Katy and Tia Mila

We are very fortunate to have Mila in our lives. Katy LOVES her Tia Mila - I often hear them squealing with laughter playing together and Katy finds Mila a very comforting and safe guardian. Tia Mila LOVES and adores Katy too. We have asked Mila to start speaking to Katy in Tagalog so hopefully Katy will become fluent. Katy gives Tia Mila kisses by pressing her cheek against Mila's.


And for some reason, she then likes to pat Tia Mila on her face afterwards.?

Happy Birthday Callum

On Sunday it was Callum's turn to turn One! Here's my favourite picture of the birthday boy, who is a fun-loving little one!

Ellie was also at the party, looking gorgeous in a floral dress. Ellie knows!

Callum and his Mummy Natacha.

Callum and his Daddy Chris.



Katy loved the food. She loved the filo pastry filled with spinach and ricotta, and tried pine nuts for the first time. She and Daddy retired to the bottom step for some quiet feedtime.

Playaboard

On Friday, Katy attended her first ever playdate on a boat! Katy's pal Joshua, who is almost 1, lives on a beautiful liveaboard at DB Marina.



Katy also tried guacamole for the first time and LOVED it! She loves the avocado but is not very impressed with the raw onion, which she tends to spit out.

Katy's Step

Katy likes to hang out on the bottom step. It seems the perfect height for a little kid to sit. And it is a good place to wait for an adult to take her up the stairs. She knows she is not allowed to go up without an adult (although sometimes she has memory lapses...)

Typhoon Party

On Tuesday night, a Signal 8 was hoisted in Hong Kong and we experienced very heavy rain, strong winds and thunder/lightning. This continued all through Wednesday. On Thursday, the babies all got together for a paddle in the pool despite a little bit of rain. The two girls were little fashion plates - Ellie looking very pretty in a demure and super-cute little pink tankini, while Katy caused a minor stir in her sassy new bikini!


Ellie thought Katy's outfit was outrageous!


The two boys were too interested in the toys to worry about what the girls were wearing. Here's Callum filling up his green watering can while Joshua plays with the blue bucket.



An interesting thing I have noticed is that the baby host or hostess is usually a little perturbed at having a bunch of baby visitors encroach on their territory. Conversely, the baby visitors LOVE the opportunity to explore new ground. We haven't had these particular baby visitors to our place very often, so Katy was feeling a little uncertain about what was going on. Very unusually for Katy, who usually has to be dragged out of the water or bribed out with food, Katy preferred to snuggle with Auntie Mila rather than play in the water with all the other babies.

After the paddle, Callum's Daddy gave him a big bounce in the castle, which Callum LOVED!

Finally, Auntie Tiffany led the troops in a stirring rendition of incy wincy spider, followed by a performance of big fat spider that really entertained the crowds.

Who's in charge?

On Thursday we had some workmen come to clean our air-conditioners, complete with large and noisy machines requiring lots of running water.

Of course Katy LOVED it!

She started pacing around inspecting everything with her hands behind her back. We have absolutely no idea where she learned to do that!

Daddy's new clapping game

Sung to the tune of "Good King Wenceslaus". Katy LOVES playing with Daddy!

Littlest Scrapper on the Block

Mummy went to Sham Shui Po ("The Po") on Monday with Auntie Tiffany and Auntie Paula to buy scrapbooking embellishments. 3 tonnes of ribbons, buttons, charms and patches later...Mummy and Katy spent many delighted moments admiring and sorting Mummy's new treasure chest of pretty things...until Katy caught sight of the camera of course and wanted to play with that!

Where are your ears?

Pink Minx

That should keep the grandparents happy for a while with smiley photos. Kung Kung and Poh Poh love the new blog - they have been busy every day printing and laminating photos to stick up all over the house!

The Lai Ironing Gene

As we all know, Katy loves to get involved in whatever is going on. In fact, she gets quite miffed if everyone is busy around her and she is not participating. But she seems to have a particular love of ironing! She has our old iron and the little ironing board here and she does the movements back and forth and circular too. I wonder if she has inherited the Lai Ironing Gene. Perhaps like twins, it skips a generation. Kung Kung has the gene, as do his brothers, but Mummy and Uncle Bert most definitely do not.

Daddy's Workout Buddy

Although Katy is no longer in the 97th percentile for weight (remember her chubby body when she was 3 or 4 months old?), she still makes a great prop for Daddy to use in his workouts. She is very helpful and tries to make him collapse his plank poses.

Ellie the Cupcake Princess

Today Ellie had her first birthday party. (Her real birthday is 1st July, the day before Daddy's.)

Ellie's Mommy Tiffany and Katy's Mama are scrapbooking (and Church) friends. So not surprisingly, Ellie's Mommy threw a beautiful pink cupcake themed co-ordinated party.

Ellie looked gorgeous in her personalised birthday cake dress and hat...

and she had a beautiful and yummy cupcake ONE cake.

The babies LOVED their rare sugar treat.

Mummy even let Katy have two small bites of vanilla cupcake with a smear of buttercream and two crumbs of Auntie Tiffany's delicious devil food's cake. Katy was in heaven. Katy also really enjoyed Auntie Tiffany's spinach and artichoke dip and the strawberries. Katy really has a very curious palate and enjoys trying a lot of adult foods.

As usual, we tried to take a group picture with the babies and as usual, this was a futile but fun effort.




Katy seems particularly averse to group photos...perhaps she is too much of a DIVA!?

Here Comes the Sun

It finally stopped raining!


When Katy feels scared, she pats herself on her chest. We have no idea where she got this from, but she has been doing this since she was about 6 months old. Katy isn't scared of much, but she somehow has a phobia of small electrical appliances. She is terrified of the handheld vacuum, the electric air pump, the hair dryer and the food processor. She LOVES large electrical appliances like the vacuum cleaner, washing machine and dryer. She LOVES the electric toothbrush. It is quite baffling.


We love our little Water Baby.