Last week was an eventful week. Her mobility was significantly enhanced. She became a crawler. I think going to the grandparents house for two days must have greatly stimulated her physical development. Before the visit, she was still doing her frog leap and buttock raise. She couldn’t coordinate the movements of her limbs, had no idea how to move her legs, and could only raised her buttocks high, pull herself forward with her hands before landing flat on her chest. Then suddenly on the second day after the trip, she discovered how to move her legs, and that marked the start of her little adventures.

Everybody was excited to witness her newly aquired skill. We all gathered around with lots of oohs and aahs and laughters to see her so diligent in her crawling business. From the living room to the kitchen, bedrooms, toilet, she wanted to explore every corner. Amusing and entertaining, we followed her little exploration trails, encouraged her with rattles, opened arms and rewarded her with claps and hugs.

But when the novelty wears off, everybody started grumbling. It is really quite impossible to leave her unattended now, for we don’t know where she will venture to. She wants to follow everywhere you go, and starts crying if you disappear into the forbidden kitchen or toilet. And when you want to take a rest and watch some TV or read the papers, she will crawl here and there enthusiaticaly for an hour non-stop. It is our turn to follow her everywhere without getting the rest we wanted. She isn’t tired at all, but we all are!

Just brought the kid for a wellness checkup. She is weighing exactly 8kg and measures 67cm now. Everything seems to be fine. Of course, I could jolly well skip this session, but I think I need to spend some money to reassure myself. Though not as worried as before, I am still concern over Yauyau lost in interest in babbling (loosing language skill is one of the red flag for autism, though babbling might not be considered a language skill). The baby was responding to her well, and therefore Dr Liew told me not to be overly bothered by her quiet self, and it is difficult to pick up symptoms of autism at such young age. However, she wants to monitor this area as there might be possibility of speech delay if it doesn’t improves.

And she told me the preservative free Hep B vaccine is available now. She could order it for me if I am keen. I think she still finds it ridiculous that I am so cautious of the normal vaccine (afterall, Yauyau had already received two doses, and there are more poisonous stuff in our living environment). Again, she mentioned the normal single vial vaccine she uses is virtually preservative free, but the manufacturer cannot claims it to be so because thimerosal was used during manufacturing, unlike those use in Polyclinics, which contains preservative as they are meant for administering multiple shot. But I just don’t want any “poison” to be injected into her when I have a choice to get her safer ones. Anyway, she is a nice lady who is willing to place an order for me.

I am its first owner, and later passed on to my brother, sister, and two cousins. Finally, my daughter gets to use the same chair that mama used to sit in.

I salvaged this bamboo chair years ago from my grandma’s junk collection when my uncle decided to clear all the rubbish cluttered around. Since then, I have been waiting for the day to sit my own children in it. The day has finally arrived! Can’t help feeling sentimental about it.

I am glad I am not living at my in-laws place in JB, because the neighbourhood is full of kids, and there is a baby boy one house away. He is 3 days older then Yauyau, and I realised that the grandparents tend to compare (compete?) the both of them.

I have been suspecting this competition months ago. My mother-in-law commented that Yauyau has a lot of hair, whereas the other boy is botak. The other boy is big sized, but Yauyau is smaller. The other boy has been zooming around in his walker, time to get her one. He is taking solid food. He still can’t sit. He smiles a lot, blah blah blah. Got me a bit worried initially, especially when you think the baby looked smaller, thinner and therefore might not be developing well.

And I got a taste of the comparing experience this time.

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I was back in JB at my in-laws’ place on Sunday and Monday, with Yauyau, without James. This was something which I really dreaded, alone there without the husband. But needed to attend to some emergency, and couldn’t not go. Luckily I still had the baby with me.

The problem doesn’t lies with my in-laws, but with me. My father-in-law practically stays in his room all day or wanders off to do his own stuff, and my mother-in-law is the typical nice auntie, they don’t really bother about me. However, I always feel uneasy when I am there.

Firstly, I have to solve the meal time problem. I can’t expect my mother-in-law to cook and serve me. I feel very embarrassed and unfilial if I do that. However, as she is fantastic cook, I doubt my cooking will ever impress her. The kitchen is her territory, how can I invade it and meddle with her stuff. Besides that, being plain lazy, I only cook as and when I like, or when I have an urge to experiment with some new recipes, so I hate the idea of having to cook on schedule. In the past, this problem is solved rather easily. I would declare enthusiastically that I wanted to learn cooking from her and therefore observed how she cooked, or James and I will disappeared to some shopping malls at strategic time. Saved me from having to cook or being unfilial, only needed to help do the washing.

This time, the baby saved me. Being a rather choosy cry baby in an unfamiliar environment and overwhelmed by two grandparents exploding with overflowing love, she would fuss, cry or stretch out her hands signaling me to carry her. They wouldn’t want her to be so traumatized, and therefore instructed me to tend to the baby. And the grandparents would not allowed her to play alone on the floor unattended, someone must be there to catch her just in case she tumbled. Ahhh, I was the only choice. So, I was excused from the kitchen. Thanks, dear daughter.

Problem number two. As we do not return to JB often, it doesn’t seems very appropriate if I spend all my time hiding in the room lazing away. I always feel that the right thing to do is to do some chit chatting with my mother-in-law or watch TV with her. I wouldn’t want to be labeled as a daughter-in-law oblivious of her presence. Actually, I do enjoy listening to her talking (all I have to do is to pop a question now and then, and she can talk for hours….easy…hehe), I think I know all about James childhood, his relatives and his parents more then he knows them. But it could get rather tiring listening to stories for hours, and especially if the fan or the air-con is not working, and you feel sticky and itchy all over the body. If James is around, we can disappear to the mall (again, haha), or watched DVDs together, or I can pretend to be really busy doing some work on the computer with him. But he was not with me this time.

She saved me again. Being their precious grand daughter, they would tell me to bring the baby back to the air-con room for cool retreat (she was sweating mad), or bring her back to the nicely air-con room to be fed, or get her to nap (in the nicely air-con room, too). And I get to idle and relax peacefully, compliments from the baby’s blessing.

The Chinese seventh month is finally over. I am really terrified of ghost (I believe I saw those eerie beings before, scary!), and therefore hungry ghost festival always makes my imagination runs wild. Anyway, this entry is not about those supernatural things. This seventh month is a joyous month. James and I have a baby cousin now (so zeeyau is having an uncle younger then her!), Jenny my ex-colleague finally gave birth to her baby boy, and Alfred my secondary school classmate has fathered a baby girl. This is the stage of life when we suddenly received numerous wedding invitations and baby arrival announcements. There are always some kind of party or celebration to look forward to. And i enjoys shopping for presents!

Anyway, just visited Jenny and her son. It is almost the 14 days, and she still has not decided on his name yet. Well, names are especially important, I guess she wants the best one, and I know she will not compromise on something that does not appeal to her. The baby seems so small with those tiny limbs. Weighing 3.3kg, he is not considered a small baby. I guess all newborns look like that, like a little frail old man. Yauyau must have looked even thinner and scrawnier as her birthwieght was relatively low. Newborns, so fragile, yet so sweet! Almost made me wanting to have a second baby!

Bought a toy xylophone last week. Too attractive and interesting for me to resist getting it. Anyway, it has a pointy stick with a ball on its end, and she just loves licking and mouthing the lollipop, and refuses to play it the “correct” way. I was frustrated and worried (that she might fall and stab herself to death), therefore, kept it away from her if she is alone. I also spanked her little hands whenever she mouthed that lollipop, hoping she would understand eating that wasn’t permissible. Seems that she never understood.

However, after reading “Positive Discipline, The First Three Years”, the authors demonstrated that spanking, punishment, shamming are not the answers to training children to keep away from dangerous objects. They believe in using distractions and choices, training and not abandonment, redirection, etc. Saying “no” to kids (who like to explore and touch almost everything) is unwise, because “it is normal and developmentally appropriate for toddlers to explore and want to touch”, and usually the child “never learns” even after countless “no”. Doubt and shame could be instilled into the child instead of autonomy too. Distractions should be used to divert their attention to something else. Furthermore, they believe that “children under the age of three do not understand ‘no’ in the way most parents think they do”.

I decided to put that theory to test. Whenever the kiddo tries to pop the lolli into her mouth, I will remove it from her mouth, and then guide her hand with the stick to hit on the metal bars. A lot of patience needed, but amazingly, it works! I am fascinated today when I saw her hitting the xylophone after I repeated the removing and guiding procedure. It took me about a week, but worth the effort (and of course, she still prefers putting that stick into her mouth, kind of reflex?).

I am very sure I heard her say “babu” this afternoon. And thats all she would say to make me so happy. No matter how many “babu” I repeated to her, she just stared at me, shut her mouth tightly, unable to understand why I got so excited. Hopefully she will make more sound so I don’t have to be so worried.

Indar told me “babu” means housemaid in Indonesian. And it does not refers to the typical domestic worker, babu are maid that needs to serve and attend to every aspect of their master. Now I know why the baby said that to me.

I have bought another new toy! The activity ball from Tiny Love . Quite an enjoyable thing to play with. It will make a silly sound when you tap the ball, five different sound altogether (the sound is a bit too soft though). You can also pull out the head or the legs, and it will retract automatically with jerky vibrations.

But the baby doesn’t seem to be very impressed by all the tricks the ball performs. I tried to grab her hand and hit it, she couldn’t be bothered with the sound. I demonstrated how to pull the head and legs and guided her to do it, but she didn’t have the skill and strength to do it. Too bad!

Luckily I observed the sacred rule when choosing toys. 1. Brightly coloured. 2. Handles or pointy thingies attached. Look! The creature has two antennas on its head and a plastic ring on its hand. Perfect! She enjoys holding the antennas and chewing the ring. Phew, money not wasted after all.

When you become a parent, your shopping habit change. Your wish list consists of the following: cute (baby) dress, (small) shoes, fanciful (plush) gadgets, (tiny) hair accessories, new blender (to process baby food), super cool sound space stereo (to play music to the baby, what else!), a bigger house (so the kiddo can have her own room). You can do without those things you wanted so badly (in the past). You achieve more happiness shopping for the kid. You decide not to buy that unpractical thing to pamper yourself, but walks away with 10 silly toys for the precious one. Worth it. Good for her development. You forget yourself.

And this doesn’t only happens to young parents. My father just returned from Shanghai. He actually bought two sets of silk comforter and blanket for my brother and I, and nothing for himself, except two skinny brinjals and some over ripen peaches (his weird habit, buying fresh produces whenever he goes oversea). He will always bring something back for us, but unfortunately, the gifts he bought were usually unpractical, useless or simply too old fashioned. Now, i can fully appreciate his act and is able to experience the same kind of happiness he derives from doing so. Though I know I would most probably keep that blanket in some dark corners indefinitely, I will accept it happily without hesitation. And I have decided to give my brother a lecture on this, for he actually refused to accept the present. How could he be so insensitive? How upsetting it will be to the father, who only think of getting something for his children while penny pinching himself.