9 months old!

Liam has reached 9 months!

3 more months and he is officially a toddler. My little baby is a toddler!
He is entering the 'difficult' stage. Eating is a problem right now. Sigh. Why are my kids like that??

We started solids when he turned 6 months. Till today he doesn't really like them! Of the 3 he is definitely the worst.

I'm at my wits end at the moment and am trying hard not to freak out about it. Of course it doesn't help that he hasn't gained a single gram since the end of December. How is it he can put on weight so easily for the first 6 months of his life and then struggle to even gain 100g in the next 6? It's bloody ridiculous. I had a lot of internal struggle as to whether he needs more milk? More solids? being a breastfed baby I felt a lot of responsibility -- maybe my supply sucks?? Maybe my milk is too watery or something?? Should he start some formula?

Anyway.. I trawled the internet for more information and the message is mixed. Obviously the pro-breastfeeding people say that milk is all they need for the first year and solids is 'just for fun', and other sites say that they need the solids more towards the end of the first year.

I think I'm probably going to try and encourage him to eat more, but it's really tough. Patience is probably what we need. Hopefully one day he will come to like food.  Annika is finally mostly over this phase. At 3.5! Sigh.

Work is also a source of stress.. the clinic feels like it's another kid!
We've completed the clinic renovations and the place looks much nicer, but I guess it'll take awhile for people to start coming back. And also, I probably need to spend more hours sitting at the clinic... which is another reason why Liam has to eat more and drink less.

For all these reasons I'm quite sure Liam is our last kid. After Annika I entertained the thought of having 4, but I'm definitely not a chilled out/relaxed sort of mamma. I'm really tired of being stressed out over the kids and stressing out over feeding/napping issues. The older kids are at a good stage now, and I'm looking forward to being able to do more stuff like ski and travel with them all. The clinic would suffice as my 4th!

Moving forward: Liam, please start eating better so I can worry less about you, Clinic, please pick up so that I can also worry less about you! Annika and Madison: Enjoy your pre school days... they are running out fast!

Madison's 6th

I'm really happy to say that the money spent on face painting and balloon twisting was well worth it!

Alicia Lye, the solo artiste who came and entertained the kids with her art is quite good. She has a company called Happier.Sg and she specializes in face painting. I've seen a few face paintings done by other artistes and she is by far the best. The only downside is that she operates on her own, so if its a big group she might have difficulty painting all the kids. I think the adults also wanted their faces painted by her!!

I wanted to keep the party small and simple this time, but have great food and wine. Chris and I did steak taste testing over the past few weeks, and I finally decided to order chilled barley fed USDA rib eye from MMM at Square 2. It was a tough decision!

But the steaks turned out great. We had them almost an inch thick and the marbling was fantastic. I bought 2 cast iron grill Le Cruset pans to cook the steaks in. We cooked it over the BBQ fire, but the pans took a really long time to pre heat. I was so lucky.. our new neighbour on the 5th floor lent me his cast iron flat grill and that heated up more quickly. He was so nice to come and help us grill the first 10 steaks!

I think we had 5 bottles of wine amongst us all, as well as some beer and soda. The kids had pan fried ribeye and chicken nuggets.

Oh.. the only hitch in the day? The kids.

I asked Madison if she would like to have her hair done before the party and she said 'yes'. So I took both girls to Monsoon at Novena Square for a haircut and for me to get my hair treated.

After we spent a good hour getting our hair done, we went home to prepare the food for the party.

The girls were amazingly well behaved at home.. no fights, no screaming and no tears. Of course that also meant they were probably up to no good.

They were sitting in the balcony and Madison was GIVING Annika another hair cut. She lopped her sister's fringe off so annika now has no more fringe.

Unbelievable. 2 hours from the party just freshly back from a professional haircut and they did this to their hair. Why not do it YESTERDAY! To say the least I was fuming mad.

.. it was lucky Warni spotted hair on the balcony floor and stopped them before more damage was done.

I'm glad the party is over and that it was a success... everyone enjoyed the meat so that was the point of it all...

One more party for school and I'm done for another 3 months!

Moo cow

I'm so lazy!
It's been ages since I've uploaded any pictures of the kiddos.

This was taken just this Sunday that passed. We went out to Marche at Vivocity for lunch. It's actually quite fun taking the kids out for meals now that Liam takes the bottle fine and the girls enjoy their meals outside. The only thing is that logistically things seem to take awhile to do so we wind up just having the meal then leaving pretty much soon after ( naptime for baby ).

The girls wanted to sit on the poor cow and I said 'no' initially, but another little girl got to do it so then they asked why they couldn't!

Of course their daddy obliged. They did make a cute photo though!

We are now in the month of March and Madison's birthday is coming up. We are having a little party this year with a few neighbours and their kids. I wasn't going to do anything for the kids but then I thought it was rather bad to focus entirely on the food only. So I've lined up a balloon twister and face painter for 2 hours.

I'm making the cake as usual but fortunately Madison has agreed to a simple cake decorated with flowers. Annika is getting excited and has started planning her party, but she has requested for a bouncy castle and a face painter. I think she also wants some complicated cake design.

More updates closer to the day! ( or perhaps after the party?? )