islandhippy

Not only is the Vivo City Christmas tree garish, it’s also rather ghoulish. While walking past today I saw a human head hanging from the tree.

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Daddy [reading a book to Olive]: Olive, look. Tess the sheepdog is talking to her puppy, Sam. I wonder what she’s saying?
Olive: I know, I know. I know what Tess is saying to Sam.
Daddy: What is she saying?
Olive: Woof!

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[Olive wearing a daisy chain made by Daddy]
My daughter is sooooo cute! Last night Olive kicked up a bit of a fuss because she didn’t want to have a bath … fair enough, I do the same thing even now. She was eventually persuaded to brush her teeth and bathe and after she put on [...]

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This morning Sandy disturbed a two-metre-long equatorial black spitting cobra at the foot of the steps to our flat, underneath Olive’s buggy. We used to see cobras several times a month but we haven’t seen any for ages, probably because our nature-loving neighbours kill all snakes on sight. Sandy shooed this snake into the garden [...]

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Sandy took Olive and Leo to a local playground this afternoon only to be met by three teenage delinquents sitting on the climbing frame. Sporting facial studs and dragging on cigarettes, this scary trio were obviously gangbangers. This being her turf, though, Olive decided to confront them immediately. She walked up to the climbing frame [...]

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Good news. Olive has decided to skip the potty stage of toilet training and now happily uses the loo with a toilet training seat on top. She obviously didn’t appreciate out efforts to sit her down on the potty four months ago and decided instead to embrace change in her own sweet time.
Olive has also [...]

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Sandy was changing Leo in Olive’s room the other day when she spotted Olive sitting in bed reading Jack and the Beanstalk but turning the page with her eyes tightly closed. When asked what she was doing, Olive replied that she didn’t want to see the monster. She knows on which pages the ogre appears [...]

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Mum was saying to me the other day that she’s never seen anybody feed their kids as much as Sandy. That suddenly hit home today when I saw Sandy present Olive with a whole fish for lunch! Most two-and-a-half year olds are eating fish fingers, Olive gets a whole trout.
Sandy: “Fish fingers? One fresh [...]

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Sandy’s gone to the market for ‘marketing’ as they call it in Singapore and Olive and I are at home painting and teaching Leo to stick his tongue out. I’ve suddenly realised who Leo looks like: Wayne Rooney! The poor child.
Leo is so much easier to look after than Olive was at 4 months. The [...]

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Olive has been sick for the last five days with a nasty stomach bug that resulted in frequent bouts of vomiting. Mostly over me. This morning, however, when I got her out of bed, changed her diaper and asked her how she was feeling, she gave me a big smile and said, “I’m not sick [...]

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We’ve had no time to update the blog since Leo was born so here’s three months of news in one short post …
Leo
Huge. Cuddly. Smiley. Paint-stripping farts.
Olive
Makes you laugh. Makes you cry. Makes you want to bang your head against a wall.
Sandy
Has no more relatives to invite to help with the kids. Drops [...]

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Take a photo of your family in your favourite family-friendly spot in Singapore and post it up online with a write-up celebrating it.
There are top cash prizes ($2,000) and spot prizes (iPad, digital cam, Resorts World Sentosa & retail vouchers etc) up for grabs plus a Flip camera for Facebook entries which are great [...]

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Olive modelling her chef’s uniform made by Daddy from two plastic bags, some old drawing paper and a diaper carton.
Olive helping Daddy make (and eat) lasagne. We doubled the recipe to feed 12 instead of 6 but somehow the three of us still managed to eat half of it in one sitting. I blame Olive.

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Kiasu: [Hokkien] a fear of losing, used to describe a person who is overly competitive; afraid to lose.
I may not have renounced my nationality and taken Singapore citizenship like Sri but I am displaying all the traits of a true-blue kiasu Singaporean. I’m eagerly following the results of the Primary One registration balloting, which is [...]

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This evening I returned home from work to find an ecstatic Olive jumping up and down in the doorway shouting “Olive pee in potty, Olive pee in potty, Olive has a star. Daddy pee in Olive’s potty [runs to potty and points inside] and Daddy have star too.” Olive is such an angel, she makes [...]

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Hello! My name is Leo 森 Tatham. (If you only see a square box then your computer doesn’t speak Chinese.)
My first name, Leo, is short for … Leo.
My middle name is 森 or “Sen” in Hanyu Pinyin. 森 means “forest” and is pronounced “sun” when spoken in English with a comic French accent [...]

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If you’ve ever tired of playing the guessing game I spy after several rounds, then you should try playing the game with my two-year-old daughter Olive. Not only are her rules very complicated, she’s also really funny. You have to guess fast otherwise Olive will pose the question and supply the answer before you know [...]

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Olive and I hit the zoo again this morning and when we returned home my two little monkeys, Olive and the squeaky one with no name, gave me a father’s day present: a hotdog. This may seem an unusual gift but when daddy has been surviving on Chinese confinement food for two weeks, a crappy [...]

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As soon as Sandy and I got back home from the hospital, I delivered bottles of vino to all our neighbours with cards that read “Good News: Sandy and Phil have a new baby! Bad News: He’s loud. We hope this wine helps you sleep!” There is no sound proofing in these old colonial buildings [...]

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Wow! It all happened so fast, I can’t believe I’m holding my son. Olive took two days to arrive, this little guy popped out in two hours. Boy-with-no-name was born at 5.47am on 15 June 2010 and weighs 4.3 kg (9.5lb), nearly setting a hospital record. Sandy did an amazing job. Her first comment upon [...]

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Sandy began experiencing contractions at midnight, thankfully just after the final whistle of the Japan–Cameroon match. We timed the contractions for an hour until we realised we were about to give birth at home. We called a cab at 1.30am and were safely checked in to the hospital by 2am. It’s now 2.30am and we’re [...]

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[Phil on the first day of the World Cup enjoying what could be his last beer out for some time]
Every day Phil asks me ‘do you think you might give birth today?’ He’s worried about missing the football. Er, hello, I don’t know when I’m gonna pop. Every night I feel like I’m going into [...]

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This morning I had to yank Olive off a footpath before she was mown down by a victoria crowned pigeon from New Guinea which was being chased by a lemur from Madagascar which was itself being pursued by an angry spotted whistling duck from Australia. Like a scene from the movie Jumanji, this procession of [...]

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Call me paranoid but when you return home from work to find the landlord has dug a one-meter-long open trench in front of your door you have a right to be concerned. Our landlord happens to be the Singapore government, in the form of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA). Did the SLA warn us it [...]

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