Of Colors and Spelling!

Recently I learnt something new! Daddy has been trying to teach me how to recognise colors, and he's worried when I showed no sign of recognition until he asked Mommy if I'm color-blind. Well, I made him proud last few weeks when I could tell what's pink :)

Now, I've slowly added more color codes into my dictionary, I could tell correctly too when they showed me green, blue, white, brown, red, purple, black and yellow!

Oh, and that's not all. Mommy kept saying I still didn't know my ABC when Jie Jie could recognized them all since she's 22 months old. Well, last week, I surprised her by moving 1 step ahead, because you see, when she asked me how to spell cat, I spelled it out loud and clear - C- A - T - T - Y!

She has no idea why I needed to add the T and Y at the back, Amah was amazed and kept saying I can spell kitty when asked for Cat :)

Oh Mommy and Daddy, do be patient with me. Even though I don't know my ABCs yet, but I could talk and sing more fluently than Jie Jie at that age. Now, I know so many songs and could sing them in whole too, not just a few sentences. Also, I could converse very well compared to Jie Jie at this age. Give me time, ok? Each child develops differently ya? :)

Belated School Birthday Celebration

SJ's school organized a birthday celebration for her recently. It was already 3 months belated, because she joined after her birthday. June, they were out sick, and July, we went for holidays. So we got the invitation on August, to celebrate with the other August babies.

Daddy couldn't make it, so I went myself. I didn't expect it to be  a whole school event. I thought it's just limited to her class or something like that. Well, when we arrived, we're already late by 10 mintues or so. It's really very bad traffic that day. Also, they kids were throwing tantrums so we left later than usual from home.

On the way there, SJ kept asking me to sing birthday song to her. She demanded me to sing in English, Chinese, BM and Korea, and I have to keep on repeating it until we reached!

When we reached there, the teachers brought the kids to sit down with the rest, while the parents sat at the back. A very touching song was being played at that time, unfortunately I couldn't really tell what's it about. My guess would be about how great the love of parents are, and the kids should be always grateful to their parents.

After that, the birthday children were asked to go in front, with their parents. When I went to look for SJ, she was sobbing so pitifully there. Looks like they were especially manja when Mommy's around :P So I led her to the front, but she wanted me to carry her! It was after awhile only she agreed to line up with the rest of the kids, so I could go in front to take some pictures.

 Can you see her standing there?

SJ's turn to get her birthday present

Singing of birthday song before cutting the cake

Everyone tried to get a good snap of the cake

Oh Oh, did you see someone's crying? The principal quickly went to console her...

Can you see the rest of the students sitting there?

Before they adjourned to their place, the birthday kids were asked to present a flower to their mother as a token of appreciation for bringing them up. It was quite touching here :)

Here's a shot with one of SJ's class teacher

Queueing up.. preparing for the next event

Where is Jie Jie all this while?

Can you see her smiling at me?

Mei Mei at the front was not participating, while Jie Jie was kneeling down

I managed to get a pic of them together :)

After that, the parents could bring the birthday kid to have breakfast. SY's teacher asked me to bring SY along too, so she got to enjoy the cakes and jelly as well.

It's obvious who enjoyed it the most :)

Luckily my colleague was there too, so he helped me took a picture with the kids.

Looks like Mommy's having a bad hair day!

Well, it was certainly a different experience altogether. Firstly, in all previous schools that we attended, we're the one who organized birthday parties for our kids, but this is the first that have everything planned out so formally. And secondly, it's the first time I saw how they emphasized on gratitude to parents during a birthday - because that's the day when a mother has to suffer to bring the child to the world. I have always taken my mother and parents for granted all this while, it's time to think about them during my birthday instead of about myself! What a good experience from this.

St Petersburg - Day 2

The next day, we start our day early. I'd say St. Petersburg is much more beautiful that Moscow, it's one of the main tourist attractions. By comparison, Petersburg is much younger than Moscow (while Moscow celebrated its 850th birthday in 1997, Petersburg is less than 300 years old!). The official date of its founding is held to be 1703, when Peter the Great decided to build a new capitol, to wash away the conversative style of Moscow. He wanted Petersburg to be a true European city. Construction took place so rapidly that the city took shape not by the week or even day, but by the hour.

We stayed in Nevsky Prospect, which is St. Petersburg main avenue, and also the most famous street in Russia. Even though my sister claimed that it's the city's central shopping street and the hub of the city's entertainment and nightlife, I still find that we had to do a lot of walking.

The many waterways and canals rightfully earned Petersburg the name Venice of the North

There are a few beautiful sculptures of men and horses like this

Nevsky Prospect City at a glance

Luckily SJ agreed to walk once in a while, or else I'll be suffering from severe backache (which I actually did!)

Luckily there's Daddy to help out once in a while...

Sze Yi enjoyed posting with her Tigger the most...each of them brought one along actually

Nevsky Prospect is also renowned for its splendid architecture...

Since it's my sister's first time here too, all of us were busy reading the maps and finding the directions.

It's not always that Daddy got to be in the camera! He told me he hardly see his own pic in my previous entries, so I made sure I put more of his here :)

This is the Kazan Cathedral, which is distinguished by its curved colonnade of numerous huge columns.

The cathedral was conceived as a replica of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome

More on the Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral

The girls especially SY were posing with their mouths open in nearly every shot, maybe she thot that's coolest pose!

We went into the Cathedral to have a closer look at the interior...

One last glimpse of the whole Kazan Cathedral before we made our move, magnificient, isn't it?

By then it was already lunch time, so we went to a nice restaurant since it's my father's birthday.

We ordered quite a variety of food so that we could sample a little bit from every dish

It's quite famous for its pancake, as you can see that we ordered 2 types of that

This sculpture was just outside the restaurant

After a hearty lunch, we continued on with our adventure...

Do we look like tourists? :)

We then headed towards The Church on Spilled Blood, which is arguably the most-photographed site in the city.

At a glance, you might see a resemblance to St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow. The architect, Alfred Parland, was trying to copy St. Basil's, and most would say the two churches do look much alike, although their environs are certainly different.

Church on Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg, Russia

St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square

A closer look at the Savior on the Spilt Blood

 It's very common to see couples having weddings in St. Petersburg...

We went into the Cathedral to marvel at its unique interior

Oops, SJ's already asleep while SY's still very active.

After that, we went to the Palace Square. Here's what we passed along the way.

Here's the Palace Square...

We spent sometime sitting around here while waiting for my sisters and brother to check out the tickets to the Hermitage Museum. By then, SJ was already awake, and she was playing with Sze Yi, running all over the square. Their actions attracted some tourists, who naturally came over to give them some sweets/chocolates and also requesting to have a photo with them.


The square is bounded by the incredible Winter Palace, the stunning General Staff Building and the incomparable Admiralty with the Alexander Column standing proudly in the center.

Winter Palace

General Staff Building

The Alexander Column

A closer look

I couldn't find a nice picture of the Admiralty from our shots, here's how it looks like (taken from the web):

After that, we went to the Winter Palace. There's a nice fountain there, and we saw a big reflected mirror in the garden.

It had been a tiring day, so we called it the day.

St Petersburg - Day 1

We left for St Petersburg via the internal flight instead of using the train since we didn't want to take the risk due to the recent bombing incident that happened a few months back.

Checking in our luggages, we left things that we won't be needing at my sister's hostel

Sze Yi's very excited, we're about to board the flight soon

We finally reached St. Petersburg

This is the domestic airport in St. Petersburg

We're quite disappointed with our appartment, it's not as good as shown on the internet, and quite old compared to the one we had in Moscow.

The Living Hall - the TV is not working, so we converted that into a room that can fit 4 people

My parents' room, this is the biggest room and the nicest

This is our room, we can open up the sofas to make 2 beds

This is the dining area, luckily the TV is working here. It's where the guys watched World Cup every night.

The kitchen

Our bathroom - it comes with a washer

The walkway to the living room

We reached there towards the evening, so the kids were very tired and slept early. My younger sister went out with my brother to get some groceries for the week (yes, we'll be there for 1 week). Hubby and my sister's bf took my parents out to buy dinner, while I stayed back with my elder sister and the kids since the appartment management would be coming later to fix the TV.

Here're some pictures that Hubby took while they were out:

 

 

 

That's all for Day1 :)