life in singapore … with baby
Posted in baby stuff on Jul 13th, 2008
Steve, Katrina and Thalia flew back from Dubai for a holiday and we joined them at PS Café in Dempsey Village to celebrate Thalia’s third birthday. Sunday brunch at PS Café is a real family affair, every other table has a buggy parked next to it. Olive bought a dress for the occasion and carried [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jul 13th, 2008
Olive keeping daddy occupied.
Congratulations to Olive, who slept for eight hours last night! She went down at 9.30pm, talking herself to sleep, then woke at 5.45am.
Her ladyship waiting for breakfast to be delivered:
Posted in baby stuff on Jul 12th, 2008
Hashi and Hooi Hooi gave birth to Yukie (pronounced “yookie” with a very short “air” on the end) so we dropped in for lunch to see the baby. Yukie is tiny! Half Olive’s size. Luckily, Hooi Hooi has had no problems breastfeeding problems; she’s attending breastfeeding classes and all the other nine mums in her [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 29th, 2008
Sandy’s two sisters, Hueh Hueh and Ah Ngae, drove down from KL so we packed a picnic and headed off to the Eco Lake at the Botanic Gardens for smoked salmon, cold cuts, roast beef, couscous, potatoes in salsa verde, strawberries and cream, and freshly baked lemon drizzle cake and chocolate brownies. Hooi Hooi, nine [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 22nd, 2008
Singapore held its first ‘opera in the park’ at the Botanic Gardens on Saturday. The Singapore Lyric Opera and Singapore Lyric Opera Children’s Choir performed a selection of operatic favourites to a healthy mix of Singaporean and expat families with loads of kids, dogs and trailing maids playing in the late afternoon sun. Afternoons such [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 21st, 2008
The house is full of baby toys. And babies. Holly and Oscar flew in from London so there are six of us in the house at the mo. Some random photos:
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 16th, 2008
Sandy, Mum and Olive enjoyed a tai tai lunch at Marmalade Pantry in Holland Village. Dinner was more casual down at the local Chinese seafood restaurant with dishes of sambal stingray, crayfish in cereal with curry leaves, sambal sweet potato leaves and an onion omelette. I knew there would be an argument over which cake [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 15th, 2008
[Above: Grandmother and granddaughter's hat parade. Olive's little pink number is from Petit Bateau, thank you Shah and Jonathan.]
Singapore’s National Parks Board recently opened HortPark, a 23-hectare “gardening hub” — we like hubs in Singapore — just down the road from our house. We took a stroll there this morning and found the place buzzing [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 15th, 2008
Somebody collapsed with the effort of writing my father’s day card. Thank you Olive. Those look like Mummy’s favourite truffles, what a coincidence!
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 13th, 2008
A big thank you to Kari and family from Rødding in Denmark for sending Olive her first mobile. Kari was Phil’s au pair 30 years ago. The mobile reached Singapore just at the right time - Olive has finally begun to focus more on her surroundings and loves to lie back and gaze at the [...]
Posted in baby stuff, food on Jun 13th, 2008
Mum celebrated her birthday here in Singapore. Sandy, Olive, Mum and I had a great dinner at Halia restaurant in the Botanic Gardens. Olive was a star, she was well behaved the whole evening.
Seared blue fin tuna for Sandy …
Javanese spice-encrusted rack of lamb for Phil …
Lait frais de la bossom for Olive …
No dinner [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Jun 9th, 2008
I’m so sad cousin Oscar will miss his flight to Singapore tomorrow . Please get better soon Oscar and fly over to visit me.
Posted in baby stuff on May 25th, 2008
Wow, look what Kathy made for Olive! A beansprout baby pillow, two burp cloths, a hanky, a bunny rabbit with “Olive” felted on and a passport cover. All in a beautiful apple floral fabric. Thank you so much. Kathy is a former publishing colleague of Phil’s here in Singapore; she also designs and sells her [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 24th, 2008
This afternoon Olive cried for about five hours nonstop. It’s so distressing but having re-read all the books I guess it’s normal. Evening fretting seems to kick in around the third week and last for a couple of months (too optimistic? longer?). We fed her, changed her nappy, burped her, took some layers off then [...]
Posted in baby stuff, books on May 23rd, 2008
Olive’s going to be in the international press! Today a writer for The Weekly Telegraph, the overseas edition of the UK’s The Daily Telegraph, interviewed Phil in Singapore and she noticed Olive’s photo on his desk. She took down Olive’s name and asked whether she could mention the new arrival in the article. Of course! [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 22nd, 2008
Happy Birthday Olive! Our little Buddha is one month old and according to Chinese custom we must give family and friends red eggs and chocolate cake (er, surely not chocolate cake?!).
I tried asking mother-in-law the significance of red eggs.
“Red”
“OK, I know red signifies happiness and good luck in Chinese culture but why eggs?”
“Just [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 21st, 2008
I woke up this morning to find a tray of red eggs in the kitchen. Has mother-in-law been out early stealing the eggs of Singapore’s elusive red jungle fowl? Or could the eggs be for a certain chubby baby’s 1st month birthday celebration tomorrow? Check back soon for more details …
Posted in baby stuff on May 19th, 2008
It’s the Vesak day long weekend here in Singapore and Sandy’s two sisters and aunt travelled down from KL and Penang to join Sandy and mother-in-law shopping. Five ladies shopping with baby Olive riding in the handbag. Evidently Olive enjoys going out shopping … lots of bright lights and admiring stares. On one trip Olive [...]
Posted in baby stuff, books on May 18th, 2008
Party pooper Olive managed to sleep through the first party she ever attended. I guess we should be thankful for that. Eric and Mayumi threw a house-warming-cum-fourth birthday party for son Isaac. Not only did Olive sleep through somebody’s birthday party, she even received a present! Lucky girl. Mayumi gave Olive a collection of poems [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 12th, 2008
Can you believe it … the first letter to arrive addressed to Olive was a bill. From the hospital. Olive was charged S$400+ (over £125) for her stay in the neonatal ward (this on top of the thousands of pounds mummy and daddy have already paid for their stay in the hospital). Luckily most of [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 11th, 2008
Thankfully Olive is not the world’s biggest baby. That record belongs to Karan Singh, reports Perez Hilton (starved of information in Singapore we have to get our news wherever we can find it). Karan was born 66 cm (2 ft 2 in) long and at ten months of age is almost 1 metre (over 3 [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 11th, 2008
Today is Mother’s Day in Singapore. Sandy’s first Mother’s Day as a mother. I gave Sandy and mother-in-law framed photos of Olive, and tonight they’re getting a slap-up meal of beef braised in Guinness with bacon, mushrooms, thyme and bay leaves; lashings of mashed potato with spring onions; and garlic French beans. It’s probably the [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 9th, 2008
I emailed Daniel and Marja earlier today to check when Marja is due — next week, they hope — and Daniel wrote back asking why I hadn’t posted any tips on being a dad on the blog. Because I’ve only had two weeks practice! But it’s a good idea so here is the only thing [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, baby stuff on May 7th, 2008
Posted in Uncategorized, baby stuff on May 3rd, 2008
Here we have ah ma (Hokkien for grandmother) teaching daughter how to bathe granddaughter.
Sandy’s whole family are down from Malaysia (plus brother over from UK), spending the long May Day weekend in Singapore to see grandchild #1. There are eight of us camped out in a two-bedroom flat. As I sleep at about 8pm these [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 2nd, 2008
A quick guide to writing Olive’s middle name, 安, in Chinese script. If you’re wondering whether the stroke order makes any difference, it doesn’t to the final outcome, but it would be as strange for a Chinese-speaker to use the wrong stroke order as it would be for an English-speaker to write “cat” by putting [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 1st, 2008
Every morning we have an old Malay lady come round to give Sandy a Malay confinement massage. I’m not allowed in the bedroom during the massage so I have no idea what it involves. All I know is the house smells for hours afterwards of Makcik Ju’s homemade massage oil and Sandy appears from the [...]
Posted in baby stuff on May 1st, 2008
Druncle (drunk uncle) Sri, Andy and Claudia dropped in after happy hour at the local bar to wet the baby’s head (”wetting the baby’s head” is basically an excuse for the father to have a quick beer; in my case my first drink in two weeks!). They arrived with a six-pack and a baby bottle [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Apr 30th, 2008
(If you only see a square box instead of the Chinese characters then your computer may not speak Chinese!)
My name is Olive An Tatham (Olive 安 Tatham)
安 = “An”: a girl’s (and boy’s) name in Chinese and the character for “peace”. The character comprises the radical for “roof” (宀) over the radical for “woman” [...]
Posted in baby stuff on Apr 29th, 2008
We tend to post funny stuff on the blog and spare readers (if we have any) the serious issues but the past week has also been really tough on mother and daughter (and dad) and we would like to share it in the hope somebody else might benefit from it. Our main problem was breastfeeding. [...]
