Survived my first work week

My first week at work wasn't too bad. I missed Amanda and Wayne a lot, and I was absolutely tired out with everything but I cheated a little, I took a day off on Thursday. Still, it went better than I expected. I  have always felt that somewhat 'un-understood', that everyone underestimates the kind of emotional adjustment we have to go through with going back to work. We go through such an emotional experience of giving birth. Spend the next four months, 24 hours each day putting our hearts and soul into caring for this tiny wee baby that we grow to bond with tremendously. And the very next moment, with the snap of our fingers, we are 'expected' to just drop everything and switch to full working mode. Emotionally, it is very tough, having to just leave our babies and get going with work - immediately. But well, no one would really understand, and no point complaining, we just have to get going on. 

Maybe I still need more time to get used to this new routine, but every day seems to be adrenaline packed, with all that rushing from the moment I open my eyes in the morning to the time I konk out in bed at night.

Our day starts around 630-645am. I wake up, shower, make up, express milk, pack Amanda's bag and then mine (pump, parts, etc etc). The husband wakes up, showers, washes my pump parts, packs Wayne's bag, prepares Wayne's milk, brushes his teeth and changes him into his school uniform. While he does that, I feed Amanda her milk. We leave home at 750- 8am.

I drop Wayne and husband at Paragon, where he would bring Wayne up to school and then take the train down to his workplace. I, on the other hand, make my way to the east, dropping Amanda at nainai's place before heading to work at CBP. I reach work at 9am.

(Before I start work, I'm already tired from the morning mad rush).

I try to get as much work done during the day, expressing milk twice at 11am and 4pm for half and hour each time. It's disruptive to work. Add in breakfast and lunch moments, there is hardly time for much productive work. I need to try harder.

I leave office at 530-545pm, pick Amanda up at 6pm so that I can pick the husband and head to Paragon to get Wayne before his school closes at 7pm. Most days, despite me leaving office at 545pm, we make it to Wayne's school only just in time, with the evening traffic.

When we get home, I change Amanda into her pyjamas, play with her for that short precious 5 to 10 minutes before I let her play alone in her cot for 20 to 30 minutes while the rest of us have our dinner. Thanks to nainai for packing home-cooked yummy dinner for us - we get to enjoy a nice dinner after a long day and it saves us the hassle and time of dabao-ing food home.

After dinner, I give Amanda her last feed for the night before she falls asleep - usually around 8pm. I sulk a little at this point, cos really, each night I barely get to spend any time with her at all. Sigh. Anyway.. that's when the husband starts washing the dinner dishes, Wayne's school bottles and my pump equipments. I shower, express milk, do one round of laundry and pack whatever I can for the next day. Husband bathes for Wayne and either one of us prepares his milk, reads a story book for him, gives him his medicine and supplements, change him into his pyjamas and prepares him for bed.

By then, I am exhausted and usually end up in bed with Wayne by 10pm while the husband enjoys some time to himself surfing the Internet and watching the television. I don't know how he does that after such a long day, especially when he helps out as much as I do with the things at home! 

Amanda sleeps through till around 2 to 3am - when she stirs, I'd usually give her her pacifier and sometimes she would fall back asleep. Other times, she would cry and I would give her a milk feed. On other good nights, she would sleep through all the way till 6am. Regardless, I wake up around 2 to 3am to express milk. Wondering when I should start skipping this round of early morning expressing of milk.. I guess I could now, but I am just worried my milk supply will drop. 

Well, and then, the day starts again at 645am. So there. No time for anything else.

But I survived!

And I guess it will only get better as I get used to this routine. Well, unless work gets really busy and I need to bring work home.. Should that happen, I really don't know where to squeeze in time for work.. but one step at a time!!

Hooray to next week - a public holiday on Tuesday and we will be on leave on Friday! 

Rewind.. 32 years back

Found this old photo of mommy and grandma

Halloween cuteness

Halloween is supposed to be spooky... But with all these adorable kids, how could Halloween be anything but cute!!!!

Jake, Felicia, Kaelyn and Wayne - Love Felicia's outfit!!

Wayne didn't want the traditional jack-o'-lanterns or devil costumes, instead opting to be Spider-Man! (Hmm.. Conrad's influence is getting a little too much!).. So anyway, he and Conrad agreed to come in Spider-Man costumes together so that they could ... 'fight'. (See what I mean! No fighting, Wayne!).

Wayne must be the cutest Spider-Man mommy has ever seen! Thanks to mommy who searched high and low for his costume, it was difficult finding one in his size!

This is one of the reasons why I love him going to school so much.. There are all these fun activities for him!! If only we practice trick-or-treating here as well, that would be so much fun!!

"Spiderman.. nobody knows who you are.." 

And behind the costume, is this cheeky little boy!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

Neck rash.. Ouch!

Over the last three days, Amanda has been having a case of neck rash, which although did not seem to bother her, did look really painful *heartache*.

Not sure if it was from not cleaning her neck thoroughly, or from not airing her neck adequately after baths, or just from her having layers of thick folds around her neck which when rubbed against each other caused the irritation and redness.

Whichever the cause, mommy felt awful just looking at her red and sore neck. Can't help but feel I have not done a good job in taking care of her. Thankfully after three days of applying lots of cream on her neck, the irritation has cleared up. Phew.

Reminded mommy of the importance of airing her neck more and applying lotion on all her folds diligently everyday.

At the peak - looks really bad doesn't it. 

Getting better after two to three days.

Thanks goodness she has fully recovered. Hope this doesn't occur ever again!

Celebrations has begun

I am turning 32 this first November.

 Since mom and dad will be away in Japan, we had an early celebration to celebrate Kenneth and my birthday! 

Mom cooked a sumptuous meal for us (home cooked food sure is a treat these days!), and Vivien got us the yummy cupcakes from Twelve Cupcakes (another favorite!).  Thanks everyone for the happy night of celebration together!

A candle for me, and another for Ken! There would have been three candles if Terry was here!

WIth my big boy

My ever beautiful younger sister and brother in law

Sumptuous dinner complete with almond longan dessert! We were stuffed by the end of the night with all the food!

Love.

My first birthday with meimei

Do we look alike??

Thanks for my birthday present!! I bought a pair of jeans and tank top!

Long overdue haircut

Wayne finally had his haircut. Brave boy now, he no longer cries while having his hair cut. So long as the hairstylist doesn't use the "zzzz.." (in Wayne's words).  He actually means the electric shaver. :)

And since the arrival of meimei, daddy has taken over a lot of mommy's role in looking after Wayne. While in the past, it would have been mommy sitting down with Wayne while he had his hair cut, it was now daddy in the seat. As mommy watched on, with meimei in my arms, mommy does feel a little wistful. 

Love you a lot, sweetie.

Five and Dime

Saturday morning brunch at Five and Dime. Didn't realize how near it was to home.  

Meimei holding her little zebra rattler while waiting for everyone to get ready for breakfast. Almost every morning, I'd wave that in front of her and and watch how her gaze follows the zebra around. 

Daddy carrying meimei in the carrier for the first time 

Yummy food but like most brunches, overpriced

Centre of my world

One of the rare photos of mommy and Amanda

Sawadee-ka Day 4

Last day!

We had breakfast at Cafe Claire, which is a pretty cafe with a touch of French in the heart of Bangkok. We were impressed by the decor of the cafe and the food was satisfying too. I had the French Toast (I've been in love with French Toasts ever since having the best I've eaten at Antoinette) while HK had the Eggs Benedict, both of which turned out yummy.

French toasts

Eggs Benny

After our chop chop breakfast, we rushed to MBK mall to get dried local products for the family - the normal pork floss sticks and banana and durian chips.

Running out of time (we had a flight to catch!), it was quite a mad rush for our last meal in Bangkok. Ironically, we were craving for Japanese food while in Bangkok, so we saw ourselves back at Central World, where all the Japanese restaurants congregated on the sixth floor of Isetan.

We then taxi-ed back to the hotel, faced with the daunting task of squeezing all our shopping buys into our luggage. And we thought a big luggage would be sufficient! It took us a few rounds of mix and matching the stuff between our big luggage and our hand carry duffel before we managed to get everything in!

Checked out of our hotel, entirely satisfied with our four days and three nights stay at Oriental Residence. HK made a mental note to put in a good review for them on Trip Advisor (if he actually gets down to doing it). I am reminded of the electrical sockets in the hotel room which were built in with international adapters, a very thoughtful touch. All hotels should have this, shouldn't they, since 90% of their guests are from overseas.

Thankfully traffic was in our favor and we got to the airport in less than half an hour. While checking in our luggage, we were amazed again with how monks are held in such high regard in Thailand (And I don't mean this in any bad way). In the photo below, monks get priority queues at the check in counters. And we also saw that in the BTS trains - alongside the pregnant women, kids and elderly, monks get priority seats in the trains as well.

It was also obvious that the Thai king was held in extremely high regard, with huge posters of the king everywhere.

At the airport, we also saw this luggage wrapping service  for the first time. It provides added security for your luggages (no worries of crooks unknowingly sneaking in drugs in your luggage! hehe) and keeps it clean too! Amused, we decided to cling wrap the kids' dollhouse which we were going to check in for 200 baht.

Well, so that ends our short getaway. Just four days, but we felt relaxed and rejuvenated as a couple. I am already looking forward to our next trip, not sure when and where, but with the kids the next time!

We are at the airport having our last coffee before boarding the plane and bidding Bangkok goodbye! Till the next trip! 

And in 3 hours, back to poop cleaning and diaper changes!!! Can't wait to hug my two precious kids!!!

Sawadee-ka Day 3

Day three!

First stop was to Central World to do some shopping. This was quite a huge shopping centre, and located just next to Siam Paragon.

In search of breakfast, we discovered a whole floor of eateries on the 7th floor of this shopping center. We settled for some savory crepes at Crepe n Co (which was meh only) and coffee at Segafredo's.

We were really impressed by the decor of the many eateries. My, they put in a lot of effort - small individual cafes but all unique and extremely pretty, with lots of thought going into the details of the decor. Why are there so few of such cafes in Singapore?

A Thai local brand.

Plan Toys time! We splurged on toys for the kids buying 12 items of toys for them including a wooden doll house. Spent 7,602 baht, which amounts to S$300. It's really cheap compared to how much these toys are going for at Takashimaya. Some items were on 50% discount, so you can imagine how the husband and I just bought and bought. Extremely pleased. Can't wait to see the delighted face of Wayne when he sees his fire station toy set. Absolutely sure he will love it. Now we just have to think about how we are going to transport the bulky boxes home.

We then stumbled upon a whole level of Japanese restaurants at Isetan, still in Central World. Japanese food in Thailand! It was much cheaper than in Singapore. We had ramen for lunch.

As with all meals, Huakai had beer again!  The beer here was really cheap too. Chang beer, Erdinger, Heineken, Asahi.. He had a beery good time.

Noticed the can drink here showed the volume in cm cube rather than in ml. Interesting.

We then headed back to the hotel again, for a pump break. A taxi driver tried to katuk us again quoting 150 baht for the ride back. We said we wanted to go by the meter but he wasn't willing so we hopped on to another taxi (paying 60 baht) while he continued his search for other gullible tourists willing to pay almost three times the normal fare.

Next, was out to Siam Paragon, for more shopping (window!), followed by a coffee break at a cafe by Mandarin Oriental where we had a brownie with vanilla ice cream too. Got some Dr Brown bottles for Amanda in the special edition pink as well.

The husband's favorite shopping centre

Coffee break

We were too full for a proper dinner, so we bought the yummy Four Seasons roast duck back to our hotel. Yes, it was that heavenly!

Spent the night lazing in bed watching Masterchef - it's been a long while since I watched the TV for so long. Hooked on Masterchef now, I need to go home and follow it on YouTube (if I can find the time!)!