KKH Healthy breastfed baby competition

Annika won first prize at the KKH healthy breastfed baby competition 2011!!

It's incredible!

The initial judging was over a month ago, and we hadn't heard from them for a really long time.

Then, 2 weeks ago I got the letter telling me she made it to the finals!
So yesterday we dressed her up, I got dressed up and after much commotion managed to get us all to United Square by 10am for the initial judging. Of course after we get there I realize all the finalists were told to be there AT 10 so we ended up waiting for our turn anyway! In the meantime we had to entertain 1 energetic preschooler( Madison ) and an even more precocious toddler( Annika ).

Of course I was checking the competition out.... and I decided.. if Annika didn't win I wasn't going to do this kind of thing ever again. There was NO FIGHT. ( NB not being biased! I am an objective doctor as a first... I would admit defeat if there were a cuter, smarter baby around )

Finally we were called into the judging room. Annika sat on their table and was playing with one of the judges while the other one interviewed me. Mostly developmental assessment type questions. Of course she passed them all... was she crawling? She is almost RUNNING after her 2 older sister/cousin!

From judging to the announcement of the winners was a huge time gap of almost 4 hours. So I decided we should go home, let the girls have lunch and nap first, then Chris and I would return to see if we won. The programme given to us said that the announcement of winners would be at 130Pm with prize giving at 2. If we did by any chance WIN, then the plan was to go back and grab Annika for the prize giving. If we didn't then we could go out for lunch and let her continue with her afternoon nap.

And of course they didn't go according to plan. We returned at 130, only to find out that the prize giving AND announcement were all happening at 2! Oh well...

And of course Annika won the FIRST prize in her category. I was really quite embarrassed because
1. no baby for prize collection from the Minister of Health Dr Amy Khor HERSELF
2. I changed out of my nice clothes and shoes into Tshirt and slippers
2. No baby for official photos

Still... it was so nice to win. Like a vindication of the hard work it has taken to nurture Annika. We got cash vouchers, a V bike, diaper bag and apparently a cash cheque (which we didn't collect because we rushed off after the prize giving)

And today I got a call from the KKH people telling me that Annika had to go for a photo shoot so that she can be featured in their newsletter! Very flattering. I'm certainly not used to all this attention!

I think Chris is hooked. He's looking for another contest to enrol our kids into.

What a great end to a weekend!