Baron Adventures: Destination Singapore & More: 1 Month Down and Going Strong

Despite the lack of blog updates, we’ve had a pretty exciting couple of weeks.

Fish at the wet market

First of all, our helper Jennifer started on November 1^st. She’s amazing. She’s really great with Avery and Avery is really comfortable with her. That was our biggest concern so we are so relieved we made the right choice! She’s also great with Scout. Somehow she puts up with the relentless ball-playing (much like the dog in There’s Something About Mary). She even let Scout sleep with her while we were away this weekend (not that Scout gave her a choice). Jennifer is a great cook, too. She’s still being pretty conservative on the meals, but Avery is definitely trying some new foods…slowly. And we don't have to clean up after dinner! We can actually have family time before Avery goes to bed. I’m not sure how we’re going to give this up when we move back. Our apartment is spotless and when Jennifer runs out of things to do, she irons our clothes, organizes cabinets or re-folds the clothes in our drawers/closets.

Our first visit to the hawkers...
Avery finds a hot dog

Carly's a little more daring

We had our first visitor 2 weekends ago. Liz Dyas, our friend from Penn State, came to Singapore for work and stayed with us for the weekend. It was our first time out without Avery. We had dinner in the main shopping mecca in Singapore – Orchard Road. We followed that up with a visit to one of the seediest night clubs around apparently. I guess it’s a lesson in why you should get recommendations from locals. We went to Brix, a nightclub next to the Hyatt, because there was a live band. The music started off pretty slow and awkward, but got much better. But it was the clientele that made it extremely…interesting. Let’s just say that the bartenders, waitresses and band weren’t the only people making their living at this club. We had a much tamer Sunday, relaxing in our “resort”, and we went out in the evening to Gardens by the Bay to see a giant enclosed display of plants from all around the world.

Avery is doing great in school. She started taking the school bus recently and is really excited to be able to sing “Wheels on the Bus” with purpose. The school has some events for parents to get connected and involved, which is great. They have a community garden that is having its Opening Day in about a week. We’ll do our best to not kill the plants with our black thumbs. And we're wondering if Avery is starting to sing some Mandarin songs at home or if she's just in that stage of making up her own sounds and songs.

Excited to get on the bus!

This bus is not so big and yellow

Content...at best

Before she even took
her backpack off...

Horses right across the street
from school

In other news, I have a job and we sold our house! Well, at least I officially have a job now. My days of stay-at-home dad are numbered. I will likely start on November 26 so I’ll be sure to enjoy these last days of freedom. We closed on our house last week, which is such a relief. We were especially relieved that it made it through Sandy without any damage. It’s one less thing for us to think about and take care of.

We had a public holiday this week – Deepavali. We’re still getting used to the Singapore public holidays, reflecting the country’s cultural and religious diversity. This holiday marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year. The translation means “Row of Lights” and it celebrates the victory of goodness (light) over evil (dark). One interesting thing we found is that Hindus wear new clothes to celebrate and we could see this all over town. Unfortunately, we didn’t take part in any of the festivities, but hopefully next year. To read more about the holiday, go to http://www.deepavali.net/.

Next week, we're looking forward to finally getting our sea shipment!! It'll likely be bitter sweet - we are in need of so many things, but we have a feeling that we're going to have a lot more stuff than we have room for. For instance, where we can put 8 giant jars of peanut butter?!

We'll also post about our trip to Thailand soon, but I think this is enough for tonight...

Some random facts:

Singapore starts decorating for Christmas really early here. They already had decorations up at the end of October on Orchard Road.