A day at East Coast Park

And we brought Beanie to East Coast park for a short bicycle ride and some sand play on last Sunday. She actually cried for a full 5 minutes when I forced her to sit on the bicycle. She was pulling my shirt and screaming her head off when I placed her in the child back-seat of the bike.

It was as if I was bringing her to the slaughter house.

Anyway, I simply ignored her and started paddling and soon enough, she settled down and eventually enjoyed the joy ride. We paddled for about an hour and Beanie did enjoy herself as a back-seat passenger despite of her teary protests earlier on.

After that, we had some sand play with her playmate, Kylie. Both Beanie and Kylie are born on the very same day and on the very same year. Yeah... what are the chances right?

At Beanie's age, she still doesn't know how to interact-play with Kylie. So both of them just spent time digging furiously at the sand side-by-side and occasionally, snatched toys and shovels. That was their idea of "interactive play" --> by snatching each other's toys.

After that, we went to this really children-friendly restaurant, Brussels Sprouts at Playground@Big Splash. The restuarant has cute little outdoor slides and rocking horses for the children to play. It even invited a Balloon Sculptor to craft balloons for the little ones for free!

I was so impressed! And as you can see from the picture above, Beanie was totally smitten by the Balloon Sculptor too!

All in all, it was a really enjoyable family outing. ;)

And now, I have to think about what to do and where to go tomorrow, on Easter holiday!

Beanie meets Singa

Remember Singa? The Courtesy Lion? He was such an icon during my era. He was EVERYWHERE when I was a kid in primary school. I remembered that there was a little song about Singa, the lion where the lyrics went something like "it is so nicccccce to be courteous... .... lah lah lah" In fact, it was deem as "cool" to be nice and courteous so that we could all be like Singa!

And then for some reason, Singa disappeared.

Where did Singa go?

Apparently he has been residing at the building of Ministry of Communications and Information (you know, the one with many colorful windows opposite clarke quay.) In fact, Singa has been very busy because Beanie and I found out that Singa is now a proud father of 5 little singas! Very productive, if only every Singaporean follows Singa's footsteps and we will not have a problem with our ever-declining TFR and the hotly debated 6.9 million figure in our recent white paper.

I don't know about you, but I think it's time that Singa steps out of his super-early retirement and gets back to work. Singaporeans have been rather angsty lately due to the over-crowding in our MRTs and buses, that's assuming that the MRTs and buses are running punctually and without any glitches. All these jostling and pushing are not helping anyone. We can really do with some courtesy and niceness...

WE NEED YOU, SINGA! *wail*

Ok, enough of the drama.

Back to our little excursion with Beanie and the little Singas. So, we chanced upon Singa and his brood and as you can see, Beanie was really excited. She checked out all the little Singas and made friends with them. The little Singas seemed excited too because we were the ONLY people in "Singa, the Courtesy Lion" exhibit.

I was very excited too. It was like I bumped into a childhood friend and had so much to catch up! You know, chatting about our kids and how Singapore was like in the 1980s (so different from today!) and why is Singa a stay-at-home-dad now? Why isn't Singa making his rounds in primary schools like he used to?

Singa lamented that courtesy is not in vogue anymore. Schools are too concerned with PSLE and rankings to bother about courtesy and niceness. But I told him a piece of good news that primary schools are re-introducing "Good Citizens", so there is a fighting chance that Singa will have his job back!

Haha... it was really nice to catch up with Singa. I really do hope more people will check out his exhibit!

A picnic at Botanical Gardens

This post is a bit dated since we actually had the picnic before the Chinese New Year but I only have the time to blog about it now.

Before I have Beanie, I had fantasized about having a picnic at the Botanical Gardens where my beautiful kid(s) will run around freely and I would chill and relax with a glass of champagne while enjoying the live music from the performing orchestra.

Ahhhh... what bliss.

Well, my fantasy did come true! Hrm... minus the champagne part though.

Beanie, being the active little girl, was RUNNING ALL OVER THE FIELD. Although by nature, I am a really chill mom and I don't mind my kid running around freely, but Beanie was trampling other people's picnic mats and raiding other people's picnic baskets!

When Beanie was let loose for 15 minutes, she brought back 2 bananas, packets of biscuits, 1 ball and almost a dog! Luckily the leash of the dog wasn't long enough. So I had to follow Beanie around to ensure that she wasn't grabbing another kid's toy, snatching food or stealing someone's pet dog.

And little Beanie was rather fearless, she did not care whether I was following her or not; she simply ran after whatever item that caught her eye. Be it a dog, leaves, other kids or bubbles. After a while, I gave up and let her be. Every 5 minutes or so, I would just look around to ensure that the little bit of pink with white pokka dots was within my sight radar.

It was a beautiful day for a picnic. The weather was sunny yet breezy and the performance was fantastic. Can't wait for another picnic again!