Being a public holiday today, we decided to bring Darius out for a walk at Chinese Garden.

On the way there on the MRT, we realised that the train was quite empty, which was unusual for a holiday. We were wondering if it was because most Singaporeans have gone for short overseas trips during this long weekend, or if they were just staying at home because of the swine flu?

Anyway, we decided to drop by IMM first because the weather was still too hot for a walk at the garden. When we were there, we were pleasantly surprised that the mall was stroller-friendly, with travellators and accessible slopes.

We came by this store called Kids Mall, which was quite  a large store selling baby related stuff. There were a lot of toys and children’s clothes available too.

While Catherine was checking out the clothes, I carried Darius out of the stroller and held both his hands with mine as I placed him standing on the floor.

I knew he enjoyed standing/walking so I was trying to give him some happy ‘exercise’ times, instead of making him couped up in the stroller. Indeed, he was smiling upon landing his feet on the ground, and to my surprise, he started walking comfortably and rather quickly while I held his hands high up.

I wasn’t using much effort to support him, yet he was doing a fine job of balacing himself as he moved forward. Also, I was not guiding him on where to go and had allowed him to move towards the direction he wished. Interestingly, Darius actually started turning at corners and in between shelves by himself! I was quite amazed by his actions, and together we enjoyed walking all around the store for around 5 minutes with him. ^^

In the end, we only bought a drawing board set for Darius from the store. We thought it should be a good buy since it came with a free smaller sized board, which would be useful for travelling.

We then went to the sky garden at the third floor of IMM, and saw the splash park. We had wanted to bring Darius for some water fun, and had even brought along his and my swimwear. However, judging from the crowd of children already there, we realised it wasn’t such a good idea after all, as Darius might get bumped around (even with me holding him) since some of the children were running around quite rowdily.

There was a dry playground next to the area, but it was crowded with children too. We will probably only bring Darius for some splashing fun after he has learnt to walk by himself independently.

Feeling hungry, we went to the Pepper Lunch restaurant for dinner. After finishing my unagi set and seeing Darius getting restless in the stroller, I carried him out and placed him on my lap. Catherine handed him a small brochure from Pepper Lunch for him to fiddle around, since we knew he enjoyed handling paper with words/pictures on it.

Sure enough, he couldn’t stop experimenting/observing the piece of paper and refused to let go of it. We were glad we could entertain him and soothe him down simply with a piece of paper. ^^|

Darius can sometimes be easily entertained ^^|

When the dessert came, I scooped up some ice cream and placed the spoon near Darius’ mouth to see how he would react. He immediately opened his mouth, knowing that spoon = feeding. It was fun teasing him. ^^

Gonna wait till you are older, Darius~ ^^

After dinner, we took Darius for a cloth diaper change. When we placed him down on the changing table, we realised Darius was already outgrowing the mat! No wonder he’s unhappy lying down on it. ^^|

"Let me out of here!"

By then, it was 6pm and we took the MRT to Chinese Garden MRT Station, and walked a distance of 250m to reach the garden. Entry is free and the park  and there was quite a number of other park visitors when we reached there.

"Erm... This travel brochure did not mention this pagoda..."

We had great fun walking around, while rotating between Catherine and myself to carry Darius with our arms. He was feeling very bored in the stroller and he immediately started smiling and laughing after we brought him out, carried and played with him.

Along the way, we took some nice photos:

Darius is a happy boy! ^^

Father and son mimicking the monkey statue ^^|

Darius is born in the Year of the Rat

Soon the sun set down the west and the skies began to darken. Feeling tired, we started to head back home.

On the way back, we made an amazing discovery about Darius, which gave us quite a big surprise. We shall talk about it on our next post. ^^|

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