I'll be back

Have been VERY busy with sorting lots of things out, mentally, emotionally & physically - the messy house and household chores, career, personal life goals (short-term & long-term)... the list goes on.

Hence, haven't been able to afford the time to blog or post pictures of Karyn. In fact, am only half done with the sorting... There's really too much to think and work through. Haven't been taking pictures of Karyn for close to 2 weeks already...

Well, at least I've gotten a part time cleaning lady to come in once a week. That solves part of the house issue.

Still have lots of junk waiting to be cleared out. Will post again when I can afford the time.

In the meantime, here's one more picture of Karyn - a personal favourite of mine.

Savour it and don't miss me while I'm not posting.

Karyn & her teddy bears

Karyn has 2 cots at home. 1 in her own room and 1 in Mummy's room.

There's a manual cot mobile with 4 oh-so-pretty teddy bears on the cot inside Mummy's room. Liwei Gu Gu bought it for Karyn when she was 1 month old.

Look at how Karyn plays with the teddy bears.

A walk in the park

Karyn's starting to develop a plethora of expressions that keep everyone - Mummy, Daddy, Ah Ma & Ah Gong, enthralled.

Here are some pictures taken while taking a morning walk in the neighbourhood.

Sleeping in her Peg Perego stroller. Her Daddy calls it her BMW.

Full of expressions

Daily exercise routine no. 2

Mummy read somewhere (can't remember if it's the Internet or some book) that from sometime around 4 to 5 weeks old, one can start putting the baby on her tummy to let her do some upper body exercise.

Ever since then, Mummy has added this to Karyn's daily exercise routine.

So every time Mummy puts Karyn on the bolster, she will automatically lift her head and chest and do mini push ups.

With the bolster supporting her, she will exert her whole body's strength and nudge herself forward.

Of course, she is always motivated when Mummy is by her side cheering her on.

"Crawl, Karyn, crawl."

Push... push...

"So clever, Karyn!"

Push... push... push..

Durian cravings - the sequel

Oh yes, speaking of durians, suddenly remember a conversation between Hubby, Karyn and I.

When Hubby knew that my mum was going to bring durians back on Sunday evening, here's what transpired.

Hubby: "Next time when Mummy eats durians, you and Daddy will run far far away, ok?"

Karyn: "Ge.. ge.."

Me: "No! Next time Mummy AND Karyn will eat durians TOGETHER. Daddy will run far far away!"

Karyn: "Ge.. ge.."

Well, you see, Hubby has a durian phobia.

He describes the smell of durian to be worse than the rubbish chute and even worse than vomit.

It's just too bad he's not a durian connoisseur.

"It's an acquired taste," I always tell him. "You don't know what you are missing in life..."

Don't you all durian lovers agree with me?

Durian cravings

Check out Karyn's reaction to her first real exposure to durians - outside Mummy's tummy...

While Karyn was still in Mummy's tummy, she had already 'tasted' durians. Not just once, but 4 times. Though 3 out of those 4 times were not the real fruit, but the processed version in the form of durian rolls from Angie The Choice.

Actually Mummy was afraid to put on too much weight and feared getting gestational diabetes which might result in a large baby. So she had to fight the constant durian craving that plagued her throughout the entire 3rd trimester.

What made it worse was Ah Ma and Ah Gong frequently goes to JB where there are cheap and good durians which they would buy back upon request. All Mummy had to do was to verbalise her wishes.

In such a tempting situation, Mummy had to exercise extremely high discipline and only indulged in the occasional durian roll, a couple of weeks apart, so as to spread out the calories.

Now that Karyn's finally out (at 2.99kg instead of the 3.1 kg that the gynae had predicted), Mummy finally has the chance to pig out on durians!

Karyn's daily exercise routine

Karyn has a daily exercise routine which she enjoys tremendously. In fact, she likes to show it off to everyone.

This routine started when Mummy discovered Karyn's potential when she was only about 3 weeks old.

When placed over the shoulder, she'll start to lift her head on her own.

Then I will start chanting, "lift your head... exercise your neck... so clever...!" over and over again.

And like a well-trained performer, or a big show-off, whichever way you prefer to describe Karyn, she'll start the routine on demand.

Once I prop her up on the shoulder and start chanting, she'll immediately respond by lifting her head off my shoulder and try to hold it up on her own.

Of course, at times she'll fall flat on her nose. Yup, that has happened countless times before. But Karyn's a courageous girl. She never cries when her nose is slammed on Mummy's shoulder. She'll try and try again to lift her head up.

So now that I have discovered this new ability of Karyn's, I've been putting her through this exercise routine every day.

In fact, she's so good at it now that she can hold her head up high for as long as 40 seconds. No joke! I've timed her before!

Greedy Karyn

New discovery about Karyn - she can smell the aroma of food when people are eating!

Yesterday afternoon, while Ah Ma and Mummy were having lunch, Karyn was sound asleep in her 'day bed', a few steps away from the dining table.

Halfway through lunch, she woke up.

She started making gurgling sounds, wanting to be carried. And we found her smacking her lips and sticking out her tongue.

So I picked her up and returned to the dining table to continue with my lunch, carrying her in my left arm.

To both Ah Ma's and my surprise, Karyn's lip-smacking and tongue-sticking-out intensified. She was getting more and more excited, wriggling in my arm and making louder gurgling sounds. And believe it or not, she kept turning her head towards the table of food!

It wasn't time for her feed yet, but she was showing signs of hunger...

Her wriggling was getting more forceful and violent, her arms flailing about and she was starting to suck on her hand - that's the surest sign of her hunger.

Ah Ma had to gobble down the remaining of her lunch and rushed to make Karyn some milk.

Karyn was pacified only after she was given the bottle.

Ah Ma and Mummy concluded: Karyn "knows food when she smells it".

Haha...

Ah Gong's birthday

Today is Ah Gong's 56th birthday.

1st time celebrating it with Karyn - his 1st grandchild.

Whenever he is coming to visit Karyn, he would tell his friends that he's going to see the person who let him 'chen gong' (become 'successful'; actually it's become Ah 'Gong' - grandfather in chinese).

Haha! What a ingenious way of playing with words!

Positive + Positive = Super Positive

In Mathematics:
(+) & (-) = (-)
(-) & (-) = (+)
(+) & (+) = (+)

In Karyn's case, (+) & (+) = (+++)

What am I talking about?

Karyn's eyelashes, what else?

Everybody (relatives, friends, even hospital staff) gushed at the length of Karyn's eyelashes.

By infants' standards, I should think she 'exceeds expectations'.

And the reason for that...

Both Daddy and Mummy have long eyelashes. She must have inherited the good genes from us!

No need to use eyelash curler nor mascara next time!

Hence Mummy theorises...

Short + Short = Short
Long + Short = Long/Short
Long + Long = Super Long!

Errr... I mean eyelashes, not the other body part. In case some of you might be wondering... Haha!

Are you lonesome tonight?

Are You Lonesome Tonight? ~ Elvis Presley
(extracted)
Are you lonesome tonight
do you miss me tonight
Are you sorry we drifted apart
Does your memory stray to a bright sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight

This dear daughter of mine... is scared of, guess what?

Yes! She's scared of loneliness.

She suffers from what I call, the 'Loneliness Phobia'.

Everytime we put her to bed in her cot, we have to switch on the radio - either Classical 92.4FM or Class 95.

She absolutely can't sleep well if her surroundings is silent. In fact, she thrives on noise. Yes. Can't believe it right?

The best illustration of that is the day of her baby shower.

There was at any one time, 20+ people in the house, all the way from noon till 5 p.m. And boy, were they noisy. The adults were eating and chatting, the TV was one, the children were playing...

And you know what? No prizes for the correct answer...

She slept through it all!

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, she's such a sound sleeper when in deep slumber that I think even an earthquake won't wake her up.

So the conclusion is, the rowdier the crowd, the louder the music or TV, the better Karyn sleeps!

Now, I've sidetracked. Back to Karyn's 'Loneliness Phobia'.

When she's not asleep, or tired of playing on her own, she demands to be carried.

She'll cry once or twice to see if anyone goes to carry her.

If nobody responses, her cries will get louder.

And if nobody goes to her still, she'll start to wail.

When finally we look in on her, she'll continue to wail until we pick her up and carry her. She's such an attention seeker.

But the thing is, there's almost always no tears when she is seeking attention.

That's how we differentiate her cries.

(If she's hunger, tears will be rolling down her tiny rosy cheeks by the third wail. I'll talk about hunger in another post some time later...)

OJT - bathing the baby

After weeks of observing Ah Ma at the bathing 'ritual', it's finally Mummy's turn to do it.

OJT (On-the-job-training) Session 1
Date: 3 Jul 2006
Time: 8.15 a.m.
Venue: Karyn's bedroom / Common toilet

Step 1:
Prepare the bath (Venue: Common toilet)
- Get ready bath water in the bath tub (test first, must be lukewarm)
- Put cotton pad (for cleaning eyes), wash cloth and baby bath liquid at the tub
- Put bath towel (for wrapping Karyn after the bath) next to the tub

Step 2:
Prepare the changing table (Venue: Karyn's bedrooom)
- lay a cloth nappy on the changing mat
- pick a set of clothes (blouse & shorts) and put it next to changing mat
- get ready all toiletries (nappy rash cream, Ru Yi oil, powder)

Step 3:
Undress the baby (Venue: Karyn's bedroom)
- put baby on changing mat
- remove mittens, booties, blouse and shorts (leave the diapers on in case she pees or poos)
- wrap baby with cloth nappy and bring baby to the tub

Step 4:
Pre-bath (Venue: Common toilet)
- unwrap baby's upper body (leave the lower body wrapped, esp. the diapers)
- wet the wash cloth and clean baby's tongue
- wet the cotton pad and clean baby's eyes
- rinse the wash cloth to clean baby's face and rinse her hair
- put 2 drops of baby bath liquid into the tub

Step 5:
Actual bathing (Venue: Common toilet)
- remove diapers (beware of leaking poo and sudden pee!)
- dap baby's chest with water (to let baby transit from dry to wet environment)
- slowly lower baby's buttocks into the tub (support baby's back firmly with one arm)
- wash baby's upper body with wash cloth (take note to clean between all the joints, i.e. front of neck, armpits, inside elbows, between the fingers)
- gently transfer baby's chest onto another arm to wash her back (take note to clean back of neck)
- gently lift her up and clean her buttocks with other hand
- gently transfer her onto her back again and wash her lower body (take note to clean behind the knees, feet, groin area and lastly the genital area)
- lay out the bath towel on your knee
- scoop baby out from tub, place on knee and quickly wrap her up with bath towel

Step 6:
Dress the baby (Venue: Karyn's bedroom)
- put baby on changing mat
- quickly wipe her dry without removing bath towel
- pull bath towel down to expose only upper body
- apply powder (crane of neck, behind neck, armpits, inside elbows, chest, back)
- put on blouse (put left arm thru sleeve, lift her back off mat, put right arm thru sleeve and button up)
- remove bath towel and quickly place diapers under her buttocks (beware of sudden pee or poo!)
- put 2 drops of Ru Yi oil on your palms and rub them together until palms are warm
- put your palms onto baby's tummy for 3 - 5 secs
- repeat the procedure another time
- apply nappy rash cream all around her buttocks
- fasten the diapers
- put on her shorts, mittens and booties
- carry baby upright for a while in case she needs to burp (tend to have wind after bath) then put her back to bed

Step 7:
Clearing up (Venue: Karyn's bedroom/Common toilet)
- keep away nappy rash cream, Ru Yi oil, powder
- pick up soiled clothes and put into baby laundry in toilet to soak
- throw away soiled cotton pad
- rinse wash cloth and put into baby laundry to soak
- pour away bath water, rinse tub and put it away

End product: A satisfied and contented baby!

Actually, I didn't do all the steps on my own. Only did steps 2 to 6.

Ah Ma helped to prepare the bath and the clearing up.

Well, it was my first attempt, what did you expect? Hehe...

In time to come, I'll need to do everything myself. Meanwhile, I'll accept all the help I can get.