Simple September: Lunch at La Ristrettos

Recently, I met the hubby for lunch near his workplace, without the kids. Going out without the kids is rare, and so are couple dates. These days, our conversations usually take place during dinner (while we try to feed both kids and ourselves at the same time), or after the kids are asleep (by which both of us are usually exhausted after finishing the remaining household chores). So this lunch meeting, although pretty short (he had to go back to work, and I was rushing back for Lil J's nap), was quite a treat.

We had a nice meal at La Ristrettos, a cafe nestled on the 8th floor of Novena Medical Center. The coffee was good, and their breakfast menu was pretty decent. The pasta was disappointing though. (You can read a review of the place by another mum here.) 

It was really nice, being able to munch our lunches, while it dripped and drizzled outside. We chatted, without having to worry about wiping dirty mouths or making sure someone didn't spill his soup. I guess these dates are going to be even rarer when #3 arrives, but I think right now we'll just enjoy whatever time we have together, be it couple time, or with the kids!

Weekend wanderings: Blast from the past

We had a pretty interesting weekend.  The hubby had wanted to visit the Pompeii exhibition over at the National Museum, so we ended up going there for a visit on Saturday as they were having an open house (i.e., admission was free! Yay!).  

We of course, brought Junior J along, but had to leave after an hour or so,
since he started getting restless.

The exhibition showcases artefacts that give you a glimpse into life in Roman town, before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (which ironically, was responsible for the preservation of all these items).

There was armour used by the gladiators, like the shields they used, as well as a really heavy looking helmet...

Did you see?  A crab!  I'm wondering whether to send this picture to my supervisor...

... to items used in everyday life, ranging from the "cookware" they used, furniture in their houses (and the different rooms found in a typical Roman house), anchors, scales (I think there was about 200 over items on display!).  I must say I was most impressed by the beautiful artwork that was produced during that period:

Mosaic work.  I've always admired the painstaking effort it takes to create a picture
by piecing together many many tiles... There was also a beautiful fountain on display,
again decorated with mosaic and also adorned with shells.  Gorgeous!

One of the many marble carvings on display.

The exhibition also had a section with books about that period for you to browse, along with craft activities for children.  However, as it was open house day, there were no activities due to the heavy traffic... but we did collect the craft activity for the boy to do at home (it was to assemble this cool gladiator helmet).  All in all, I think the exhibition would be more suitable for older children.  We had to repeatedly remind Junior J not to touch the exhibits, or step up on the exhibit platforms, and the boy got rather restless after an hour or so.  However, he did seem to enjoy looking at some of the exhibits (he saw this giant scale and said it was a "swing"), and we tried to explain some of the items to him (and he had fun pointing out some familiar objects he saw):

EGGS!  Argh, blur and grainy photo... 

Dog!  This mosaic on the floor had the boy really fascinated for awhile. :)

The most unique part of the exhibition, I think, were the body casts of some of victims of the Mount Vesuvius eruption:

Body casts of a couple, with the man reaching out for the woman at the last moment.
The ash from the eruption covered the town and hardened, but voids were formed later
due to the decomposition of organic material that was trapped in the ash.
The casts were made by filling up these voids with plaster.

There was casts of people, along with a dog that was left chained while his owners fled.  Looking at those figures, curled up in various poses... it reminded me that we really need to treasure our time in the present and make the most of the time we have now. 

The exhibition ends on the 23rd of Jan, so there's still time if you want to visit (more info here), and there's another open house from the 21st to the 23rd of Jan (otherwise its $12 per entry for adults).  Bring your SLR if you have one.  We had brought only the compact LX5, thinking that photography might not be allowed, but it turned out you could take pictures (but no flash photography).  The whole exhibition was rather dim, so the photos turned out grainy and blur...

Anyway, with that rather macabre reminder to "celebrate today", we went off for lunch at Pasta Brava to celebrate two "events": Me finishing my dissertation, and the boy finally hitting 10 kg awhile ago (he was so skinny and kept hovering around the 9 plus kg mark for a long time, so it was something to be happy over!)... we really love the pasta there:  

And we ordered mushrooms for the boy (and he loved them, as well as the soup!)...

After an eventful Saturday (we ended the day at Alexandra, where I popped into Ikea while the hubby went to get sport shoes with the boy at Queensway), Sunday turned out to be pretty uneventful, since the hubby was on call.  I did manage to bring the little boy to church on my own though... 

I hope everyone had a good weekend?  Here's to a good week ahead (or what's left of it)... Its been rather productive thus far, with the boy starting some "bible lessons" and me feverishly packing our study (Simplify, remember?) and planning the little boy's upcoming birthday party...

Weekend wanderings: Little celebrations

Junior J and his Kongkong :)

Ok, the hubby and my mum always think I'm nuts when I try to celebrate half birthdays (ie at like 6 months and 18 months) for Junior J... I guess I just try to find any reason for a celebration, after all, it makes one happy, you sometimes get to eat cake, there's usually good food involved, and I mean, there's always something to celebrate about right?

So for the weekend that passed, we made an effort to go out and have fun, in view of the little kid turning one and a half:

The weather forecast predicted thunderstorms in the morning, but it turned out to be:

So we took advantage of the balmy weather and...

:: Went to the zoo, and the boy was fascinated with the otters that were squeaking away (he tried to squeak back!), and also managed to match the elephants to those in his book...

Hey papa, those things at the back look like those in my book!

And he saw the hippos having their own fish spa:

If you take a closer look, you can see fish feeding off the skin of those hippos!

And spent some time waving and blowing kisses to the infamous white tigers:

... and watching the baboons playing:

He also got to eat Ben & Jerry's along with his lunch!

:: Went for dinner at the Botanic Gardens, and brought the dog along too:

Another pizza for the birthday boy, please!
(You can see the open kitchen in the background, where you can watch the pizzas being made!)

Tried pannacotta:

And had a nice walk after that, while the boy chased his own shadow, and the dog lunged at cats:

On Sunday, it was really...

So we stayed in after church so the boy could rest, and celebrated with my family by having yummy Thai food for dinner over at at Wang Thai (@ Blk 92 Toa Payoh Lor 4):

Mango salad... tangy and yummy!

Crispy pork knuckle... Mmmmm!

Since he's now old enough to make it into the toddler class over at Sunday School, we brought him there on Sunday too, and the boy got to:

:: Sing songs (he spent alot of it walking around, while I tried to make him do the actions!)...

:: Make his first artwork with glue (yes, this mama has been depriving him from working with glue, ever since he used crayons on my tree mural!)

:: Eat snacks and interact with a whole bunch of other kids.

:: Experience real school life: Another kid suddenly went up to Junior J and shoved him really hard while he was just wandering around minding his own business, and the boy fell and hit his head.  Cried for abit and insisted on sitting on my lap after that, but he was back to normal 10 minutes later.  

I think all in all, the boy had fun.  I know I did! 

(PS: This post is late, cos I left the camera in the car, so the photos were stuck with the hubby at work!)

Weekend wanderings: The unwired life

Flower growing at the Symphony Lake, Botanic Gardens

Just after I posted about Junior J turning 16 months, our internet connection promptly died.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, since the hubby went and got the modem changed, and nothing seemed to work... so we ended up getting a new internet plan (ours was due for renewal anyway).

Meanwhile, I was suffering from wired withdrawal: No daily fixes of "Apartment Therapy"and "Ohdeedoh" (you are talking about someone who used to keep every single issue of the Ikea catalogue since the time they set up shop in Singapore).  No checking of email, and no Facebook.  I felt odd.  My fingers itched.  So I made off with the hubby's iPhone (mine has no data plan, his does), and got to read and send emails with it, and did a bit of blog hopping here and there during the boy's naps.  However, I guess the internet dying on me was good too since it made me unstick my fingers from a mouse, and focus on other things.   (The nice lady at Singtel loaned us a modem to use meanwhile, hence my posting now.)

We had a busy and great (and a relatively unwired) weekend, thanks to the public holiday on Friday (the hubby was on call on Saturday though)!  We managed to:

:: Get a beautiful new kettle.  Our old one (more than a decade old!) had announced its retirement a week ago, by submitting its resignation letter consisting of loads of gunky stuff from the heating element.  Oh, and we also went shopping at the Philips carnival and bought some stuff, like a new phone, since our old one decided to follow in the way our kettle.

:: Spend an evening at the Botanic Gardens with the boy's grandparents.  We wandered around the Symphony lake, but the boy was rather sleepy then, so he was quieter than usual...

However, he had quite abit of fun walking around the rolling lawns amidst picnicking families and couples...

And stopped many times to examine the grass...

... As well stare at pretty girls having picnics (believe me, we've never ever taught him to do that, he's always had this tendency to flirt with girls, both little and big).  And he promptly fell down since he was so busy looking at this group of girls (which was probably done on purpose since that ensured all their attention was on him)!

And we ended the day with dinner at Casa Verde again, and this time, we managed to try the pizza, which was really good!  

:: Do some major grocery shopping... as well as stock up on some scrapbook supplies (Papermarket was having this big sale, and the hubby was nice enough to let me go shopping while he brought the boy for a walk around the mall).

:: Go for a long, slow drive down Old Upper Thomson Road.  This was a spur of the moment thing (and we didn't have the camera). The hubby wanted to let the little boy go and see the monkeys (macaques) that tend to hang around the area, and the boy was fascinated!

:: End our Sunday by trying out some pretty decent fish and chips at a coffeeshop in Toa Payoh (the boy liked the fish, but the batter was a tad too salty)...

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Weekend wanderings: Sick, scrapping, slurp...

The weekend started off really promising, since I attended my first ever scrapbooking class at Paper Market @Raffle City on Friday afternoon with an ex-colleague, E.  I've been resisting the urge to take up this hobby, since I know that I'd probably get really caught up with working with all the pretty papers and embellishments, and it'll be a slippery slope for both me (and the wallet) after that!

Scrapbooking: Tools of the trade

However, I thought it'll be good to take a break from all the stress my dissertation was giving me, so I said yes to E when she asked me if I was interested.  The whole process warrants an entire post, so I won't elaborate, except to say that we had fun and learnt some stuff.  And the icing on the cake was the 2 doughnuts from J Co that I had after class (I'm off the elimination diet and slowly introducing dairy back since Junior J seems to tolerate it much better now...)!

The weekend then proceeded to go downhill after that... The hubby was on call on Saturday, and spent Sunday sleeping it off.  Both of us caught the bug from Junior J and fell sick, so I spent Saturday on my own, sniffling and trying to run after the little monkey.  The boy threw up his whole breakfast on Sunday morning (and the dog slurped up some of it... eww) so we didn't make it for church.  But I'd rather elaborate on the nicer bits rather than whine, so I'm striking all that off the record...

The sun was shining through the glass front of the restaurant,

which splashed the name of the shop across the wall. 

Pity I only had the iPhone with me!

We were feeling better on Sunday evening, so we finally managed to meet up with our friends, XX and HB, whose wedding we recently photographed, to pass them the photos. :)  We took the opportunity to try out the food at Cacio e Pepe, which was pretty good:

We all shared the Pietro pizza...

... and I tried the sausage stuffed with risotto.

The hubby tried the recommended ravioli with truffle sauce (which is not on the menu), and it was really good.  Junior J had fun stuffing bits of pizza into his mouth, and we ended the meal with lava cake which was yummy too, and made for a nice sweet ending to a not so good weekend.  Anyway, have a great week ahead!

Weekend wanderings: Another great one...

We had another fantastic weekend, since the hubby was post-call on Friday, which made the weekend slightly longer for us. :)  Weekends spent together as a family are a rather rare occurrence for us, so we really try to use the time wisely when we have it!  So for the past 2 days, we managed to:

:: Do some painting in Junior J's room... I'm not going to post pictures of the finished product yet, look out for the "Monday Made" post later! :)

:: Chop up lots of veggies for home-cooked lunches...

:: Head down to church on Saturday, and got reminded about the importance for building relationships during the sermon...

:: Take part in a mini-triathlon (600 m sea swim, 10 km bike, 2.5 km run).  Ok, the hubby took part (and got stung by a jellyfish during the swim, but thankfully it was not a major sting...), while I went down later with Junior J to cheer him on at the finishing line:

I made two flags using post its and ice-cream sticks,

and Junior J waved them to cheer his Papa (it reads "Go!" and "Papa!" btw).
And those are the funky red running shoes the hubby has, a birthday present from his sister.

It was really really hot, but we were so very proud of him being able to finish his first "full" triathlon!  (and he even got interviewed by a reporter from the Straits Times!)

:: Hang out with our DG mates P and H, and their son, little Z, at the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden in the Botanic Gardens...

It was so hard to get the two boys to look at the camera at the SAME time.  

So this is one of the rare shots... but sorry P, that you got partially blocked!

We wandered around enjoying the flora and fauna (we spotted a squirrel and some interesting birds) in the garden...

This was taken by the hubby, and I really loved the shot!

... plus Junior J got to play with the fountains there...

... had fun shaking some musical instruments (made from plant parts) that were on display...

... and kept running off by himself to play on the grass!

The two boys had fun at the playground, where Junior J promptly tried to bury his legs in sand...

... while little Z couldn't really decide whether he liked the sand or not (it was his first time!).

:: End the day at the gardens, by having dinner together at Casa Verde, where the two boys sat opposite each other, stuffed pasta in their mouths, and generally made messes and exchanged toys...

The aftermath of a pasta dinner (taken by the hubby)

The restaurant had run out of the pizzas that they were so famous for, so we settled on pasta...

and left the place with full tummies, itchy mosquito bites, and tired little boys.  

See what I mean by them never looking at the camera at the same time?

It was really a blessed weekend.  I hope you had one too! :)