I started the kid with Gerber babana cereal at around her 3rd month. Gerber=baby food, so it was the obvious choice for me. She took it quite well too. Of all the flavoured cereal I have tried, Gerber’s has least milky taste. The fish and chicken ones taste rather savoury, and for the fruity ones, you can find fruits’ “flakes” in them. I don’t like things like “banana powder” or “chicken powder”, so I switched brand after a few boxes.

I am sorry, Dumex, but their cereal is the number one on my dislike list. I have tried their milk based, apple flavour, banana flavour cereal, and none of them taste right to me. The milky smell and taste is overpowering, I dumped the whole bowl right after I mixed it up. And it dissolves badly too, with lumps all over the place like coagulated milk.

My favourite is Frisocrem and I have stayed with it faithfully. Not too sure why it cost more, but its taste appeal to me. The cereal dissolves well and makes a very creamy texture. It has a nice milky smell which is not overwhelming, and tastes a little sweet though, which is a minus point. I can usually get it quite easily at NTUC, but the supermarket seems to have a problem replenishing the shelves with Frisocrem when it runs out of stock, which can take days!

No more Frisocrem at home, and no signs of new stock, I decided to try Honey-Joy from Nestle. It dissolves quite well too, and has an interesting texture since there are corn flakes added. True to its name, this cereal seems to be very generous with honey (or sugar?), extra sweet! There are a lot of ingredients listed on the labels, which I don’t like.

I have also tried the Nestle rice cereal (plain). The mixture changes into a strange greyish colour after mixing with water. Weird, but tastes alright after adding some fruits to it.

When I have run out of everything or when I am less lazy, it will be Quaker Oatmeal for Yauyau. It seems to be a very wholesome meal after adding fruits into it.

Out of convenience, I am still giving baby cereal to the kid as breakfast. But I am considering reducing or stopping it in near future. Maybe could start her on things like bread or muffin, but definitely not porridge. Not so hardworking to wake up early and cook porridge.

I have received some information regarding cheese from Dory some time ago. Our kids seem to enjoy eating cheese, and we are the typical moms concerned about too much sodium found in cheese. She has been giving her boy Monterey Jack, which she said is unsalted.

The usual cheese we eat like Cheddar actually has quite a high content in sodium. Just need to eat some to know the salty taste. According to cheese.com, “Salt plays a substantial role in cheese making. Salting serves a number of functions; it speeds up the drying process, heightens the cheese’s flavour, helps the rind to form and slows down the proliferation of micro-organisms. Each type of cheese has a specified salt content.”

I have tried searching for information on some of the more common cheese found locally, like Feta, Camembert, Cottage Cheese, Cream Cheese, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Ricotta, Romano and so on. It is frustrating to find that different sites give different information. One site described feta as a “pickled” cheese, while another one give indicated that it has no salt. The same differing facts I get for Parmesan as well. Perhaps there are different varieties within each kind of cheese. So the safest way to find out is to read the labels before getting it for the kid.

I mentioned Cheerios in my last post. The power of advertising introduces this finger food to me and conditions me into believing that it is the perfect snack for children.

I have been looking for it for months. I always try searching for it in the baby food section, without any success. There are only formula, baby cereal, jar food, rusk and babybites, no sight of the much wanted O shaped food. I even went to the more high class supermarkets where more expats frequent in search of it (I had the idea that all ang moh kids grew up eating Cheerios, too much advert I guess). Still no sight of it.

It was like discovering a gold mine when I saw Bee Gek from our playgroup brought out these little golden ring like snack. It is available in our little island, and can be found at Cold Storage! The next day, I headed down to Cold Storage at Guthrie House (a lot of ang mohs shop there, sure have), and I found the treasure among the many different kinds of breakfast cereal. It was never found at the baby food section.

Taste a bit like pop corn without butter and honey. The kid loves it (to be fair, she loves almost every food we offered). I enjoy eating it too and my father enjoys offering “biscuit” to the kid without having me screaming at him.

I bought a set for Dory as Ryan’s birthday present. These stay-put suction bowls from Munchkin look so interesting and useful that I decided to get one set for Yauyau too.

The bowls come in a set of three, which was why it took me more then a month to finally come to a decision to buy them yesterday. Three suction bowls! Why would I ever need so many of them!? But having returned to my old impulsive shopping self on that instance, I adhered to the “buy first, justify later” principle and brought the three colourful bowls home happily.

And I must tell you, it is a good buy. I have it tested today, the suction rubber kept the bowl firmly stuck to the table at the coffee shop. Not only that, it kept Yauyau firmly glued to her chair as well. With the bowl full of Cheerios stuck to the table, she actually spent at least ten quiet minutes eating her snacks while sitting on those red plastic chair. For once, Indar and I didn’t have to take turns to finish our food and carry her in our arms. What a great helper I have found!

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.

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 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.

Please do not be misled by the photo. The baby looked so happy not because of the octopus, but because she always gets excited by the camera.

I had contemplated the idea of getting this octopus some time ago, after seeing a picture of a very happy baby hugging it (the power of advertising!). Moreover, it is supposed to be an award winning developmental toy for babies which encourages “….blah blah blah”. The “award winning” stamp already convinced me it is GOOD. I wonder how they do the judging. Do babies vote? Or they measured the length of laughter it generated from the babies?

Well, that was a stupid question. Of course they have a panel of grown up experts determining every aspects of positive stimulation it is going to benefits the child. Anyway, when we first placed the octopus in front of the kid, she didn’t seem very interested. It wasn’t suppose to be like that, at least not in my imagination. I thought she would waved her hands wildly, kicked her legs excitedly and hugged the sea creature lovingly!

The legs of the octopus plays a note when given a squeeze (one whole octave altogether). I was squeezing the legs randomly, desperately dying to attract her attention, but she was only mildly interested. In the end, I gave up enticing her to play, gave her the noisy rattles, but continue to squeeze the octopus legs. Gosh, I think I enjoyed it tremendously while trying very hard to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with the eight tentacles.

I think I have fallen into the trap of choosing toys that entertain me more then the baby. Luckily, she is slowly warming up towards the new toy these few days, thus justifying the purchase.

Good tidings! The baby has put on weight, she is 6.1kg on the old fashioned scale. I think I made the right decision to start her on cereal early. She loves her cereal, and enjoys the apple juice for baby too.

In the beginning, we still try to give her a bottle of formula, thinking that she might just decides to accept it again. I even bought new nipples and new bottles. Never successful. I gave her apple juice in the bottle, hopping to entice her to use it again. Still won’t budge.

So, the problem doesn’t lies with the formula, but with the bottles. I have since sent them into earlier retirement. We resort to spoon feeding her juice or milk now. Luckily, the baby sitter only needs to do that once a day. The process is tedious and messy, I think half of the liquid ends up either on her bib or clothes. Well, at least we get to dump some water down her throat.

Just bought a new gadget to solve the hydration problem, a sippy cup. The colour is attractive, and it is spill proof, but one really have to sip and suck to get the liquid out. Hmm…I think the baby didn’t receive a single drop of water, she is treating it as her new toy and chews on the sprout. I am hopping for a miracle, that she will accidentally take a sip one day and realize that liquid will actually flow out.