (yes, Ariel Power!)
Snow White
Sleeping Beauty, etc
Sometimes, will refer to herself as princess…. oh no!!! it’s starting already!!!
Hahahaha

And she likes:
playdoh
crayons
paints
chalk

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Ethan, my sister’s kid likes:
dinosaurs
swords
guns
Batman
Anakin Skywalk (who he insists is different from Darth Vader, can’t understand the transformation from hero to villian.)
Mulan (for all the fighting scenes)
Toy Story (loves the mismatched toys - calls them funny things, can play with mismatched toy parts for hours.)
Finding Nemo

Purple Colour and Black and Orange

Yes, can you tell he’s a BOY? Hahahaha

Gender stereotyping aside… Ethan does seem to have quite different preferences from Estelle. A tea party for Estelle is pretty boring to Ethan, unless he gets to have 2 teacups to fight each other. A game of sliding the plastic animals down the box is similarly zzz unless they all fight and die! Hahahaha.

But there are some common games that never fail to amuse all…

1) Bubbles

2) Catching

3) Swimming

Anyway, we (the girls) were just discussing it on Sunday, on Wendy’s very lovely custom made couch (drool drool) that we never liked pink. All three of us! (I remember that I always insisted on blue… and I especially liked this rag doll that my mum bought from the Lor 8 market that’s blue all over except for it’s plastic face. It keeps falling apart, but I loved it.)

Maybe it’s because we (all three of us) were the second kid, and felt that we had to rebel since our older sisters got to choose pink first. Hahahaha. To be honest, I’m not even sure if Wenz liked pink, but she sure had quite a few pink clothes… Hahaha. And LQ, my younger sister is a GREEN FREAK… to this day!

And LQ has been trying to psycho Estelle to like green too. Which works to a certain extent. Hahaha. At Sembawang Park today, she had a choice of 3 slides and she chose the green one and on the way down, she said “Estelle like green one…”

And green seems to be all the rage now (according to our lovely, fashionable SQ) and with Aunty Karen coming to visit us tomorrow… We’re all going to be Martians soon.

Byeee

Thought we’d try to stick to a new schedule as of today. Hope to get her used to it before the baby comes…

730 - 800am Wake up and have a bottle of milk

800 - 830 am Hang out with Mummy at breakfast table, maybe have a bit of toast/cereal?

830 am Brush teeth and change out into play clothes.

1130 am Bath time

12 noon Lunch

130 - 200 pm Afternoon Nap (hopefully 2 hours)

400 pm Fruits and Snack

700 pm Dinner

730 pm Walk Dogs

800 pm Reading/Quiet Time

900 - 930 pm Maybe a cup of Milk, Brush Teeth, and then Sleep

Well, that’s the idea…

So… it started well this morning…

But she slept from 2 pm to 445 pm! Nearly THREE HOURS. hahaha. Looks like pushing the Afternoon Nap back is working well… considering she’ll sleeping a little more compared to the 1 - 1.5 hours that she usually does.

After her afternoon nap, we packed up and went to Sembawang Park! (Mummy: Hmm… maybe it’ll tired her out and she’ll still go to bed at 9 pm tonight…)

On the way back we ta pao some food (Prata, Nasi lemak, etc…) and had a feast. Hahaha

Word of the Day: Papadam

We even had a “Estelle like Papadam”.

After dinner… we walked the dogs, played the piano. And received a call from MyGym about bringing swim gear tomorrow for a water theme play session. Just the word “Swimming” was enough to make Estelle go crazy! She ran around the house, and looked for her swim gear, and wanted to wear her swimming costume NOW!

So we threw in a session of playdoh to distract her. And were treated to a running commentary of Daddy Elephant, Mummy Elephant and Estelle Elephant. After which she wanted me to make 3 Kangaroos. But there was no kangaroo mould, so I managed to distract her with Gingerbread men instead.

She’s so cute la. Hahahaha

If you want, you can click here for a larger pix.

Guess what time she finally slept?
11:15 pm.
well, maybe tomorrow… (yah right.)

It was quite a busy day today!
Estelle spent a lovely morning with Grandma at MeiHwan and played in the garden… and Grandpa took a long lunch and came back to play with Estelle too!

In the afternoon, Estelle went to Ah Ma’s house and played with Ethan before going off to United Square to see Dr Ong at Aglow. Instead of taking 2 vaccinations, Mummy opted to just take the Hep A jab today. There were a few cases of a reaction to the Pneumococcal Vaccine in today’s papers. So to be on the safer side, we just had the one jab, and will return for the pneumococcal vaccine next month (when we visit Dr Ong with Amelie).

Estelle was very good at the doctor’s! She had a good stare at the needle, tensed a little during the injection (yes, she was staring at it. We couldn’t distract her enough.) but there were no tears, and she happily accepted the Piglet plaster that went over the injection site.

And Ethan had a Pooh Bear plaster.

Oh DaddyO! Estelle is 88 cm and 12.7 kgs at 24 months. So will that make her 176 cm as an adult? That’s nearly as tall as DaddyO!

Both of us were so tired that we decided to have an early night and turned in at 830pm.

Sweet Dreams….
g’nite.