analogue photography | thestepsitake :)

My dear baby Nana,

On 26 June 2015, you made me a mother. On 26 June 2016, you turned 1 year old and today you are turning 2.

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Where does all the time go?

In this year, you learned how to walk, run, jump, talk, sing, speak, communicate, draw, read books, make friends, bite and push other kids, greet, said sorry and thank you, being compassionate and expressing yourself. You are developing your own little character throughout your first birthday until today. You are demanding, sometimes annoying but yet you are very loving. You impress me every single day on all the tiny little milestones that you achieved. I’m truly grateful that I’m there, to be with you, to witness all of them and to teach as well as learn together with you.

You speak Malaysian English, Cantonese and a little bit of Mandarin. By age of 2, you can speak a short sentence with 3 different languages. You are truly Malaysian.

You still hurt yourself every now and then because sometimes I’m not fast enough to run towards you and protect you. You are very petite in size as to compare to your age and sometimes I get comments from strangers as if I starve you and ate all the food myself. Sometimes we eat out when I’m too lazy (or frustrated to cook). There you might have eaten some msg or whatever seasoning that isn’t good for your health. Sometimes I ignore you because I’m too tired (or lazy) to response. I just wanted to let you know that I’m not a perfect mother. But I’m trying to be as good as possible, to love and to protect you with everything I have.

Thank you for calling me “mummy mummy mummy” endlessly. Thank you for giving me a pat on my shoulder when I told you “mummy is sad”. Thank you for letting me sleep in a little bit more in some days without waking me up and greet me with your charming smile with your best “good morning mummy” greeting every morning. Thank you for kissing me good night before you go to the bed. Thank you for loving me wholeheartedly every minute every second until you need to peak on me when I’m on the toilet doing my business. Thank you for running towards me and hug my leg when I’m in the kitchen cooking our meal just because you wish I can sit down and play with you. Thank you for giving me a thumbs up on the food I cook for you. Thank you for testing my limit and challenge my patience. Thank you for giving me joy and laughter. Most of all, thank you for being my friend and spending these beautiful moments with me.

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26 June 2017.

Happy 2nd Birthday my baby girl. You are and always will be my baby.

Love,

Your mummy mummy mummy.

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Images taken at various places using Lomo LC-A+ & LC-Wide loaded with various film.

It’s our annual trip and from 13th – 17th Sept 2013, exactly one year ago, we heading to Lake Toba, Northern Sumatra, Indonesia.

Lake Toba is the site of a massive super volcanic eruption that occur many thousands years ago, and it was the largest known explosive eruption on Earth. The moment I knew the history of this particular lake, am really impressed.

We flew from different places and meeting up at Medan; from Kuala Lumpur, Pekanbaru, Penang, Singapore and Kuantan. Then we start our journey to the ‘danau’ (it means lake in Malay) and it tooks about 5-6 hours bus ride. It was a very tiring journey, but despite all the tiredness, we are glad that we could meet up and gather together. Well, after 5-6hours bus ride we finally reached the jetty where it’s the place we wait for the big ferry which bring us to across to the island where all the resorts located. And, we waited for a great 4-5hours to finally reached our turn to go in. GOSH! We accidentally bump into the same weekend of the “Festival Danau Toba” which there’s lots of happening events, which is great, but, it explain why the queue to the island is so long as well. At 2am local time, we finally reached the resort and everyone is superb exhausted.

But the scenic view of the lake does worth all the waits. We went for sight-seeing, cruise, swim at the lake (which is really hard, haha, as we need to use lots of energy to make ourselves float and move around compare to swimming in the pool or by the sea.). Oh, and we had one very “magical night” as well. 😀

We spent around 2 days here and then we head to Berastagi, where by the time we visiting Mt. Sinabung near the hill towns of Berastagi erupted again! Gosh, and by the time we visited Berastagi, it’s full of ashes and it’s not suitable for sightseeing. Anyhow, we head back to Medan after a night stay at the town. We did nothing much but just walking around and enjoying some Chinese delicacy around the town.

A short trip, pretty tiring, few of us experience food poisoning and fever during the trip but then, it’s good to be able to meet up and travel together with my dear friends.