This rainy day.

It rained the entire day today.

And so, we were stuck at home.

I was a little concerned about how I should keep J occupied - we kind of ran out of craft materials.

But she asked to watch movies in the morning and I sat alongside, working on my photobook.

I completed the photobook.

Then we cooked some pasta together. 

She ate some and asked for milk because she was sleepy.

She didn't want to nap in the end.

She rolled all over the mattresses in her room instead.
I contemplated asking her to attempt some rainy day painting, like painting a rainy scene with fork while seated watching the rain.
But she was having so much fun, I didn't.
What I did instead, I watched her.

I watched her attempting somersaults, jumping up and down the bolster and pretending it was a bridge connecting both her mattresses.

Then she took her cat puppet and the cat did the same.

And she laughed.  And repeated.
It was a lot of rolling and jumping. I lost count of how many times I told her to be careful.

She finally stopped to wipe the perspiration off her head.

But she still didn't want to nap.

So I went to cook dinner. The whole time, she sat at her table, playing with her doctor's kit. I came out to see Ducky bandaged in washi tape.

While the soup cook, I decided to do something I haven't done for a long while.
I went in and held her hands as I sang "Beauty and the Beast" and danced with her. 

She sang along.
When we finished the song, she ran off to her room to get her tutu skirt so she could put it on.
"We are princesss(es). Mama has a princess dress too."
Right. I was indeed wearing a dress.

I was so thrilled when she sang along that I sang more Disney songs.

She sang along.
We can't really dance but we twirled and we skipped.
We held hands and swung from side to side.

This rainy day, there was no lesson plans.

It was all J-led.

But this rainy day, I had the most fun.

PIP's PLAYbox at Esplanade Singapore

We missed out on PIP's PLAYbox the last time we went to Esplanade for "The Magic Jungle". 

My friend told me it was really fun.

I didn't know how fun was fun so I had to go check it out.

We had been indoors for a while now following J's latest bout of flu so I know she can't wait to get out. I told her that we were going to PIP's house when she woke, and I don't think she had gotten out of bed faster than this.

She met PIP when we went for the performance so she knows who PIP is.

Getting to PIP's "house" is a perfect excuse to get her to shower "because it is only polite if you turn up neat and clean at someone's house." She bought it. Getting a shower wasn't her most favourite thing to do recently. I don't why why. However, that did give me an opportunity to give J a mini lesson on manners when visiting someone's house..

I am not someone with a good sense of direction so I thought the walk there would be challenging. But it was an alright walk from the train station to Esplanade (if you do not have to carry a 15kg wriggling toddler) and PIP's PLAYbox is relatively easy to locate once you arrive at Level 4 because of the brightly coloured decals on the outside.

As with visiting someone's house, please remember to remove your footwear and deposit your shoes in the shoe cabinets on the right as you enter. I couldn't locate the shoe cabinet initially. It's important to do so because the inside of the PLAYbox is where children and be free to roam around. You can imagine the number of little hands that's going to touch the ground.

The sight that first greeted us was one that shouts brightness, lightness, freedom.

I love that the full length glass panels allowed the sunlight to pour right into the space. That gave plenty of natural light so no filters and edits are required for the photos.

I love that it is so minimalist. Simple, natural wood tables with plenty of green.

The moment I stepped in, I was in love.

And that, is the activity corner where children (and parents) can work on the seasonal activities.

It was Mandala-making when we were there. We spent a short while working on our mandalas. Only a short while because I can't wait to check out the shadow play corner at the back.

But before that, we arrive at a little nook where children can cuddle up to read a book or two. Which we did.

Books from local writers/ illustrators are placed in various corners and there are cushions and other reading nooks around so that meant that there are really many spots to cuddle up and read.

The colourful animal heads are props from The Magic Jungle which J really wanted to touch but I stopped her because I wasn't sure if we were allowed to. Turns out I think we can, because I saw many doing so from the photos on Instagram. We'll play with that the next time we visit.

The space becomes more whimsical as we move in, with many cupboards and doors to open. Which J did and I freaked out, because (again), I wasn't sure if we were allowed to. Then I took a while to convince myself that since it's a space for children and there are still so many doors to open, then they must be meant to open.

There are photos of PIP displayed on a few shelves and J being curious J wanted to have a good look. It was nice to talk about the photos - Where PIP went, what PIP was doing...

There's also some puzzles, IKEA train sets, and a collection of Tegu blocks to play with. 

A rather large collection of Tegu blocks if you ask me. I was excited to lay my hands on these magnetic blocks but realise that I'm very bad with construction toys. I can imagine fairies and play with air but to build something? - Sorry I can't.

But we still had fun anyway!

Right at the end of the play space, there is a door leading to an outdoor playground which we didn't manage to check out because it was under maintenance. But it sure looks like fun!

See those sound pipes? I love sound pipes!

There's also a flight of steps leading up to the treehouse. Beside those steps are higher cushioned steps to snuggle and read some books together. 

We were suppposed to leave but J found this and we got stuck for an hour longer. 

Just cuddling up together to read.

I love moments like these.

Of all the books we read that day, this is my favourite.

The story is simple and not too wordy for J to follow. 

The illustrations are adorable.

And it introduces the musical instruments in a very fun way. J and I had fun trying to imitate the sounds these percussion instruments make.

And maybe it's because they were instruments I could relate to. Makes me think of the four fun years I had in Chinese Orchestra when I was in school.

Cute right?
J thinks that the tubular bells looks like the installation on the ceiling.

J had many questions along the way too.
The one I like most - "Who does the stick belong to?" when we were at the page on Muyu.
The page shows most of the Muyu hitting themselves with a stick, but one of the characters was also holding on to the stick, so J as genuinely curious to know who exactly the sticks belong to.


This is the corner we snuggled in.
She didn't want to leave.
I told her that we should take a photo to show Daddy your latest bedroom inspiration.
And she demonstrated that.

It is such a cosy place I didn't want to leave either.

Maybe the weekday crowd plays a part - there wasn't any crowd. For an hour or so, we had the whole space to ourselves.

And in very local terms, this is a beautiful place to nua. 

Can't believe I couldn't find the definition of "nua". okay, this is the best I could find.

I'll be back to nua.
Soon.

Ocean Week - The rest of the week

It is really a bad idea trying to document our activities daily.
I went to bed early the night of Day 3 to save up as much energy as I can for The Big Day, and spent the next few days recovering from the running around at the aquarium.

But anyway, here's the rest of Ocean Week.


DAY 3
It was a day of realisation so we ended after one activity.

I found this idea from Pinterest - footprint starfish, but didn't want to risk J decorating my mum's floor, so I changed it to handprint instead. Pretty naive of me to think that handprints would end up looking like starfish.

J was apprehensive initially when grandma painted her hands, but quickly got used to it and started to insist that she paint her hands on her own. Even though the painting didn't resemble starfishes, it ended up looking like sea jellies when inverted.

We had a lot of paint left so we went on to stamp vegetables instead.

And... that is all the ocean-related activities we did. I stopped because I realised I was trying too hard to capture the moment with my camera, up to the point that I was interrupting J. She got distracted upon seeing my phone so on second thoughts, that's probably what made her stop. 

The whole afternoon, I reflected. Do I want to be so focused about capturing the moment with the camera? Or should I do so with my heart. J didn't seem as enthusiastic in the activities either so should I still attempt structured activities? I don't have an answer yet.

Because I was so caught up in my thoughts, we allowed J to have a lot of unstructured play that day. She did amazing. 

She helped with the clean clothes. She pulled out the toy box and played with the little toys that were from her uncle's time. She swept the floors when my mum was sweeping. 

She didn't ask to be entertained. But at the same time, she's learning.

Note to self: I'd still like to continue with themed activities but I probably not be too rigid about it and expect things to go as planned. Maybe I should try to take her cue and facilitate her learning instead of trying to 'teach' her.

Day 4

The big day we hit the aquarium! 

What's better than seeing those fishes and sea creatures in person?

We were lucky to see the dolphins this time. We've been there for three times but have never had luck with the dolphins! Read more about it here. :)

Day 5

We are all exhausted from the trip the day before. Maybe, except J.
I attempted to make a jellyfish from this activity sheet we got at the aquarium.
It got destroyed even before we started. Was I even surprised?

When I was about to give up doing ocean-themed activities altogether, my dad decided that it was time to show J the starfruits he brought home that day. Before they rot.

So, J

1.  felt the smooth texture on the starfruit (she sniffed it the day my dad brought it home).

2. saw that the cross-section of the starfruit is, well, a star (we tried explaining that to her, not sure if she got it), and

3. did some starfruit painting.

The starfruit prints are perfect as sea stars so I gave her some blues and greens to paint an ocean first.

J really doesn't like to paint over the entire piece of paper.

We didn't manage to do as many activities as I wished to during this week but I did discovered something about the way I tried to carry out the activities and J's learning style. Let's leave that for another post.

Let me go dream about future aquarium visits now that we have the annual pass.



Here's what we did prior...

Preparation and Book List

Ocean Week - Day 1

Ocean Week - Day 2

To S.E.A. Aquarium we go!

To S.E.A. Aquarium we go!

After days of haze hovering around the moderate to unhealthy levels, we were blessed to wake up to clear skies on the day we were supposed to visit the aquarium. It was also the day J turns 23 months-old and I have been planning this trip for a while.

We got the tickets of Qoo10 at slightly less than $21 each. $7 multiplied by five is quite a bit of savings. (Tickets are at $28 for Singapore citizens.)

Our tickets did not include the entrance to Typhoon Theatre though. I thought they did, and felt bad in disappointing my dad. But he decided that it is quite a fun experience that we should try and he paid for the tickets ($2 per pax). It was quite an interesting 4D show though most of the time, I noticed that our eyes were on J instead, observing her reactions. Her eyes were affixed to the screen. Ah. It's like Pandora's Box after our strict no-screen rule isn't it? We were a little surprised that she doesn't seem to be bothered by the lightning and loud thunder. She even went "Boom boom boom" after it. Thank you Dr Seuss' "Mr Brown can Moo, Can You?"

Raincoat is recommended for little ones since they do sprinkle quite a bit of water!

Following the shipwreck scene in the show, we exited to a underwater shipwreck. That makes so much more sense now!

I had been reading to J prior the visit so there were a few sea creatures I really wanted to spot.

The hammerhead shark is one of them. We have a Safari Ltd TOOBS figure too so that helps.

I didn't expect such a beautiful picture though. I can lie there watching them for hours if I wouldn't get in the way of others.

Moray eels were in my list too since they are in the Ocean TOOBs we got.

I've always wanted to go through that tiny little entrance that looks like it is for children, but the three times I went with J, she was in a stroller. It's so much easier now that we were without one!

It's quite intriguing, watching the eels move. Reminds me of Flotsam and Jetsam from The Little Mermaid. So says the sis. It smells a little funky in there though.

We visited the Big Silver Fish (I don't know it's name) since J really like watching it the last time we were there. This is one huge fish that is popular with children.

Hello Nemo and Dory.

Ahh... I could sit in front of this for a long, long time too.

Sea jellies. Love them.

We even saw the itty bitty baby ones that are soo adorable! They are only about 1 cm.

The dolphins came.

This was our fourth visit but it was my first time seeing the dolphins.

And we saw them playing with the balls.

J likes them too, I believe, because one night before bed, she said "See dolphins play ball again. Next time."

And finally another one we see in the books - the lionfish!

I love the touch pool. We had a go touching the sea stars and J learnt a little about their textures - hard, bumpy. There were some sea cucumbers too which J missed since she doesn't really have gentle hands. 

I really appreciate the activity corner at the Open Ocean.
While I prefer to sit in front of the glass panel to look at the fishes and manta rays, J had other plans. She just wanted to walk up and down the stairs. Because... so many flights of stairs!
She wouldn't stop until I told her that we could do some colouring.
The volunteer on duty is a nice young man whom we bumped into at the touch pool, and once more when we took photos with the mascots as we were about to leave.

I don't know what these are called. Sea worms?

But they are one of my favourites.

Don't they look like they came out from some cartoon show? And they look like they can talk.

Like guinea pigs. Those talk too.

The Living Fossils exhibit is on when we visited (till 30th September) so we spotted some dinos.

I wasn't concentrating at this point because I was occupied with the "Annual pass or not?" question.

The cutest of them all.

The axolotl.

This one bumped into the sides of the tank and looked utterly confused. Or maybe it was going "Ugh. Did it again."

I'm sorry I laughed because it was really quite funny.

I thought of it as an alien sea creature until I googled for it's pronunciation and saw that people keep them as pets. A real-life pokemon!

We never had luck with mascots either so the manta ray was a pleasant surprise.

He/She even interacted with J and as her momma, I really appreciate that gesture.

As cliche as it may sound, I'm very grateful to my family for making this trip possible.

And for the love they give J.
She was one happy kiddo that day.


Sidenote:
I love the aquarium a lot and when my friend asked if I would get bored visiting it many times a year, my answer was a "no". I realised I could sit in front of some tanks for hours, just looking at the coral reef and fishes. There's just so much to see you know?
What kept me from getting the RWS Attractions Invites was the fact that I have difficulty travelling alone with J and the stroller, which is a necessity. Thank goodness my best friend for life, who is also my sister, shares the same thoughts about being in an aquarium, so yay! we both got our passes!

Note to self: Take photos in landscape next time.


Here's what else we did this week:

Preparation and Book List

Ocean Week - Day 1

Ocean Week - Day 2

Ocean Week - The rest of the week

Our first contact paper craft

Even though I said that contact paper craft in my last post was more of an "invitation to destroy" than "invitation to play", there were actually some observations I made, and definitely, some takeaways.

Materials we use:

1. Tissue paper, precut into confetti and stored away ($2 for 25 pieces, Daiso)

2. Contact paper ($2.95, POPULAR bookstore) 

This is J's first encounter with tissue paper and contact paper.

Observations:

J fiddled the tissue papers in the bowl. She wasn't quite sure what to do. I don't know if I'm supposed to show her how to do it but I stuck a piece of tissue paper onto the contact paper. 

She, too,  stuck a piece onto the sticky paper then play around with the tissue paper. She pulled at one and realised it will tear, so she continued tearing the paper and returning he smaller pieces into the bowl. 

Then she tried to "water" the confetti down onto the contact paper but except for a couple of pieces, the rest didn't stick. 

J attempted to stick another piece of confetti into the contact paper, and realised her hands got stuck. The contact paper makes a funny sound when she tried to pull her hand away. So she kept doing it and was enjoying herself. "What's that? Hahahahaha...." 

The contact paper fell of the wall in the process and she scrunched it up. I opened it up again and stuck it to the floor instead. Then I showed J that we can just sprinkle the confetti onto the contact paper. Which she did.

And she did more while she was with Daddy and so we ended up with this:

Not too shabby, if I may say.

Thoughts:

To be honest, I was quite disheartened initially because this seems to be yet another ITP that failed. But it was her first contact with the materials after all. I can't expect her to do the proper art right away. I think it's good that she's willing to explore and play around with the materials. The "getting to know you" stage is important too.

I stuck the completed piece up on the wall and didn't think about it but the next morning when J entered the playroom and saw the art, she requested to "make art" again.

I gave her the another one.

This time, she tipped the bowl of confetti over the sticky paper and spreaded them out before she held the paper up and declared "Very nice!"

Contact paper art done in 10 seconds flat.

Sick-and-rainy stay-in Sunday

Sundays are usually outdoor-days because a certain little person needs to expend her energy. Said little person is now recovering from throat infection so we were advised by my mum to stay in.

It was hard but the universe made it a little easier for us by giving us some rain.

Staying indoors for the entire day is torture for the little one. She is getting quite bored of the books we have at home. And the toys are less attractive now that they have been around for close to a year. Or two.

We managed to each crack our brains and came up with something to tide us through the long day. 

Imagination

J did her part and has been quite creative in pretending that the clothes rack is her playground. Well, if we can't go to the playground, we bring the playground in. It's nowhere close to being a playground but she sure had lots of fun. We had to cut short the activity because The Husband and I both feel that the clothes rack is quite light and we don't want the clothes rack falling onto J.

Invitation-to-play

A contact paper craft inspired by Let's Tot School.

It became more of an invitation to destroy at the end. And we had a little confetti fun.

Song and dance

I was at my wits end after the contact paper activity because I had no idea what else to do. Then The Husband brought in his phone with Super Simple Songs playing in the background. Lifesaver!

J is very tickled by "cookies" in this song.

And these songs are perfect to dance along to, which we did. And J got to move around like she needed to.

This is my favourite!

I guess a stay-in Sunday isn't so bad after all!

(Not really. I'll pick outdoors any day.)

Rocks and brushes

We stayed over at grandma's so Grandma School started early. J is still recovering from her throat infection and we did not go to the parks nor grocery shopping. I wasn't expecting any activities to be done but today turned out to be pretty fun. 

My mum read the story of the clever crow to J and I thought aloud about how nice it would be if J can experience it for herself. The change in water level, I mean. Not drinking from the pitcher. My dad heard my thoughts and volunteered some of the rocks and stones he had collected. I used an elastic band to mark the original water level so that J can observe the rise in water level. I don't think she got it, so I pretended to be the bird instead.

After the story telling with props, J continued putting in and taking out the rocks for a while. I cut the activity short because she's is still recovering and we all don't think she should play with water for too long. She did continue playing with the rocks for a while. The difference in texture of the rocks provides a good sensorial experience. I did not introduce textures like "rough" and "smooth" though. I'm saving it for another day. I want her to just feel and familiar herself with the rocks. It's, after all, her first encounter with them.

This activity lasted about 10 minutes but it should be able to last J for quite a while if I hadn't cut it short.

My sis came over later and since she bought J a little apron, we did a some painting. It's J's first attempt at painting. My mum came up with the idea of a makeshift "easel". J picked out the colours. We used our old palette and my dad's brush.

Here's her final piece before she declared that she wanted a change of paper. Thank goodness she decided to stop before she paints all over it because I think it looks a little like a llama. This is definitely going up on the wall!

The painting activity lasted about 15 minutes. We ran out of paint and it was starting to get a little messy. J tried to paint standing up and the strokes turned out more artistic.

Pretty sure that she had a wonderful morning because the little one is sleeping soundly beside me. And no sounds of phlegm. Thank goodness! 

Tulipmania at Gardens By the Bay

Early this month, we celebrated Mummy's birthday with a trip to Gardens by the Bay.

It was a rare opportunity for a family trip, so it's extra special to me.

I've always wanted to check out Tulipmania but never made it to any during the past years somehow. So, I am extremely grateful that the family doesn't mind making that our destination.

It was also a 'field trip' for Grandma School that day.

Cool-Dry Observatory, Flower Dome
I'm glad it's air-conditioned because it was scorching hot outside.
Before it poured, that it.
The cacti reminded me of the visit to the Subtropical Botanic Garden in Hallim Park, South Korea.

As I was walking in from the left, I thought it is an elephant. 

Living Rocks. Spot them!

Tulipmania
This year's theme - Fairytales.
Right up my alley!

We couldn't spot Thumbelina while we were there. Then I reviewed the photos and there she is!

  

The familiar fairytales we know of.

It's quite gorgeous.

The Little Red Riding Hood display is a little creepy though. Freaked me out a little.

All of us had a camera of some sort (either phone or a real camera) and we were snapping away.

The little one looked like she wanted a camera so we gave her the empty Polaroid case and told her its her camera.

She snapped away, very seriously.

Some friends commented that this year's display was a little disappointing because the first year they went, the whole dome was filled with tulips and not just the Flower Field. I guess with little to no expectations at all since it was my first time there, it was more enjoyable.

But of course, what matters most is the company.
Looking back at the photos, I love the bonding opportunity.
Mummy and Daddy took some couple shots which turned out to be a pretty hilarious experience. J couldn't stop laughing. I especially adore that set of photos of J with her uncle and aunt. The Cheeky Three.
Super thankful that J is a lucky girl who is showered with so much love and super thankful for a fun family like this.