Tristan at Singapore Zoo

We brought Tristan to the Singapore Zoo last month. We joined the membership where our family has unlimited entries for a year.



Tristan doesn't seem excited, but he's happy. I think he couldn't differentiate those animals that he's seeing there versus the ones in his VCD.



We didn't manage to watch the Elephant show as we have to wait for half an hour, and Tristan is impatient to stay still at one place.



He seems a little tired, so we skipped some animals' section such as the monkeys and Orang Utan.



We ended the tour early as Tristan seemed to have enough. While we were having our pizza, which was nasty, it started to rain and we felt lucky to have completed our tour. To compensate for the nasty pizza, we had the Ben & Jerry chocolate ice-cream, and we all love it very much.


Here's the link for Singapore Zoo if you are interested to know more about it.

The Kungfu Suit

During Chinese New Year back in February this year, my sister-in-law bought Tristan a kungfu suit, putting on this suit making him sweat all over before we switched on the air-conditioner, not due to any kungfu action, but was caused by the material of the suit, there was no detail labeling of the material used, as it was bought from the so called flea market, it looks like cotton but wasn't good in absorbing sweat.


This video clip was taken during the Chinese New Year, which was the only time he gets to wear the suit :




I had to keep this suit in the closet since then. Quite a waste as Tristan has outgrown it now.


Although he hasn't performed any action in this video clip, he did imitate one of his VCD's karate kick whenever we played that VCD sometime back, it was real fun looking at his action. Seems like most boys love the kungfu action, unfortunately I don't have a girl to prove this or otherwise.

Tristan's Second Birthday

Although I don't have much time to write about Tristan, I do hope I can make short notes about his progress and growth, I am sure I would enjoy these records at my old age :-)




I still have to work fulltime to support my parents, with the limited amount of time that I can play with him, he is quite a fast learner, picked up things that we have mentioned once and can use it at a later time out of our surprise, eg. he said "oh my god" last night when the milk spilled onto his face by accident.



By now he already can recognize A-Z and a-z, numbers 1-20, more than 10 shapes including trapezoid, more than 10 colors, but there are certain things that he's having hard time picking up, such as the spelling of "octopus", "elephant" etc, and if you ask him "what's your name ?", he will said "name." LoL



Here's the link to his first birthday if you would like to see how he looked one year ago :-)

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

This bell tower is located in the city of Pisa, in central Italy. We took a train from Florence to Pisa, arrived in an hour.




The entrance :


It's 8-storey high, made of white marble, and standing at 183.27 feet.



According to Wiki, this tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift direction.



Piazza del Duomo, dating from 1063 :



The Leaning Tower is just next to the Duomo :



The view from the back :



View from the side :



Closer look at the side :



The top 3 levels at the side, the sun has just come out from hiding :



Inside the Duomo :









The Baptistry of St. John which looks like a Romanesque crown :



Completed in 1363 :



We didn't climb this tower as we had been climbing bell towers and catherals in Florence, needed a break ;o) It's estimated to take 40 minutes to climb up this 294-step staircase.



Sky is getting cloudy, leaving, catching our train back to Florence.

The bath room toys

Ever since I blogged about "The bath book", Tristan is no longer interested in it anymore :(

Baby/toddler changes from time to time, in terms of their look, behavior and preferences.

He used to love taking bath, I didn't even need to ask him to do it. Everyday after work in the late afternoon, I would take a shower for myself, then prepare the water to take bath for him, he could identify the noise of water running, and would start climbing up the stairs, saying "bath" at the same time.

Now, it's a total change, when I carry him into the bathroom, he would cry out loud and refuse to get in, and most of the time, exhausted and sweat heavily.



So I bought these plastic animals, introduced a few of them day by day, and it works for only a few days, it's getting me headache to send him into the bathroom pleasantly. (The shrimp, starfish and sun were beach toys that I used for the same purpose but he had lost interest to them now too).

Arno River and its bridges

Arno River is located in central Italy. It passes through some popular places such as Florence and Pisa. It flows from the central towards the west into the Ligurian Sea. This river look so clam and pieceful, but it has flooding record in history and the last one was at 1966, where it took only 24 hours of rainfall to reach 190 millimetres in Florence. There are new dams built to alleviate this problem now. We were at Florence and we could see 2 of its bridges, Ponte Santa Trinita and Ponte Vecchio.



The buildings located next to the river. There's a street and walkway between them where we can walk along to admire its beauty.



There are many places of attractions near this river such as the Palazzo Vecchio, Galleria degli Uffizi, Piazza della Signoria etc.



This is Ponte Santa Trinita.





Ponte Vecchio. There are shops built along it, mostly jewelery shops. It was swept away by flood twice (1117 and 1333) and was rebuilt in 1345.

The bath book

We got this bath book from the Borders last year, whenever Tristan refuse to take bath, I will bring this book to the bathroom to attract him into the bathroom.



So far it has never failed its mission, because we keep it away from him from time to time, so that he won't feel bored with it eventually.



It's made of water prove material and has colorful tokens with alphabet on one side and pictures on the other side.



These tokens float in the water, it's fun to play with them during bath time. Tristan loves to dig them out one by one and toss them around the house.



So the end result is a missing "S" :(


It's for ages 3 and above, but the tokens are quite big, the diameter is closed to 5cm so we just introduce it to Tristan because he loves colors and alphabets. How do you like this bath book ?