Chicken Pox

My little guy has chicken pox. He had a fever Wednesday night but Thursday seemed fine. Thursday night after a fun afternoon at Sentosa (including the Sounds of the Sea show), I noticed a few watery spots on him. I looked it up on the computer and sure enough, they looked exactly like chicken pox spots. The doc confirmed it this morning.

I had chicken pox much later - around 8-9 so to me it's a big kid's illness and now my little boy has it... he is doing great though considering - happy and energetic and of course he has not lost his appetite. He does not have too many spots yet and is a bit itchy but not too bad. He enjoyed playing/reading with me all day and watching some videos which he does not usually get to do (except Friday night and Sunday morning).  Hopefully, it will remain mild and he will have good memories of playing and being taken care of.

Superland Sports Day

Last Saturday (July 21) was Sports Day at Noah's school. This basically entails coming into school super early on a Saturday morning (fun fun) - then the kids do a "warm-up dance" - Below Noah doing the dragon dance. He was very excited about doing his dance and did the steps and movements very well (in my very unbiased opinion!). Maybe he will be more coordinated than his parents...

Noah doing the dragon dance warm-up.

After all the different aged kids did their warm up dance (there was not much of a difference between the 3 and the 4 year olds but those 5 year olds man - they knew their stuff!), Noah and his friends lined up for the games. Noah was the closer on the green team... 

Waiting for his turn...

Trying to help his little friend Same who was a bit scared.

Ok - it's finally Noah's turn.

He jumps through the hoops, crawls through the tunnel and runs to the beams..

Then comes back with the wheelbarrow...

Clearly enjoying himself...

Switch to the ball...

Almost there...

And the green team is the winner!

Noah with his teammates getting their medal and present (to be fair all kids got medals and presents - not just the winning teams).

A fun morning at school. 

Train to... DC (with free M&Ms)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Noah received some train tracks and trains from his grandparents for his birthday. Last weekend, he said he wanted to use every single track he had in his track box to make a big big circuit. So we started building and building and I got more and more into it... surprisingly it requires some thinking/planning to use every single track piece (we fell short by one end piece). Below, Noah playing with the result. He wanted to hook up all the train cars he had to make one big train...

Then he decided that if you had a train, you needed tickets to ride the train so he went about making tickets for all of us. Below is Lhasa's ticket (which he wrote out entirely on his own).

And just to make sure the ticket master knew who Lhasa was - he drew a picture of a cat on the back (I drew a cat on a separate piece of paper bit by bit and he copied bit by bit).

When I asked him where the train was going, he explained that it was going to DC... here my ticket (there was a profile of me in the back - which he drew on his own and knew to put one eye, a piece of the mouth and the profile of my nose - not sure where he learned that in a profile picture you can only see one eye - maybe all those museum trips and painting books). 

When he had prepared tickets for Lhasa, me and Daddy (he did not need one because he sold tickets so he could ride for free), he decided that we should have M&M tickets to get some free M&Ms on the train... so he made M&M tickets for me and Seth (Lhasa does not eat M&Ms) with our name again and "M M". So now we are set to go to DC - we have train tickets and free M&Ms to keep us going during the trip!

As an aside - this is our 100th post on this blog (and the tweeting of this post will be the 1700th tweet!). Thank you for following us loyal readers (aka, grandparents, siblings, few select friends who know about the blog and keep up with Noah's shenanigans and people who found this blog somehow and keep reading it - there are a few of you out there in Russia I think - so спасибо). Thank you!

14 Juillet: belatedly

Happy 14th of July - Bastille day. One of my French friends celebrated by giving birth to an adorable little boy - Léon (congratulations to you P, S, and E if you read this). We just went to the Singapore Hippopotamus (they had a Bastille day discount for French citizens). I remembered really liking going there as a kid - either my tastes have changed or the one here is not as good... it was fine but definitely not noteworthy. Noah with his hippo menu - 

Happy Belated Bastille Day everyone (a few days late - but oh well - it's not clear why we celebrate the liberation of crazy prisoners anyway).

Gardens by the Bay with Daniel and Gabriel

The other day, we went to the new Gardens by the Bay which recently opened behind the Marina Bay Sands hotel. They are amazing - lots of green space and walkways on four different levels which make you feel like you are in a jungle with different habitats on the ground and on lower and higher limbs.

Here Noah, Daniel and Gabriel playing on the sculpted lion. Noah was holding Gabriel tightly so he would not fall off the lion...

Petting the lioness...Noah is so gentle with younger kids he takes a liking to... and with wooden lions it seems - he was gently petting the lioness - it was very sweet (for those of you who were wondering how he treats younger kids he does not take a liking to - he basically ignores them - and who knows why he likes some  little kids and is uninterested by others - he tends to make this decision quickly and not to waiver much - I wonder what characteristics sway him one way or the other).

The kids having a fun ride on the lioness.

Noah's 3rd Birthday: Celebration # 2

To mark the day, we had invited a few kids from our condo for a birthday dessert the evening of Noah's birthday. The original plan was to do it outside by the pool but just as we were walking out, it started to drizzle and in Singapore you can't take a risk with a drizzle because the next second it's a torrential downpour. So back up we went and quickly set things up at home. Below, Noah at the kids' table waiting for his friends to arrive.

Noah playing with the bird balloon.

Like for the school party, Noah (and Daddy) made some cupcakes but this time he just put some icing without decorations. We prepared a few bowls of gummy bears, sprinkles and m&ms so that each kid could decorate his/her own cupcake.

The kids started arriving and Noah opened some more presents - a tea set for his kitchen (with little wooden teabags and sugar cubes - adorable) and a big set of kitchen items - he was literally (and I mean literally) jumping for joy!

When everyone had arrived, we lit the symbolic candle, sang happy birthday...

and Noah blew out his candle (with our neighbors standing behind).

The kids eating their colorful cupcakes...

Noah and his gummy bear cupcake.

Oh Oh! No more gummy bears!

Noah and Matthias discussing what to do next...

Blow on the party toys...

Can I have one more gummy bear pleeeeaaaaase...

After the dessert, the kids played with Noah's new trains.

And then everyone left. And the doorbell rang and, to our surprise (we don't get deliveries much here), a man said he had a present for Noah for his birthday from tonton Charles and tata NiCole (and Audrey but he did not mention her)! A really neat 3D puzzle. Noah is one lucky kid.

Bedtime for the birthday boy - with one last game of bisou dodo with maman.

This birthday day is over... but the party lives on... below the evite for his party in early August (I scrambled all personal information as this blog is public).

Noah's 3rd Birthday: Birthday Day

The rabbit (who has now been replaced by a bear) is up and shining bright and... it's July 10 2012, Noah's birthday... we cross off the last night on his calendar...

First things first... opening some presents: some really cool train tracks and trains from GG and Grandpa.

 I had never really played much with train tracks but when you have enough tracks (and lucky Noah got some extra tracks from his grandparents), you can really make some fun structures for the trains. Noah playing with his trains.

The week before his birthday, we had also gone to Ikea to purchase a craft table and some bins to replace his old changing table (which has been repurposed as Seth's desk). Below, Noah's "new room".

At Ikea, we also purchased a kitchenette for Noah (care of GG and Grandpa - thank you :) ) - Noah was SOOOOOO excited. He kept marching through the apartment chanting "Noah a une cuisine, Noah a une cuisine" (Noah has a kitchen). 

Before heading out to the birdpark - Noah just had to make some food...

Noah with his meal...

After the meal, he baked some cookies - our little chef with his cookies. 

We then headed to the birdpark. Because we are members, we got complimentary panorail (or monorail) rides...

Unfortunately, the monorail is no longer in use. Instead they have these little trams. Although Noah LOVES monorails, he was not too disappointed. In fact, he kept asking over and over to ride the tram - forget the birds... the trams are clearly the cool thing to do if you are 3 years old at the birdpark! On the way to the tram station, we stopped by Noah's old friend the ibis.

And went to a bird show where Amigo the parrot sang happy birthday to Noah... Noah got a kick  from having a bird wish him happy birthday and still keeps talking about it. 

He also fed the lories - when we first arrived in Singapore, Noah was a bit scared of the lories then he was unable to feed them on his own. But this time, he was very excited and was able to keep the little cup straight with the bird perched on top of it.

A new lory feeding technique: the kneel...

Finally, we got to the tram station and rode the tram...

again...

and again...

Noah had specified that he wanted chicken rice for lunch so we went just outside the bird park for some chicken rice - he wanted to dig in and was not very happy about this photo session.

After lunch, we went to the penguin exhibit which is a bit cooler and covered and Noah took his nap...

After a refreshing nap and some penguin viewing, we headed back towards the exit which has arches full of orchids.

We figured that might be a good place to take his 3 year old picture.

Seth took the pictures and I got Noah in a jolly mood by acting silly.

It seems to have worked!

We then headed home to prepare for the birthday dessert with his friends (see next post for the pics from the birthday dessert).