YIONEUNOICHIEIN1

Yah, the title may look gibberish but the super observant can quickly discipher the meaning behind it all.
Cutie Charlotte is 1 year old!!
A year ago, Cutie was torturing Darling inside her tummy. She refused to come out on her calculated 9 June birthday and decided to stay 2 days more. It happens that Charlotte’s birthday is the sum of Darling’s and my birthday.. Darling’s birthday is 6 Dec while mine is 5 May, so Charlotte decides to come out on the 11th. Lolz. Darling had to go in and out of the delivery suite a few times, undergo a few rounds of the uncomfortable cervix assessment and the anxiety of childbirth before Cutie decided to make a grand entrance. And what a REAL GRAND entrance involving almost everyone on call that night at the delivery suite! She wants everyone to be present on her birthday, so decided to make it a CODE GREEN emergency caesarian entrance, getting nurses, gynaes, neonatologies and paediatricians all around to receive her! A year on…. she is still as attention seeking as the start! Haha. She grabs the attention of everyone with her presence, be it in a good or bad way. She can amaze you with her motor skills (suddenly standing up when you least expected her to, and then walk towards you unaided!), she can suddenly utter gibberish and start clapping when she sees something interesting, she can dash towards a corner of the room only to pick up a strand of hair to lick, she can cover her mouth with her little hands and break out in a howling cry that can make you think she was trained by a Korean drama actress. Yup, that’s Our Cutie Charlotte and she turns 1 year old!!!

We decided to have a celebration for Cutie a few days before her actual birthday as her birthday is on a Thursday. Darling has been planning for her birthday party in March and April, spending hours browsing through numerous websites and images of 1-year-old birthday parties happening in Singapore for ideas of theme and venue. She shortlisted this cafe which fits the bill of being in a central location and “specialises in birthday parties for babies and kids” and it won awards being a child-friendly restaurant. EatPlayLove Cafe is a cosy cafe situated in Kampung Glam area, near to Bugis, located in the Aliwal Arts Center. It’s a Thai-fusion cafe with vintage decorations and dedicated areas of the cafe for kids to do craftwork while parents dine. We didn’t personally visit the cafe and the FB pics were all we had to decide this IS the cafe we want to hold Cutie’s important milestone birthday party.

Cafe settled, next up is the theme. “Sesame Street” was the initial plan since Cutie loves her Big Bird and Elmo hand puppets so much and there were so many kids party photos with the Sesame Street Theme. So we spent a few weeks browsing through google images, getting ideas on decorations etc before we felt that Sesame Street may be too “common” as a theme. We wanted something more personal, more special, more Charlotte. So I decided to put a search on Disney princesses. I wrote down a list of Disney princesses and decided to analyse each princess’s characteristics and see which one will fit our Cutie Baby the most. It is a very interesting research I must say, haha as I realize that each Disney Princess does indeed has 1-2 unique characteristics. There’s a few comparisons online done by other like-minded people which I can look through and it makes my job in searching for a fitting theme easier. Alice emerged as the leader with many characteristics similar to our Cutie Baby! Alice is a curious little girl who loves to explore the world, sometimes not realizing the dangers involved. She has no fear of the unknown and the unknown made her more curious to explore and experiment. She is rebellious of sorts, going against public opinion, wanting to do things differently. She can be feisty, going against authority, even speaks back at the Queen! Alice dares to try weird concoctions and food, resulting in her growing and shrinking, while Cutie will dash towards scraps of paper, strands of hair and never hesistate to put them into her small mouth and shutting it tight. There were elements of Alice in Wonderland that we find coincidental to Cutie as well, such as cats and 10/6 on the Mad Hatter’s Hat. Alice loves Cats and there’s also a Chesire Cat that she talks to a lot in the story. Charlotte, likewise, will get all excited when she sees the stray cats at the void decks. The price of the Mad Hatter’s Green hat is 10/6 (ten shillings and sixpence) while Cutie’s birthday is 11/6, the 11th of June. The Alice in Wonderland theme fitted Charlotte almost too perfectly we feel, so decided on this theme!

Theme settled, the next important thing is the cake! Again, Darling is the one with the connections to this wonderful artisan baker whom her friend engaged. She was impressed by her friend’s child’s birthday cake and wanted something as amazing, if not MORE spectacular! The cake has a moving component, something we though we will only see on Food Network’s Amazing Cake challenge. Well, this friend of hers managed to get her child a moving cake. How can Charlotte get something inferior?? Cutie deserves the best! So we decided to engage Jill Patiss to be our Cake designer. This will be her first Alice in Wonderland themed cake as well, so it’s equally exciting for her. We had to come up with important elements of the story to be incorporated into the cake. Darling searched the web, finding similar designs to show Jill Patiss, hoping to inspire her creativity. We never saw the cake’s design blueprint and the first time we saw the cake was at the actual birthday party itself!

EatPlayLove Cafe is also doing the Alice in Wonderland themed party design for the very first time as well! So we had to come up with the colour theme we wanted to show the cafe as a sample. We brainstormed some designs by looking at similar parties done elsewhere and consolidated the ideas to give to the cafe. Gayle was the person in charge of coming up with the designs of our ideas and she did not disappoint. She tried to incorporate everything we asked for. The colours, the food labels, drink labels, banner designs, quote cards etc, hoping to make this party a success as well. We paid for the dessert table and decoration package and everything will be set up for us before the TEA PARTY started. This saves us a lot of stress, because I wanted us to enjoy the party together with Cutie and not to get stressed over unnecessary things. The final design was amazing!

Pictures speak a thousand words… …
The birthday dress was bought during one of the EXPO baby fairs and is very well matched with the headband and ribbon! Lucky Darling is good with matching colours… … if I was the head designer, it will be fashion disaster!

Birthday Girl getting ready for the Party!

The cafe has done many birthday parties over the years and Tristan is very fast in setting up the macarons, cupcakes, stands and arrow banners. They even have colour matched table decorations and balloons. The next picture will showcase the details of the decorations, matching the Charlotte’s ONE-derland Theme.
“DRINK ME”, “EAT ME” are classics from the story and we loved how the colours combined to give a cheerful vibrant atmosphere.

Gummies Tier. Personalized Birthday card. Water with the “Drink Me” labels. Cupcakes with the “Eat Me” labels. Giant flasks to hold mashmallows and Cookies.

No Disney cartoon has as many memorable quotes as Alice in Wonderland, so I selected these few quotes, 1 from each character of the story, to make the themed decoration more complete. Darling was very satisfied with the end result.

Memorable Cute Quotes

The centerpiece of the dessert table is Cutie’s Birthday Cake. It makes a superb dessert table decoration PERFECT. The cake is an amazing piece of art! The detailed elements of the Story can all be seen on the cake. The cake is such a joy to watch! Every part of the cake is filled with details that it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE not to have a Jawdrop reaction when you look at it. The girl on the cake was supposed to be Alice but we decided to let Charlotte own the cake by having her own figurine on the cake! Notice the dress of the girl’s figurine?? YES!!! It’s modelled after Cutie’s dress. Darling has sent a pic of Cutie’s dress to Jill Patiss so that she can create an almost perfect replica of the dress. We replaced the 10/6 on the Mad Hatter’s hat to 11/6, to reflect on Cutie’s actual Birthday. There is a revolving Tea party table as a cake topper with miniature cakes, teacups as well as a teapot. We were told that the entire cake is edible, except the battery operated revolving tea party topper. Lolz. We absolutely love this cake. Darling is absolutely delighted that this shall be the best cake amongst all the 1-year-old birthday parties she attended, and it will stay number 1 for a very long time we feel.

Mr Rabbit, Mad Hatter’s Hat, Caterpillar, Chesire Cat, Charlotte, directional signs, complete with a revolving tea party table cake topper.

Wonder how it all looks when pieced together?

The final setup of Charlotte’s ONE-derland Tea Party

The Tea Party is a success! Kids were entertained with the crafts corner. Adults have ample tables and seats to have a chit chat, catching up over yummy food. They can even have an eyefeast on the POWER cake. Almost everyone has a group photo together with Cutie Charlotte and brought home some cakes and cookies. Darling looks very very very happy and satisfied with the ONE-derland party and we get to keep all the decorations. Next time when Cutie is old enough to have her own room, we can use them to decorate the room.

On Cutie’s actual day birthday, we ordered a cake for the infant class to celebrate with the other classmates and her teachers. A pity we could not take leave to join her but teachers were kind enough to give us soft copies of the photos taken during the birthday celebrations.

Josiah celebrations

Cutie even had a birthday gift from the school!

Birthday Gifts from School and her favorite teacher Ms Angie

We also held another sing-song cake-cutting ceremony together with Darling’s family. The tart is super yummy!! It’s supposed to be a “snickers” Tart and it tastes exactly like a Snickers Bar! Lolz, super delicious. The cupcakes are Mint-Chocolate, which tastes like the “After-Eight” Mint chocolate.

Mini Birthday celebration on 11 June

She drank from a bottle called “DRINK ME”
And up she grew so tall.
Grow Curiouser and Curiouser everyday our Cutie Charlotte.

Alice: “This is impossible!”
Mad Hatter: “Only if you believe in it.”

Believe in yourself Cutie Baby and You can achieve Great Things.
This is a land full of Wonder, Mystery and Danger our dear Cutie Charlotte, but Mama and PaPa will be with you every step of the way.

Happy Birthday Our Cutie Baby

Well, since my darling took a while to decipher the title…I shall provide the answer. Haha
YIONEUNOICHIEIN1
It’s the way to say “1” in different languages…
YI = mandarin
ONE = English
UNO = Spanish / Italian… coincidentally UN = French
ICHI = Japanese
EIN = German

Well, even more coincidentally, they all happen to be from the countries we have travelled to before!

Birthdays and outings

April and May came and gone so fast! So many activities during the last 2 months that I have yet to record in here. Lolz.

April:

Darling and I brought Cutie to her first “indoor playground” trip. There are so many indoor playgrounds springing up everywhere to cater to different ages, such as polliwogs, cool de sac, hokey pokey etc, I thought Singapore has a low birth rate?? Well, most of our generation parents think that the old-fashioned HDB playgrounds are dirty, not fun etc and it does not help when the weather is so super duper hot these days! Indoor playgrounds is the answer to all these! And if you have a maid, can even leave the maid with the kid in there while husband and wife can have some me-shopping-time! At Cutie’s age, there’s not much playgrounds that offer a play section for < 1 year olds. Cool De Sac happen to have a small section for infant play, so we decided to check it out. The area is quite big, but older kids will enjoy it more for it’s slides and bouncy obstacle course. The infant section is small but the users are small too mah, so it’s ok. There are many toys there, ranging from building blocks, to miniature animals and vegetables, to plastic rocking horse and the foam slides and foam blocks for climbing. Cutie takes a while to warm up to the slide and toys but after a while, she started to enjoy. She loved the pool full of colourful balls and especially the yellow rocking horse! Haha, maybe it’s because she love yellow stuff.

Go Yellow Horsie!

She loves the Freefall feeling, so the see-saw is one of her favorite HDB playground installments, see how much fun she has with Darling! Darling is having lots of fun too!

See-Saw Up & Down. U go up and I come down

Cutie is becoming more mobile and it’s getting harder to get her to sit down in her high-chair for meals. We have to put distractions on her table such as toys, blocks, remote controls, cold packet drinks etc before we can get her to sit down to finish her food! We try very hard to instill the idea of having to sit down in the chair during meal times and she can only get out after eating. So far it has worked when she is in our own home and when she’s outside. =) She will quietly sit down in her baby seat when we feed her the puree or cereal.

Big Boss Cutie Charlotte

May:

May is an exciting month with many important events! I love May as we have lots of opportunities to go out!

Our first outing in May is the River Safari! Cutie loves small animals, esp those that are very active with lots of movement, just like her! So cats, dogs, birds, monkeys are her favorite! She was so excited to see a monkey up close and personal, lolz that she keep pointing and laughing to herself when she saw the small monkeys jumping from branch to branch and walking on the railing. Cutie loves hide and seek as well, and she loves to look for monkeys hiding in trees and in the shrubs and will get super duper excited when she spots one. If she points into the bushes, there’s sure to be a monkey hiding there if we look hard enough. Her vision is perfect! She loves big animals as well but tend to lose her interest very fast because large animals usually move very slowly…. The appearance of the Pandas JiaJia and KaiKai got her interested for a while but cutie will lose focus once the pandas sit down to eat their leaves. Haha, but she don’t mind staying in the panda enclosure looking at other tourists while she enjoys the air-con.

Mama, I see a Monkey!

MaMa, what’s that Black & White Bear?

The Black & White Bear is YUMMY!

My birthday falls on the first week of May so Darling has planned a surprise trip for Cutie and me on a Sunday. She drove using iPhone Apple Maps for the first time while I was in the backseat entertaining Cutie. Yeah! I love surprises!

Darling brought us to Sentosa RWS and the secret Birthday lunch will be at OCEAN Restaurant by Cat Cora, located within S.E.A Aquarium. We are having lunch in the Largest Aquarium, haha. Eating fish with fishes swimming around us is a wonderful experience. Cutie saw lots of fishes swimming around while she’s having her puree too. She enjoys seeing the schools of fish more than the single Manta Ray or Shark and points non stop too!

Birthday SEA Aquarium visit

On my Actual birthday, Darling gave me another surprise! She ordered a rainbow cake for me! I always wanted to try a rainbow cake. so YAY I got 1! This rainbow cake is special, the colours are all made using natural ingredients and it’s supposed to be a natural rainbow cake. Colours not that vibrant but natural things are good! And it’s super yummy too! I love you Darling! Cutie enjoys singing the birthday song and keeps pointing to the candle flame rather than blow it out!

See How Excited Cutie is!!! Pardon my Fat Tummy. =p

The following week is another exciting event! It’s Darling’s First Mother’s Day!!!!! We had a combined celebration with my mum at Prima Tower revolving restaurant. Cutie again loves the cake cutting. She does not know how to blow out the candles yet but she sure is attracted to them!

3 Mummies having Mother’s Day Cake

Initially we planned to go Mount Faber and the Henderson Wave bridge but I guess Cutie is too tired so she slept while in the car. So we ended up chilling at the Vivo starbucks! Cutie had a fun time too, playing with her light sabre bubble stick. =p

The actual mother’s day was a real surprise treat for Darling! It’s her first Mother’s Day after all, so She deserves a special award…This prize is awarded by Cutie. She had her First Stand on Mother’s Day!! Can you imagine how excited we were when Cutie suddenly stood up on our bed?!??! We were like “WOWOWOWOWOW WOW!!!”
We applauded Cutie for her effort and she felt so proud! Then continued to attempt standing for longer durations, just to impress us and earn more applause! Haha We love this Hao-Lian behaviour of Cutie, it spurs her on to achieve new milestones!

Standing performance on Cutie’s playmat

Cutie amazes us and amuses us as much as we amuse her I feel. She is such a curious girl! She is a naughty cheeky girl as well! Sometimes we really dunno whether to be angry or amused when feeding Cutie Charlotte. She can really seal her mouth tight and no matter how we push the spoon, it will not go into her mouth! Sometimes it’s the last scoop of porridge that we can’t wait to put into her mouth and declare a Beautiful Victory but she will just seal her mouth tight and deny us that temporary gratification! How irritating! Lolz. The end result of the battle? Cutie will be transformed into a “大花猫”!

MaMa, Did you REALLY pick me up from the Rubbish-Bin?? ;p

Amused by her own reflection before bedtime

Darling and I used to go for several running events a year, but since her pregnancy and the arrival of Cutie, we have stopped doing so. The last one we went to was the StanChart marathon last year. So when the opportunity came for the baby-friendly running event, I immediately signed her and Cutie up!! Haha, I am talking about the Cold Storage Kids Run 2015 on 17 May 2015 @ The Meadows (Gardens By The Bay).

Baby Champion

Darling and Charlotte in action!

Cutie Charlotte loves vibrant colours and she loves her Elmo and Big Bird puppets! Every night without fail, she will give the puppets to her favorite Puppeteer to bring them alive…..And that favorite puppeteer is none other than…. ….

MaMa can always bring Elmo to life! Notice Barney on TV? Dunno why kids just love Barney… …

I want to bring Cutie outdoors often, to let her feel the wind blowing in her face, to smell the scent of trees and the morning dew, to touch the silky smooth surface of a leaf and to see people of different ages engaging in activities. I hope this stimulates all her senses, to engage her enough to hopefully make her smarter. Hahaha, which parent do not want their child to be smart? So we decided to try out a new activity on 1 of the May Weekend. It was one of our favorite pak-toh activity too but too dangerous to try with a baby. Lucky they came up with this new vehicle so we can have some family fun time! This vehicle has no gears and no brakes! It moves really slowly and the speed is constant despite our maximum effort…so it’s a good workout for us parents too, while Cutie baby enjoys the breeze first hand in the front seat. Hahaha.

Happily driving the vehicle, enjoying the sea breeze on her face and hair blowing in the wind

As mentioned in the earlier paragraph, Cutie’s favorite cartoon DVD is “Barney in the Zoo”. Hope she likes the animals more than she likes Barney. She loves some of the animals featured in the DVD, essentially the Meerkats (Top Top favorite), Monkeys and Tigers. Everytime these animals are featured on the DVD, she will be glued to the TV screen and her index finger will start pointing to the animals on screen. She will even clap when the Meerkats appear! So we brought her out to the Zoo during the last weekend of May to show her the REAL deal! Haha.

Meerkats Live

We ended the zoo trip with a visit to the KidsWorld waterplay playground and she enjoyed the jets if water spraying onto her face and body and the huge water bucket pouring water over her head!

Since she likes waterplay, we brought her to another water playground at Changi City Point for another session of water fun! This time, we donned her with the Hello Kitty Swim Suit which darling has been DYING to let Cutie wear! Hahaha. Well, Darling got her wish and Cutie got to play in the right attire! And I got drenched too.

Proud MaMa with Hello Kitty Model

That brings us to the close of May. June is another big BIG month for us. It’s going to be Charlotte’s Birthday Month! How time flies, Charlotte is going to be 1 soon! We have planned a themed party for her and I will cover it in a blog post very soon!!