The good things about having a friendly neighbour with 2 daughters is that you get play mates for the baby, plenty of hands-me-down and a wealth of experience about bringing up kids.

When the mother next door decided to stop at two, she will be very happy to give away whatever she could get rid off. So far, I have gotten a cot, car seat and a big bag of clothings, and more clothings are still coming in. The best part is, the baby has found a someone of similar age to play with. Maybe she is not at the age of playing interactively yet, but she is delighted to see little human around. Can’t help but feel sorry for her for not having many siblings, cousins or neighbours to play with like we used to have.

When the baby starts to roll over, she is no longer contended to be laying still. When she starts to sit, she doesn’t want to lie flat anymore. When she begins crawling, she cannot sit still. When she learns to walk, she probably thinks she is no more a baby and is not cool to crawl anymore.

Friends and relatives told me girls usually begin walking before their 1st birthday. Quite accurate for Yauyau’s case. We thought she would probably begin her new walking journey around the Lunar New Year period, looks like she couldn’t wait to perfect her walking techniques and is getting ready to walk over to receive her ang paos. Just a few days ago, she was like crawling 90% and staggering 10%, now she prefers to do her stumbling act 90% and crawl when she needs speed.

And experienced parents told me when they start running, the kids don’t walk anymore. That’s when all the panting and sweating begins for us.

The baby is approaching one year old soon. Hopefully, I would be able to continue breastfeeding for as long as 2 years, but the strong support I used to get is now weakening. My mother-in-law is suggesting I start weaning her off my breast for my own good, so that I could have more freedom and also to facilitate leaving her overnight at her place or at my father’s place, so as to make her less dependent on me. She even bought me a box of organic soy milk powder, too bad it contained sugar, gave me the perfect reason not to offer it to the baby.

Formula milk, fresh cow’s milk, fresh goat’s milk, soy bean milk, horlick…. I am considering starting one of those along side with her cereal breakfast. I am never a fan of animal’s milk, and after reading just a few articles on Not Milk (thanks to Phoebe for the link), I am inclined to make the kid dislike milk just like mama. Maybe I will start with soy bean milk, but what if I really decided to wean her, is soy bean milk adequate in providing her the necessary fats, lactose and whatever other nutrients?

So much caution from experts that milk is essential for babies and toddlers development, especially their brain (mentioned brain and all mommies will scramble to pump more milk into the kids), but to what extend is its essentiality? The child will have lower IQ or EQ, less intelligent, develope smaller brain, be less nimble or what? Is there really no substitute?

I was told by my sister that one of her friends probably never drink much milk since she was born. She rejected all milk, be it breast milk or formula or goat. Her exasperated mother had to resort to making super powerful soup of meat and vege to feed her, until she was able to take solid. That girl, must be deemed much deprived of the all important nutrients found in milk, grew up to be as smart, studying in one of the top schools and holds a good job now. Her intelligent, character or physical well being doesn’t seems to be compromised by not drinking milk during her early days.

Mommy’s milk is safest for the time being, before I could find an alternative I am comfortable with. Please let me know if you have any suggestion.

Oh dear, my sis declared that I have joined the league of Ah Sohs. Because only aunties 1. like to watch drama like 霹雳火, 2. like DJ 东方比利, 3. know the prices of different eggs.

But that Taiwan series 霹雳火has really gotten very drama lately, the ladies underwent “face off” surgery and some of the characters are so evil or stupid that they made my blood boils, very exciting! Though I think TCS is trying to let Channel U die a slow death by creating a havoc with the channel new time slots, changing that show to 10pm is just right for me. One good thing about Taiwan series is that the plot is moving so slow (yet dramatic) that I can skip a few episodes without missing the big picture. Eh, I also watched upmarket series like West Wing, and I think my listening skills improved dramatically too.

I wonder how is 东方比利now. I have not been listening to FM Love 97.2 so much nowadays, but I fondly miss his programme. They are very informative and entertaining, and he is such a professional, knowledgably and well mannered DJ. He is loved by all aunties, because he is really good mah! By the way, I also love Violet 粉樱 and Marcus 陈健彬, hilarious duo.

And I must share my latest addition to my grocery list, the Omega 3 eggs (Oh dear, I just opened the fridge and realised I had the wrong fatty acids, those I bought were omega 6, not omega 3. need to do some search again). Only pampered 小姐 like my sis doesn’t understand the big wisdom behind the different eggs. Some are cheap like dirt, costing only $1 plus per tray, while the omega eggs cost $3 per tray. I normally buy the mid range $2 plus eggs and not the cheapo ones, the reason is very simple, they keep better in the fridge and the yolk stay firm for weeks, which is important to family that cook only on weekends. See, 小姐 like her won’t know this kind of thing.

Back to the omega eggs, they actually fortified with omega 3 fatty acids, with higher content in DHA, crucial to the optimal development of the brain in infancy and childhood. Since the kid is not nursing so often now, and I have also stopped popping my fish oil supplements, the powerful eggs will hopefully boost her DHA intake. By the way, the kid is taking the yolk and we have to take turns to finish up the egg white, which we all think taste horrible. The texture is not springy at all like the normal hard boil egg, more like the rubbery texture of salted egg, without the saltish taste. Yucks.

Ok, perhaps I am acting a bit auntie in certain areas, which is one of my not-to-be item on my 2005 resolutions. But on a positive note, it also shows that I am a better home manager, just like all the other effective ah sohs, well, at least when buying eggs is concerned. Isn’t it better to switch from buying designer clothes to buying designer eggs? (Btw, I don’t buy designer fashion too)

My JC good friend Sock Hoon and I have decided to meet more often and make Friday an outing day with the kids. That’s one advantage of being a stay-at-home-mom and self-employed mom - go shopping, do house visit or pretend to be arty farty on weekdays, without the maddening crowd, without the presence of the bored husband. We kick start with a visit to Botero In Singapore at the art museum.

We are no artist and only know how to appreciate art in our way, so our comments were mostly made up of words like “very beautiful, interesting hor, very colourful, wah very fat, cannot understand….” and the likes. Nevertheless, we tried very hard to read the brochures and write ups, stood at a far distance to look at the paintings and then moved nearer to examine it again and nodded our head as if we really appreciate a great deal.

The children were definitely not as pretentious. Yauyau wasn’t interested. Maybe the colours caught her eyes, that why she was making a lot of noise in the quiet hall, and I had to carry her in the end to stop her nonsense. I wondered what went through her mind when she looked at the Women on the Beach painting. Was it “Got milk”? I think the only painting she liked was A Family, because there are children in the painting. Still too young for art, but according to the kiasu mom’s principle, there is no harm expanding her visual horizon.

For 3 years old Xuanxuan, it was a more worthwhile trip. Whatever funny nonsense she told us about the paintings, at least she could make some comments. Interesting though, she liked to name the food found in the paintings and thought the loaf of bread is a French fries. It might not be as exciting as a visit to the playgroud, but the visual impact was strong enough to further open her mind. I was told that she enjoys painting green faces, let’s see if she starts painting fat bodies.

Oh yes, the staff in the museum were extremely helpful to mommies with kids in strollers. They couldn’t wait to inform us that there is a lift we could take and kept explaining how it operates. And they never went “sshhh shhhsshhhh” when our fussy kids make noise.

The part the kids enjoyed most was outside the exhibition hall. Strangely, both of them were intrigued by the water fountain. And of course, they loved it when we rested at Olio Dome, they finally got their snack, and we had our ice cream!

Is it a baby thing that they all rub eyes when they are tired? Mine rub her eyes often, when she is tired, and when she isn’t tired. My brother and sister-in-law are quite concerned over that and advised me to stop the kid from rubbing the eyes too often or too vigorously. According to them, eyes rubbing might “reshape” the developing eyeball and cause astigmatism (or myopia, not sure) in future. My brother is not optometrist, my SIL is in the health care service, but she is a speech therapist, nothing to do with eyes. I am not sure where the source is from, but I trust they must have read the report somewhere or heard it from some health practitioner.

It isn’t too difficult to prevent the kid from eyes rubbing, just remove her hand when she does that. She doesn’t protest much. Just as I thought I am quite successful in protecting her eyes, I discovered another problem. Some of her eyelashes are staging a revolt and decide to grow in the wrong direction. She has ingrown lashes at the outer corner of her left eyes. Must have irritated her eyes often which explains why she rubs her eyes often.

My sis has ingrown lashes too, and according to her, there is nothing we can do about it (this was what the ophthalmologist told her). Even if we remove those bothersome lashes, they will grow again. So how? Luckily for her case, they are congregated at one corner and don’t poke into her eyes directly, they are more like a small bunch of grasses growing haphazardly. For the time being, I try to push them to the side and hope they don’t bother her eyes too much.

Today is the last day of Yauyau’s 11th month. This 11th month has been the most magical to us.

She still hates to be alone, but if she knows we are around, somewhere near that she just needs to turn her head to catch our sight, she would gladly plays on her own. My little girl is more secure now and is learning to enjoy the pleasure of playing alone.

No flying kisses or saying actions despite me teaching her for some time already, but the 11th month really marks the start of another steeper learning curve. Where she just stared blankly at our actions during the earlier months, now she would try to imitate the adults though most of the times the hands ends up at the wrong places. The spirit of learning is blooming.

During the 11th months, the baby also developed a better sense of rhythm. In the beginning, she only shake her head (sideways instead of nodding), then hands waving were incorporated, next the body and bums began to shake too and lastly, bending of knees. A whole journey of discovering body movements. There must be built in rhythmic cells in the babies’ body to help them discover music and movements. Her cells were programmed to kick in at the 11th.

She has not talked yet, her vocab probably still remind at 1 or 2. She would relate “mum mum” to eat, breakfast, lunch, dinner, hungry or anything that got to do with food. She still use ” ba or apa” when she tries to talk to us about her exciting world. My in-laws said she would probably call “papa” first, because she goes “bah bah bah” all the time. My father said she must have pick up Indonesian from Indar, because she always asks “apa apa” or “apa t’pa”. Sometimes I wonder if she would becomes like xiaxue, she who “BAH” all the times! Anyway, we are happy that she is making sound.

She has not walked yet, but is trying to do so. She has more control of her upright walker now and has a vague concept of changing direction when it hit the wall. Yup, she must have realised that crying doesn’t make the wall disappear. She has been standing up but never dare to make her first step forward. That must require a giant leap of faith or courage. When she suddenly walked forward two steps yesterday, she must have felt the significance, because she was shouting for our attention after those two steps. Then she refused to “walk” anymore, until the father returned home. She immediately crawled towards him, stood up and took two steps before falling onto the floor again. So precious, we felt our importance in her life.

That was bits and pieces of our magical month. When was yours?

I think the baby looks a bit lean lately. She wasn’t that chubby from the start, but not skinny too. I thought it is because she has grown taller, and believes that after gaining height, she would expand sideways to gain back the proportionate mass. But it remain that way, and I even start to think that she also looks a bit pale lately.

Which makes me start to question my milk supply again. Maybe not enough milk to satisfy her anymore. That’s why she is getting thinner, paler and not sleeps through the night, must be hungry! I decided to try giving her a small portion of bread as her supper before bed time. She didn’t seem very appreciative for it. Just as I was still figuring out about my supply suspicious, she vomited a huge amount of smelly stuff last night.

What happened? That’s a long story. To cut thing short, she probably cried too much and upset her stomach, therefore threw up everything. However smelly her vomitus was, it confirmed to me that she had drunk quite an amount of milk before that. It thoroughly smelt like sour milk. Well, at least I know there is no need to try to feed her bread at all. But I still don’t understand why she is getting thinner.

She has turned into a night owl ever since we returned from Malaysia. I bring her to bed at 9pm, but she just rolls here and there, crawl here and there refusing to sleep. I wanted to tune her biological clock for sleeping back to 9pm, so I continue to coax her into sleeping from 9pm every night. So many days have passed and her eyes were wide wide open until close to midnight.

Is there any effective method of getting a baby to fall asleep earlier? I realised that letting her cry for a while works very well, but very traumatizing for both the baby and I. Laying on the bed waiting for her to turn sleepy is taking up too much precious time. How I wish there is a button I could press and set her to sleeping mode.

It will be the first time that we are marking the ICCD in Singapore and we will like to make this day really special for everyone, especially for our children with cancer. We will like to involve as many Singaporeans as possible to participate in our gold ribbon campaign which will run from end December 2004 to end February 2005.



Singaporeans can show their solidarity by wearing the gold ribbon pin on 15 February 2005, the actual day of ICCD and submitting their pledge online on this portal. Our target is to reach out to 100,000 Singaporeans who will place their support for our children. - Children’s Cancer Foundation