Friday, February 18, 2011

Feeding Jo Ern

Mum-mum time... what is everyone else eating?

A post now on a topic dear to me... food. :)  Jo Ern's approximate feeding schedule after waking up is milk, milk, food, milk, food, milk.  Timing is about 2-3 hours apart, more if she has a nap.  That takes her to evening, then it's milk and usually some fruit before bedtime.  She wakes up once (ok sometimes twice) in the night for milk. 

She doesn't quite like milk now but luckily we can just add unfinished milk into the next solids feed.  Not going to waste any breastmilk!  (Unfinished formula milk must be thrown away)

Food-wise now.  I started with steaming baby-friendly food, puree-ing and freezing into cubes.  Then I mix and match the protein, carbo and veggie cubes for the day.  Now that she eats more, the required cubes don't fit into my Avent cups, what with all the spaces in between the cubes.  So I cook porridge and freeze directly in the Avent cups.  Porridge would be rice or millet, with minced pork and assorted veggies.  But wait... very few meals are identical.  Books say variety aren't important to a baby but who says variety is bad?  :)  I still do the cubes so a meal would be basic porridge plus salmon and spinach cubes, or chicken and sweetcorn cubes, or sweet potato cubes, etc.  And her two daily meals would be different - if one is green, the other would be yellow/orange/white. 

One thing though, all this baby food processing does take time.  I used to try new recipes or bake on weekends, now that time is taken up by baby food. I don't make fixed quantities and some weekends we have places to go, so sometimes there is a glut of food and sometimes a shortage!

Protein - chicken, pork, fish, egg yolk and most recently, beef
Carbo - brown rice, potato, millet, oats, lentils, barley
Veggie - anything goes!  Most recently, onion and tomato
  
Frozen food - seen here are millet, brown rice, broccoli and pumpkin cubes

Frozen milk in one-portion servings 

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Ang pows

Look, I got all these angpows! 

Let's see how much this che-che gave me...

Jo Ern is very good with angpows - she has been taking all that are offered!  I know many young kids don't accept a proffered angpow or some even run off.  Jo Ern looks at the sender a few seconds, looks down and takes the angpow, and eventually will put it into her mouth.  Hehe. 

Erm her dress is on backwards.  Hubby put it on while I nipped out to the market.  I thought it looked a bit funny and later found the label was in front!  Hubby thinks buttons shouldn't be at the back... 

Sunday, February 6, 2011

CNY 2011

Do I look nice in red?

This CNY I'm more excited than usual since it's Jo Ern's very first. Bought a few dresses for her. But a week or so before, she started having red spots on her face - rashes and mosquito bites. And there were new bites every day. Aiya, like that how to look pretty in all her new clothes? Luckily Papa bought a mosquito repellant, no new bites after that and my little model looked decent enough!


I have an orange! But Mummy didn't let me eat coz it has chemicals

For the first time, I was cooking reunion dinner.  The menu for 10:
1.  Appetiser: Pai tee top-hats (my mum made the hats and the chilli sauce)
2.  Steamed fish with choy poh and garlic
3.  Prawns with wine in claypot
4.  Roast chicken with dipping sauce
5  Stir-fried mixed veg - broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkin, carrot and sweetpeas with razor clams

(Prepared by hubby)
6.  Lotus root-peanut-pork ribs soup

(Contributed by guests)
7.  Yee sang from Eu Yan Sang
8.  Waxed meat rice
9.  Roast pork
10. Lettuce wrap

Plenty of food! As usual, quality was lower than normal with bulk cooking heh. The fish tipped over in the kuali and lost some of its topping, I completely forgot the garnishing, the veg was slightly undercooked, the prawn was slightly overcooked by the time the fish was cooked... but overall, everything was edible, phew.

Some of the food
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Jo Ern can creep fast already and was happily zipping about.  She enjoyed the extra attention from Koo-koo, Alicia che-che and Kingsley kor-kor.  And although she must cry at the sight of Dickson kor-kor, she just loves to look at him anyway.  Err... and then cry some more.  

 I zip here, zip there in my little red dress

Sunday, January 30, 2011

New camera, Take Two

This new camera can take nicer pictures of me?

So hubby told me the day before he left for his Myanmar trip that he'd bought a new camera. As usual the purchase was in my absence coz otherwise I'd be nagging that my Sony Cybershot is still good, heh. Ah well, I'm rather fed-up that so many of my photos of Jo Ern turn out blur, especially the indoor shots. Got new camera also good la.

Then the day he returned, he called to say the camera had been stolen in KLIA. Aiyo I hadn't even seen it! Apparently his friends wanted to take a picture with the air stewardesses after the plane landed. Someone obviously noticed his spanking new camera then. He'd been so careful with it all over Myanmar too. There went the hundreds of shots taken on his holiday, just like that!
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Now if it were MY camera that'd been stolen, I'd have sulked and refused to look at cameras for a while. Hubby leh, IMMEDIATELY went back to buy another one. Of the exact same model. This Canon is in between an auto and a DSLR in terms of functions and appearance. Must go play with it a bit...

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Another haircut??

Just take a little bit off the top

I was commenting to hubby last night that Jo Ern's hair is flat now, totally doesn't stand up any more. Then only he said he took her for a haircut that morning. Aiks she had a haircut barely two weeks ago! Hubby really wants her porcupine hair back. He actually asked the hairdresser to make it stand... luckily she refused to cut it that short haha. A crew cut definitely wouldn't look nice with the dresses I bought for her first CNY!

I'd better make sure hubby doesn't make these ad-hoc visits too often or my little girl will soon get mistaken for a little boy...

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Genting trip 4

Corridor leading to the room

Jacuzzi beyond the bedroom. Nice stained glass window

Genting again?? Heh. Hubby still has platinum card status and Genting keeps giving free rooms and whatnot (privileges steadily decreasing since he doesn't spend enough time at the casino for their liking). So we take advantage now, while we can! We had a suite at Highlands hotel this time. I still think Genting is a good place for a holiday with a baby - not too far, cool weather, and everything is walking distance once there.

We did something different this trip... went to the theme park! Gosh I haven't been inside in years. Verdict: it's pretty nice. There's lots of space to walk about, thrill/family/kiddie rides, performances to liven up the place and clowns giving out free balloon creations. This is the first time I am going to a theme park with my child and I just loved that thought. Next time we'll leave the stroller behind to make it easier going for rides. We only went on one carousel ride since it was nearing Jo Ern's nap time.

This is nice! Mummy carry me a lot

See my pretty balloon bracelet?

All zonked out after morning at theme park
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The last time we came to Genting, Jo Ern couldn't crawl yet so I could just spread out a towel on the floor and plonk her there. This time she wanted to crawl and kept going to the edge of the bed to look down longingly at the floor. Poor kid, but the carpet didn't meet my standard of cleanliness. Poor mummy too, tired out from catching her before she attempted any headfirst dives! So what else did she do? Tasted everything she could lay hands on, watched cartoons , made a mess of the newspaper...

Spiderman rocks!
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Must keep up with the news

There was a 'Mountain of Food' promo where it was only half price at most outlets if you pay via Genting points. Great!! Too bad we couldn't go for fine dining with lil Miss Short-on-Patience around. Went to Ming Ren, Pizza factory and Good Friends restaurant where the seating design failed to impress Jo Ern.

I may be a bit short, but surely this table is wayyy too high?

Overall this was a good trip. Jo Ern had fever starting the night before and we were wondering whether to go. Decided to lug along her medicines and chance it. We have fever syrup/ suppositories and could always drive down if necessary. She slept for ages under the duvet and after that was fine already. Dunno if that was the cure - in my time, the cure for fever was to wrap up warmly and sleep, when you break into a sweat you'll be fine.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Teething, teething

Teeth came a bit late for Jo Ern, just before she turned 9 months.  On the plus side, drooling started late too.  Now she has two bottom teeth and is happily biting things, sometimes rather savagely.  Must buy teething rusks on my next shopping trip!

Bite bite

Bite BITE BITE