Yesterday, we brought Darius for a wedding banquet for the first time. The last time we attended one was when he was still in the womb.

Yesterday’s wedding lunch was for one of my cousins, held over at the still-renovating Oriental Mandarin Hotel. We arrived at around 12.15pm, following the time stated on the invitation card. Some guests were already at the reception counter then but I came across many unfamiliar faces too. Looks like quite a number of my cousins were not attending the banquet after all.

When the banquet finally started at 2pm (it doesn’t pay to be punctual after years of courtesy campaigns), Darius appeared to be the youngest kid in the entire ballroom. Parents of younger kids probably didn’t want to risk creating a big hoo-ha during the banquet in case the child starts crying or throwing tantrums.

Unfortunately that was what happened to Darius just minutes before the banquet started — he had not been able to sleep in his stroller on our way here despite it being his usual nap time, so he was particularly fussy while he was awake. Catherine managed to feed him some porridge before he started fussing and wanted to get off the baby chair. Upon carrying him out though, he started crying badly and surprised both of us. We had not seen him behaving like this before, at least not all of a sudden without any reason.

We thought he needed to pee so I brought him to the restroom to relieve himself. However even after that, he continued to cry so we believed it was due to his lack of sleep; he was tired and sleepy but refused or was unable to fall asleep.

In the end, it took Catherine quite a while to pacify him to sleep in his stroller after pushing him out of the ballroom into the quiet lobby. Fortunately she still managed to make it in time for the creative opening animation by the wedding couple.

Darius slept for around an hour before he woke up in the middle of the banquet. We seated him up on the baby seat and he was quite well-behaved for a while, now that he had slept and feeling refreshed again.

We brought along his toy phone to keep him occupied

After a while though, he was eager to get off the chair, wanting to run around the place. Seeing that he had been confined to the stroller and baby seat, I carried him out and let him run around happily while I followed behind. Fortunately, there was ample space at the front part of the ballroom so he could wander around without obstacle.

My nephew also followed Darius as they ran around together, enjoying the vast carpeted area they were allowed to roam in.

The banquet ended slightly past 4pm, for which we would have appreciated better if the dishes had arrived faster. After we left the hotel, we decided to take a walk round Orchard Road since we were already there.

We started off with Takashimaya Shopping Centre and checked out the toy fair at the basement. Didn’t find anything interesting so we proceeded to Kinokuniya Bookstore shortly after. The place was much more crowded than usual, and we soon noticed it was because there was a 20% discount for all Kinokuniya members. We were not, but still we managed to find some suitable books for Darius at the Children’s section and bought them for him.

We then took the escalator to go one floor out, and saw several interesting shops, specialising in art-related stuff and unique toys. We went into one of the toy shops and the shop assistant was friendly and offered Darius a toy train for him to play with the train tracks they had set up.

Darius played for a while before he got bored, and we decided to move to Wisma’s foodcourt to feed Darius his dinner.

While on the way, we took a look at the Christmas lightings as the skies started to darken. Although the lightings weren’t especially spectacular, we still took some photos for memento.

Already giving a sleepy look...

Then while feeding dinner to Darius, he fell asleep halfway through. He must have had a tiring day for the day’s irregular napping time.

No related posts.