Today, we went down to IKEA Tampines and its Darius’ second trip there (see Darius’ First Trip to IKEA). We were intending to get him a new bed from here as he is beginning to outgrow his cot.

As Darius was sleeping when we reached the place, we decided to go have our lunch first at IKEA’s cafeteria, filling our stomachs with a rather nice chicken chop rice. Then with good timing, Darius woke up right after we were leaving the cafeteria and preparing to make our move to around the place.

First, we headed to the children section and let Darius loose to explore the play area himself. He soon spotted this push trolley and started pushing it around:

Seeing that he was enjoying himself with the trolley and knowing that pushing is a good activity for toddlers, we considered buying it for him. However, after we saw him trying to step onto the trolley and nearly slipping off, we decided otherwise. Safety will have to come into consideration.

As Darius was trying out the other stuff in the play area, he started whining. Checking the time, we then realised it had already past his lunch time!

We quickly returned to the cafeteria to feed him, only to discover that it had already been fully packed with the lunch crowd. While we were wondering where else could we go to feed him, we noticed a glass door at a corner of the cafeteria, leading to an open area. As that area was empty, we were suspecting that the door was locked. Still, we decided to give it a go and hooray, the door swung open as we pushed it, and we were welcomed into the area with a nice breeze from outside.

As first we thought it was a smoking corner

We took one of the few tables there and Catherine started feeding the hungry Darius while I looked around at the surroundings.

As I looked over to the right, I saw black smoke coming out from an area not far away. My first thought was a fire had broken out since the smoke was really dark and didn’t look like those fumes emitted from factories. Interestingly though, the smoke disappeared after a while and I didn’t bother to go find out its cause afterwards. ^^|

Anyway, with his stomach now filled, Darius was all happy and energetic as we set off to continue our bed search again.

As we reached the section displaying a number of children’s beds and extendable beds, we let Darius tried onto some of them.

Darius trying to get off the bed

Darius enjoying the company of the crocodile bolster

After that, Catherine and I ran through our shortlisted bed and continued their pros and cons based on the design, feasibility and cost. After some discussion, Catherine and I were still unable to decide on a suitable bed. Thus in the end, we decided to withhold our purchases and go through our options again later.

With that decision made up, we then put the bed matter behind our heads and proceeded to explore the place, checking out the other sections. We came across this display room with a cute height chart and decided to use it to check Darius’  growth progress:

Darius has indeed grown taller now

As we moved on, Darius spotted this moving light on the corridor and got fascinated with it. He then started following the light and laugh occasionally, having fun with it:

After walking for an hour, we felt it was time to leave. On our way out, we headed to the pickup section to pick up the lime green circular table and stools we saw at the children’s section earlier.

When we reached there however, we were dismayed to see that although there was ample stock for the lime green table, there wasn’t any for its same-coloured stools! The only stools available were pink in colour! -_-|

Boxes and boxes of pink stools only...

Disappointed and unable to understand why IKEA was selling the tables (somemore they labelled them as ‘new’ models) without their matching stools, we had no choice to call off our purchase. We wouldn’t want to match the table with pink stools…

While waiting in queue to checkout the other small items we had bought, Catherine suggested, “Remember the green stools my sister-in-law left over at my parents’ house? Maybe we can buy the stools from her instead?”

Indeed, if she was willing to sell it, we would be able to have matching stools after buying the table from here! I quickly took out my phone and gave her a call. After telling her of our plan, she immediately agreed to let us have the stools — for FREE! What a nice gesture from her! ^^

With this, we returned to the pickup section and took the two boxes for the table (one for the table top, one for the five legs) off the shelf and checkout the items.

After we reached home and took some needed rest, I began to fix up the table.

Darius quick to explore his new furniture

While I was moutning the legs one by one, I left the remaining ones standing upright beside me. Somehow, Darius was afraid of knocking those legs over and was thus very careful as he walked past them.

As he walked to and fro, he would only briefly touched the top of the legs. However on one occasion, he accidentally caused one of the legs to begin swaying:

Although Darius was quite pitiful when trying his best not to let the leg fall off, Catherine and I couldn’t help but laugh at his interesting actions. We were impressed over the effort he took to ensure the leg would not be ‘damaged’ by minimising the impact from the fall. Of course, we praised him after that for his good deed done! ^^

Finally, the table was fixed up. Together with the stools collected from my parents-in-law’s house, a cute crocodile mirror we just bought from IKEA and a white board, this is how Darius’ study corner looks like now:

Hopefully he likes this colourful corner we had set up for him and will read his books and do his crafts here. ^^

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