Yao's 1st Birthday

Can't believe that I haven't blogged about my little baby's anecdotes for the past 9 months! Guess I have a lot of catching up to do.

Well, just some brief updates. We celebrated Yao's lunar birthday 11 days ago with a simple tradition. Since it happened to be the school holiday, so both Jie Jies were at home. We took half day off ourselves. Prepared mee suah for her per Amah's request. She loved it and even asked for second helpings.

Organic millet mee suah (to symbolised long life) cooked with wild salmon, English spinach, minced pork, Goji berries. 

Ta Jie wanted to feed her too

 Next is feasting with the chicken drumstick. This symbolised good life later

Then the most exciting moment came next. Both Jie Jies have been briefing her on this a few days before her lunar birthday. They kept telling her about this and wanted to 'rehearse' with her in advance. I had to put a stop to this as it might affect her choice on the actual day :)

Abacus, ruler, pen and book - which would she choose?

This would kind of predict her field of career in the future, according to Amah. 

1, 2, 3... she's happily moving towards her object of interest

We all thought she would pick abacus like both her Jie Jies but to our amazement, she picked the notebook! Well, she was hesitating between the ruler and the notebook, and in the end she decided on the notebook. Haha, looks like Mommy's craze on the Big Bad Wolf had some influence on her. All these while I've been trying to read books to her, but she doesn't show any interest. It rather surprised me that she settled on book instead of abacus. 

Yao examining her latest treasure, a birthday present from her Ta Jie 

It's good to have Ta Jie helping with the preparation of all these stationaries.

Next we went to Amah's house because she wanted to let Yao received some blessings from the Goddess of Mercy. 

 She enjoyed playing with Jojo (their Ji Chek's doggy). She even went to touch the doggy's nose without any fear!

After all that, we just took her to the mall for a walking experience since this was her first official walk with shoes on (according to Amah they are not supposed to walk with shoes before they reach 1 year old). 

Fast forward 10 days later, we celebrated her English birthday. Thanks to my little sister's help, we managed to come out with a cake, 100% purely from fruits. 

Our fruity creation - made from honey dew (as the 1st tier), papaya (2nd tier), alphabets and the Number 1 from mango, and the other decorations from kiwi, cherry tomato, papaya and honey dew. 

I got this idea from Soo Sean as I'm rather rigid with my baby's diet. Since I was looking for an eggless version, and wanted to avoid those high sugary and processed ingredients, I finally settled for this. Thanks to her, I got all the utensils (cake ring and alphabet cutter) from her. Initially I wanted to make the base from water melon but since all my girls were still coughing on the eve itself, I discarded the idea and came out with another alternative that I could accept (even though honey dew was rather cooling too).  

 With different lighting capture from a different camera

Can you see the candle? It's also from a fruit! 

I stumbled upon this idea when I was contemplating whether to use normal wax candles... I have a nice happy birthday wax candles bought long long time ago (when Sze Yi was 6), but I didn't want to contaminate the cake with wax residue so I settled on this instead. I love the glow from the orange. Thanks to hubby who made this possible, as my original natural wick from the orange was not working as expected, so he did a little engineering to make it glow.. Ah, so now it's perfect!

Our family photo...oops, my baby's close to crying

With my little sister, the chef behind the cake decoration :)

Urgh... Yao is crying because we woke her up for the cake blowing as my sister needed to catch a bus.. poor baby, she's not feeling well too. Even though my original intention was to let her enjoy the cake or even smash it, she hardly touched the cake as we just woke her up for the birthday song singing. We didn't even manage to cut the cake as we're in a rush. However, I gave her little slices of grapes and mango while we're preparing the cake (she's still running around and I needed to keep an eye (and also hands on her) so having my sister around was a blessing. I might not be able to come out with this if I was all alone. 

We let Yao cut the cake on the actual day after work just to complete the tradition and she got to sample some kiwis. After that it was present opening time. This time she's smiling all over :)

Happy birthday, my little baby. Hope you grow up to be a healthy and bouncy princess, and continue to be doted by all of us. You are our little gem always :)