Squirrels in the park

Any more nuts?


Matty's turn

One of the blessings of where we stay is the nearby Kensington Gardens. It's good to have a nearby park where Matty can run around and play, and as parks go, this one is really quite nice. One of our favourite spots is the "Flower Walk" which is the haunt of the park squirrels. They are very used to people feeding them nuts and are really tame. They'll come right up to you and take the nuts from your hands, sometimes staying to eat it right next to you!

Matty is slightly scared of them though, and tends to throw the nuts down to them when they're about 2 feet away. [He had a bad encounter with some swans a few months back, when he was held on to the bread he was feeding them just a tad too long and got his hand snapped at. He still tells the story till this day]. Luke is trying to teach him that the squirrel is way smaller than him but he still seems a bit suspicious.. It's interesting to see how the seasons affect animals though - the squirrels have been getting a lot more agressive in the past few weeks, probably trying to eat as much as they can before winter comes. At least I hope it's brought about by the seasonal change -- I much prefer them slightly more demure.

Nursery Days

The Wicked Witch of the West


Works of art

Matty started going to nursery in May this year. He took a bit of time to settle down, and the first month was generally marked by tearful goodbyes in the morning and exuberant hellos in the afternoon when I picked him up. After that period, he started to really enjoy it there.

He now spends 3 mornings a week there and always looks forward to going again. In fact, usually by Sunday, after a 2 day absence, he'll start to say "See Bernie again, see friends again" (Bernie is one of his teachers). The education system here seems to agree with him and he has great fun doing painting, collages, watching Thomas (the tank engine) videos and generally mucking around. We get to bring home his works of art too, like the Witch hat he made for Halloween and the countless other paintings & drawings. I set up a little corner to stick some of it up and he's quite proud of it, showing off his masterpieces to visitors who come by. All in all, it's worked out really well and mummy gets 3 mornings off every week too =)

Weeklong driving trip

Idyllic Cotswolds village


Lake Windermere

A couple of our friends came to visit (my goodness, a whole month ago!) and we drove up to the Lake District. It was quite a nice trip where we unfortunately confirmed that Matty definitely suffers from motion sickness (bad genes..). I bet WY & Y have never seen that much throw up in one day ever =) But it did get better after the 1st day, after we restricted him to a diet of dry biscuits whenever we needed to drive around.

England has lots of very pretty, quaint villages and lovely countryside which you'll never find in S'pore or M'sia. It was quite a pity that we only had the one week to drive around, but we do have another 2 years to go..

The World Traveller

The Colosseum


Roman Forum

One advantage of living in London for a few years is getting to travel around the region a bit while we're here. Matty is going to be a very well travelled boy by the time we go home, though I doubt he'll remember much (if any) of it. We went to Rome for a few days in Oct, and he really enjoyed the plane ride and being in a new place. I don't think he was much impressed by the sights, but more the interesting things at his level (dogs, pigeons, kids, etc). That's what you'd call a different perspective in life I guess...

Greedy Matty

A drumstick all to myself..


But why settle for 1 when you can have 2!!


Okay, okay, I confess that these are posed shots (but he did get to take one bite of the duck). Hehe, guess part of the fun of having kids is making them do stuff which they will grow up to regret and be embarrassed by =)

Matty is getting greedier though. He recently recovered from a bout of stomach flu (I think). After 1.5 days of throwing up and eating nothing, he seems to have discovered a new-found appreciation for food now. Makes life a lot easier for me since he's now eating his meals with a lot more gusto, and a lot less coercion. Not satisfied with that, he also keeps on asking us for food while we're having our meals and ends up taking about 5% of my portion. His current favourites are rice and noodles (yes, very Chinese, this boy) but he also likes his veggies like broccoli, corn and courgettes! I am hoping this phase will last for a long long time...

Getting Started

I never thought I'd start a blog, but never say never, right... I suppose being a few thousand miles away from most of our family & friends, it's good to have a forum to update people on what's happening in our lives (and what Matty is up to). So voila, here we go.

It's autumn now, and most of the leaves on the trees are going fast. It seems like just a while ago when we first arrived in London and the trees were totally bare. And then there were new buds and leaves, and before we knew it, summer. Those were lovely warm times (though Mr Goh would use quite vastly different adjectives), and now that it's getting chilly and dark at 5pm, I'm reminded of dismal winter days. Still, we can look forward to going home in Jan, so that helps..

We've had a constant stream of visitors since August when my parents came, and Luke's dad is visiting with us now. I think Matty is getting so used to having other people around that he'll have to readjust next month. He still asks after "kong kong", "por por" (grandparents), "Uncle Wai Yew" and "Godma", our most recent visitors. He's definitely going to have a great time when we go home and see everyone again!

Anyway, I will keep this short for now, and hope to put up some recent pictures once I get the hang of this...