Extra Lovable @ 8 months

Shin is getting extremely adorable of late.

1) Whatever body parts we stick to or happen to place near her face, head, neck or ear, Shin’ll react by resting her face/head on that part. It’s strange but true that she has attempted to kiss my feet for a couple of times already! She has discovered that doing so will elicit lots of giggles and even more kisses from Mommy. Whenever I whisper a song (or nonsense) in her ear, she rests her ears on my lips and chuckles ever so happily (while I pretend to chomp on her ear). When she has enough of strangers, she’ll plonk her face sideways on our chest and look away. Even the paed says she’s so manja when Daddy carries her.
2) She enjoys tumbling and rolling around on the bed with us, complete with laughs and number 1 above, when she used to hate our bed and would wail the minute we lay her down for a cuddle.
3) She’s so generous with her ‘love-love’ and will proceed to kiss the face of whatever soft toys we plonk in front of her! She will gladly extend this ‘love’ to other babies if we ask.
4) Late one night Shin refused to sleep and was restless plus cranky. At my wit’s end, I put her in the rocker and gave her a bolster. She immediately swept the bolster on the floor. I took it and lightly threw it on her chest. She swept it off again and I did the same, again. I thought she was going to be rather irritated but to my surprise she saw it as a game and laughed out loud. Of course we continued our little game in the darkness until she fell asleep her Daddy came home and rocked her to sleep.
5) Shin ’sings’. Yes she does. I noticed that she will make a tune and babble along whenever I sing Rainbow Connection in an attempt to put her to bed.|
6) She is SO happy whenever she stands in her cot and spies us going to her, laughing out loud and sometimes even bobbing up and down!

All these lovely little episodes are making me miss Shin crazily whenever I’m away from her.

Suitable from weaning?

I talked about Shin’s eczema earlier on and I think I may have more than an inkling on how it originated. You see, I was very concerned about Shin’s low weight and so have been thinking of ways to give her more fats. Offering full-fat yoghurt is one great way I read. So I went to many supermarkets in search of baby yoghurt — and I couldn’t find any suitable for below 1-year-olds, not even from Cold Storage. Until I read about a particular brand of rather expensive fromage frais and I did find it in one of the more high-end supermarts in town. The label read ’suitable from weaning’ so it must be baby-friendly. Or so I thought.

Shin was absolutely hooked upon the first spoonful. As a mommy, I was naturally delighted to see my girl lean forward with mouth wide opened after each mouthful and became very enthusiastic feeding her every other day. And if I may say so, I enjoyed finishing the rest of whatever she couldn’t.

The problem was, these were berry-flavoured and contained juice concentrates. She developed a scary measle-like rash on her tummy and neck a few hours after she ate this, and she scratched so more crazily after each day it pained me so. The affected sites soon developed into eczema areas. And Shin had 3 helpings throughout the week before I realised what was happening (I had thought that it was the after-effects of the viral fever she had earlier, or that she had roseola).

I have stopped the offending product for 2 days, been mosturizing her after her bath and thank goodness the rash has disappeared. I’ve noticed that she also has been scratching less.

I really do not think that its appropriate to add the label ’suitable from weaning’ for products that contain ingredients likely to cause allergic reactions. I am not saying the commercial biggies are at fault here — we all have a choice — just quite disappointed that claims can be so callous. As a mommy, I definitely should have been more vigilant and discrimate in my selections.

I think I will give Shin the fromage frais again only when she’s about 1. Hopefully she can enjoy it without the side effects then.

The many challenges of Parenting

Recently I noticed that dark circles have formed under Shin’s eyes. Read up on googled materials on the web, which as usual, didn’t help much due to the gazillion myriad of information out there. The consensus seems to be that this is not due to lack of sleep. I keep wondering whether its because she’s fair or has nasal congestion (she does have runny nose pretty often) or whether this is an allergic reaction to certain solids.

And then the rashes around her neck seemed to flare up these 2 days and she couldn’t stop scratching. Looking at her eczema makes me really sad. She’s also constantly scratching her head, pulling her hair and rubbing her eyes when she’s tired.

Sometimes I wonder what is it that I am doing wrong that Shin has to endure a host of problems, from her very poor weight gain to painful diaper rashes to her insecurities.

Update 1 hour later: ok I think I was overly negative…am still in a down mood, but just now my heart warmed as I thought of how Shin would ’sing along’ whenever I sang Rainbow Connection to put her to bed. It’s obvious that she’s singing and not talking because of the way she strings the words together and intones her gibberish. My girl…I just want the best for her (don’t we all mommies?) and wished I could suffer all her pain for her.

Milestone: crawling

I realised today that I didn’t record when Shin started to crawl exactly. Maybe because she shuffled her bottom always and dragged her face sometimes across the floor we just didn’t think she was going to lift her bum off the ground or have enough strength to support her arms anytime soon. Or perhaps it was because we, and she, were too pre-occupied with all her standing. She kept going for our hands to guide her in standing in every waking moment — she would keep looking at each of our hands, stretch hers out one after the other to grab ours and the hoist herself up. If we didn’t comply and support her, she would just make frustrated cries.

Some babies never crawled, skipping this stage instead and going straight to walking, and there is a lot of controversial information on the net: walking before crawling indicates superior intelligence (*rolls eyes*); crawling is necessary to connect both sides of the brain because of co-ordination between right hand and left leg (*I think I read this is the What to Expect book*); and then there is the Glenn Doman belief; and also there is ‘it does not matter if baby never crawls as long as he is mobile’. As for us, we’re just glad that Shin is now crawling. She is crawling, crawling out of the foam mat (aka safety zone), crawling towards forbidden things such as fans, notebooks and cameras, and crawling under tables. And the realisation only came today. I’m sure she had already started earlier, I remember her doing it yesterday, but can’t recall if she did it on Monday.

With her newfound independent mobility, I’v noticed she doesn’t want to stand up as much anymore, preferring instead to go places, cruise along, climb, reach for and touch things. I try to let her explore as much as possible and hate it when I have to say ‘No!’.

Exciting times ahead!

Energizer bunny

After an extremely nasty bout of high fever and an even worse bum rash which caused Shin to shriek for two days straight, 3 visits to 2 PDs and a lot of $ later, we are so glad Shin recovered just in time for her 8-month birthday on Sunday. Yes she is literally bouncing with glee for the last 2 days. She has been trying to stand up in her cot for about 2 weeks or so now and has just discovered that with a little skill and effort, she can pull herself up to standing in the cot and get a great view of the room within seconds. Of course now that she has mastered that (and not much fun anymore), her current goal is to place her hands on the high bars above her head on one side of the cot to try to do chin ups. She has grown in strength (and determination) and although she is more steady now compared to 2 weeks ago, she still gives us heart attacks everytime she lets go and falls backwards. Shin loves these moments of hitting her head on the mattress though — she often gives a big laugh as soon as this happens.

Putting her to bed is a tiring affair as in no time, she’ll scramble up (ok I can’t see her but I can hear lots of scruffing noises), even in complete darkness (we use black-out curtains in her rooms and I shut off all the lights in the house last night in a desperate attempt to make her sleep). When her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she saw me sitting in a corner of room looking at her quietly, she gave me the biggest grin. I chided her jokingly and as I walked towards her, she was so excited she laughed out loud and began to bounce up and down. She became irritated when I picked her up to rock her to sleep as that meant no more practice time. In fact she was so angry she began to cry and we spent the next 1.5 hours trying to calm her down and make her sleep.

The I-need-my-time-to-practice-this-is-so-fun happened again this morning and she only went to nap about an hour ago when she was too tired after our morning walk. I foresee that old Daddy and Mommy are going to expend a lot of energy from now on monitoring her and chasing her around when she starts to walk. One can only hope that all this exercise will help to slim lazy Mommy down.

Taken a few weeks ago when she still couldn't stand steadily and before we lowered the cot; she totally doesn't need our help now!

My heart *melts*

‘Aw…Just now she looked at the sofa with the laptop and wondered why mama not sitting there…’

Baby meets baby

We were at JZ’s for a playdate yesterday and when Shin saw another baby, A, about 1.5 months younger than her, she reached out to stroke A’s hair and cheek rather gently. And Shin also tried to ’sayang’ A when I said, ‘Love-love.’  In fact she did it so many times I think it overwhelmed A a bit! Shin’s way of loving us and being affectionate is to rest her head on ours, and close her eyes in the process and give a big contented smile. She has been doing this to Daddy and Mommy since 1.5 months ago but  I was pleasantly surprised that Shin did that another person. I know its too soon to tell but I certainly hope that Shin will grow up to be an affectionate and compassionate person. YC said that luckily Shin is a girl, if not we’re going to have a lot of trouble in future answering to other parents why our son is gao-sua-ing their girls!

This is love to her

Tree Ring Circus

I’ve always been attracted to whimsical tales, bordering on the weird sometimes. I think such stories fuel the imagination and allow us to get lost for a short time. Since reality is quite mundane, what better way to escape it than into books? Here I recommend you a fun read about a runaway circus on a tree (which YC said he cannot comprehend; but of course, it would kill engineers to grasp the beauty of literature…and he is so going to kill me for saying this) that Shin enjoys. I’m really glad she likes being read to and hope she inherits my love for words. Whenever I pick up a book before bedtime, she relaxes with her head on my chest, goes all quiet and looks at each page with interest, sometimes fingering the surface, sometimes trying to turn back to the cover. She sometimes will try to babble along, to my delight. Back to the recommendation: the illustrations combined with the text provide good opportunity for reading aloud and we do lots of counting of animals as I point them out. The words and pictures pop out literally! I’m sure mommy friends out there with toddlers will also appreciate this book.

Image from Author's Site

I scored a number of other good reads from NLB last week and will share them when I have the time. Note: ‘Good read’ to me means bright animal pictures, with simple text which lend themselves to good inflection so as to capture baby’s interest.

Totally not fluke

Shin sat up again today and climbed up the railings while her daddy was preparing her bathwater. He said she was unusually quiet when he went out of her room (she would usually bawl her eyes out when we left her) and when he got back, she was standing!

When I got home, she demonstrated the rolling over and sitting up effortlessly.

Ah, I realise this is the start of the mobile era that CY and Sue had earlier warned me about. ;P

Get up world!

Shin managed to sit up from lying position today. She has been able to sit unsupported for about a month now, but today she managed to roll over, use her arms to push herself up and sit up. All by herself.

We have also again lowered her cot as I discovered that she could hoist herself up if she’s really determined. Right now sitting up and climbing up the bed railings are more of a fluke. She has yet to remember the steps to consistently succeed. But I think with practice she would be able to do it very soon.

My baby is growing up too fast!

Taken when Shin was first able to sit up on 3 Dec after her bath.