3 and a bit

The gap between blogs seem to be widening as there are more things happening in our lives. Between March and now (which is September), we were busy with endless things : Search for a site for the cafe; bought a property for cafe; Looking for contractors; Branding and Renovations for Red Bulb; Kay's dance recital in May; Michelle & Andy's Wedding; Sharon (a dear friend from singapore) visiting Toronto; Opening of Red Bulb; Muun Design Studio winning an award; Took a trip to Ottawa/Niagara/St. Jacobs; Dealing with extremely hot weather; Vince & Penny (from Hong Kong) Visiting Toronto; More hot weather and playing in the splash pads ...

We are glad that Kay has been a part of every one of these events in some way or another and it has a great journey so far. No doubt there were lots of sleepless nights, heated arguments and headaches along the way, we have managed to come through it all unscathed (so far). Kay has been the shining light at the end of the day. Yes, she wears mummy out excessively, but everything would be fine after a hug and a kiss. It's been such joy seeing her grow into this little person. Very opinionated, extremely sharp, smart, sensible, sensitive, vocal and funny. She would break into a dance while playing "tea party" or start humming a Hedley "Perfect" tune on the radio while knowing all the words in the lyrics.

Recently, she has been into a somewhat disturbing topic of "death". She keeps talking about things dying, not fully understanding the concept. It's a tough one to explain to a 3 year old for sure. We also want to teach her about compassion and not killing bugs and ants when she sees them. So I've been telling her how bugs also have families and how little bugs have mummies and daddies just like her. Then trying to explain why we are killing flies in the cafe. There probably isn't a good enough reason ever to be taking away the life of a living thing as we are taught in Buddha's teachings. So we have tried to close the windows at the cafe whenever we can to prevent them from coming in.

I should probably be blogging more to talk about her little peeves and such as they happen, but right now I just want to be completely absorbed in the moments before she grows up too quickly and begins kindergarten next September. Here are some snapshots from the past few months.

Strike a Pose ...birthday continues.

A week ago ... we are going back and forth with the timeline a little.
Kay and her friends waiting for the Pinkalicious Play to begin. It was a LONG 40 minute wait before it started. But glad they enjoyed it. Kay and Caitlin were the only 2 that sat on the rug by themselves through the whole play. Then we enjoyed some $2 pink mini cupcakes after the show. Weather outside was wet, but at least we had some fun inside :)

Fast forward to this week, yesterday...
The birthday continues as Uncle Mike and Art visits Kay. More smiley cupcakes. As you can tell mummy is not very creative with the cupcake decorating. Actually i'm just testing out all the nibs I have in the piping kit I just got at the recent Food show.

The rest of the photos ... is just Kay POSING .... She Loves to pose for the camera. Wonder where she got that from :P

Kay is three !

Our little baby turns three yesterday. It was just me and my princess with some cupcakes and candles during lunch today. No big bang birthday party or cakes yet, she has been down with a cold and fever for the past 5 days. Today is Day-6 of mummy staying at home with her. No nanny, no work meetings no phone calls, just me and a sick toddler. But the weather has been so nice that we actually managed to get some fresh air, in between the periods of her medicine kicking in and when she is feeling more energetic. Kay rode her Tricycle all by herself for the first time. Peddled and steered (with some success) with no help. This will be the beginning of many firsts in learning for our 3 year old. And we took a walk in our backyard today, played around on the swing and slide and checked out the damage that winter did to our vegetable patch. The alpine strawberry plants are actually growing already, and tulips are poking up from the ground. Spring is indeed here. Even the cats miss the sunshine. We let Te-a our cat out into the patio for a little while and she was just sprawling around.

Happy birthday Kay... hope you get well soon.

Do you speak Chinese ?

Here is a funny story. A girl at Toy r us asked Kay, while we were shopping that day, if she spoke Chinese. And being our confident little toddler, she put her hands on her hips and nodded 'yes'. So the girl asked if she knew how to say 'pink' in Chinese...and there was silence. She just stood there, not knowing what to say. Poor Kay....

This is the extent of her learning Chinese so far. It's all our fault for not implementing it consistently. It's hard when we don't speak it at home to each other. And we also want her to know Cantonese and later French or Spanish and maybe Japanese ... so it's going to be a huge learning curve. Try harder mummy and daddy !

Rachel's birthday

With the new year beginning, we are going to be attending more birthday parties. And the year always starts with Rachel's birthday in january. We had a lot of fun at the Woodbine fantasy fair last week. In fact, so much fun that Kay didn't wind down at all ...until 1.40am. She was a little over-stimulated by the plane-rides, merry-go-round, carasole, train rides and excitement at 7pm at night. But all's good after one episode of Caillou on the PVR.

I think the best thing about this age is seeing them interact with friends, discovering the world and learning languages, sounds, sights and smells. Textures of playdoh, licking chocolate from the fingers, decorating cupcakes are all favourite activities.

Adventures in learning

Singing a chinese song, switching from Pink to Green, writing her letters A to H ... Kay is discovering a new world in languages and loving music & dance. She even made up her own rhythm when there isn't a song ... da da che, da da che, da da che, da da che, da da che.