12.5 months notes:
dd seems to really enjoy her gymboree classes now. at her level there is a lot of climbing up and down obstacle courses and crawling through tunnels (barrels of different sizes and lengths). in the beginning she would balk at crawling through the tightest tunnels, which were a bit darker and narrower. but no longer. she seems happy to crawl through anything so long as there is a prize (e.g. a ball) or sometimes just to get to the other side to me!
at gymboree there is one 'game' for the tots that involves all of them standing up and rolling a large, long 'log' from one side of the room to the other. i can see that dd is now much more stable on her feet and can keep pace with the rolling whereas before she would sometimes trip because she only took tentative steps.
at home she does lots of cruising along the furniture (our tv screen is coated with her little finger prints) and likes to pull herself up to one of our major electrical appliance to press buttons (e.g. the different ones on the desk fan, dvd and video player, etc.). all quite scary and i dread to think what she will get up to when she starts walking on her own and running everywhere. yikes. (thankfully we were given a child harness by dd's step-cousin, and i am sure it will be very handy when the time comes.)
much to my dismay, my once chubby little michelin baby is no more...she's lost quite a lot of weight since she insisted on self-feeding and crawling lots. one of the mothers at gymboree was surprised to hear how light dd is now, even though as she put it, "she looks so fleshy." i had to inform her that dd is small-boned hence even though she doesn't weigh a lot, there is still a lot of 'meat' on her bones.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
a happy crawler...tunnel vision etc
leah's first birthday celebrations & other 1sts
technically, leah's 1st birthday should be when she was born, shouldn't it? anyhow, this post is about some of her 1sts...
long distance travel: to the uk to see her great-grandfather, who has since passed on. we're so relieved we made the effort to go back to see him and it was such a wonderful, beautiful sight to see him so happy to meet leah. i will always treasure this memory.
hospital stay: for bronchiolitis (see above!).
birthday: we didn't make a big deal of this as these first b'days are usually for the benefit of the parents --- the kiddos don't appreciate all the fuss! we were in wales with the paternal grandparents and dd had a little cupcake with a single candle which we helped to blow out. she was blase about it all naturally.
during our welsh visit (about 10 days) dd decided that she wanted to feed herself and refused to be spoonfed, clamping and pursing her lips and turning her head away whenever we tried to get a spoon near her. this arrangement would be fine except that as a novice self-feeder she seldom got more than a spoonful of food into her mouth by herself. she was also really fussy about the food she was served and sometimes all she did was played with the meal with the spoon - pushing mush around the bowl. as she had always been a hearty eater, i was most upset to see her lose her interest in eating. in fact, she spent 3 weeks doing this and has only recently begun to eat a bit more.
stomach flu/bug: a couple of days ago dd suddenly contracted a nasty stomach bug. she vomitted a few times in the morning of thurs 8 feb, and was acting unusually quiet and forlorn. in fact, she sat doubled over in her cot making little whimpers, making me even more anxious. she was whisked off to the paediatrician immediately. dd is still suffering the effects with a loose tummy. other than the bad bottom, she is still her bubbly cute self though so fingers crossed that she will get over this very soon.
word: apart from dada and mama, we think that dd's first word is going to be (or IS already) "cat". she seems besotted by them, starting with nainai''s little black and white one. she loves looking at pictures of cats and can now point to cartoony representations as well.
champagne: her introduction to alcohol was courtesy of yeye at nainai's 60th birthday party. (we hope this doesn't mean she will cultivate expensive habits.) a champagne flute was proffered and at first she just dipped a finger into the liquid, followed by 3 fingers and then her entire fist was crammed into the glass. when even this didn't slake her thirst she tried to grab the glass with two hands to drink.
bite: one of dd's twin cousins bit her on her right index finger on her 1st birthday. the 2 of them were about to poke each other with their indexes and it was anyone's guess who would strike first. unfortunately, her cousin is a year older and quicker on the draw. the howl and look of disbelief and recrimination was tragi-comic and she was nearly inconsolable. i can't remember how we managed to calm her down, but her cousin didn't apologise for giving in to temptation, although a look of cheek and shock lit up his face when leah burst out.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
we made it to 1 year!
i thought i would never be able to nurse dd to a year. when i started bf-ing, it was my aim to reach 12 months but now we are through the goalposts! it hasn't been extremely hard to do although i have to admit that i have yet to night wean dd.
the main reason for not night weaning is to keep up my supply, as i would now like to see if we can nurse till she turns 2; i read that early night weaning could sometimes lead to total weaning. also, i think that my experiments with night weaning in november resulted in my period returning after a few months' lapse.
backtracking a bit: to my chagrin, the first time AF (aunt flow) came was just when dd was introduced to solids and still sleeping through the night. she has since singularly failed to sleep through without wailing for a feed. in fact she stopped sleeping through the night when we undertook a car journey to singapore when she was 7 months old - that 1st night in singapore she kept crying every few hours and the only way to pacify her was to nurse. and this has continued ever since! we don't know if it is due to the travel upsetting her and us falling into a pattern of nursing at night, but we adopted co-sleeping because of the night nursings.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
copycat razzes
lately we've noticed that dd picks up things very quickly. but we were still a little taken aback at what she did this evening.
one of our (ok, *my*) favourite amusements is to blow raspberries on dd's belly and to sometimes do a "bwah bwah wah wah bwah" noise too. she's always giggled and gurgled to bits whenever i did that and it's a fun way to "tire" her out and get her in a good mood just before a nap.
anyhow, we were preparing for her final nursing this evening on the bed, and dd was larking around a bit --- her usual routine is to nurse for a short time and then crawl to the foot of our bed where her cot is to pull herself up and do little squats. sometimes she'd try to grab whatever toy is nearest her in the cot. tonight she did that for a bit and then turned around and crawled back to me.
but instead of heading straight for "dinner", she face-planted herself on my belly, and proceeded to make strange noises, "bwah bwah bwah". dh and i looked at each other. but before we could say anything dd went on and blew a raspberry on my tummy. she didn't look up at all but continued (oh, probably for a good 5 minutes or so) to alternately razz my belly and make those "bwah bwah" sounds. in between breaths she'd giggle and laugh to herself.
the truly amazing part about it though is that for a first attempt at raspberry blowing, she was expert with raspberries that any 5 year old boy would be pleased with (wet, sloppy and full volume)!
so, our razz times must have entertained dd so much she decided she had to do it to mommy...
