Catherine and Darius followed me to exchange my faulty Xbox 360 console at Funan this afternoon. The exchange at the Service Hub on the 6th floor went smoothly, and we settled down at the MacDonalds downstairs for a short break.

I had originally thought of bringing them to Marina Barrage before heading down to Vivo City to purchase something, but we came up with another alternative at the spur of the moment - to visit the Hua Xia branch at the Harbourfront Centre.

I have been posting on a local forum since two days back, looking out for a second-hand Mambo neck float and portable tub. We were thinking of letting Darius get used to floating/swimming in the water at home with these items before bringing him to public swimming pools when he’s older.

But before getting the tub, we wished to let Darius do his debut swim at Hua Xia first to see his receptivity towards this new activity. Today was a good opportunity to bring him for a trial session since we were planning to go Vivo City anyway and Harbourfront Centre was just next to it. We have arranged to go for a session with MeiZhen but since we were hyped up given this opportunity, we decided to get Darius into his debut swim today still. ^^|

We took a cab there and found the shop on the 3rd floor. It was a small unit with some floats and baby books for sale outside. Through the transparent glass in the shop, we could see four tubs, three of which were unoccupied. The lady at the counter approached us as we walked into the shop, and we told her about our first visit.

She then brought us through the glass door, which was later closed to ensure the room was kept warm to prevent our babies from catching a cold. We were advised to give Darius a small feed first as it was nearing his feeding time and he would be needing the extra energy to swim later.

Having fed him half the normal amount, we let him rest for 10 to 15 minutes before we were asked to take off his clothes, put on the neck float, and then place him into the leftmost filled tub.

Soon after he got into the warm waters, he started showing signs of fear and started to frown, and soon led to complaining cries. We were advised to hold on to his hands so that he would feel more secured in his new environment. On top of that, we were also talking to him continuously and singing some songs. All these efforts helped calm him down a little.

Most of the time, he would just look up at us, instead of kicking his legs to propel him around the tub. We tried holding his legs and teach him the kicking motion, but still he hardly used them and chose to let him legs rest in the water. Catherine was commenting that Darius was probably too lazy to kick his feet in the water, or just afraid to try out new stuff. We also suspected that he disliked having the float around his neck. -_-|

The lady had initially told us that since Darius was swimming for the first time, we shouldn’t let him be in the tub for too long. However, it had been close to 30 minutes but the lady still had no intention to help bring him up. She had been trying hard for the past 15 minutes to get Darius to enjoy the swim (by singing and talking), since that would motivate us to sign up a multi-session package with her. We had been remarking to her that Darius was probably getting tired to enjoy the swim, but she continued to proceed with her ‘coaxing’.

An unhappy Darius

In the end, after our repeated prompts that he was really exhausted, she finally agreed to let us bring him up, quickly wrapping a towel over him. She had promised a body massage for Darius, but replied reluctantly that she was currently busy with other visitors and would entertain us later. She probably was disappointed that she could not convince us to sign up a package, since we did not show much interest either.

Decided not to wait for her any longer, since she didn’t even bother to mention about the massage after the swim, despite us staying in the room to finish Darius’ feed. Upon leaving the shop, we bought a Mambo flower shaped neck float as a one-session package.

On the Mambo website, the float costs S$28.90, not including postage fees. At Hua Xia, we only needed to pay S$52 for both the single swimming session and the float. Since the session costs S$28, we were only paying S$24 for the float. Catherine had wanted to get a purple or yellow float, but they only had the blue one. Still, considering the price and convenience, we decided to purchase the float.

Watching Darius swim had also made us hungry (probably due to our continuous verbal encouragement and singing) and we had a quick dinner at Vivo City. By then, Darius had fallen asleep too. He must had been pretty exhausted.

After our dinner, we proceeded to the open area above Vivo City, where a huge Christmas tree stood tall with beautiful lights. We took several pictures with the tree as the backdrop before strolling around the area.

It was a huge and tall Christmas tree

There are pools of water imitating beaches on this large rooftop, and upon reaching one of the ‘poolsides’, Catherine suggested bringing Darius down for a walk (he had already woke up then). We remembered before Darius was born, we had told ourselves that we would bring our child(ren) here to play with the water, after watching other parents doing the same with their children. So we were glad we could finally do that with Darius.

Taking off our shoes, We held Darius by his armpits and let him ‘stand’ in the shallow water which only reached his ankles. We were concerned if he would feel cold in his feet but he appeared alright. Instead, he was either looking stunned in his new environment or turning his head to check out his points of interest. We had good fun taking photos while watching his expressions and actions, and thanks to Catherine’s patience in getting Darius’ attention, we managed to capture several good shots.

Father and son!

Darius' first beach visit was on a man-made one... ^^|

As the night began to fall, we went over to the edge of the roof to take a look at the sea and Sentosa island. As we turned back towards the Christmas tree, a picturesque sight captured our attention:

Thereafter, we walked around the mall for a while before joining a long queue to head home by cab.

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