Letter to Jah (4 years old)

Posted in Birthdays, Letters, my thoughts, Our Thoughts, Parenting decisions, Uncategorized by jahbella

Dear Jah,

You have just turned 4 years old a couple of days ago and it somehow feels like our little baby is now a little boy. A big boy you might correct me if you heard this now. Your Papa is still in disbelief because it has suddenly hit him/ us that you will be entering Kindergarten in a month’s time. We long to rewind to the days where you were a little colicky baby or when you were just learning to take your first steps. Ok maybe not so far back..:)

Jah at 4 months old

First unassisted step at 9 months 3 weeks

But we know you are excited to grow up..you talk about entering Primary school and you talk about being 18 or 21. You talk about what you want to be when you grow up. Right now your dream profession is to be a clown. Yes I kid you not! You have gone from a ‘parachute pilot’ to an army soldier to finally a clown. Although you did mention last night that you wanted to be a teacher, just like me but your reason was so that we could go to school together. 🙂

You have become quite a book worm and a Star wars fan

Being 4 years old is proving to be a trying age for both you and your Papa and I. We absolutely love the conversations we have with you and your hilarious antics but sometimes things get a little out of hand. We love that you are so opinionated because it helps us to learn more about who you are but you are also starting to test the boundaries, push our buttons and well really really assert yourself. The past couple of weeks have been a nightmare to say the least because well apparently everything has to be Jah’s way or the highway. Oh wait a minute, Jah hasn’t come home for a few weeks now because he is climbing the beanstalk with Jack. Yes, you have assumed the identity of a little dog called Goldie and you have renamed my stuff dog ‘An’ (he used to be called Goldie). Yes you have become quite the drama king (in a rather cute and amusing way).

We love your tender heart and your need to make sure that everyone is taken care of. We love the compassion that you have and the way you seem to understand the world’s big issues in your own little innocent, compassionate 4 year old way.You are mature beyond your years. You have a level of maturity and magnitude for forgiveness that even some adults may not have. We lost your iPad this last week and instead of breaking down and throwing a tantrum like we would expect any 4 year old or even an adult to for that matter. You said these words in the sweetest kindest voice ever, “Its ok Papa, I think the birthday robber came and took my iPad. Its not your fault Papa, its ok.” Ironically we would probably have felt much better if you had just thrown a tantrum but in that moment it felt like our hearts weighed 1,000 tonnes. Perhaps because it was filled with guilt but bursting with pride all at the same time.

You have just turned 4 years old a couple of days ago and it somehow feels like our little baby is now a little boy. A big boy you might correct me if you heard this now.

But you will always be our little baby.

JahBella’s Mummy

12Nov2015

Jahbella’s Tokyo Adventures (Jul 2015) – Ninja Restaurant Akasaka Review

Posted in Eating Out with Kids, Holidays, Japan by jahbella

One of the main things which we were worried about when it came to visiting Tokyo with the kids, was food. We heard that most places in Tokyo or at least those that would be serving the more ‘authentic’ Japanese experience, would not be too child friendly (think small places/ no high chairs/ unfriendly chefs/ zero tolerance for kids who make a pip). So how do we ensure that we get a decent experience (i.e no fast food) but yet feel welcomed and have the kids enjoy themselves.

Taking the train to Akasaka

A friend who had just returned from Tokyo recommended that we try the Ninja Restaurant at Akasaka. The Ninja Restaurant Akasaka is basically a themed restaurant which served mainly course meals and is ‘set’ in a Ninja village. The experience starts from the moment you enter their doors and its main entrance is so non-descript that you can’t even tell what’s behind that door on street level. In fact you wouldn’t even notice it unless you were looking for it. Trust me, we were looking for it and we missed it. :p

Upon entering, your Ninja guide would take you through the ‘village’. Through trap doors and door ways with low beams and ceilings. Lots of bending down and going down narrow stairways before you eventually reach the main dining room. It was all very dark so please excuse our photos which were all taken in a very dark restaurant. Oh and we couldn’t take any photos of our ‘journey’ through the village for fear of falling.

We prepped Jah way beforehand for fear of his reaction to the ‘scary’ ninjas and the dark restaurant so thankfully he was perfectly fine and loved the experience. However we totally forgot about prepping Bella, actually it would have been quite impossible to prep her. She was and is still currently in the phase of “I’m scared of everything” (come on! She was even afraid of standing next to cute ole Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland..sigh). So there was a bit of resistance from Bella and she insisted on sitting on Joel’s lap through the entire meal which was well not the best dining experience for him.

Anyway we were led to our private dining room, yes a private dining area/ room even though it was just the 4 of us. Thank goodness so that we could have some privacy to calm Bella. Oh yes and because we had kids with us, the restaurant had advised that we could only book the 5pm to 7pm dinner slot as they do not allow kids after 7pm due to the ‘nature of the crowd’. While some people might feel ‘discriminated’ by this, I felt that it is a very good system to ensure that the kids were allowed a friendly environment and no one was going to be upset that they might be seated next to kids. 🙂

Don't be fooled by this peaceful moment...Bella was super jumpy hahah

Don’t be fooled by this peaceful moment…Bella was super jumpy! Thank goodness for a private area!

We were asked to pre-order our sets when we made our email reservation so that the kitchen could ensure that they had the ingredients for what we wanted. They had a kids menu available but we chose to order 3 adults meals to share amongst the 4 of us because we weren’t really keen on the kids menu. However a recent check on their website shows that they have updated their kids menu offering a little and even offer a kids ninja bandana as part of the set. Would have been nice if they had it during our visit 🙂

That is where she will stay for most of the meal…:/

We ordered their 2 sets of their Tasting Course as well as their Jyubei course. The courses were delivered one by one and only after you have completed each course. So you would probably buffer about 2 hours for the meal. The food was good! Some dishes probably alittle ‘stranger’ than I would have liked but we all loved their beef. In fact the kids were fighting us for the only course of beef that we ordered..grrrr…We didn’t take photo of a lot of our food because we were so caught up in eating, the entertainment and also with pacifying with Ms Bella so honestly the food photos don’t do the meal much justice.

Yes..all edible! Jah was made to believe that they gave him Ninja power!

Some of the courses were accompanied by a bit of fanfare – like dry ice coming out of a ‘treasure box’ which they would ask you to open and also get you to crack the magic egg, or a ninja sword display before you were served your next dish as well as some drama as your ninja server prepares your stone boiled soup.

Magic box…

Magic egg???

Dramatic Sword Display with fire!

Stone boiled soup (The soup was cooked with hot rocks in the pot!)

We were initially concerned about whether the kids could sit through a 2 hour meal but with the fanfare and entertainment, the kids were entertained (or at least Jah was..Bella was just always on edge every time the Ninja reappeared with food :p)

They rounded up the meal with a private Ninja Magic Show where a magician would come to your private dining area and perform a few magic tricks. Jah was amused and annoyed all at the same time because he felt tricked by the magician’s ball disappearing from under the cup act. :p

Bella totally suspicious of our Ninja magician (Note no photos allowed during the magic show)

What impressed me about the experience was the fact that the show didn’t just end with dinner. Our Ninja server engaged us and the kids all the way as she was escorting us out of the ‘village’ and even needed Jah to help perform some ‘magic’ before the door would finally open to let us out. They even took their act all the way to street level as they bid us goodbye.

It was an awesome first dinner out in Tokyo and truly a wonderful official start to our Tokyo Trip. 🙂

JahBella’s Mummy

More of our kid friendly Tokyo Adventure coming up soon…

In the meantime, you can read about…

5Nov2015

Jah’s Birth Story – 9 Nov 2011

Posted in Our Thoughts, Parenting decisions by jahbella

I have always wanted to document Jah’s and Bella’s birth stories but never quite acted on that thought. To avoid any further procrastination and with the encouragement of some wonderful mummy bloggers who have recently done the same. I have decided that there is no better time to document Jah’s birth story than now, given that my little boy will be turning 4 in a few days.

The road leading up to my pregnancy with Jah was not the smoothest one, with 2 miscarriages and a lot of heart pain before we could finally got to ‘enjoy’ being pregnant with our first child. For that story, click here.

Jah at 4 months… on mummy’s birthday (2 June 2011)

While I was fortunate enough not to be plagued with horrible morning sickness, I basically had ‘whole day sickness’ till the 20^th week or so which pretty much stopped me from eating most things or anything. I didn’t puke but I also didn’t feel like eating anything at all. I didn’t put on any weight in my initial months of pregnancy but thankfully Jah continued to gain weight and he was a whooping 3.6kg (based on the scans) by the time we were at 36 weeks.

4D scan of Jah…:D

I know it looks abit scary…

But really fun to see his expression and imagine what he might look like..

So yes we were pretty eager to have him out, like most first time parents normally are (until they realize its really easier if they stayed in :p) Also because of an old back injury (fractured tailbone), I was very worried that my tailbone would snap again during labour if Jah turned out to be too big.

During the last few weeks leading up to the birth, we spent almost every visit asking/ convincing/ psychoing our gynae that perhaps we should consider a c-section or that perhaps we should induce the birth soon. On hindsight, I think it was not so much the fact that we wanted Jah out fast or that I was soooo worried about my old injury but more so because I’m just a total control freak who needed to know exactly when it was going to happen. Yes and I now know…it doesn’t work that way. :p

I honestly can’t for the life of me, remember exactly how it happened or why our gynae was suddenly for an induction but on the morning of 8 Nov 2011 (during a routine gynae appointment) at 38 weeks, our gynae decided that we could potentially consider an induction (if we wanted to). Oh we wanted to! This was perfect for my plan! I didn’t want that off chance that I might go into labour on 11 Nov 2011 (11/11/11) and be in a crowded hospital with lots of planned births. I really wanted to be discharged by then so that my child didn’t have to ‘fight it out’ in a crowded nursery. Yes control freak you say and yes such strange frivolous thoughts! The ‘Now-Me’ would have tried to slap some sense into the ‘Then-Me’.

We were told to come back later that night at 12 midnight for the induction. So off we went to prep the house with the final ‘touches’ (Joel was cleaning the house up till the very last minute before we left for the hospital). So no wonderful ‘last’ meal before the birth for us, we didn’t realize that we should probably have jumped at that chance for one ‘last’ leisurely meal. 😦

We turned up at 12 midnight at the hospital, did our registration and I was promptly sent to the observation ward to commence the induction process. I was given the first pill to kickstart the contraction process and was told to head to my room for some rest before ‘reporting’ at 5am again for the 2^nd pill (it was 2am by then). Both Joel and I were too excited to catch a wink and honestly I wish someone had told me about walking around to quicken the induction process.

I was given the 2^nd pill at 5am and then given some help to clear my bowels (ok we shall not go into details here). I was kept at the observation ward and the nurse would come every 1 to 2 hours to check on the state of my dilation. I was also put on an Oxytocin drip to help bring on the contractions and to help with the dilation process.

By 8am, I was only 1.5cm dilated and that’s when my gynae decided to go ahead and burst my waterbag, hoping that this would push me along (no pun intended). I was told that based on my progress, Jah should be out by 3pm.

The moment my gynae told me that he was going to burst my waterbag, I immediately requested for an epidural. I remembered reading that the contractions were going to be really painful without the cushion of a waterbag and I was also not going to take the chance of it being too late for an epidural (you can’t have one if you are more than 8cm dilated).

I was given my epidural about 45 minutes after they burst my waterbag. On hindsight, I probably should have just waited. The epidural gave me such horrible side effects for the next few hours that it was probably much worse than any labour contractions that I would have had to go through. I was shivering and shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t sit up or hold a proper conversation. In fact I couldn’t even sit up to vomit. Yes I was throwing up repeatedly. It was such an out of body experience and I truly felt like I was going to die or if not someone should just kill me because I was utterly miserable to say the least. I think Joel was equally miserable because all he could do was hold my hair while I put my guts out (it was mainly water because I hadn’t eaten since 10pm the night before).

By the time 3pm came around, I was only 4cm dilated but we were all still hopeful that we were not too long off from 10cm. I remember a furry of activities around me at about 530pm, nurses coming in and out and then my gynae rushing it to check on me. I thought that this was it..I must be 10cm dilated now. My gyane comes in and tells us that I was still only 4cm dilated and that we would need to do an emergency c-section because Jah was in distress and he was trying hard to come out but the dilation was not enough. Basically there was pressure forming at the top of his head from trying to force his way out and so they had to switch off the oxytocin, slow down the contractions and allow him to ‘take a break’. I was too tired and too out of it from the epidural side-effects to even care about whether it was a natural birth or a c-section. All I wanted was for it to be over and for Jah to be safely in our arms.

I was prepped for the emergency c-section and I remembered myself asking the nurse “what if I have to puke during the operation”? Thankfully I managed to, just before the operation started and it was smooth sailing thereafter. Joel joined me for the emergency c-section and I remembered him watching/ checking Jah as he was being weighed (3.745kg! – yes that skinny boy now was 3.745kg at birth). I remembered Jah being put on my chest after that and I remembered that breathless feeling…I’m not sure if it was from the 3.745kg weight on my chest or from the fact that he is now our responsibility 🙂

Fresh out of the oven and onto the weighing scale!

I remember Jah and Joel leaving the operation theatre together while I was being stitched back up and prepped for recovery. I remember being back in my hospital bed with a chubby Jah in my arms. I’m not sure if it was from sheer exhaustion or effects of medication/ pain relief but I remember nothing about what happened after I gave birth and before I held Jah again in my arms. But perhaps that’s all I need to remember…how difficult it was to have him and how precious he is to us.