Le Rong's 1st Birthday!

I have finally decided to sit down and spend some time to write this post which should have been done 2 months ago. It's our 2nd princess's 1st birthday party! Not exactly a birthday party, more like a get together by our immediate families to celebrate Rongrong's birthday.

After browsing through various cafes or restaurants online, we have decided to hold Lerong's birthday lunch at a vegan cafe called Loving Hut. Besides reserving a table there, we also bought a simple yet nice cake from Bengawan Solo and a cute birthday balloon that will add to the ambience. Dear and I also bought a bracelet each for da xiao bao from Poh Heng Jewellery, and they're expensive! Oh, and I also bought a cute little strawberry dress from Taobao that Rongrong would wear on her special day.

  A beautiful cake and how Rongrong was fascinated by the balloon.

The celebration would have been better if we could occupy one big table instead of splitting into 3 separate tables. But it was still great to see the kids (Le Xuan and Abby) enjoying themselves and the food there was quite good too. Rongrong was starting to get cranky as it was time for nap, so we let her take a 15 minutes nap before waking her up for the cake cutting session. 

          

Singing the birthday song and cake cutting time! 

Le Xuan was as usual a very sweet sister. She bought a present for meimei using her savings and even wrote a poem for her. I could still remember her asking me and porpor to bring her to kiddy palace and she took a really long time deciding what to buy for meimei. And her poem never fails to impress me. 

          

                                             Proud Le Xuan giving meimei her birthday present

It was a simple yet lovely birthday celebration. Too bad we didn't take a group photo of everyone and all the presents that Rongrong received, but it was a memorable day. Oh, and on Rongrong's lunar birthday which was about a month ago, we had the traditional Zhua Zhou ceremony for her to see which item she'll pick. Haha she picked both ruler and pencil at the same time! Not sure what that means though, but just for fun!! 

                                                                Pencil + ruler = ?? 

We hope that Le Rong will continue to be healthy and happy, and the sisters will love each other deep deep. Papa and Mama love you loads! Sometimes I still wonder if this is all a dream as I never thought that we'll have a second child. I feel blessed to have our little family and will continue to count my blessings everyday.  :) 

Le Xuan's First Piano Recital

Another overdue post here as the event actually happened on 29 May 2016 (Sunday).

Le Xuan's music school organizes piano recitals every year. Given that she joined the school only in February, this was her very first piano recital.

Le Xuan chose the song "Animal Band" as her performance piece. Preparing for the recital was not easy as she had to memorize the score and observed the basic protocol of walking to the piano, adjusting the bench, sitting properly, fingers in ready position before she starts, and also do a curtsy after her performance. She also had to attend two rehearsals on weekends prior to the actual day performance. These may sound trivial to us, but it could be very overwhelming for a 6-7 year old kid.
When the day arrived, I could see that Le Xuan was quite nervous in the morning, so I did not ask her to practice her song before we made our way to the performance venue. Too bad Papa was still at Barcelona that day and couldn't make it to her first piano recital. I'm sure Papa would have been able to help relieve darling's jitters that day, and darling would be even happier to have both Papa and Mama watch her performance.


After dressing Le Xuan up, we made our way down to Forte Academy at Waterloo street which was the concert venue. When it was finally her turn to perform, I could hear many people saying "soooo cute!!" when she walked up to the grand piano. As she was very nervous, there were a couple of hiccups, but she still managed to complete the whole song.  Everyone gave her a huge round of applause when she gave a cute little curtsy after her performance.  Although she could have played much better, I was also glad that she did not give up halfway and chose to complete the song. Bro's family was there to support Le Xuan too.

Le Xuan playing "Animal Band"

Happy to receive a certificate of participation

I believe that this was a great exposure for Le Xuan and that she will gradually learn to be more confident in future. I'm so proud of our little big princess and hope she'll continue to enjoy music and piano as she grows up.

2016 -- New Beginning for us especially Le Xuan

I had wanted to write a post on the birth of our 2nd beautiful baby Le Rong, but it's been such a busy and challenging few months that I didn't have the time for that. Time flies and Rong Rong is already 3.5 months old now. She's a SG50 baby born on 16 Sep 2015. I'll never forget that she shares the same birthday as our founding father Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

 Our beautiful girls

Besides taking care of Rong Rong which meant sleepless nights and painful engorgements, we had been busy settling the renovation of our new house at One Canberra. In terms of our businesses, dear was striving to hit his year end target while I had to plan for the transition of my tuition to OneCanberra. I could still remember that we collected the keys to our new house on 16 Oct 2015 as it was Rong Rong's full month that day. It wasn't easy for Le Xuan who suddenly became a big sister after being the only child for 6 years. She also fell very sick before her K2 graduation day which she had high viral fever for 5 days followed by an outbreak of rashes.  Luckily she was able to attend and perform on her graduation day. And soon after her graduation, she started feeling blue about going to Primary one soon.

This is the first week of Year 2016 and Le Xuan has embarked on her journey in primary school. Not easy for her as she needs to wake up so early nowadays, has longer school hours and it's also her first time taking school bus home. She cried the first 2 days due to apprehension which was made worse when she forgot afew books. But I could see that she's feeling much better today (Day 3) although she hasn't made any friends yet, haha. Nevertheless, it's already a big improvement and I'm sure she'll have many friends soon.  All these also happened in the midst of our preparation for our big move to One Canberra on 15 Jan 2016, so many things to pack and so many things to settle on our renovation! Dear's business is going into the second year and my tuition is going to start on 18 Jan 2016!! Frankly, it has been quite draining having to do all these with minimal sleep. 2015 has been a challenging year for all of us, but I'm sure things will be more settled and it'll be a wonderful year ahead for our family. Happy, healthy and wealthy!!!