Musings

Hannah should be eating lumpy foods now as 1) she has more teeth and 2) chewing helps (indirectly) in speech.

Just the other day, I made cream of mushroom soup for our dinner and used some of the soup to mix with steamed rice for her too. I’m glad she took to the taste of mushrooms positively as both Yang and I love mushrooms. :)

Okay, dinner tonight. I heated up 100 ml of frozen, homemade tomato sauce and added minced beef. At the same time, I had a small bowl of rice steaming in another pot. The whole process of preparation and cooking took no more than 30 minutes.

Once the minced beef tomato sauce was ready, it was poured over the steamed rice (I added more water to get very moist rice). Just before feeding Hannah, the rice is mixed thoroughly with the sauce.

She enjoyed it :) Yay.

Something strange has been happening of late: I’ve become increasingly forgetful – and not of things that I did a week ago, but just barely seconds ago!

The typical scenario goes like this. I’ll lock the car door, and walk off. Barely 5 seconds later, I won’t for my life remember for certain if I’d just locked the door – and I’ll have to walk back to double-check. And the funny thing is that at least 19 out of 20 times, the door would be indeed locked still.

I’m thinking it has to do with the fact that lots of little routine things we do are mechanically wired in our brains, so that when we actually perform the action, it doesn’t actually register into our memory imprint. So, when we’re uncertain if we just did something – whether it’s if we switched off the water heater, locked the front gate, or the car door – it typically comes down to whether we trust our mechanical routine behavior, or the absence of a visual memory imprint of us performing that action.

Still… it’s an inescapable feeling of resignation that I’m getting old. Gah.:(

The play yard we picked up several months ago has been experiencing minimal use recently, since Hannah doesn’t react very well anymore to roaming about with plastic partitions. We routinely let her walk around the living room and study these days, and she’s learned to sit by herself at the entrance of the kitchen and not enter unless one of us asks her to. Wonderfully learned behavior of the part of our little girl.:)

That said, our favorite spot – as in for Daddy and Daughter – still remains our bed in the master bedroom. She’ll climb all over the mattress and linen, play hide and seek with the little red clock, and – of late also – sprawl herself on the bed, giggle and on the occasion stone too. All under my watchful eyes though. While she’s learned to recognize the danger areas, e.g. where the edge of the bed mattress is, there still is always the possibility of her accidentally falling and hitting herself on the bed’s wooden frame.

Plenty of photo opportunities when she’s at play with the little red clock, though it no longer works very well anymore since she’s been pulling at its knobs and dials.:)

Playing the Frontierville Facebook game has been a bit of a bonding activity for me and Hannah at home. I’m quite certain that she doesn’t understand what the game’s about, but she’s attracted to its colorful visuals and folksy and rhythmic music for sure.:)

Hannah learning how to harvest crops on Daddy’s homestead.:)

But in reality, I’m just lucky if she doesn’t delete any of my neighbors, the way she goes about banging the keyboard!

Now that Hannah’s happily seconded during day hours at the nanny’s, our weekday morning hours have become pretty routine. On Wednesdays though, Ling starts in school a little later, and that’s given us a weekly opportunity for us to get prepped a little more leisurely, and also for some pictures in the new morning light coming into the house.:)

She’s become quite attached to Mommy, and will always gravitate towards her when she has a choice between Ling or myself. Not unexpected since Ling’s still the primary caregiver between the two of us.

That said, this morning there was a really lovely bonding moment between Hannah and Daddy. She was happily contended to rest herself while hugging me as I sung to her.:)

Hannah now loves to pinch things from around the living room, study and her own room, and walk around the house with them. She’s a little less attached to the sheep doll these days too, an item she could not tear herself away from earlier this year.

These days, her repertoire of toys include memory card boxes, talcum powder bottles, her baby books, dinner mats, coasters etc. At the end of each day just after we set her down to bed, we’ll have to scour the entire house to pick up all the ‘litter’ on the floor.:)

Just some random sampling of cute and endearing moments with our little girl. Such behaviour of hers might not repeat again.

• When I squat down, open my arms and call Hannah’s name, she would giggly make her clumsy baby walk towards me and hug me.
• She’d let us hold her hand and walk with her.
• When she stood up on her high chair to play, I would give her a displeased look and told her firmly to sit down. It might take her a while but she would eventually ‘guai guai de’ squat down. I would continue to stare at her and say “leg leg” and then she would slowly put her legs down to a sitting position. She might avoid my glare and then afterwards check whether she had gotten my approval by making some eye contact.
• Hannah would shake her bum bum to the beat of songs played to her.
• She would walk over and sit on my laps when I hold out a book to read to her. Sometimes she would look up to me and make eye contact while I was reading to her.
• She would laugh at us when we make funny sounds.
• She would put her little finger to dig my nose and poke through my lips.
• She would sit at the entrance to the kitchen where I prepare her meals and ‘wait’ for mommy to play with her.
• She could understand the meaning of my words even though she could not utter them herself yet. For example, I have asked her to hang her towel back on the rack where she had pulled it off (I didn’t expect her to do it actually) and she understood me and tried in her own messy manner to spread the towel on the rack.
• She would blow me a kiss after I put her down to bed for the night.
• She would open her mouth widely and say ‘ahh’ for ‘amen’ during our bedtime prayer.
• She plays ‘hide and seek’ with me when it is time for bath. She would disappear from my sight and then reappear to check whether I’m still around. Upon seeing me, she would giggle and go back into hiding. :)
• She yaks on her pink diaper cream tube (pretends it to be a mobile phone).

Of course, we had our share of exasperating moments with her too. For instance, she would sometimes cry without apparent reason.

Below is a recent video taken of her trying to get her hands on her wet laundry and her latest play-thing (green cushion). :)

From Paris with Love (2010) – on rental. Luc Besson, the award winning French film director and producer, is quite a prolific filmmaker. In the last 5 years alone, he’s been credited in an astonishing 18 films already. A lot of his output belong to the action film genre, though within the genre itself there’s been critical hits (e.g. Léon starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman in her breakout role) and films that got royally panned by reviewers (e.g. Transporter 3).

Interestingly, a couple of his most recent action films have starred big named Hollywood actors. He produced Taken, the action film starring Liam Neeson that I five-starred last year, and this year we’ve got From Paris with Love, a super violent action-heavy starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

I don’t care much for Meyers after the over-acting he did in The Tudors, but Travolta is always fun to watch in roles that see him as a foul-mouth guns-a-blazing criminal/terrorist. Travolta does more of the same in this new film but as a borderline good-guy. He plays Charlie Wax, a super counter-terrorist agent who’s motto revolves around ‘smash enemy into pulp first, don’t bother with questions later’. The American agent’s sole expertise lies in violently eliminating terrorist cells.

Starring Travolta, Meyers and a Ming Vase.

Meyers comes in as Ambassadorial aide James Reese but who really dreams of a job with the CIA. Wax is flown into Paris where he’s met by Reese in a hilarious introduction scene involving Wax with a bunch of skeptical French customs officers. It’s scene after scene of gun battles and explosions thereafter with a wide-eyed Reese gradually waking up to the fact that being a CIA agent might mean he has to readjust his life expectancy.

Unlike Taken though, there’s no pretense of subtlety in this film and even less story to speak of. There are a couple of secondary characters, mostly oriented around Reese’s normal (boring) day job and life, though in the film’s last act, one of these characters reveals himself to be a lot more than originally seemed.

There’s a bit of cute and fun banter between the two mostly to do with Wax’s joy in partaking in extreme violence and Reese recoiling in horror each time, but the two otherwise have little ‘buddy’ chemistry. Moreover, unlike Bryan Mills (Neeson)’s motivation in engaging in violence in Taken, Wax’s only motivator is…er… that he’s just loves his guns and perforating terrorists and bad guys with bullet holes.

The film will explain what’s the role of the Ming vase.

So, as fun as Travolta is to watch while he relishes his role as the gun-happy nut, there’s no understanding to attain of his character. Reese fares a little better on account that one of the story’s major outcomes is centered on the aforementioned secondary character.

Still, it’s a ball of loud, noisy fun for about 92 minutes. Travolta apparently liked his role so much he’s open to do a sequel for this film LOL.

Leap Year (2010) – on rental. The long National Day weekend saw the both of us catching up on a whole ton of films. Five actually, including Salt that I just posted a short review of. We also finished watching two Luc Besson films: District B13: Ultimatum starring Parkour expert David Belle, and From Paris with Love (this action film is anything but a romantic drama), and two bona fide romantic dramas: Remember Me, and Leap Year.

Leap Year is a new romantic comedy starring America’s sweetheart Amy Adams who plays Anna, with Matthew Goode, the lanky British actor who recently played Ozymandias in The Watchmen and plays Declan in this new film.

Anna is in a serious relationship with her well-to-do boyfriend doctor Jeremy (Adam Scott). But when the latter doesn’t propose for her hand in marriage but instead goes on a work trip to Dublin, she takes off after him intending to propose to him instead. How’s that? According to Irish tradition, the man who receives a marriage proposal on a Leap Day must accept it.

Unfortunately, getting to her man to Dublin from Boston is anything but easy: inclement weather puts her on the other side of the Isle, and she has to now somehow find her way across the island to Dublin before Leap Day. So she enlists the help of Declan, the proprietor of a local pub in financial difficulties and who needs the money Anna’s willing to pay.

Anna (Amy Adams) and Declan (Matthew Goode).

The film does have a couple of things going for it. Stylistically, it’s filmed in the same way as Made of Honor. You get gorgeous scenery of Ireland, a locale not often seen these days in modern dramas – beautiful enough again for Ling to add to her ‘must see places in my lifetime’. There’s an absolutely stunning view of the steep cliffs along Ireland’s coast line against the setting sun that’s worth the rental or theater admission ticket.

You also get interactions with the Irish locals, one type of which is when they look at Yankee antics, courtesy of Adams this time, with a mix of disdain and bemusement; and the other type of local customs, accents and cultural idiosyncrasies.

There’s also the two likable leads – Goode who’s naturally English and barely manages faking an Irish accent, and Adams – who’s always a joy to watch. Now that’s an actress I find beautiful compared to the likes of Jolie. The two of them are easy on the eyes, and their inevitable romance and feelings for each other are slowly nurtured in a very unrushed manner through the film’s running length.

She’ll be back. Really.

On the other hand; there are missed opportunities. The film’s title is drawn from the aforementioned Irish tradition, but this cultural practice – if at all true to begin with – has only almost coincidental relation to the story itself. The practice is mentioned throughout the film to create some sense of urgency for Anna in her madcap endeavors to get to Jeremy before Leap Day, but beyond this, you could have easily removed this story element and lose very little in the process.

The second issue lies with the story. There’s little that surprises in this film and who Anna eventually ends up with – Declan or Jeremy – is a foregone conclusion. OK, so romantic dramas of this sort are formulaic, but when you have non-conventional films like 500 Days of Summer, the story outcome in Leap Year feels a little too safe.

And lastly; I like Adams. But man, the things the film makes her do here. You’ll see her vomit, get drenched in stormy weather, and roll in mud. The film isn’t coarse by any measure, but I was wondering if the scenes depicting Anna’s dilemma and of her slightly ditzy personality might had been shown without resorting to this sort of antics.

Mixed bag then. Watch if you’re a fan of either actor, or if you’d like to get a preview for another vacation spot during the long December holidays.:)

It’s been a while since we’ve taken Hannah down by the pool – the last being when Matt was in Singapore. Hannah still loves getting her feet wet though, so we dropped her into the children’s pool with her baby buoy during NDP for some wet n’ wild.:)

She likes her float so much the next day she walked about the house with it.:)

Day three of the long weekend! We were originally intending to head down to Ikea and Tampines Mall for brunch and to pick up replacement cabinet handles for the kitchen but decided not to squeeze with the rest of Singapore at these two popular joints. So, it was the usual haunt at Compass Point – Ling always has stuff she can buy at Kiddy Palace. Couple of pictures before we headed out first.:)

And the following at the mall itself by Ling:

Hannah taking a walk with Daddy.:)