Thumby Yum Yum

You adults just have NO idea how tasty my hand is...why can't you understand?

Daily SMS from the husband:

‘ She has mastered the art of sucking on milk and the thumb both at the same time and not let the milk leak out.’

Shin has been trying to slip her thumb into the mouth stealthily (but surely) in the past few weeks, WHILE drinking her milk. We ignore it most of the time because my girl just cannot stand distraction. There must be NO third party talking or looking at her when she’s feeding because if that happens, she will get too excited to continue. YC even went as far as not looking at her when she looks at him while feeding (which I told him ‘Cannot! coz then you’re not bonding with her!). So even when she does that and milk leaks out from the side of the mouth, we don’t pluck her hand out and just clean up after she’s done.

So I guess now that she is wasting less milk. Erm…Yay for her and us?

This one takes the cake* (no pun intended) ;P

Eversince I went back to work, YC has been forwarding smses about Shin’s feeding, sleeping, funny moments and milestones to me. These messages keep me going (many times I go ‘Aw…’ , wishing I was there). This came in today,

“‘Was investigating a pipe suddenly bursting sound. Traced it to Shin. She pooed a 2nd time today. This time, she pooed big time. As usual, I have kept the stool samples for your investigation.’

Right…thanks dear =_=”

Heh, watch out! I still have many tricks up my sleeve!

Tale Tuesdays

The good thing about working in the city area is that a lot of amenities are within walking distance. For the past two months, I’ve borrowed quite a number of books for Shin (though not as frequently as I would have hoped to).

Of course she still can’t understand any of this, and she does usually get distracted halfway into the story, but we figured that starting her young would cultivate a good reading habit and eventally help to improve her language ability.

A book I’d recommend for babies and toddlers is Chicken Cheeks which I borrowed a few weeks ago. Shin loved it! She’ll stare intently at each colourful page of animals and even when we’re not reading it and I say ‘Penguin Patootie’ (a phrase found in it) out of the blue, she’ll giggle. In fact we liked it so much I forgot to return it on time!

So yes I intending to make trips to the library a regular weekly affair.

Beautiful Edinburgh

Ok, this isn’t Edinburgh, but Oxford. It’s just a few minutes walk from my hotel. When I took this picture, the weather was purrfect (my overseas colleagues said we brought the warm weather with us). I don’t have any decent pictures of Edinburgh as I was there for only about 24 hours. BUT I really liked Edinburgh. It’s a gorgeous place with impressive architecture and well dressed people. In fact I liked it so much, I professed openly to my boss I wanted to work there and enquired with the senior managers there if they’re recruiting!

Leadership that is inspiring

While sitting in on a meeting this morning (I said ’sitting in’ because in the pecking order, I was really in the lowliest rungs in that room and to describe myself as a participant would be totally laughable), I got a glimpse of what charismatic leadership and effective management were.

Well it wasn’t a very pleasant meeting per se because it was one that had stemmed from problems working with our office. In all honesty, some of the directors from another department weren’t really there to be friends with us. However, a little into the meeting, my boss’s US boss interjected and shared a story about Coca Cola survey on customer satisfaction and reminded all to focus on the solving the problems at hand so that the future would look brighter than now. He was able to steer the dialogue in the correct direction. He did NOT inject his own subjective opinions or side any parties (well if he did, it was done so very cleverly I have to take my hats off him), but by asking all the right questions to elicit information for all to think clearly, at the right time, in a very diplomatic way.

And we all came away with a few solutions and more confidence for the future (at least on our end). That’s the way leaders should be, shouldn’t it? I have learnt a lot in that 1 hour.

So far apart for the first time

Dear Shin,

Mommy misses you. Madly. The work’s done here and I want to quickly get back to you. When the boss first said we need to go to UK, Mommy felt priviledged that the company was ’sponsoring’ a trip to Europe. It was both exciting and scary to think about the work that needed to be done. And of course Mommy knew it wasn’t going to be easy to be away from you for 1 week.

And sure it wasn’t. Two hours into flying, and Mommy started to miss you and wished I were on the flight back instead. Yes, it was swanky to fly business class (for swaku Mommy) and for attendants to address you by name on the flight, but I’d trade any of these just to hold you (even if you were making your anger known and bursting Mommy’s eardrums). It must have been the most difficult 14 hours to survive. Mommy wondered what you (and Daddy) were doing, whether you’ll miss me, whether you’ll drive Daddy mad, whether he’ll sing to you to calm you down and if you’ll not drink milk properly again.

True enough, Daddy tells me that you started waking up in the wee hours, refused to drink and refused to go back to bed. He thinks you are missing me. I think so too. You must be looking for the woman who feeds you at nights and in the mornings and not knowing where to find me. Its really something that babies shouldn’t be subjected to and I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there to make you feel better. Though I’m so glad for Skype which lets Mommy see you (were you looking at Mommy too through the screen? You seem a little distracted darling).

Everytime Mommy sees babies and toddlers on the beautiful streets, Mommy thinks about what it would be like for you to be here with me. The architecture and warmer than average weather here have been nothing short of awesome and how nice would it be for the 3 of us to spend time here. Daddy and Mommy did seriously consider flying you here so that we could all spend some time in Europe. But you are too young and bringing you away from the comfort zone would be really taxing for all of us (sorry dear).

Another 36 hours seem like an interminably long time to endure to get back to you. But I’ll try to make the most of my time here. Mommy is going to do a little sightseeing and shopping tomorrow before the flight. I’ve already got you a few presents and I’m going to get you more! It’s strange but I don’t really care to buy much stuff for myself anymore.

It’s 4am in SG now, I hope you are not waking up again and looking for me. Sleep tight my dear girl. Another 1.5 days and both of us will see each other again.

Love,
Mommy

If only I could pack her up too

Notice that Shin is grasping the side of the luggage? She does this very often wherever we put her — in the bathtub, in the stroller. She always needs something to hang on to. In fact here, as in all other new places we put her for the first time, she didn’t dare move  at all for the first few minutes. I always joke that she’s going to grow up to be rather risk-averse. My little TIMID bully.

Beyond tired

For posterity

Shin usually becomes cranky in the evenings, just before bedtime. We have to carry her around quite a bit, swaddle her, rock her, reswaddle her, walk her until she gets really tired and then she sleeps. She screams a lot in the process and we try our best to calm her down. We try not to bring her out of her darkened room because, once we do this, her ‘I-can-play-now-no-need-to-sleep’ instinct immediately kicks in and it gets even more difficult to put her to bed later.

Yesterday after a long time of fussing in the room, we decided to bring her to the living room while we have dinner. She sat in the chair quietly, not particularly happy or unhappy, but generally just tolerating it and relieved I think. We noted something interesting. Each time Mr EG left his seat, example to the kitchen to get a drink, Shin would shout to indicate her displeasure (note that I was still in my seat with her at the dinner table). This happened for 3 times (no we didn’t purposely test her reaction)! We laughed and she looked at us with this totally puzzled stare.

Then when we brought her back to her room (way past her usual bedtime), she began to scream again and refused to stop even when I picked her up. When Mr EG took over, she calmed down immediately (Mr EG has this effect on her at night, she loves to doze off on Daddy’s warm shoulders; Mommy’s one is all skin and bones and not comfy at all). Since I was no longer needed, I left the room and went to do some housework. 3 minutes later, Mr EG came with Shin into the kitchen, ‘She wants ME to carry her but she wants YOU there for her to look at. She can’t stop screaming after you left the room.’

Oh, my baby…you are so cute* and you make us laugh so. So young and experiencing separation anxiety already?

*I know we find it cute and funny now but if she keeps this up, I’m sure cuteness would soon turn into irritation. haha.

Worry

Have you mommies out there experienced periods when baby doesn’t want to drink milk? Just before I went back to work four weeks ago, Shin was happily downing 180ml of milk per feed. But since I went back to work, she has been drinking less and less. At first she would drink lots of milk when I got home and fed her at night and so that evens the volume out, but we noticed that recently with me being at home, she still drinks as little as half of what she usually does! When I’m not at home, she’ll drink between 20ml to 55ml only! I need to add that in this case, we obsessive parents update our milk log religiously so we can tell at a glance the deterioriating situation very clearly (and painfully).

We are unable to pinpoint the crux of the problem. Since birth her intake has been rather erratic. We brought our concerns to the paed a couple of times, asked him if we should send Shin for a full checkup but he always assures us that Shin is healthy and that some babies just do not like milk very much. She gains weight very slowly and as parents, it is really heart wrenching to see your baby being born a good size at birth (3.3kg!) and then looking smaller than even babies younger or born lighter than her as each month passes by. Apart from when being forced to drink milk, she is mostly active and happy, and reaches the developmental milestones on track. But I’m so worried that this situation spells a more major problem which we aren’t aware of. Am I being paranoid again?

Can any of you recommend a good paed? I just want to get a second opinion. Thanks!