haw par villa

i'd never heard of haw par villa before, but went with some friends to check out this mythological "theme park" built by the tiger balm brothers (and by theme, i mean creepy/weird chinese sculptures depicting aspects of confucian life and death in a ghostly quiet hillside park).
i wish i could speak mandarin on a daily basis, but today i really needed to speak it to understand this place.

these little turtles are abundant in sing

a stone tiger, a topless mermaid with amputated fingers, and crazy crow eyes

but there were beautiful parts too.

i am a homebody, and have been trying to get sage into a routine since we've been traveling a lot, so it was good to get out and do something cultural.
i'm getting too lax on my singapore to-do list!

kuala lumpur, malaysia

nate and i made an unofficial deal that when he travels for over a week, sage and i try to go with. so to KL we went!

things started off with a bang. nate was booked on singapore air, and i'd just bought a cheap ticket on arguably the worst budget airline ever. one detail i failed to consider (and i'm blaming it on sleep deprivation) is that there are multiple airports in KL. little did we know when nate was searching for me at customs, i was actually at a different airport. sage decided to kick things up a notch and shriek happily, but loudly for most of the flight. with almost-dead cell phones, we found each other and made it to putrajaya, our first stop.

nate had meetings at a beautiful resort in the jungly suburbs of KL, so we hung out there for a week...


petronas towers in the distance








sage has never had her own real crib, and felt she needed to properly taste it.


this is why we come. nate misses this when he travels a lot.

...then we made our way downtown for a weekend stay in the city. our valentine's gift to each other was a romantic weekend in a swanky hotel that we snagged for a bargain. you know, as romantic as it can be with a baby sleeping in the same room.

the petronas towers were once the tallest buildings in the world


view from the towers

not such a fan of sea coconut water


bintang walk

bought a painting for sage's future-room-that-is-not-a-closet at central market

malay makes sense: spell it like you say it.

proof i was there too

KL felt a lot like singapore, but dirtier. well, everywhere is dirtier than sing.
we didn't see all the places on my list, but we had a great time.

and then we came home to a package of love and taco seasoning from my mom.
best homecoming ever!

baby food

the majority of our suitcases coming home from our christmas vacation were filled with baby food, baby supplies, baby clothes, baby toys...you get the picture. i thought we had a pretty good stock hold, but little did i know how fast sage would blow through it.
so i checked out the options at our local store...

this is what i have to work with.
the thought of egg custard makes me want to throw up,
so no, i'm not feeding that to my little girl.
also, i feel like all this food might secretly have ketchup as one of the ingredients...heinz?

i couldn't stop thinking about fruits of the forest gel. what does that even mean?
who knows if any of the ingredients are even fruit.

after some light reading, i opted to make my own.
i was so proud of my domesticity, my dedication to healthy, whole foods.
i did have to look up how to cut a mango on youtube, but you better believe there is an ice cube tray full of fresh mango purée in our freezer.
and then i fed it to sage, who normally loves the gerber version of mangoes.
re.ject.ion.
with a wrinkled frown and everything.
nevermind that we're living blenderless and ovenless.
my tool of choice is the awesome food mill my wise mother gifted me.
i'm determined on this homemade food kick though...on to bananas.

eight months

how appropriate that sage is eight months old on valentine's day because i love this age.


i gave sage a lipstick kiss on the cheek and tried to make her lay on the floor in a tutu,
but she was like really mom, stop trying to make me pose like that baby on pinterest. girl's gotta move. so she ripped off her headband and crawled away.


her personality is oozing.
this would be the moment that she looked me in the eye, yanked off her bib,
screamed at the top of her lungs, then smiled at me all in .5 seconds. what?!


she crawls, tries to climb out of her bath tub, has six teeth,
licks the floor, thinks her dad is hilarious, and keeps life interesting.
freeze, time, freeze!

thaipusam

sage and i woke up early one morning to catch a glimpse of thaipusam, a hindu festival
where devotees symbolically carry a burden--a.k.a. skewering some body part,
wearing heavy canopies, or carrying a pot of milk.
the greater the pain, the greater merit earned before the hindu god murugan.
the festival starts at midnight and goes throughout the next day,
so we caught the end of the devotees' 4 kilometer pilgrimage to a hindu temple.

this guy flashed a peace for us

ouch!

yikes

somebody likes independence (and green beans) in this house...

but with those dark blue-gray eyes and a little head tilt action,
we melt.

year of the dragon

the party just kept going in january when we returned home to chinese new year decorations and festivities galore. red and gold everywhere, little stands with shiny boxes of oranges and other sweets (all bring good luck), and two days of singapore looking like a ghost town as all the stores closed and people were visiting their families. you can even order the "prosperity burger" at good old mcdonald's in honor of the new year.

our building is decked out in pink.
i'm tempted to just ask if i can borrow those pink flower balls for sage's first birthday party...

the exquisite marina bay sands hotel behind

touch the dragon for good luck

we watched the sun set with thousands of people

nate was done with all the crowds and the sweaty heat, but i made him pose anyway

last dance of the dragon

may you prosper in the year of the dragon