Happy Days

The last 6 weeks have been busy for our little family. Here's an attempt to condense it all into a photo journey, beginning from where we last left off ...

You might remember Hannah's obsession with the airport, or more accurately, her little pink princess trolley bag. Since it would be quite a few months before we did take a real flight, we decided to repeat an outing to the airport.

Despite doing exactly the same thing previously, Hannah enjoyed herself tremendously. We caught sight of 2 air stewardesses enjoying a break in the cafeteria, and they were sufficiently charmed by our 4-year-old to oblige to an impromptu photo session.

Next, we were off to Port Dickson, a little beach resort just over an hour from Kuala Lumpur, also Cindy's hometown. We met and thanked all our friends who had sent gifts to Isabel and had a lovely time catching up with them.

Hannah spent the weekend building sand castles and getting sandfly bites! Thankfully only the adults succumbed to a week-long of agonising itchy spots, while Hannah miraculously escaped with mere red spots.

The following weekend marked another "first" for Hannah - her first speech in front of a crowd in a hotel ballroom! It was her kindergarten's annual concert and Hannah was given the task to deliver an introductory spiel for her class' performance.

A born performer, Hannah delivered her little speech flawlessly and proceeded to participate in 2 dances with the rest of her classmates. Snapshots of the day can be seen here.

Later in the week, Cindy and the girls had to sort out their passports. Despite capacity crowds at the immigration department, we were pleasantly surprised to sort out all 3 passports in about 3 hours, including queuing time!

However, 3 hours is still a long time for a little baby. Isabel decided to shut out all the noise around her and dozed off when nap time came. With her impressive ability to sleep anywhere, almost anytime, in any position, Isabel has all the makings of an efficient junior doctor.

And then, finally, the EVENT OF THE YEAR...

JOHN AND KAREN'S WEDDING!!!

wedding pictures

The final week leading up to the wedding was packed with last minute shopping trips, errands and rehearsals for the special day. Hannah worked herself into a state of excitement, anticipating the day she would be the flower girl for her Uncle John.

Hannah thoroughly enjoyed her day as a "princess", and even enjoyed a costume change to her "golden gown" for the evening's celebrations. Isabel still managed to sleep through much of the day's fanfare, but handled the evening less well.

Anyone familiar with a Chinese wedding dinner knows what a long drawn affair the 8-course-meal is. The meal started past 8pm and went on to 11pm. Amazingly, Hannah kept up her dazzling smile throughout the evening and has received tentative requests for future flower girl duties, pending parental approval.

Our Cinderellas were home and tucked into bed before midnight, while the parents thankfully collapsed in bed shortly after, in an exhausted post-adrenaline state.

We are looking forward to the next few weekends spent quietly at home, although events and outings have a habit of springing on us unexpectedly.

We leave you now with a few snapshots of how much Isabel has grown over the weeks ...

Gifts Galore

Even before the arrival of Isabel we were giving and receiving gifts. The sisters' birthdays are merely 2 days apart, and from a previous blog we mentioned that Hannah had pre-birthday celebrations.

We have all heard about sibling rivalry, and were particularly concerned about sibling jealousy, since newborns are notoriously time consuming. Even with Hannah's eagerness to be an older sister, there was a feeling that it could all go pear-shaped if she felt her position in the family was being usurped by the new addition.

So, to prevent Hannah from looking like this when Isabel inevitably became the centre of attention,

we had a steady stream of presents ready to make sure Hannah didn't feel left out:

Having inherited her father's penchant for LEGO, Hannah was absolutely enamoured by her new Thomas the Tank Engine set. She can easily spend an hour playing with her Duplo sets, which gives us the breathing space we sometimes need.

Of course it helped that friends were thoughtfully giving presents to Isabel AND Hannah. Here's a lovely clay model set that required a lot of input from Daddy!

Isabel, on the other hand, was expectedly oblivious to the fuss her arrival had created. After 4 weeks of eating, sleeping, excreting and possetting, Isabel celebrated her "Full Moon" in her grandparents house with minimal fanfare.

Here's our little baby grasping Gong Gong's "Ang Pow", embodying his blessings for her to have continued good health and growth.

It would be impossible to include pictures of all the gifts the girls received, but we simply had to say we are mightily impressed by the beautiful gift-wrapping skills displayed,

which Hannah clinically destroyed in seconds, of course.

We were taught as children to remove wrappers carefully so as to re-use them, but these days children are encouraged to enjoy ripping off the very same beautiful wrappers. Thankfully we've managed to immortalize some of these creations digitally.

Special mention goes to our friends from PD who somehow managed to organise themselves and bought us this McLaren rocker, which Isabel has gradually settled herself into.

No less gratitude goes to all our friends (& family) for your cards, ang pows, diapers, books, toys and clothing. We truly appreciate your effort and thoughtfulness.

This is one girl who feels very welcomed to our world indeed.

Isabel's Dedication Service

Last Sunday was Isabel's dedication service. As always, we will tell the story with pictures...

This was the dress rehearsal a day before Isabel's "Big Day".

We ditched the hairband since she was at risk of looking like a mini version of Scary Spice. A lovely hairband - but I've never quite figured out how to use those on babies with unruly hair.








Here's the scaled-down version of Isabel with her beautiful elder sister.

Will there be boy-trouble in 10 year's time?

Our church Elder conducted the service with little Hannah getting progressively bored and restless. In the end, she didn't do too badly for a 4-year-old who is usually full of beans.

Our retired pastor delivered the sermon for the day, which was a biblical and practical presentation of parenting for today. The dedication service itself was a meaningful time as we took pledges to guide and nurture young Isabel in the way of the Lord.

A regular feature at all major church events - TP's creations! The painstaking effort taken to make each of her cakes is truly admirable.

The day was over before we knew it. A big thank you to our family and church friends for being a part of the special day. Thank you for all the lovely presents - that will need some mention in another blog!

Similar Yet Different

We often get asked if Isabel is like her sister Hannah. Our family can't quite give a definite answer, so we will leave the decision to you...

Hannah at Day 2

Isabel at Day 4

Would you say their features are alike? Perhaps. However, the sisters are like night and day as far as their infant habits go.

Here's a slightly painful memory of what we went through with Hannah.

Taken at day 8, we were already experimenting with the "Tiger in the Trunk" carrying position, thought to reduce colic in infants. Thankfully we were also 4 years younger, and staying with grandparents who could share out the burden of calming a screaming baby for at least 2 hours every evening.

Hannah at 8 days

Isabel seems a calmer person, with occasional unsettled evenings, but nothing quite as dramatic as our darling firstborn.

Isabel at week 1

Daughter number 2 sleeps beautifully most nights, waking up only once or twice for feeds, then swiftly dropping off back to a peaceful slumber.

Having braced ourselves for Hannah-like colic attacks, we could hardly believe that we were getting decent hours of sleep right from day one.

But of course, looking after a baby is still exhausting work, but for everyone?!

The BOTTLE was our next battle with Hannah. Both girls were introduced to a bottle of expressed milk at about week 4 to give mummy a bit of a life.

Hannah, being in general a very intense (shall I just say fussy?) baby, screamed murder for a long time before succumbing to the charms of her experienced grandmother.

Hannah

Certain that Isabel would go through the same anguish, we were again pleasantly surprised our little angel took to the bottle at the first attempt, after making a few faces.

Isabel

Surely we have learnt by now that Isabel is nothing like Hannah, even if they do resemble each other.

What is YOUR verdict?

Isabel at two weeks

Isabel on the move

What a week!

It is hard to express what it is like to have a new girl in your life(!), but let me do what I can with simple phrases and pictures:


Sleep, open eyes, sleep, drink milk, sleep, dirty nappy, sleep,...

Hannah suddenly seems years older.

How do you fold cloth diapers again?

Isabel's race: British or Chinese???

Have we taken as many pictures as we did with Hannah?

Beautiful soft skin.

Black hair.


Enough words - now take a look at Isabel's 1st week in photos here:

Isabel's First Week

Reflections on yesterday: Daddy's perspective

I say Daddy's perspective as I suspect Cindy will want to write something in the days to come, although I hope she has more positive reflections than 4 years ago: (http://cindychris.blogspot.com/2006/08/hannahs-birth-story_115571046881389819.html and http://cindychris.blogspot.com/2006/08/admission-it-has-begun-when-we-reached.html
and http://cindychris.blogspot.com/2006/08/too-late-for-regrets-at-2pm-male.html)

First of all I am struck by God's goodness yesterday. His provision, his protection, his gift of life.

Actually things really began 8pm on Tuesday 27th July. Cindy felt her contractions were getting worse. Hannah was already asleep so thankfully Cindy's parents could come over and stay with her while we went to hospital.

Cindy was admitted at Prince Court Medical Centre at about 10pm. Bupa medical insurance has proved to be a real blessing! And the midwife/staff nurse was a wonderfully gentle and professional lady that Cindy had met on a previous visit and had already hoped would attend to her.

We watched repeated news stories on the Astro BBC news channel in the labour room, until…

…things got serious at 1am on Wednesday 28th. By 2:06am it was all over. I got to be present at the birth unlike last time. It was amazing, and I'm so glad I could be there. Very emotional, especially seeing Cindy go through so much pain. But the minute the baby came out my heart couldn't help but leap for joy and give thanks to our Creator God.

Our first impression of Isabel was how much she looked like Hannah at birth. And yet how quiet she was! She slept much of the first night peacefully.

We stayed the rest of the night in what can only be described as a hotel room. With a 5 star view.

By the morning, everything was so good that Cindy requested to be discharged that evening. The paediatrician and obstetrician were both happy with mother and baby so they agreed.

In the afternoon Cindy's parents brought Hannah to see her baby sister. Finally, Hannah is a true jie-jie.



We were home by 8:30pm. Less than 24 hours after we left home! And Isabel (and parents) slept VERY well. And if that doesn't deserve thanking God for, I'm not sure what does :-)

Isabel Ju-Yi Wylie

Hannah's 4th Birthday

With 2 weeks left before Baby is due, we thought it wise to organise Hannah's 4th birthday a little early.

Here is Hannah, all ready for the guests to arrive and the party to start.

And a good chance for an overdue family portrait.

A day later, and this is the clear winner of 'My Favourite Birthday Present" (although she hasn't had most of her presents yet!) It is a Barbie art set. Pencils, crayons, pens, pastels and paints.

And it didn't take long before Hannah was begging to put them to good use.

Here is a collection of her artwork so far:

A rollercoaster.

A rocket.

A rainbow doughnut.

The Sun.

Nice work, Hannah. And happy birthday. You have grown up so fast!

Expect our next posting to be all about Hannah's baby sister.

One month...

...from Baby's due date.

What to do on a public holiday?

Friday 28th May. It's a public holiday. Hannah's off school. Daddy's off work. Mummy's on sick leave...

I know, let's go to the airport!

So we pack our bags, pack a picnic and head off down the highway.

We play I-spy, which Hannah seemed to get the hang of. She could guess 90% of the words we threw at her, but her questions were a bit too difficult. Took us a while to figure out that I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'l' was actually 'tree'.

We stop in a lay-by after a good 20 minutes of solid driving and tuck into Mummy's delicious chocolate rice crispy bars. Then we set off again.

We reach the airport around 11:30am. Having heard there was a viewing deck, we goin search of it. It's on the 5th floor (departures), past all the check-in counters, past the shops, past the escalators to customs and immigration, down a long corridor until you finally reach a large windowed hall, from which you can see the domestic and international gates, and the runways on either side. Cool!

After a while, we start to get hungry, so we venture back to the Departure Hall and stumble on KFC. Would Hannah eat nuggets and mashed potato (she's never been a fan of fast food before)? Yes!

And once that was done, Hannah got to play in the playground, which she had been eyeing all through lunch. How cool is a giant airplane playground? The only problem for Hannah was deciding whether she was going to be a pilot or an air stewardess.

After a goodly time playing here, we went around the shops and headed home.


But what REALLY inspired our trip to the airport?



A new bag! Hannah has been hankering for a pink trolley bag, and she finally got one a few days ago. She couldn't wait until December, but where better to test it out than at an airport?


Hannah went home a very content little girl!

Mother's Day

We celebrated my 4th Mother's Day a couple of weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised to receive Hannah's little gifts.

I decided to start brainwashing Hannah at an early age, and had repeatedly reminded her that Mother's Day is a time to give Mummy presents. More accurately, a time to remind Daddy to buy Mummy a present until she gets old enough to cook me breakfast in bed.

Sure enough, Hannah burst into our room early Sunday morning to announce she had bought me a gift - Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" music book. A pretty sophisticated gift for a 4-year-old eh?

Hannah's pink-and-white straw necklace and pink carnation flower still takes center stage on our dining table to this day.

My special Mother's Day prayer is for Hannah to continue to be the lively, cheerful, cheeky little monster-child with an insatiable appetite for love and life.