Happy birthday to Noel...

This year has certainly gone too fast for me. I probably say the same statement every year since I turn a quarter century old. Anyhow, for a nearly 3 year old, it seems ages. We decided to hold a small party for him on the saturday before his actual birthday. He wanted an Elmo cake. So he brought in his elmo plush (thanks godma) and showed it to the bakery lady. Ta-da, his cake has taro flavour in between the layers.

Again, this year, we did a bbq.It also coincided with our LG fellowship. So everyone brings a plate too. There were salads, porks and chicken and we made Ant made his decadent chocolate mousse and hazelnut ice-cream.

Satay skewer that jake made for the party using beef, capsicums and mushrooms.

Here, the men prefers to congregate together outdoor and eat. Ant busy carving the leg of lamb.

The boys were playing in the playroom. They were all very well behaved :)

After stuffing ourselves with all the goodies, next come the highlight for the birthday boy. We sang Happy birthday to Noel. Here's our latest family picture.

Then we proceed to open the presents. N is opening up present from Cayden. He's very excited.

Taking more pictures here.

Posing for photograph with Miss A and Aunty C.

Both looks after the boys at church creche. Miss A also teaches N at his BSF preschool program. She calls him "To-To" aka little assistant.

More to come...

Starting solids

I started Abel on solids when he was about 5 months and 3 weeks (roughly there). He was showing great interest on our food.
So this time I did a lot more research and also read so many baby cookbooks. But the best recipes and advice that I got were from Zainelicious and Angelolli They are tried and tested by people I actually know :)

I also got ready the tools that I need. A small pot to steam the food,blender with glass jug and some bpa free baby freezer tray.

Anyways for the first 2-3 weeks I only fed A baby rice cereal. I used the Watties baby rice cereal. I started with one meal a day and slowly went up to 2 meal or 3 meals. He got tired of the bland baby rice very quickly. So the next thing I tried was orange kumara puree (Sweet potato) He took it quite well. In fact he liked it very much. I then proceed to try carrots, Pears, Apples, peas and then started to mix ingredients like carrots and sweet corn and so on. I would make a batch and freeze them and each meal I would resteam them.

Favourite shots

These are one of my favourite photos taken this year. N was 32 months and A was 5 months old. We were going to take family portrait and we took some test shots at home. The actual portrait turned out yuck but I liked the ones we took at home of the boys.

BTW

How time flies. My maternity leave came to an end and I went back to work 2 Mondays ago.
It's a new set of routine altogether.

Now my day starts like this :

Wake up. Feed A. Sterilise the breast pump. Breakfast for me and N. Prep N for kindy on kindy days. Drive to work. Work. Lunch break. Pump milk. Work. Knock Off. Drive home. Feed A. Clean up. Bath the boys. Prep them to sleep.

I am slowly getting used to the new routine. How are the boys taking it? Noel is quite used to me going to work but Mr Clingy aka A was upset on the first day. Fortunately things improved. He greets me with laugh now when I get home instead of cries.

Yummy Berry Froth

These pics were taken during my maternity leave sometime in mid- Sep. Note the weather is still pretty chilly and N is in jumper.
We were making blueberry froth. Ingredients: One cup of frozen blueberries, 1 cup of ice, one cup of cow milk, and got N involved in pouring the blueberries and milk into the blender. The highlight for him was pressing the buttons on the blender. I did add some sugar to sweeten the froth. I guess if you add vanilla ice cream, you won't need to add the sugar. Notice how 'purple' the froth was. With the weather warming up, there should be more froths coming our way.

Pouring activity

N's attempting to make ice cube. He's concentrating real hard on pouring the right amount of water into the ice cube tray. He did a good job as there were no spills. However, there were no ice cube produced because he kept checking the fridge every 5 minutes by taking the tray out and spilling the water as a result.

Plate-o-saurus

Here's a little crafting activity I did with N. I refer to the craft pages in the littlies magazine. He had reminded me quite a bit to go shop for the paper plate to make the dinosaur.I finally found a stray one from my pantry one afternoon and we set off to make them. I of course cut the plate into half and cut the parts for him. N's participation was colouring the dino and also gluing the eye onto the dinosaur.

Angpow shoes

The 3 of us just returned from the Middle Kingdom two days ago. Still a little jetlagged and have lots of unpacking and laundry to do. Tidying up the pics now. Here's one taken before we went on the trip of N using the big angpow packet as his shoes! He ran away when I tried to photograph him.

Spring is here.Check out my plum blossoms

Pic taken on 12 Sep of my plum tree. Hopefully we get bigger fruit this year. Last year, N kept plucking the fruits before they even had a chance to ripen.

Abel's first trip

This is a super overdue post but I'd just finished collaging the photos. We took our moms and dad and the boys to Waiheke Island in April during the Easter break. We caught one of the catamaran from Half Moon Bay and the journey was 35-40 minutes to the island.

First stop, we went to the market. It has bric-a-brac, pony ride, plant sales, fresh foods, and local artists showing their work. We bought some fabrics and N's kitchen appliances from a lady and then went to check out the foodstalls. The breads just look so inviting!!

Next we went to Stony Batter. I nick name it the Stonehenge of New Zealand :P Of course it is the result of volcanic acitivities long time ago. The walk was about 35 minutes. We had to stop often as N kept going off-course. First to check out the red dust, the rocks, and the sheep poops and cow dungs. I also had close encounter with this sheep that literally was 2 inches away from me while I breastfed A. Luckily Jake lured it away with some potato chips.

After the walk, we were exhausted and it is time to refuel :P We decided to go to Vino Vino for lunch. It overlooks the ocean. The view was stunning. We had the big platter and the steak. Yum...it couldn't be better.

Next, we went to Mudbrick Vineyard. The vineyard has a very well landscaped vegetable garden. There were cabbages, cauliflowers, beans etc. I wonder if the restaurant used the produce in its kitchen. N had a blast running up and down the little hill at the top of the restaurant. We also tasted the wines. A little disappointed we actually had to pay to taste the wine. The wines were alright. I like some of the reds we tried even though I am not a red person.

We also checked out Palm Beach. Dad and I managed to check out a garage sale there. N had loads of fun with the sand and the playground.

After the vineyard, we pretty much ran out of things to do. We actually went to check out the Woolsworth on the island. It's the only supermarket and imagine the monopoly.

We caught the 7 30pm catamaran back to Auckland and phew, Abel did pretty well for his first trip.

Abel -3 months

Here's Abel when he just turned 3 months. His hair started dropping that month. He was very into tracking his mobile and staring at them. He's also making lots of vowel sounds.

Homemade Hummus Pizza

Anyways I attempted to make hummus few weeks back. It was easy except I was overgenerous with my garlic cloves resulting in my hummus being a little spicy. Because it was preservative free, I had to use it up quickly. So here, jake made me a pizza with pita bread. He spreaded the hummus very generously on the pita bread and then put a bit of havarti cheese and finally use the bbq sauce to swirl around the pitta bread. Then it gets into the oven for 5-7 minutes. It is totally fine to do the above without the cheese. Result: it's pretty good. The havarti just added the extra oomph to it.

I don't know whether to be pleased or to be angry. Today one of my apple have gone bad on the bottom, so I decided to carve a star for N to stamp on the paper. After A is down for nap, I got ready and he set out stamping. It wasn't too bad for the work of 2.9 year-old. Then A is crying . I put away the paintbrush and the tray away and went to get him. For 2 minutes I forgot I have left the 2.9year-old to his own device. When I went out, he was clean but had his hands in his art smock. I noticed all his stars were all gone!!!!!!!!!!!! (We were working on a baking sheet type paper)
Me: Where are your stars???!

N: In my hands. (Showing me his purple hands).

He's wiped out all his stars and he'd probably had the best finger/hand painting session in that 2 minutes whilst he was unsupervised!

Art-ing with chalks

Over the winter when the weather is permits, we bring our activities outdoor.
I introduced chalks to N in winter. First he is more interested in asking me to draw pictures for him and he guessing what I drew. When he was ready, he asked for a chalk and started drawing on the tiles. Above he's drawing plates of noodles.

I know what you did last summer

I have been collaging photos. Getting quite sick of collaging. Anyhow, now that I have little kids, going to the beach is always on our agenda whenever the weather is good. N loves going to the beach. He goes there for the playground, for the sand, and he can get dirty without too much nagging from me.

Below, he went there with jake and my dad. He had a ball with all his tools there.

For some reason, N also loves my big white bucket. It is his hat, helmet, bucket, drum, and it is also his boat below??

You might remember we got N a pirate ship in 2009. That thing sat on our lawn after the summer and it gathered lawn clippings and bugs and what not. It was an ugly piece of junk after that. This year, it joined the inorganic collection outside the kerb :P Anyways, below is just a huge drum being cut into 2 that my Fil bought. N had as much fun in it if not more.

Sharing stories

A is in his big brother's bed one morning and N decided to read him a book.

Flashback

Jake has very little photos of his childhood, like less than 10. Reason being he played photo developing with his photos when he was younger resulting in him ruining the photographs. So when I saw this being uploaded onto FB by B his cousin, I saved it :) This must be taken in the early 80s. hehe..Jake is the little toddler in the photo. My, how much he has grown. *GRIN

Can you see any resemblance of the boys in him?

N likes to play with A now. He can be a bit rough but boys are boys right? And A doesn't seem to mind half the time. In fact, he chuckles very loudly. Oh dear I look forward to lots of boyish adventures/mischiefs in years to come. And today N said this to A which I thought was so sweet of him. He kept calling out,"Hello Little Brother "to A.

Abel - 2 months old

Here's one of my favourite when he's 2 month's old. Captured him laughing.
He's a lot more alert than when he was a newborn.