Timmy's tantrums

We've realised from some time ago that Timmy is a little bit more temperamental than Matty. He's also more prone to throwing tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants or is just frustrated with life in general. I had always thought this was an issue that we'd have to deal with when he reached the "terrible twos". However, he's clearly very advanced in this area cos he's been doing it for months and months!

Here's an example from when he started walking a couple of months ago. This is one of those "keep for posterity and use to embarrass them when they grow up" kind of videos =)



Heehee, did you notice his "ballroom dancing" walking style?

Haha, broadband is up!!

Hurrah, hurrah, our broadband is up and running! After living on dial-up for a month, the speed boost is definitely appreciated. Anyhow, I thought I'd put up some recent photos of the kids for those of you who haven't already seen them recently.

Here's Timmy, who's now very adept at walking around the house showing off by walking around AND carrying a bag (yes, it looks huge but it's empty so it's not in the least heavy). He loves transporting things from one place to another and as a result we've found shoes, toys and all manner of stuff residing in places where they really shouldn't be..



And this is Matty in his new school celebrating his 4th birthday. He's quite settled in now and has a whole host of friends who are no doubt as keen about cars as he is! Interestingly enough, in his old school in London, whenever asked to name his friends he'd always name the girls but here in S'pore he always names the boys. Err.. S'porean girls not very appealing to him maybe?? =P

Anyhow, praise God that the kids seem to have adapted well to life back in S'pore. They don't seem to mind the heat at all and prefer the food as well. Our new helper, Mel has also settled in nicely and gets along with the kids, which is a huge load off our minds. It's also good to be back in our church, ARPC, and to catch up with old friends and our DG as well. All in all, a very smooth relocation I think..

I'll be going back to work in a week's time so that will be another big change. Will keep you posted (although not that regularly) on what's going on in our lives. Ta for now!

Home again, home again..

Yes, we're back! It's been a hectic 2 weeks since we arrived. Every day has been occupied by meeting up with various folks or sorting out some errand or other. The good news is, we're a lot more settled now than when we first came back. All our stuff has been shipped back safely and more or less put away, Matthew has settled in to a couple of days at school and seems to enjoy it, our new domestic helper has arrived and seems nice.. Not bad at all for just 2 weeks!

The bad news is, our broadband won't be set up till the end of the month so I can't post up any pictures until then. When there's time (and more bandwidth), I'll put up some pics of Matty at school celebrating his birthday. Oh, and Timmy has grown his first tooth and started walking too! So, more to come later....

Small spaces

Okay, okay, I won't close down the blog. But with me going back to work after we get back to Singapore, I'm not sure how frequent the posts will be. Maybe once a fortnight or once a month? We'll see how it goes...

In less than 24 hours we'll be on our way home. We've now moved out of our apartment and are staying in a serviced apartment. It feels a little like we're on holiday and I think we're all quite looking forward to getting home real soon!

I thought I'd put up some pictures of the kids which I took in the last couple of weeks. For some reason, kids get fascincated by the strangest things. Recently, they've been quite keen on small spaces. Timmy in particular enjoyed climbing into the bottom cupboard of our computer table. He fits in quite snugly and can happily play there for ages!

And then Matty not to be outdone decided to have his own little private hidey hole under the table. Well, private for all of 2 minutes, until his little brother realised where he was and promptly crawled in with him! The two of them stayed there for a good 15 mins, giggling (or rather cackling) together and tossing things in and out. They are really quite cute together sometimes =)



Timmy in his hidey hole

The kids under the table

Going home..

Yes, 3 years has gone by really quickly and now it's almost time for us to go home to Singapore for good. In our last month here we've tried to catch up with some friends here whom we won't see for some time. The photo here was taken with the Mungeams, Luke's guardians from his Sevenoaks days. We went to visit them over the New Year weekend and had a lovely time there.

While it's sad to leave, we're also looking forward to seeing all the friends and relatives at home again. Haha, now that we're going back, perhaps there won't be any huge need to keep up with this blog anymore.. After all, those of you in S'pore will be seeing a lot more of us!

The beautiful Alps

We went to Germany for a week just before Christmas and it was a wonderful holiday! We saw more snow than we've ever seen in our lives -- Matty got to stomp around in it, we threw some snowballs at Luke and it was very very cold!

One of the highlights was taking the cable car up to the top of the Tegelberg. It was really very serene and beautiful up there, as you can see for yourself.. Looks like postcard shots no?









Timmy was snug as a bug in a rug because the nice couple we stayed with lent us their pram and extremely cosy fur bag. All in all, it was definitely a great experience and I'm sure Matty at least will remember his first white Christmas!

Matty's Nativity play

Matty's school recently did a Nativity play, and he was chosen to play the part of a shepherd. His one line was "I have brought a sheep", and he was VERY proud of it! Sneakily, the school got the parents to provide the costumes, so here he is carrying a home-made staff and wearing one of my maternity tops! =)



We went to watch the play which was all of 10 minutes long (well, can't really expect much more from 3-4 year olds). The kids were quite cute and all the parents were very proud.



Here's them and their rendition of "Away in a Manger"

Brothers

Now that Timmy is getting older, he's starting to be able to interact more with Matty. I think what Matty enjoys most is being able to amuse his little brother by doing silly things. It's not an uncommon sight to see Matty jumping around like a lunatic, or making funny noises, and Timmy cackling away like it's the funniest thing in the world.

Well, I may not always understand the humour, but it is really wonderful to see them doing a bit more things together now! Matty is also a bit less resistant to spending some of his precious play time reading to or playing with Timmy, which is great. I really hope and pray that they will grow up to be good friends...

Matty Walking

Timmy is going to be a year old very soon. He's almost exactly the same age as Matty was when we first moved to London and it's interesting to see the similarities and the differences between the two of them. There are still some developmental milestones that I'm waiting for. e.g. Timmy still has no teeth!!

The other major thing which Matty started to do when he was about a year old was to start walking. I was looking thru some of the old video clips I'd taken of Matty and found an amusing one which I just had to put up on the blog. I watched it quite a few times and it was just hilarious.. enjoy!


As you can see, kids are quite resilient to the knocks and bumps of life.. =)

On top of the world

Now that our time in London is coming to an end, we have to start doing some of the stuff that we'd like to do before going home. One of the things on this to-do list is going on the London Eye, so on a nice sunny weekend, off we went!



After queueing for about an hour (to buy tickets, and then to get on), we finally "boarded" one of the pods. The view was actually pretty nice from up there, and as you can see, it was a really wonderfully sunny day.



I personally found the view of the other pods & the eye's mechanism a lot more interesting than the view of London..



The boys all had a good time, and I tried not to feel too scared of the height. We stopped moving for a few minutes when we were about 2/3 of the way up and I got a little paranoid about it having broken down and us being stuck up there for hours... But thankfully that didn't happen. Also thought it was very sneaky of British Airways to put their logo prominently on some of the windows for free publicity in millions of photos all around the world!