Little gourmet

Baby is a little gourmet. After she had her usual bowl of cereal (with yogurt, tofu, mixed veg) and was enjoying her fruits (diced plum), I started having my dinner. Hubby was working late tonight so I had dinner alone. My dinner was cod (baked with parmesan cheese), boiled sweet potato, fresh spinach. Baby started eyeing my food and after I gave her a taste of the sweet potato and the fish, she kept asking for more, and more, and more. She showed more interest in my dinner than in her own dinner (or jar food). So she ate quite a bit of my dinner too until the 2 of us had finished everything on the plate. Leads me to wonder - if she can eat so much in one meal, does this mean she hasn't been eating as much as she should all along?? She's quite a good girl today, so she helped to feed herself most of the time - I just had to scoop some food into the spoon, give the spoon to her, and she put it into her mouth herself. A bit messy still as some of the food will slide down onto her bib or onto her table, and then she'll use her fingers to play with or pick up the food on the table. She's experimenting with using both her right and left hands to feed herself, and sometimes when she's lazy, she'll try to move her mouth nearer the spoon instead of reaching out for the spoon with her hands.

I'm trying to reset baby's internal clock these few days. After our weekend trip and outings and her illness, her sleep times have gone haywire. So she doesn't get enough sleep, puts up a big struggle when it's time to sleep, and gets extra hyper and irritable =( Envious of my Kindermusik classmate's baby - sleeps at very regular hours of her own accord.

Dancing Queen Wannabe

Just for laughs...

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Healthy again

It's a relief that baby has recovered quite quickly. She has been 'grounded' this whole week and as she was quite tired the last 2 days, she zzz, and zzz, and zzz, and then zzz some more, so that probably helped her to recover too. She slept so much and so soundly that I kept checking if she was still breathing =p

She's back to her playful self now, and when we went out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant today, she had a whale of a time scrutinising, smiling at, waving to, and 'greeting' (by saying 'ei, ei') all and sundry, especially other babies. Unfortunately, her attempts to befriend others were often rebuffed or ignored. So her parents are still her best friends, for now.

At a few days shy of her 11th-month 'birthday', she's 17lbs (approx 8kg) and 67cm. That's small and light compared to other babies, but she certainly doesn't feel light, especially after we've carried her around in our arms for a while. And you won't often find the baby in her stroller - that's for our bags and jackets since baby inevitably tries to wriggle out of the stroller after a few minutes. Sigh* Can't help wondering when she's going to walk on her own since she has been a competent cruiser for a good many months already.

Viral infection?

We went to the paediatrician today so that baby can has a more thorough follow-up check. It turned out that she has a throat infection (which explains her smelly breath these few days), and that might have led to the ear infection. The doctor surmised the infection is likely to be viral as she has developed rashes all over her head and abdomen, and a bit on the arms too. Her fever has subsided, though, and she's behaving her usual self, so we're just monitoring for now. No further medication.

Providence Canyon State Park

To celebrate wifey's birthday, we took a road trip to Providence Canyon State Park, Lumpkin, GA. The state park is abit different from the ones we normally go to. What is interesting is that it is a mini-canyon and it was formed due to bad farming practice in the 1920s. We took a 4-mile hike into the Canyon Floor.

What's special about this park is that it's a canyon, so it's really interesting seeing the view from the bottom of the canyon and then all the way on top, at the rim of the canyon - the sheer height of the canyons is amazing. I suppose it can't be compared to the Grand Canyon, but it's first time seeing any canyon at all! The multi-coloured rock strata are an interesting feature of the canyon. Depending on what minerals have permeated into the rock, the rock could be any shade of orange or brown (because of iron), or bear a lovely hue of lavender (because of manganese). My favourite is the lavender hue because it's so sweet and unusual.

In the evening, we left the park and crossed the stateline from Georgia to Alabama and stayed in Eufaula, this little city famous for bass fishing. Yay! We've been to Alabama! The next day, we did a cross-rural Georgia drive. Saw lots of pastures, cattle, farmland, Plains (Jimmy Carter's hometown) and many small towns. We had home-cooked Southern fare (fried chicken okra, etc) in a place called Americus, where baby was more interested in waving and gibbering to everyone than in having her lunch. Unfortunately, it was also here that she lost a pretty pink hairclip belonging to her mummy =( A heirloom!

Feverish Baby

It is tough when your own baby falls sick. The saga started last Saturday night when we thought she felt warmer than usual. As we were on our road trip in Eufaula, Alabama, we couldn't do much except to administer panadol. She didn't get better when we arrived home on Sunday and her temperature hit a high of 40.7degrees C on Sunday night! Imagine our panic and unease, being first time parent faced with a feverish baby. After consulting 811 (emergency medical helpline), we drove to the Memorial Health Hospital ER at 1.30 am Monday morning.

We were glad that we went to the hospital and not stuck to self medicating poor baby. Cos we found out that the cause of the temperature was a ear infection. The doctors and nurses were able to provide a more aggressive treatment with a combination of Tylenol (acetaminophen) and Motrin (Ibuprofen) to combat her temperature. By about 4 am, she was down to a manageable 38.5 degrees C and we went home.

It is strange to find the house so quiet now. Normally, baby will be cho luaning which will require us to rescue her either from stopping her from entering the kitchen or pulling the wires. Now with baby resting in bed most of the time, we kinda missed her mischief...

Mei Xi's Enlightenment

There's a difference in having the ability and willingness to do something. For some time, Mei Xi has been able to finger feed herself crackers and grains of puffed wheat. However, she protested when given other finger food or a spoonful of cereal to feed herself. So it's to my surprise when she had a change of heart and started picking up cubes of bread that I had left on her table before 'disappearing' to prepare a bottle of milk for her. Now, she's also picking up blueberries, diced pear, cheese cubes... as well as spoon-feeding herself cubes of solid food. I guess it's more rewarding to spoonfeed herself cubes of food, as she had a higher success rate. Emboldened, she's now more willing to spoonfeed herself more liquid food too. Hee!

New Games

Baby has picked up some new games very quickly lately. She's gotten the hang of picking up and giving things (e.g. daddy's socks, her toys) to us, knocking towers of blocks or milk powder cans over, as well as the concept of 'in' and 'out'. Yesterday, I showed her how to put the little Eeyore soft toy into and out of a big box, and she quickly did the same to Eeyore as well as other toys. Today, she's 'practising' with a smaller toy and a smaller box - not that easy this time. She also managed to spoonfeed herself little cubes of cheese (she takes to this much better than feeding herself cereal). It's fun to watch her do all these new things.

Not so fun, though, when she's naughty. When she's doing things she knows she's not supposed to, she tends to give us a particularly radiant smile - e.g. when she is pulling electrical wires, when she refuses to sleep and wants to play in bed. It's as though she knows she's being naughty and is testing our reactions =(

Now that she is fully recovered from her cold and flu, her appetite has increased, and she's growing faster too - as though to 'make up' for the lost time when she was sick.

Spring is coming

After the winter months, I'm just glad that the mornings get bright earlier, the days are getting warmer and longer, so it's pleasant to spend time outdoors. I think the older I get, the less I like chilly weather. Cool is fine, but not chilly. When the day only gets bright close to 8am, it does get rather dreary after a while. The warm weather also means that baby and I have been spending more time outdoors - be it just sitting on the grass, sitting by the pool (I'm the one sitting while baby moves around a bit), wading in the pool, watching the ducks and ducklings waddle along. Today, we even went down to Emmet Park for Tara Feis - the St Patrick's Day opening festival - to enjoy some Irish music and Irish dancing. Pity about the sandflies that bestows itchy bites all over me =(

10 months

Our little person is now 26" (about 66 cm) long and weighs 16 lbs 7 oz (about 7.6 kg). Seems like she has a lot of arms and legs now, and she looks so cute in short, sleeveless clothes. Embarrassingly, she has only outgrown 2 outfits since birth. At one time, a lot of the clothes were getting tight-fitting, but then as she gained proficiency in crawling and cruising, she slimmed down and her tummy got smaller, so the clothes fit her comfortably once again. We're quite sure she's going to be a small, like her parents. Her height and weight are at less than the 5th percentile, compared to other Singaporean babies of her age (and this was normed against some 1980s population, and we would expect kids to be even taller now, which means she's really small). Maybe she can be a little gymnast or figure skater, like the 16-year-old Georgian competitor in the Torino Olympics, who's small but good. Heh heh.


Baby's cute when she's a little angel - that's when she smiles and laughs, babbles, and comes to us for hugs and kisses. But she's also mischievous because she's so curious and wants to explore all the things she's not supposed to =p And then she has a mind of her own, so she'll cry and protest if there something she doesn't like (e.g. changing diapers, changing clothes, brushing her teeth, food that is too coarse). Most of her crying takes place at home (or at the clinic whenever we go for the well-baby check-ups and vaccinations); she's quiet and scared when we are in unfamiliar places and doesn't dare to venture far from us.

She's no verbal prodigy. She's said 'ma-ma', 'ba-ba' before, but not on a regular basis. Seems like her interest and forte, at least for now, is her psychomotor skills. She's a pretty mobile baby - able to cruise (walk holding onto furniture), get herself into a standing position, squat and sit from a standing position, crawl around competently. She's also able and willing to pick up and feed herself certain finger food. The little gourmet loves to eat fruits, doesn't like fishy-smelling fish, and would rather go hungry than take milk that's not warm enough for her or milk that's spiked with medicine =p That's personality !