New winter outfit and Christmas baking

Happy Advent season! It is officially 14 days before Christmas and I am so excited. We did some christmas shopping and we got the below outfit for our little guy from Zara kids. I just love Zara for kids. They have the cutest stuff and pretty affordable too. So we got him a  Jacquard jacket which is a thick wooly jacket, perfect for cold winter days and also a winter sneakers. I got the little guy to model his new outfit so i could take some pictures for his 27 months old portrait.

 

Another christmassy thing that I did yesterday was baked Christmas Shortbread Stars following a recipe by Tanya Burr. I am a sucker for simple recipe and this recipe is really that simple. All you need are flour, butter, sugar and some vanilla extract which are staple ingredients if you are already into baking. And I happened to love english shortbreads but I always think that they are a bit pricy (3 to 4 euros) and whenever they have a promotion (1.7 euros) in Aldi (our local store), I stocked up on them. But since I came upon this recipe and knowing how easy it was to make it, I am just over the moon. A few pictures of the baking process and the finished product! 

Yum. I'm going to put my little guy down for his afternoon nap now and have these with a hot cup of coffee later while I spend some quiet time doing devotion reading. Happy counting down to Christmas!

It is all worth it!

Earlier today I found myself reflecting on those earlier days when we became parents. Honestly, I struggled. I felt like I wasn't cut out to be a mum. I was constantly tired from poor sleep. Zachary was a poor sleeper  until he turned 18 months and that was when I weaned him off night nursing and he gradually slept through the night. But before that, I didn't know better and I was nursing him on demand. And when he fussed a little I automatically just nursed him because I was too tired to rock him back to sleep. Well, Zachary has gone a long way since then. He now sleeps so well and sometimes I couldn't believe I would see the day where I get to sleep 7-8 hours straight. My next challenge would be to potty train him and I must admit, I am a little terrified with this whole thing but at the same time, I am positive that there will come a day where my son will be sleeping through the night AND potty trained and I am going to look back and say, all those struggles and 'poop' accidents are worth it! Okay, now I need to read up on this potty training 101 business. 

He is so worth it. 

Photos by Oli.

A 2 years old adventure.

Hello! I haven't posted anything in ages and I felt bad about this abandoned space. It used to be a creative outlet where I write about our mini adventures and whatnot and share pictures. But now it has been taken over by Instagram where I usually update bits and pieces of our lives and its just fast and easy, you know.  I also realised that as I grow older, I become more reserved in writing and sharing about 'us'. People always say "oh don't share too much on social medias because you never know what 'evil' things people will do with the things you share". But today, I decided to pick up Oli's huge-ass camera and started documenting our little daily routine and share it here. Oli is away by the way. He is currently in Sri Lanka for work, eating lots of spicy food, drinking lots of tea and missing us terribly, at least i hope he is. And I also realised that I tend to write more when he is away. Well, I started writing this blog when we were still in a long distance relationship so I guess, old habits die hard. Anyhow, it's just Zachary and me and I tend to do more stuff with him when Oli is away to distract him although I am not really sure if he actually cares. Hahaha. (Oli, I am sure he misses you a lot.)

Typically, our days start at around 8 am. That's when Zachary wakes up. He sleeps in our room where he has his own bed just beside our bed but he always find his way into our bed in the middle of the night or very early in the morning. When he wakes up, he usually just lie in bed and starts to mumble stuff until he says "Mummy, wake up! Go outside!" And that's my cue to wake up. First thing first, breakfast. Usually, it's 'chocolate juice' (which is Milo or Ovaltine) with some bread or cereal. He doesn't eat much in the morning. My mum would nagged me to feed him noodles or rice which is normal if we were back home in Malaysia. And our not so quiet morning follows. 

And today, the sun was out so we decided to go for a walk around the neighbourhood. I usually push Zachary in a stroller but today, I let him walked which could be a bit stressful but I figured it was a good practice for him to listen to instructions like "look both left and right before you cross the road'"or "stop at the red light" or "no, don't touch that. that's icky!". 'Icky' means dirty if you haven't figured that out already. By the way, parents, do you come up with your own vocabulary for things after having kid/kids? Anyways, Zachary, like any other kids, get easily distracted with little things. Like a tiny piece of paper along the way or spiderwebs and I tried my best to be a patient mom and let him revel in his own little discovery but i must admit that I kinda rushed him sometimes. It's the asian mom in me. -_-.  

By the way, I just got that wooden stick toy where he could roll it on the ground and also pretend that it is a hammer at the same time. He loves it!

We found ourselves in the wood again today. We were here last week and the wood is his happy place. He loves it because he could find wooden sticks everywhere and pretend it is a sword. 

He cried a little when we had to leave. But he calmed down when i told him we were going to the park. Okay, so I actually bribed him with some gummi bears. Always works! :D. He also made a friend at the park today. 

After spending some time at the park we left and he cried again because apparently, it wasn't enough and he still wanted to play with his new friend but "tough luck buddy". It was almost his nap time and we haven't had lunch. So we went to a nearby cafe to grab some light lunch and also my much needed caffeine fix. 

It was time to go home with this little guy who loves picking on his 'Brezel' and who was so ready to go down for his afternoon nap. 

And so with the sun down and the day almost over, we had a quiet dinner in the kitchen. We usually eat dinner on the main table in the living room but we decided to have dinner in the kitchen because eating on the main table was just different when Oli is not around. After his bath, we skyped with our most favourite man and watched his current favourite movie, Shrek. Go figure.

So that pretty much sums up our day. It was fun documenting our (come to think of it, not so mundane) routine. And I guess I'll write again soon. Till next time. Tschuss!

one fine day (family photoshoot)

This is long overdue but we did a family photoshoot sometime back in November 2014 right at the end of Autumn with Jess Renee Photography. It was our first professional family photoshoot. We wanted to do it for memory keepsake and because Oli is always behind the camera and hence, missing from most pictures. So we finally did it on a pretty Saturday afternoon after many weeks of postponing it due to bad weather. Prior to the photoshoot, we were briefed on what to expect and Jess, who is by the way, an awesome photographer and person, gave us a thumbs up on our choice of outfit. We had our photoshoot taken on a slope hill just outside Steinbach village. It was a simple setting, nothing too pretentious and just what we had hoped for. The session itself took over an hour but it didn't feel like it. Throughout the session, we were told to just be natural and I was surprised that Zachary did really well through it all. Suffice to say, he was the star during the whole photoshoot.  Anyways, here are some of our favourite picks from the photoshoot.

Jess also made a wonderful video montage of the photoshoot that was so precious to us. Something we definitely want to watch back over and over again. Here is the link to the video.:)