The father had been training the kiddo to dismount from our bed. I thought it was too early, she won’t be able to do it. But apparently, she sort of understands the concept and movement involved in getting off the bed after numerous practices.

Of course, she still doesn’t know how to do it herself yet. If she crawls towards the edge of the bed, she will stop there, clueless about how to proceed. But if we position her legs at the edge of the bed with her tummy down, she would try to stretch out her legs, gives them a few kicks and lowers herself down slowly while holding on to the bed sheets tightly. I believe the low height bed helps her a great deal, and of course, who wants to be trapped on the boring bed. The desire to seek greener pasture must have spurred her descending attempts.

Not wanting to loose out to the father (just in case he starts bragging about it); I will teach her how to climb onto the bed. This can actually be done effortlessly. Put her favourite TV remote control on the bed, just beyond her reach and there she goes! Don’t even need to position her legs on the right ledges. The moment she sees the remote control, she will use all effort to scramble up the bed, towards the prize. Training session completed in less then a minute. However, without the remote control within her sight, she will just stand by the bed, patting the mattress without the slightest yearning to get onto the bed.

The baby was extremely cranky tonight. Dinner was served to her, but halfway through her meal, her fussing began. She started scratching her head and tugging her ears with her hands, somewhat like a dog using its hind leg to scratch the behind of its ears. Then she waved her hands and tried to push away the spoon. And of course, she cried and cried, until my uncle living next door came over to see what happened. He managed to pacify her for a while, but she regained her fussy mood again. She cried so loudly my uncle gave up and escaped home to enjoy some peace.

She must be feeling very sleepy, or else she seldom cried for so long. And true enough, she started rubbing her eyes and dozed off a few times. Seeing no possibility to let her finish her porridge, I granted her wish and sent her to dreamland. After 45min of rest, I thought she would wake up happy and contented and would be ready to finish her meal. But she acted up again when we tried to feed her. Gave up, let her drink milk instead. She nursed happily. Maybe that provided her more comfort.

I wonder what caused her to be so irritable. Was it because I eat too many brownies today? She was exactly like that last Thursday and Friday, and I ate a lot of brownies on those two days too!

It is almost a formality when people ask for the kid’s name during party or gathering. I will introduce the baby as “Zee Yau”. All friends and relative immediately understood that her name is Zee Yau. But try saying that to my ex-students. They will repeat the “what’s her name?” question again and again, until you get so frustrated and asked them, “What’s your problem, Zee Yau not nice izzit?” To that generation, the transliteration (surprise! I learnt this term from James here) of her Chinese name “Zee Yau” is not appropriate enough. So cheena and obiang! Must have a proper English name! Arghh, wanted to twist their necks and crush their heads.

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I am saying byebye to my little stash of frozen breastmilk. They are stocks during the one month period (around September) when I felt very insecure about my supply. The baby was taking two solid feeds a day, meaning reduced nursing appointments with me. And she was easily satisfied after 10 or 15 minutes of nursing. She must be either super efficient or super lazy sucker, and that got me super worried about drying up again!

So I took out the medala mini electric pump and decided to try expressing again to upkeep my supply. Surprise surprise, I had “improved”! I could yield about 2 oz of precious milk after 30min of painful hard work. When I said painful, I really meant painful! Somehow the pump didn’t like me; the suction gave me burning, cutting, tearing sensation. I simply could not continue after 30min of self inflicted torture, the suction funnel was like a plunger (what is a plunger? think blocked pipes) trying to remove my milking taps! After one month of collection, I surrendered and gave up. I convinced myself to relax and let nature takes it course. Probably also because I realised I wasn’t drying up afterall. I also wondered if extended painful expressing would ultimately injured my body and cause some muscle or cell mutation!

Those liquid foods are about two to three months old, not too sure if they still fresh or not. I have not used a single packet as I gave up using the bottle. I don’t know what else to do with them. Mix them with the baby’s cereal? But the cereal already contained milk and advice against adding more milk. Drink them myself, err, very weird, don’t dare to. Maybe I should use them to make Milo or tea for James secretly, very yummy yummy nutritious. I think he will freak out and drop dead if he finds out.

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I wish I am as lucky, can change my wardrobe every few months. I used to dump all her stuff into one single drawer. It could neatly accommodated all her clothing, handkerchiefs, towels, unused toiletries and a big roll or cotton wool. Now, with another big plastic box to keep those too big, or too small clothing, the drawer is perpetually overloaded. Got to squeeze and press on the stacks of clothing before I could close it properly.

She outgrows the clothing so fast. I am already very mindful of getting practical ones only whenever buying clothes for her. 80% of them are either hand-me-downs from friendly neigbour or gifts from relatives and friends. I bought all her daily change of clothing at least one size bigger, but she has outgrown all after wearing them for 6 months.

I am a huge fan of baby bodysuits! Almost all her earlier daily gears were bodyysuits. It is cooling and the snaps at the crotch could secure and hide the diapers without worrying exposing the tummy. There is no elastic band that bites into the skin of the tummy. Now, I could still get her into those bodysuits, but couldn’t fasten the back to the front anymore.

Anyway, the leg baring bodysuit aren’t suitable for her anymore. I realised that her knees were getting very black at the end of the day. Not wanting to turn them into elephants like, ultra thick, rough and greyish skin, I dug out all the pants I could find and bought half a dozen new ones for her. Hope that will provide more protection. For the time being, I just let her wear the bodysuits as modified tail coats along with her pants and see how long they could last.

Her night rompers are definitely too small for her too. They used to be so big that I have to give the sleeves a few folds to shorten them. The pants section was so long I could have let her wear a hundred socks to get the perfect length. Now they look extremely tight, like wrapping in stockings. Almost wanted to snipe away the ending section so that she could extend her legs from the holes, but reminded myself not to get obsessively stingy. A new set of girlish pajamas for her, no more unisex colours like blue or green.

It would be too wasteful to throw away those small clothing, besides, I would like to keep them for the next one. Storage space will always be the constant big headache with her ever expanding inventory of things.

This sua-ku mom brought the baby to take the LRT and MRT for the first time yesterday! I am the typical over pampered, environmental unfriendly Singaporean who die die must drive the car whenever I am going somewhere. My father lives just ten minutes walk away (maybe nearer), sometimes when I am feeling particularly lazy, I drive there.

Actually I do enjoy taking public transport. I loves long rides (provided I got to sit!) that allows me to do people watching. I enjoy bus rides that passes through places I have not been to. But soon after I gotten my driving license, I becomes lazy and overly dependent on the car.

I miss the days of taking buses or the MRT, and hence, I decided to travel by public transport to Causeway Point yesterday! I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was like an adventure. I have not boarded an MRT for two years and have taken the bus only once this year. I have not travelled with the baby on public transport locally before. Should I take the bus or take the MRT? It took me two hours to decide to take the MRT. Should I use the sling or should I use the stroller? Took me another forty-five minutes to decide on the sling. If not for the rainy weather, I might need another hour to come to that decision.

And the rain saved me. It was 5.30pm, peak hour, would be crazy to push the stroller into the train when it was so crowded. I think the frustrated commuters around would be starring at me annoyingly, puzzled what was that irritating bulky stroller doing on the train, taking up so much precious space. The LRT stations are fitted with lifts, but I don’t think all the MRT stations are lifts ready yet. Maybe there is, but I didn’t saw any. So many people, before I can see anything, I was herded by the crowd onto the escalator.

So, as a mother carrying a baby, I supposed my status will be automatically upgraded to “needy”. I wasn’t really in need of a seat, but it would be fun to see if anybody would graciously give up their seat to me. Sigh, no one took pity of me on the LRT. They either pretended to be in immersed concentration staring at some distant object, or engaged themselves in certain very fast and complicated pressings of buttons on their hand phones. These people were so self deluding, everyone knew they were pretending, why bothered to put on a show! Well, not all Singaporeans were so unhelpful. I was immediately offered a seat after I boarded the MRT.

End of my mini adventure. I returned home by car in the end.

I have talked so much about the greenish tint and the invincible anti evil anklet that I forgot to mention the most important part: Yauyau really is a rather timid baby.

During the first month, it was a headache task to give her a proper bath. I was the queen on confinement, and was not suppose to touch water or carry anything heavy (the tiny 2.7kg baby is considered heavy, I think I am only allowed to carry my bowl of rice, and I am supposed to sit or lie on the bed while having my meals. anyway, I need to nurse her, therefore I get to hold her after all). I was spared of the ordeal. My mother-in-law was having a tough time bathing her. She was terrified of the water, cried, screamed, kicked, shitted, pee-ed and even tried to stand to avoid the water.

Luckily things became better soon after she was one month old. She was still tensed, but was much calmer. I think she was feeling very insecure about her naked self. Things got even better when she was able to sit in her tub. She begins to enjoy the water and also plays splashing the water. I thought she had overcome her phobia and decided to use the shower to bathe her instead. She was terror-stricken. The moment the shower of water rained on her, she cried and attempted to climb out of the tub immediately. Now at nine months old, she enjoys playing with water, but is not yet ready for the shower.

Beside the shower, whirring sound doesn’t please her too. Vacuum cleaner, blender, and sometime even the washing machine startled her and send her fleeing to the nearest human being around. I have been letting her face her own fear by making her watch us blending food or vacuuming the floor, she is more “courageous” now!

I guess most babies experienced stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, get startled by loud noises, is terrified of one thing or another or doesn’t want to go to sleep alone, but with the greenish tint there, she will always be labeled as the timid baby who had been badly frightened during her initial days. Well, it does become a good conversation starter with relatives or strangers I met on the street.

It was giving pomegranate leaves bath months ago to ward off evil spirit. Now I present to you my latest exorcising gadget: the silver anklet.

Everyone said the little fella has been badly frightened, because she has a greenish tint at the end of her nose bridge, between her eyes. The older folks even blamed the nurse for frightening the poor girl; some said the nurses must have handled her roughly, and some said the nurses probably bathed her in a very ungentle manner. Hmm…Maybe the gynea made a monkey face at her while removing her from my tummy which scared her badly! Anyway, the nurses, paediatricians and lactation consultants offered me more professional reason, the veins at that area are more prominent because the skin is thinner there. It will probably fade away later.

The greenish tint is still visible, which leads to the suggestion from my mother-in-law to let yauyau wear a silver anklet. According to the old wives belief, kids with greenish tint there tend to be more timid, easily frightened and startled. Since children are pure and innocent, they are able to see the extraordinary beings around. Therefore, to prevent my timid little one from getting a bad fright, she shall wear the anti evil, spirit warding silver anklet. With the invincible anklet, the evil spirit will not get near her and she will not see them. And it has to be pure silver; else the exsorsing power will not be strong!

Anyway, I am letting her wear the anklet irregardless whether it will protect her or not. I have one with lots of bells and hearts thingy hanging all over the chain. Too complicated and too noisy. Worse, what if she tries to eat the bells or pull one of them out and stuff them into her nose! I have chosen another one with a very simple design, just a chain with a tiny piglet dangling in the middle. I think it looks quite pretty and dainty on her little ankles. Ohh, she is slowly turning into my Barbie doll.

Grandparents looking after grandchildren, the typical setup in many Singapore families. Grandparents refusing to look after grandchildren, the emerging trend in many local families.

I think my mother-in-law is the typical kind of grandparent who loves to help look after their grand children. She has been visiting us almost every Friday and stays over until Saturday. To avoid heavy traffic, she chooses to cross the causeway at around 10pm on her way here, and return in the late afternoon on the weekend. But most of the time, she will still be trap in the traffic congestion. So tedious, why bother? She wants to bond with the baby, wants the baby to recognise her, wants the baby to friend her, so that one day, she could bring her back to JB and help us look after her!

I trust that she is not trying to “snatch” the kid from us, but does so with the best intention. She thought I might ultimately return to work (opps, I doubt so), or we might do some traveling and need someone to care for the kid and she will be ready to take on the job when the time comes. I was a bit suspicious when she started telling me about various good kindergarten in JB, and begin cold sweating when she said that she wants to register the baby in one of the popular kinddy there (because it has a looonnnggg waiting list). Har???!!! If Yauyau is attending school there, then what am I suppose to do? No doubt she is very good with kids and will ensure the best in all aspects of yauyau’s well being, no no, no way I could bear to leave her there.

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The grandfather definitely enjoys the presence of his granddaughter. He looks forward to her daily visits there. And that is it; he loves her being around, but dreads having to look after her. If the baby crawls into his room while he is busy monitoring the stock market on the TV or religiously sending electric shocks into his body using his Electro-Reflexologist, he will immediately shout, “Indah Indah, come and jaga baby!” No respond from Indah? He will leave his room and lure the baby to someone else. When nobody can be targeted to be the next victim, he will switch on the Baby Einstein video and to keep her occupied. While I reminded Indah not to show the series too often to the kid, the grandfather doesn’t really care what I said, as long as he can keep the baby from ka-chiao-ing him.

I am not much better either. It used to be stuffing her with more breast milk to knock her out. Probably my supply is not rich in the sedative anymore; she is still wide awake after quenching her thirst. Ah, but I have found another good buddy. She absolutely loves to eat the Baby Bites rice crackers, which can keep her busy for about 5min when I desperately need some peace. Imagine me in the kitchen, halfway through frying something or kneading some sticky dough with flour all over the place, and the attention seeking baby crying and standing beside wobbly, balancing herself by holding on to my legs, the easiest way out is to shove her a piece of cracker to distract her. Not the best solution, but what else can I do?

No wonder the population of juvenile TV addicts and suspersize kids keeps increasing. Poor little baby, what she wants is only a little bit more attention, cuddling, hugging, but here we are trying to seek alternative short cuts to babysit her. Time to hit the brakes again.