by Penny on June 15, 2010
Recently a good friend’s baby arrived and the new parents are of course delighted. So are we in welcoming the newborn baby. Then recently I’ve received good news from a few other friends that they are expecting and the babies are due very soon. One of them is even expecting twins! How sensational!
All the good news made me feel very warm. We communicated mostly via emails and photos of newborn babies and expecting mummies’ bumps were shared too. Then I suddenly realised that all these exchanges of baby announcements could be made a lot warmer and personalised if we had the time to turn the meaningful photos into photo cards and have them delivered to friends instead of doing things the virtual way.
I personally had an experience receiving some of these memorable cards and these are cards that you don’t throw away after you’ve read the messages in them because they are actually pictures of your friends or loved ones. How many of you throw out non-personalised christmas cards after you’ve kept them for several months?
I’ve recently just discovered a card shop online (CardsDirect.com) and had an experience in receiving some nice and personalised cards from them. They were delivered to my doorstep and as I’m pro-online shopping, I simply love the idea of having cards I need without having to go shop for them one at a time from the gift shops. I just order a bunch of general cards like birthday cards and thank you notes and I can use it as and when I need them, even in “emergency” cases where I don’t have time to run out to grab a card.
They also do personalised cards and I’m quite tempted to have some done up. I’m not too sure where I can get personalised cards done rather cheaply around here, so I might just turn to CardsDirect.com to order some when the time comes.
What about you? Have the internet turned you into a virtual card-sender or do you stick to the good old physical greeting cards?
by Penny on June 14, 2010
A few weeks back we brought Ryan to the movies for the first time. He didn’t have a clue what a movie is, neither did he understand what cinema meant. But all that was before he stepped foot into one.
When we saw that the final Shrek was showing at the cinema, we thought it was a great time to start introducing him to the movie. Before we brought him there, I made sure to expose him to some Shrek movies in case he may not like the show after all if he watched it for the first time at the movies.
So I bought him the first Shrek movie on CD and he totally enjoyed it. Thanks to his aunt, he also has a Shrek figurine from McDonald’s Happy Meal 
It’s a really precious toy to him.
He was captivated by the beautiful Princess Fiona but at the end of the show when she chose to be an ogre forever, he was a little upset and said he didn’t want to watch it again because the pretty girl turned into the green thing!
In any case, I didn’t give up and bought him the second sequel and he watched it anyway. When asked whether he preferred the first or second Shrek, he still liked the first one. Actually, so did we. The only thing that was funny in the second one was Puss In Boots.
So after we have gauged his interest in Shrek, we finally told him that we will go to the movies and watch the final one. We skipped the third sequel actually. But it didn’t matter, we enjoyed ourselves anyway.
Ryan was quite anxious about going to the cinema since we spoke so much about it. The day that we had the movie date, he even told his babysitter that he wanted to take his nap earlier that day because we were going to pick him up early so that we can go for the movie Good boy he was!
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Some weeks ago I was home alone playing with Ryan. I can’t remember what we were playing but usually each game won’t last too long before he makes a switch to another. But the part I remember most about that night was that we came to one of those “pretend” play when he would ask me to talk to his toy.
So during this make-belief conversation, I was exclaiming to his Eeyore soft toy that I was having some pimples and lines on my face and I put on a pout to show my dismay. Ryan looked up at me, touched my cheek gently and then said “It’s ok, be happy” and he smiled at me briefly before he turned his attention back to his toys.
That little moment was enough for me to have a high even long after he’s snoozed off and I’m left staring at that sweet angelic face, deep in slumber. He really is a sweet little boy and his small action of trying to cheer me up really did cheer me although the complaint was a pretend one. Even if it was for real, I wouldn’t be too concerned right then to go in search for acne and best wrinkle cream reviews anymore…the time is better spent just looking at my little angel sleep.
I’m sure for every parent out there, there are many of such moments where we are just so touched in our hearts that words cannot describe just how we feel. The joys of parenthood, huh?
Since Ryan was born, I was thinking of doing some nice family shots. Everyone does one of those with some studios these days and I thought it is a neat idea. At least we get to look nicer with some Photoshop skill applied to hide a little of this and that! Haha.
But jokes aside, I’ve not pursued on getting this done and now Ryan is already 3 years old. I think we should at least get one done before the year is up. Each time I pass by those bridal houses along SS2 in PJ, I would be reminded of how nice it was to take beautiful pictures and how every bride and groom would share them with guests by showing off their slideshows.
Whilst we won’t be flashing our wedding photos anymore, I think it’s a great idea to flash photos of Ryan growing up. If not for anyone else, at least for Ryan. He does love looking through his own pictures from the day he was a newborn and he would have so many questions to ask. Sometimes, he even laughed at how he was almost hairless at one point.
All the more this should be a reason for us to get our lazy butts moving and go scouting for a good place for such shots. When I say good, I’m also talking about affordability, don’t want to be paying through our noses for the photographs like how most bridal couples do for their wedding photography.
Does anyone have any place or photographers to recommend? I’m sure you would have done one of these already Right now I only have one candidate in mind which is untested. And that’s also because I saw them put up a big banner of a family picture on their wall. The place I’m talking about is called Your Precious Story. Has anyone used them before? There seems to be nice photos on their site.
If we can’t find anything else, I guess we can always give them a try…
I spent the entire day away today, only coming home just after 5pm to spend the evening with Ryan. Though I feel some guilt sometimes for being away on weekends, but I know that taking this weekend away to learn something new and valuable is worth the sacrifice.
I attended a workshop that continues for another full day tomorrow. In this workshop, I learned about how we use the brain to our advantage. Although this workshop is for my work purpose, I found that it can be so easily applied to raising children too. And children will definitely have much to gain being trained from young to use their brain power to develop them into having a mindset that’s empowering.
So I’m going to implement it right away and make full use of it with Ryan. See, it really was a weekend well spent for the long term gains I get out of it.
I have to go to bed soon as we start again early tomorrow morning with the next session of the training. Don’t want to miss the start of it as we’re doing some interesting experiments first thing we get there. I’m quite tired out from the whole day sitting there and learning, so I think I’ll pamper myself with a sleeping mask tonight to relax. But before that, I need to get started on my new acne treatments tonight too. Don’t know why I’m breaking out slightly around my nose and inner cheek area.
Looking forward to yet another great day of learning tomorrow, not to mention practicing it too!
