staycations

we've had two staycations since i went back to work and they have been helpful breaks for me short of an overseas trip. just 2-3 days away from the work laptop and all the random cleaning and washing up that somehow needs to be done on a daily basis is enough to make me feel like i can face another 2-3 months of work/family juggling. 

the reason for the pan pacific stay was my mum's 60th birthday celebration. there was a dinner planned and we wanted to be able to put baby n to bed close to his usual bedtime and that would be impossible given where we live. so we bundled parents and overseas relatives off to a staycation. had wanted to splurge on a ritz carlton stay but the rooms (harbour studio and city suite rooms) at pan pacific were much bigger for a cheaper price so we chose the latter. 

it was great having the malls literally at our doorstep and to be in aircon 24-7. h also got to splash around in the pool while both kids got to enjoy the long soaks in the bathtub.

as we weren't planning to take long leave nor travel over the school holiday period, but i still had some days of leave to clear (yes, even after taking no pay - yay for childcare leave and my 28 day leave entitlement), decided to tie a staycation with a cousin's wedding dinner so that (again) we didn't have to make a long car trips to and fro town on Christmas Eve.

chose to stay at hotel fort canning since it would be close enough to the wedding venue and we could plan visits to the nearby national museum and central fire station. fort canning greenery was also a draw, together with the pictures of the hotel pools (two!).

for this staycation we only brought h and that meant we had more flexibility to do stuff and to nap while she napped in the afternoon :D shiok! would also have dreaded having to tiptoe around a sleeping n if we had him around in the rather small hotel room.

9 months - mobile!

baby n finally got his act together and went from being super lazy at rolling around to a full-blown moving baby. it started out with me finding him in all sorts of positions in the baby cot each morning, and then a short while later he was crawling! then he started sitting up on his own a few days later. what a change! 

thankfully he is usually content to keep to where his toys are and will only crawl about more when he is trying to look for us. his bolsters are also very good bait for crawling as he LOVES them.

he has also gotten slightly wary of strangers and even my parents if he doesn't see them for more than a week. if i am carrying him he will usually turn away from the person and then put his head in the nook my neck and try to snuggle up. it is quite cute.

40 months - jabs

brought h to the polyclinic last week to get her much delayed shots and she was such a trooper! was quite apprehensive at first that she would be freaked out when she got to the polyclinic and be difficult to handle, but perhaps thanks to all the mental prep that went on in the days before the actual visit, she actually seemed to look forward to the experience and was super cooperative all the way. bonus - she didn't cry for both jabs!