I realised that I have forgotten about my earlier worries about her sudden lost of “speech”. Either I have gotten used to not hearing her babbling, or I am too busy chasing after her backside that I have no more energy to brood over that.

I think her “speech” is coming back recently. She “ahhhh” a great deal lately, especially when we play the children songs or when someone sings to her. Is that her way of singing? She sounds and looks more like a soprano wannabe trying very hard to warm up in an absolutely flat key.

And these few days, she has been going “mum mum mum”. Sad to say, she is not referring to me but to her food! She knows she is going to get her food when we sit her in her special chair, and will go “mum mum mum”. Does she means “food food food”, or “eat eat eat”? We must have been “mum mum-ing” too much during her feeding time, and she has associated it with meals.

She is also saying “ma ma ma” when she is crying. Is she trying to call for me? Is she complaining about us not giving her enough attention? Or is it her special way of demanding hugs and cuddles from us? When will she identifies me and calls me mama!? Can’t wait for that day to arrive!

We were having very turbulent nights for the past week. I am not sure if this is a normal phase of the baby growing up or if she is “possessed”! As usual, she will be sleeping in between James and I, waking up now and then, but easily put back to sleep. However, recently, she will wake up in the middle of the night and starts tossing, twisting and turning around.

She behaves as though she is in a trance. She will whimper a bit, then sit up and fall herself feely forward, sideway or backwards. Then she will lunge forward to bang herself on the wooden headboard (and starts crying if she hits herself too hard), or she will crawl towards the father or me and throw herself onto us. After crashing here and there for about ten minutes, she would “rest” a while lying on our body, or in a position that takes up the maximum amount of space she could. Then she would be up again hitting us here and there until she is really tired.

I am not sure if she feels painful after all these collisions, but my head, stomach and chest sure hurts when she uses her “iron head” to attack me. And serves me right for not cutting her vampire like nails, she extended her vicious crawls under my chin and gave me a mighty scratch last night. I am still feeling the slightly burning sensation on the broken skin now. Luckily she didn’t aim for my face!

This is getting very tiring for me. I am trying to wean her off night nursing but her weird behaviour could only be stopped immediately when I nurse her. I couldn’t sleep thru her turbulent acts, cos she nearly threw herself off the bed last night, and it is also impossible to sleep when she is raining slaps and punches on me.

Grandparents are very self contradicting people. Sometime they have such terrible double standards; they make you confused and mad.

My mother-in-law always tell us not to rock or carry the baby to sleep in arms, so that it would not become a habit that is difficult to get rid of. Once, she saw a mother rocking a baby to sleep and commented that the mother shouldn’t be doing that; the baby will become too clingy in future. I was advised not to carry her too long if she sees me doing it.

I have stopped nursing her to sleep during day time, I would usually let her try to fall asleep on her own in her bouncy chair (ok, with a little fussing and crying), or rock her a bit to soothe her (in that chair, not in arms). I know she would definitely fall asleep in about 3 min even if she fusses, but the grandma won’t bear to allow that to happen. When she saw her crying or struggling to get out, she would say, ” She still want to play, let her play some more lah.” And guess what, after I put the girl on the floor, she would sweep her into her arms and rock her to sleep.

Let me see how long I can tahan this double standard.

We brought the baby to church this morning. That was her first church service and hopefully, will be a good start. I am never a regular church goer (I thought it was unnecessary). Have been to the Orchard Road Presbyterian Church a couple of times, and a few others once or twice, and that was it. Recently, James said he has this “calling” to return, and so, we make it a point to rid all excuses and went to the Grace Assembly today.

Ah, it is quite baby friendly (perhaps all churches are? I don’t know), and the pastor delivered excellent sermon. No wonder James loves it so much. But I still prefer the old one I attended, because 1.I am used to mandarin service, and 2.it has a strong choir (errr, lame reason, but valid!).

Anyway, James asked me if I want the baby to be a Christian too. This is a tough question. Of course I would like her to be a Christian, but…..I just have some reservation. I want her to accept Christ herself, not because we bring her up or condition her to be one. So in the end, we agree that we would expose her to Christianity, and decides herself in future. I hope this does not constitute a sin!

Though our PM encourages us parents to be less protective over our kids and let them take some knocks here and there, it sure frightens us big when it happened.

The little monkey finally had her virgin hard knock on her head today. Accidents tend to happened when the caregiver is the father. I almost lost my cool and reprimanded the father when he brought the crying baby to me, telling me about the fall. I was really scared and worried then. But I know it must really be an accident, babies always perform stuns in a wink of an eye.

Apparently, the father was playing with her at the edge of the bed, and she must have lost her balance and fell backward over the bed and knocked her head against the cot with a loud “thud”. Luckily our bed is quite low and the cot has no sharp edges. She was screaming really loudly then, but I think it was because she was frightened and need some comforting.

So far, she has been behaving as normal, hopefully no head injuries. That will teach us to be more mindful and vigilant when playing with her. She is still a humpty dumbty.

It was weekend again, so another round of learning to cook something. This time, I was supposed to learn to make fried stuffed glutinous rice balls coated with sesame seeds.

These balls were much more challenging to make. It took me quite a while before I could stuff the filling in correctly. The frying part is horrible, so much oil spilled on the floor. And when my mother-in-law filtered the oil to rid the sesame seed, I almost fainted when she threw a big scoop of seeds into the sink. I quickly moved the rubbish bin next to her to catch her second dumping. Blockage is not something I enjoy clearing!

Sad to say, the sesame balls of labour didn’t turn out well. Although we fried them using very low heat, many of them burst with oil spilled all over my kitchen. The exploded balls lost some of its sesame coating and looked patchy. The dough didn’t turn golden brown, which further highlighted the uneven sesame coat. The mung bean filling seemed too dry to me, though my mother-in-law said it was just right. And lastly, the whole thing was just too hard and chewy. It was a good jaw exercise eating it. Though not fantastic and definitely ugly looking, we still managed to finish up the 15 odd balls. If they were bought from hawkers, we would have cursed and sweared at such bad quality.

My mil said the chewy texture might be due to omission of certain ingredients, probably corn flour. She will check that out. And maybe some sugar needs to be added to the dough so that the balls will caramelise e and brown after frying. I will secretly add some water into the filling to moisten it. Going to try it again.

After so many busy, sick, tired or simply lazy weekends, we finally brought the baby out again. This time to the Botanical Garden. I have not stepped into there for so so so many years. The last time I went there was to the orchid garden and that was at least 5 years ago. I have almost lost all memories associated to that place, except for the photo I have taken with my siblings and cousins sitting on that famous big branch of that magnificent tree. I was quite disappointed not able to locate that tree yesterday, yah, wanted to shoot a new generation photo with it.

Anyway, we two adult sua-kus were quite happy to be there. The big grass patch is really an ideal place for family picnic and have enough room for the kids to run wild and crazy. Yesterday was the first time the baby came in contact with grasses. She seemed quite nervous and confused, not daring to move about until some time later. Well,I guess that is one disadvantage of high rise living, too far from nature to feel safe or comfortable with it.

I had very fond memories of my parents bringing me to various parks, beaches, fun fairs and exhibitions. From food fair, to motor shows to furniture shows and even art exibitions, I have been to them all. Remember the carnival styled pasar malam about twenty years ago which were enclosed with fencing and charges entrance fee? We definitely visit them if we spotted one, and we kids would have fun time with the tikam (which I only managed to win packet drinks), ferry wheels or the tea cups that we spin until we went giddy. I hope I would be like my parents, never too lazy or too busy to bring the kid out to see and experience the world or simply to enjoy what it has to offer.

Oh yes, almost forgotten to mention, the ice-cream sold over there is so expensive. Are they really such premium goodie that justify over four dollars a scoope or are they treating us as big fat raddish to be chop chop chop up?

It is very common for computer users to attach a mouse to their notebooks for easier navigation,but have you seen people attaching a keyboard to their notebook? Probably on rare instances, but I am doing that right now. All thanks to my dear dear daughter. She has managed to destroy the keyboard of my precious notebook. After trying to resurrect the machine painstakingly, James concluded that either 1. she had banged on the keyboard with so much might that it had suffered permanent brain damaged, resulting in most of the keys malfunctioning, 2. she had drooled with such precision that the saliva happened to penetrate into the board underneath and damaged the circuit, 3. the keyboard was so tired of all her nonsense and decided to rest in peace. Sigh, heartpain. And the keyboard I am using now is so lousy, the keys aren’t sensitive to touch and and dont spring up properly.

Lesson learnt, never let the baby play with components of gadgets that is attached to the main machine, once that part is destroyed, the whole thing is as good as gone. Not going to let her bang on the keyboards of the other notebooks and the ultimate precious Sony vaio anymore.

I finally got hold of the Baby Einstein series after months of “wanting to buy it but lazy to do so”. I am not a huge tv fan, and am definitely not going to make the little one a tv addict. Somehow the glare and fast moving motions worries me about early onset of myopia, and I think I am so sensitive to her well being now that I could detect the tv emitting radiation that pose a potential threat to her health. But no harm trying, since so many parents gave good reviews about it.

Actually, I was quite disappointed by the show initially. Looks like some low cost production that is really boring, starring soft muppets talking in an incomprehensible squeaky tongue, a bunch of babies wriggling frantically, toddlers jumping wildly, followed by showing various pictures and their corresponding pronunciation, then video clips of them in real life setting, with lots of music and songs through out. But that is exactly what babies need. Simple and clean images, at least not over whelmingly stressful to the tiny brain. After a few rounds of watching, I am begining to appreciate them and find them enjoyable too.

It was amazing that Yauyau can actually sat through the 30min show and totally absorbed by it. So far, she has watched Language Nursery, Baby da Vinci, Baby MacDonald, Baby Bach, Baby Mozart. The favourite is still Baby da Vinci, because she loves those silly looking muppets so much and they appear frequently in there. Baby MacDonald is very entertaining too when it starts singing the “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” song. Very loud and noisy, and you will see her stamping her foot. But I also learnt that I should never repeat the same show to the baby too many times, irregardless of the reason. Dued to her uncle’s request to see her funny foot stamping act, I played the Baby MacDonald again to Yauyau that day. She was very very frustrated and cried annoyingly, probably screaming, ” Oh no! Not that again, the fourth time!”.

Anyway, now I understand why so many parents claimed that it is a very useful baby sitting tool. Indeed very captivating, but got to be mindful not to rely on it too much and turn the kiddo into a baby couch potato.

Frankly speaking, I am not a big fan of kueh like Onde Onde. However, I was very keen to learn how to make them. I have strike a pact with my mother-in-law to teach me a dish for each visit she makes. Advices given to parents to allow children to help in preparing meals so as to improve their eating habits applies to adults as well. I think I enjoy these sweet tasting coconut coated sticky balls now.

Onde onde is surprisingly easy to make, perfect for beginer like me. One thing I don’t like about the commercial ones is they are usually so huge, look like a big tennis ball (ok, maybe not so big, like rambutan), and the skin are often too hard. And also, I prefer the more traditional version, just gula melaka, no coconut inside. The skin just burst with a gush of palm sugar attacking the mouth when bitten. Yummy!

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