The way Sophia played with bubbles at Royce’s Kids Gym last Sunday was so cute! She stares at them with amazemens and slowly sticks out a finger to pop them. I hope she remembered to close her mouth 🙂
Wow, bubbles!
pop pop pop
After finding out about Fidgets before I was even pregnant, wanting to go there ever since Sophia was mobile and even making a trip there without going in, I finally brought Sophia into Fidgets.
After so many years, the place is starting to look a bit old. The building it is in is very old and run down at the moment because of the extensive construction works. Turf City has always looked like a warehouse; now it looks like an abandoned run down warehouse. The lift worked on our way up but didn’t on our way down so we had to walk down the steps.
I especially liked the area in the middle with couches for parents to lounge on. When Sophia is older and able to play independently I’m sure I would appreciate this area even more. The cashless system inside was good. My dad took my bag with him to giant while I stayed inside with Sophia and I was glad to be able to buy warm milk for Sophia despite my wallet not being with me. Yes, the fact that they served warm milk was a plus which meant I didn’t need to bring milk with me. Other mummies were fishing out their bottles, hot water and formula but since Sophia drinks fresh milk, the frothed plain full cream milk does perfectly fine. Though next time I’ll ask them to froth just half the milk and add in cold milk so I don’t have to wait for it to cool before giving it to Sophia.
All in all we had a relatively fun time. Sophia picked up balls from all over (but wasn’t too excited about the actual ball pit), played with cars (and got shoved off cars by many bigger kids) and climbed the structures (though the big kids structures were too hard for her and the small kids structure was too small for mummy to accompany her on).
A small not too pleasant incident that happened was a few older kids aged 4-7 started playing ball war (throwing balls at each other) with their daddy at the babies play area. I didn’t intervene initially thinking they will stop after a while so I just stood in between Sophia and the fight to shield the balls but Sophia was also moving around and a ball inevitably hit her. She didn’t seem to mind but the balls that hit me actually stung so I didn’t want her or any other baby to be hurt. I had to tell the staff there to stop the kids and the staff seemed rather reluctant to but did so in a nice way eventually. I felt bad for spoiling their fun but in such places one group’s fun should not be at the expense of another group’s right?
After reading the reviews of PizItalia over at both Kless’s and San’s blog, I couldn’t wait to check out the 2 storey tall playground. So I asked my good friend cum ex-colleague whether she would like to bring her son there as well and we trooped over the first weekend after reading about the place. The moving dinosaur that greeted us in front of the restaurant was impressive. Pity both our children were scared of the T-rex and we couldn’t get photos of them in the eggshell next to the dino, which would have been so cute!
Moving T-rex outside restaurant
We got there around noon and it was as hot as Singapore gets. The restaurant only had a small air-conditioned area where the air con wasn’t strong enough to cool the area down. So it was extremely uncomfortable especially for my pregnant friend. Nevertheless, we sat down, fed our children lots of water and gulped lots of iced water ourselves. As you can see, the kids weren’t too happy from being hot and hungry.
Unhappy children
Seth went off to the playground first while I fed Sophia her home cooked porridge. I was surprised the food hasn’t attived by the time Sophia finished eating as even though she’s not a very slow eater, normally the food arrives before she finishes and I have to fight her to finish her own food before eating our food. Nonetheless I was glad for the time to play at the playground with her without knowing that my food is getting cold. The playground is technically a 3 storey structure but the slide started from the second storey and the third storey looked to me like just a small square area of less than 1m square leading to nothing. I wonder why they bother to creast the 3rd storey. No child was going up as far as I could tell. Also, I was surprised to find that the spongey looking “staircase” was actually rather hard. 
Part of the installation was also already falling apart despite being so new.
Part of the protective foam that was supposed to cover the metal bars
And the bottom of a few spongey structures was just stapled on with the staples exposed. I do appreciate that these electronic staplers are not like our office staplers and the individual staples will not come out as easily but they just still look dangerous to me.
Staples - potentially dangerous? Perhaps not right now but in a few months or years when sufficient tiny hands have pulled on it.
The good thing about the place is the huge ball pit, which Sophia enjoyed “packing” ie picking up individual balls and putting them into baskets and S enjoyed jumping into.
Packing balls
Sophia also really liked the white tiger soft toys:
How long more will these tigers stay snow white?
The older kids can be dropped off and there’s supposed to be a lady outside signing them in and generally keeping an eye over them but I don’t recommend this. She is just alone there and can’t really attend to all the kids. One of the girls was complaining to everyone that she wants socks and when nobody gave her socks just went outside to look for her parents. The lady watching over the place never paid any attention to this girl and nobody stopped her from leaving the playground.
After a rather long time, S’s mummy never came to get us, which she was supposed to do when the food arrived. Even S got too hungry and went back to the dining table another 10 minutes or so later S’s mummy came to say lets leave, they forgot our order and S is too hungry. A lady who was there with her child told me that the service is really quite patch and the last time they came they waited a long time as well and they gave them the wrong bill etc. So it doesn’t sound like its a once off mistake. But of course it could be teething problems in a new establishment and maybe they just need time to improve their procedures.
Anyway toddlers’ stomachs are not made to be empty for long periods of time so we trooped over to macdonalds where Sophia had corn and a single fry which she stole from my friend’s box that was supposed to be empty. First fry in her life.
It looks like she's eating corn, but she's actually stuffing a fry into her mouth
The highlight of the trip though, was when we finally left macdonalds and went out into the open. That was when I finally see a very happy girl running about holding her macdonalds balloon. That was what made the trip worth it.
Seth was happy to be out too, looking at the “boat”s docked in the distance.
All in all a good trip out. There were a few items on the menu that I was interested to try but pity we couldn’t. Hope PizItalia can sort out their service issue and do well. I think restaurants that cater for children is a great concept and as a mum I hope such establishments do well so that there will be more of such options in Singapore.
Sophia joined Luke and Izzy at the second working mums’ play date (which reminds me, I need to blog about play date number 1) at Royce Kids’ Gym today. It was unlike any other play gym in that it had far more things that an infant or very young toddler could enjoy. There were tonnes of brightly coloured toys all over and some slopes and swings and hammocks. Its not as futuristic or clean or sophisticated as say the Petite Park but I dare say its more fun for Sophia and other kids at around the 8 months to 3 years age group. Older kids may find it not exciting enough. I’ll stop here and let the pictures speak for themselves.
Sophia playing with a xylophone
On a separate note, we learnt today that baby Luke is now sleeping very well through the night and napping well in the day and is a much happier baby as a result and its all thanks to just one session with the Baby Sleep Fairy and following her advice. I’m mighty impressed.
Last week when my dad was fetching my mum from work as she had half a day off, I sneaked out with Sophia once he left the house. Why do I have to act like a teenager I’m not quite sure myself but such is the dynamics of staying with one’s parents plus being too practical in thinking that since we live within walking distance from our workplaces, the family really only needs one car, being my dad’s car. That makes my dad feel obliged to chauffeur all of us wherever we go and Sophia gets first priority for her appointments. Consequently it makes me feel like I have to trouble him whenever I bring Sophia out and hence reluctant to do so. Weird dynamics? I agree.
Anyway, Sophia and I trooped all the way to expo from our home in the CBD.
Changi City Point
And our intended destination was clearly Petite Park as the title of this blog already revealed.
The ball pit - humongous and deep!
The highlight of the place is this huge ball pit, which is really much larger than the ball pit at most other indoor playgrounds.
Large bouncing balloons
This area with large bouncing/floating balls was what attracted me to check out this place after seeing it featured on other bloggers’ reviews. However, it is not quite appropriate for Sophia as the balls were really quite large and they even make me feel momentarily dazed when a particularly large one hit me in the head so I can understand why Sophia was rather scared the whole time we were in side the balloon cage even though she was excited at the same time.
Fan and balloons
What looked really amazing at first glance is really quite low-tech. A caged up area with larger than normal balloons blown around by a very ordinary fan.
Slide
This slide also looked quite amazing on blogs and Sophia rather enjoyed climbing up the slide. She still doesn’t seem to get it that slides are meant for sliding down on and prefers to climb upwards on it instead. And once she reaches the top she is at a lost as to what to do. Too cute!
Ship Ahoy!
I can imagine bigger kids enjoying this ship that gently rocks to and fro. Sophia liked walking along it too but I’m not quite sure she knows what its meant to be.
There was also a bouncing castle type slide that Sophia really enjoyed bouncing around on but alas my camera acted up on my by the time we got there so no photos. There was also an area with smaller toys like wooden puzzles, xylophones, play kitchen and the like where Sophia played with an older kid who served her “toast”, “cakes” and “tea” because “it was her doggy’s birthday”.
All in all we enjoyed the trip. Sophia didn’t want to leave. The staff were generally competent and nice. They were constantly putting toys back to where they belong after children messed them up and this gentle lady kept watching out for Sophia and telling the older girls to “be careful, the baby’s there”. Not that they paid any attention to her but at least she bothered to try.
I may be back. Or not. Only because its so far away.
Sophia went to peek-a-boo last friday with ultra adorable and sociable Isabella last friday. Here’s Izzy. Look how charming and smiley she is. (G, I hope you don’t ind me posting Izzy’s photo. I’ll take it down if you do.)
Izzy
Exploring the slide
Crawling off the trampoline
Playing house
Open; close; open; close
Walker that bumped into Sophia
