Four already

My new teeth are at the top. Now I can BITE... arhmm!

Four TEETH already, I mean.  But the new top teeth are much bigger than the two bottom ones.  And there's quite a large gap in between.  Hope this doesn't mean orthodontic braces in the future!

Goodbye to Tai-ma

 So many people here. Tai-ma must have had a lot of friends

Yesterday was the funeral of my grandmother, or Jo Ern's Tai-ma (great-grandmother) in Taiping.  There goes the last of my grandparents.  I find her passing a sobering reminder that death is inevitable.  But she lived till 96, a good long life.  She was reasonably healthy until almost the very end and I'm glad she didn't suffer long then.

We were exempted from many of the rituals since we had a baby with us.  Jo Ern behaved very well though and actually sat through one of the prayer sessions. Well ok, I was prepared with a celery stick for her and she just sat there without a peep chewing on it!  No pictures since whipping out a camera didn't seem appropriate.

It's time for my lunch but this bread will do since Mummy is busy

For the wake that night, attendees were served peanuts, red bean soup, barley-gingko and vegetarian curry mee.  Hmm rather sumptuous food, no?  But an uncle told me this is quite common these days.  I guess people needed more sustenance since prayers went on till midnight.  Goodbye and RIP, grandmother.

Nobody brought my bath-tub... lucky got this pail to pom-pom in

Gentle, but not all the time

I climb up the stairs, wheee

Jo Ern has been branded the 'good' kid, which is mainly in comparison with her 2-weeks-older cousin Jensen.  At her birthday celebration recently, my aunt said she was really 'gentle' and feminine.  Well that's coz Jensen was screeching away at the time while Jo Ern was going 'ai yaaa' softly.  But I find she can be quite a handful too.  Especially now when she can move, stand and climb.  And she will cry loudly when prevented from doing what she wants. 

Don't wanna SIT in this chair... wanna STAND!

Don't wanna SIT, don't WAAAANT!!

Of course, she got her way eventually... as usual.  Err when should discipline for babies start??   

One year old today!

I get new toys today coz it's my birthday!

Has it been a whole year with little Jo Ern?? My precious girl turns one today! It feels like a blink of an eye. Other times I think, all this time and Jo Ern is still only a baby. I'm happy with that though. Here's to many more happy years together!

No offence to those who send baby to a full-time babysitter, but I wouldn't have missed Jo Ern's first year for the world. Hubby had suggested that option which is common practice on his side of the family. Then there would have been no disruption to our schedules, no crazy daily commuting between our house and my parents' at different ends of the city, no need for a maid, no sleepless nights tending to a bawling sick baby.  But there would also have been less time with our cutie-pie, less bonding, less joy.  I wouldn't be able to look over any time of the night and see my little daughter.  For me personally, it's no contest.

On to the birthday girl:

Skills
New skills seem to come all at once to Jo Ern. One day she can't do something and the next day, she's doing it fine. She can drink from a sippy cup after weeks of coughing on the water flow. Last night she suddenly could climb DOWN the stairs (*faint*). She has been happily wobbling her way up for quite some time now. She also extends her arms to be carried, which makes people melt and carry her more!

Speech
She 'talks' a lot! Her favourite words are 'ai yakk, ah WAKK, ah BEHH, ah DEHH, ah VEHH'. Seems to be practising her consonents, heh. She loves holding objects to her ear and going 'Ai YAKK!! Ai YAKK!!'. Funny, we don't use the phone THAT much... (or do we? :) ) Ah Mah says she's 'calling her friend'.

Character
Not so scaredy-cat already! She allows more people to carry her. Good thing she does get over her fears eventually.  Like she used to be terrified of the green rocking horse at my parents' place, now she rocks on it like a pro.

Weight
Just over 8kg. A full kilo away from the 'standard' of tripling birth weight by the first birthday. The paedi recommended to add butter, cheese and oils to her diet. I am, sparingly and slowly... don't want her to develop a taste for fatty stuff and having a weight problem later.

Food
I started preparing a 'breakfast' of veg soup or oats+fruit, but she got sick shortly after and breakfast mostly ended up in the bin. She's back to two solids a day. But she has bread, sometimes with cheese, in the morning. She gets some food at dinner time too. I'm not up to speed on that yet though - it's ideally something she can eat by herself. Baby biscuits are too sweet and I hesitate to give her bread too often. Sometimes she has oats but then the maid would have to feed her in between her own meal.

She looks up in anticipation whenever she sees others eating. Then she comes over and loudly insists on having some!

Milk
Still being breastfed. I'm thinking of what formula to start her on. Maybe soy milk or Pediasure because of the stories surrounding cow's milk. Then again, cow's milk is supposed to result in bigger bones and Jo Ern has a small frame, so maybe a round or two of cow's milk might do good.

What else...
After a rest at two, finally the third tooth is peeking out. Probably THAT was why she was waking up so many times at night.

She is playful and giggles a lot when she's happy

Gurgles with laughter when chased

Prefers Mummy over Papa at the moment :)

Almost one!

CAKE!  Want some, want some now! 

For Jo Ern's first birthday, we had the celebration with family at home. Home is still best for babies since they can move around and do their thing.  The plan was to take-away 'poon choy' and buy the cake.  I only need to cook rice and veg, make fruit tea and jelly, and open some munchies.  Good plan, right?  Nice and stress-free.

Too bad my guests started arriving at 5 o'clock!!  We had gone to Tesco and tired-out hubby was having a nap, I was sweaty from sorting out the chicken and squid, the maid was cleaning the fish, Jo Ern hadn't been fed nor changed, the fruit tea hadn't been popped into the fridge... And the people arriving straight from Taiping needed the toilet, some food, drink and a shower.  It was a hot day and there was a total of 11 people in the house who needed showers!  Suddenly I was flooded with queries on which bathroom to use, how to switch on the water, where to get some drinking water, whether the mugs can be used... and requests for towels, hanky, comb, biscuits, a spoon, tissue, cotton wool/wet wipes etc.  Haha so much for stress-free!  What happened was my grandmother wasn't well and everyone went to visit her in Taiping.  My mother decided last-minute to stay on there too.

After the glitches, things went on well.  Chek chek (my uncle)'s gang arrived at a more decent time and hubby went off with my father to collect the 'poon choy'.  There was a moment of worry when the thing looked too small to feed everyone.  Looks deceive... the basin was packed.  Pretty fun searching and digging for stuff!

The basin with all kinds of good stuff

Wanted some pictures of Jo Ern with the cake but she was busy trying to grab it.  She did succeed when I was distracted for a while. But as everyone said, it's HER cake so it's ok!  Happy birthday, my little one!  I plan to have another small celebration for her actual birthday on Wednesday.  :)

Not sleepy yet

Mummy... I'm not sleepy yet. See, I can still do funny things

See?  Can do funny face

Oh fine, I'll just stand up and nibble away at this bar

It isn't an easy task getting Jo Ern to sleep.  She will pick play over sleep almost any time.  Luckily my maid Lina has the patience to pat and pat her until she falls asleep.  That can sometimes takes 20mins or so.  If it were me, I start getting leg cramp or back itch after 5 mins hehe.  I do succeed sometimes... then I pray she sleeps longer than the time I took to pat her!

Speaking of sleep, she wasn't sleeping well when she had a blocked nose and I had to nurse her to sleep.  Unfortunately that pattern seems to be staying.  Last night she woke at 12, 2 and 5am.  I had tried to just pat her but she wasn't having any of that.  Couple of nights ago, she screamed blue murder for an hour until she got her milk!  For now I'm taking the easy way out and just giving her milk when she wakes.  No energy to fight with this little one in the middle of the night...

Eating out

 

Hey what's this food on our table?

I want some, I want some

Jo Ern used to have to just wait when we ate out.  Lately she's been getting some food as well, which definitely suits her better.  That does mean I have to order something suitable - soupy noodles instead of those tossed in salty sauce, Big Breakfast at McD so she can have the scrambled eggs , pau at dim sum so she can have the skin.  I try not to give her highly-seasoned food lest she expects 'tasty' food for her meals.

The first time we went for buffet and she could actually have something from, I was just snickering away at the additional value for money we were getting.  And that time she could only have watermelon and boiled egg yolks from the nasi lemak.  I guess it would be worth taking Jo Ern to buffets for quite a few more years!  Heheh.