<3 socks

dear ezra, 

there may come a day when you look back at all these photos that we have taken of you, and as you look closer at the photo above, you may start to question mummy's taste in socks and why she chose those with heart-shaped patterns. 

let me tell you...

that you are very much adored and loved by the kor kors and jie jies in church. this pair of socks, in particular, is given by jie jie chern, who tenderly thought of you and decided to share a bit of her own with you. and you seem to like it :)

she is not the only one. there is jie jie en-si who gives you an affectionate pat on the head when she sees you and got down on her knees many times to play with you. then there is kor kor abel and kor kor asher who exclaim, "baby ezra!" to welcome you the moment they see you. kor kor en-yi suddenly seemed a lot older when he plays ball with you. and there is kor kor titus, who is very much intrigued with you and can't stop commenting about you :) ("he looks like a doll", "why does he keep chewing his toes?", "when can he start to walk?").

there's also kor kor luke, who shows a special interest in your age. ("how old is he? when he's xx years old, i'll b xx years old!") and not forgetting kor kor timmy, which wrote in a card for you, that he was praying for your health.

thank God for these children in church who tenderly and unreservedly show their affection and befriend E. these are probably the boys and girls he will look up to as examples, and my heart is warmed to think about that :)

7 months

ezra boy,

you are seven months old!

one thing im exceptionally thankful for, is your smile. you smile when we make eye contact with you, you smile when we carry you, you smile when we talk to you, you smile when you see someone familiar, you smile when we ask you to, you smile when we point the camera at you.... you just smile soooo much and it is very contagious! after starting you on semi-solids, there were points of time when you seemed to experience some tummy discomfort and seem grouchy and fussy most of the time. it was then that we realised how we missed your smile and how we have taken it for granted. oh, do keep smiling my dear! you are the sunshine in our lives :)

 

we are thankful that you generally take your solids well. to this day, you have tried broccoli (makes you fart), pumpkin (you like but we don't, but pretend to), spinach (like!), apple (not so much), banana (gave you constipation), and pear (like it with rice cereal). yet, how come you are still waking up at night???

this has been an incredible month for you and us! you just reach your milestones in a blink of an eye, leaving us to wonder, when did he ever learn to do that?! you were so adept at rolling, then you decided it was too cumbersome and decided to pick up crawling instead. of course, not on your knees yet, but somehow, you manage to drag yourself to get to places. it was during times like this we witnessed your determination (stubbornness) and how you simply will not relent in getting what you want. 

den, two front teeth on your bottom gums sprouted out all of a sudden, catching us by surprise, but leaving us very excited too! it must be rather itchy and uncomfortable for you, since you are gnawing at everything and there was one night when you had a fever for no particular reason. we are amused to see how you try to get acquainted with them. sometimes you chomp on your fingers forgetting they are there, and then wail in pain.

can you get any cuter? your squirrel cheeks, toothy grin and sprightly nature melt our hearts countless times :)

thank God particularly for sustaining your health and keeping you free from illnesses. of course, we are concerned that you don't seem to gain as much weight as you should :( but day by day, we just do our best, and commit the rest to God. 

just one thing i would like to highlight to you, my son. a recent BS put this thought into my head, and has changed my perspective about teaching you. i used to think that my example could be sufficient in leading you to the ways of God.. but i realised that there is so much more i can do. i would like to regard the time i have with you as borrowed time, and as the seconds tick by, so does my influence diminish. it is tempting to assume that you are still so young, and there is little you understand, but we hope to start, as parents called by God, to instruct you and teach you as best as we can. may we grow together as a family, in His grace and knowledge :)

like every month, i say again, oh please slow down! you probably can't, and so, we just treasure every moment with you.. every smile, every sleeping face, every cheeky grin, every awkward sleeping posture, every tug of my hair.... moments you make our loved ones smile, moments when you go dizzy with excitement and all four limbs flail in excitement.....

:) we are truly blessed to have you. 

my hands-on husband (part 2 - curtains or blinds?)

to reduce the hassle of cleaning, PP and i are prepared to do without curtains or blinds, but we realised that we could not do without these for the bedrooms. i was rather keen on wooden blinds at first, but after hearing about the noise, durability and the hassle of cleaning, we decided that something more clean-cut would be better. since baby is the priority and we needed something that could block out sunlight effectively, this was pretty much love at first sight :) 

alas! shipping the blinds in would cost so much more than the blinds itself :/ so, we decided to improvise! at first, we thought we could just purchase the fabric and get a curtain/blind company to fix it for us. to our dismay, very few companies offer such a service and even if they did, their prices were unreasonable. 

to our relief and joy, we found that the blinds from ikea fitted our dimensions exactly! so we bought them, and the hands-on husband yanked out the ikea fabric and attached the fabric we bought from GRAstudio :) it sure was not easy, because he had to manage the cutting of the fabric and the drilling. thank God for hPP's effort :) :) here's the outcome...

love all the beautiful elements of the sky, whether clouds, rainbows, stars... all these are a testament of how our God is a great designer and his artistry and creativity has no limit at all!

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalms 8:3-4

my hands-on husband (part 1 - our bedroom lamp)

im very thankful for a hands-on husband :)

we scored this rustic lamp for $10 when we were exploring the streets of chinatown, bangkok! clearly, it was meant for wet markets and is truly, vintage and industrial :p it stuck out like a sore thumb in the shop full of chandeliers and classy lamps... and i was thrilled to see it! the shop owner was puzzled to see our strange interest in it, hehe. however, it was too shiny and glossy for our liking... so this is what my dear husband did. 

he sprayed some primer on it, before spray-painting it! all the materials were gotten from our favourite crafty source, art friend.

we had two options, blue and white :)

clearly, the white one matched the room better although i really liked the shade of blue :) 

the blue lamp is sitting in our store room now :/ are you looking for a lamp like this? if so, we will gladly sell it to you :) we promise it will be cheaper than what you find in typical lighting shops because we got it at a reasonable cost. PP's handiwork, however, is very valuable! 

online purchases

being 8-9 months pregnant made me highly immobile when preparing for the home :/ this was when i truly appreciated the internet! christmas shopping, research for the home, and even purchases were made online. thank God for the internet, which has become a blessing in this case. many little things in our house were found online because we were not able to source them from anywhere else, or because they were cheaper :) 

take for example, this chair. ever since we started research on our home, i was especially taken by the simplicity of this chair, also known as the eames chair or the eiffel chair. see the inspirations here. little did i know that it was so common :/ nonetheless, it was comfortable, clean in design and fit the theme of our home. at first, i planned to purchase the chair from here or here, but to my joy, i stumbled on this link :) it is the cheapest version i have seen thus far, and with some hesitation, we decided to order 2 pieces, one for our craft area (above), the other for the iMac area. delivery met with some hiccups because i forgot to state my preferred time slot. thank God the two chairs arrived safely nonetheless and we are rather pleased with the quality :)

sometimes it is all about the details. PP and i spent a long time scouring for suitable wardrobe handles for the wardrobe in baby E's room. Mr A actually suggested some cute "bear bear" handles, haha. we quickly told him we would try to source for our own. to our dismay, they can be hard to find! we had no idea where to get them locally. most of the handles (e.g. in IKEA) are metal and not to our liking. we saw some really special ones on etsy but they were rather costly too. after some searching, we finally decided on these :)

these lights were originally for the master bedroom but when they arrived, they were so lovely that we decided to place them in the dining room instead. it all worked out, as the lamp we got for the dining area fit nicely in the master bedroom too :) (more on that later as well, hehe). initially, i thought that we could just do with simple LED down lights, hehe. no regrets getting these from this lovely shop :) part of what made these lamps so special were the bulbs!

they are known as thomas edison bulbs, also found online here :) love the unique light patterns created by these bulbs...truly one of a kind. apparently, this person can make any kind of bulbs as long as clear specifications are provided!

these are our wall hooks and this is where we got our trash bin :)