His First Super Greens - Broccoli

The super baby food book has been a bible whenever it comes to Ian's diet. Although asparagus is OKed from 7 month onwards, we have never given it a try because we are not exactly sure how to prepare it for Ian. We have bought the frozen green peas a couple of weeks ago, but have not yet cooked it for Ian.

And since the book has finally given the green light for broccoli (as Ian is already 8 months old), we bought the organic variety from NTUC yesterday to let him start on his super greens. This is one of my favourite vegetables as well.

This morning, I cut 3 bunches of florets and soaked them in salt water for about 10 minutes.


After a little soaking and washing, they went into the steamer for a 10 minutes sauna before going into the blender. One third went into the fridge (to be fed to Ian later), and I splitted the remainder into 2 baby cubes for freezing.

At the same time, I was cooking the brown rice grains to make some porridge for Ian. Cooking a pot of brown rice porridge was not an easy task as I had to keep stirring to prevent the bottom from sticking and to prevent the water from overflowing.

It was hard to cook the brown rice grains into the mashy consistency that I required. After about 30 minutes of cooking over the stove, I threw a cube of frozen pumpkin puree and a slice of organic tofu into the pot, then transferred the shuttle chef thermal pot into its outer container to let it continue to cook.

When Ian woke up from his nap, the porridge was still not mashy enough. So, we blended it before giving Ian.

Stage III Evaluation

This morning, I picked up the GD book again after it has been left on the shelf for the last couple of months.

Ian has already passed the stage III evaluation, based on this book. That means his midbrain and subcortical areas are developed.

Competency evaluation:

• Visual - appreciation of detail Checked
• Auditory - appreciation of meaningful sound Checked
• Tactile - knowing differences in sensation Checked
  
• Mobility - creeping in cross-pattern Checked
• Language - Creating meaningful sounds Checked
• Manual - Prehensile grasp Checked
  

In fact, Ian's tactile competence is already in the stage IV as he can understand the third dimension in objects, for eg. to pick up a flat object like a piece of paper on the floor. He is also on his way to achieve competency in stage IV mobility - walking with arms used in a primary balance role.

Cosplay

A little tiger...




Ian in his "dragon robe"... Jinbei suit from Jshoppers. This picture was taken in the afternoon, showing how Ian looks like on his 8th month "birthday".


Oh, where's his ninja suit? 引続き注目しなさい...

My 2 Front Teeth

The 2 Weeks Before 8 Months

I am finally back after a short hiatus from blogging. Both hubby and I have been bogged down by work due to tight project schedules (what's new?), and we are almost taking turns to do our work at home, while the other party takes care of Ian.

Anyway, Ian will be turning 8 months old this weekend. Time really flies... and here are the events in our family for the past 2 weeks.


Y for Yoghurt

The super baby food book recommends yoghurt for babies above 7 months old, hence, we bought a small tub for Ian to try. Although we do not like plain yoghurt at all, Ian finished the whole tub over a period of 4 days. Although he did not mind eating whatever amount that we gave him, he gave us a "yucks" expression for every mouthful of it.



C for Carrot

We bought a pack of organic carrots from NTUC to let Ian start on this nutritious vegetable. When I mentioned to his nanny to start giving him carrots, I was surprised to find out that she had already introduced carrots to Ian (without our knowledge). Anyway, we passed the whole bag of organic carrots to her so that she could add it into his diet. I was glad to know that she knew not to give it to Ian everyday.

Other new food that we have let Ian try are pear, Gerber canned peach puree and Frisocream wheat-based cereal. He loves the Frisocream the most. I let him try another slice of papaya, mixed into the Frisocream cereal, and Ian accepted the taste this time round.

Cough, Cough

Ian suffered from a cough last week and there was an unmistakable hint of phlegm in his coughing sound. On Thursday, his nanny said that when he wanted to cry, no voice came out of his mouth. She suspected that he was having a sore throat and blamed it on the brown rice powder that I had prepared (since I fried-dry the grains before milling). Anyway, we took leave on Friday to bring Ian to see a PD.

Seeing a PD was not an easy task either. Ian's fave Dr Ong was on a long vacation unfortunately, and we had to visit the AMK branch. We went around noon but the clinic was packed. The nurse almost 'warned' us that they had already rejected some walk-in patients, and she would not be fair if she were to let us in. Anyway, she squeezed us into an evening slot.

Since we still had the whole afternoon to waste, we decided to try another PD at Sembawang Kidslink. It was a good decision. The female PD was very friendly, detailed and she answered many of our questions without the usual 'rush' which we had experienced with other doctors. She gave 2 bottles of syrup medication to treat Ian's cough and phlegm. And thank God, Ian recovered by Tuesday.


He Is A Little Creeper and Cruiser

Ian is officially crawling on all fours now, and is getting adept at it. Or rather, this type of movement is more aptly called "creeping" in cross-pattern, according to the GD book.

He can also stand up without our help by 'scaling' the walls like a lizard. Just this morning, we found him standing in his playpen. Somehow, he has managed to 'scale' the walls of the playpen, reach the top edge and pull himself up. He has also began to cruise around the edge of his playpen. With his new found skills, Ian must be enjoying the new views now.


Tough Luck for the Mommy

My head suffered a knock against the shower tap on Monday, and caused a 'bah luku' within minutes. Hubby rushed back from office to bring me to the doctor. The doc asked whether I would like to go to A&E instead, but later on decided to let me observe for 2 days since I could still talk coherently. On the second day, I was still feeling giddy (perhaps due to fatigue accumulated over the past weeks). So, hubby took me to see our usual GP. She prescribed a gel to be applied on the swell and she mentioned that if I left it alone, the bump might become a permanent one.


His First Words?

On one of those days when I fetched Ian home without hubby's help, Ian was getting cranky at my mom's place while I was still having my dinner. He started yelling and to our surprise, he said "回家" (go home)! It might have been a coincidence that he babbled a sound like that, but my mom heard it too, and said that Ian was hurrying me to bring him home to sleep.

Ian, Ian, when will you call "Mummy"?

An Orangey Day

Ian got to taste papaya for the first time today, courtesy of my mom. We blended it with milk and added cereal to make it thicker. However, we were not sure whether Ian was not hungry enough, or he just did not like it. It was tedious to feed him this, and he simply refused to eat any more after finishing half a bowl.


While hubby took over the feeding, I quickly made the pumpkin baby cubes. We bought half a pumpkin from NTUC last weekend, and since Ian is not likely to finish all of it within this week, we decided to make baby cubes out of about 2/3 of it. The remaining will go to his nanny so that she can cook it for him during the day.

Food for Ian at 7 Month 1 Week

At month 7 week 1, we introduced 3 types of commercial food:

1. Baby jarred prune
2. Canned apple juice
3. Organic tofu

Although we are trying hard to feed fresh food to Ian, we have succumbed to a baby jar - prunes. We are not sure how to prepare a 'fresh' prune puree, and hence figured that it was better just to get a jar.

Gerber Prune puree with the HB cereal

As Ian is not fond of drinking plain water, we took the suggestion from the forum to give fruit juice and then, slowly dilute it with water to get the baby to get use to the taste. However, Ian does not appear to like the juice either. We mixed some into his avocado milkshake, and the remainder went to Hubby's tummy.

Heinz apple juice

Tofu is a high protein food and is supposedly good for baby from 7 months onwards. Hence, we decided to introduce tofu for the week. We compared the normal tofu with the organic one. All the normal ones contain 2 ingredients (calcium sulphate being one of them) as coagulant, whereas the organic version contains a 'natural' coagulant. It costs double of a normal one, but we decided to give a more 'natural' food to our baby.

To prepare, cut a slice of the tofu, steam it for 10mins and blend. Although the book says that it is OK to eat it as it is, but we prefer to steam it first to kill any germs. Keep the remainder in a tub of water, in the fridge, for up to 1 week. The water has to be changed daily.

Since tofu is a rather bland food, we mixed in the jarred prune puree and the usual HB brown rice cereal. It does not look appealing to me, but Ian enjoyed every mouth of it.

To this date, Ian has tried the following food:

1. Frisocream rice cereal
2. Happybellies brown rice cereal
3. Happybellies oatmeal cereal
4. Healthy Times oatmeal cereal
5. Healthy Times barley cereal
6. Plain rice porridge
7. Organic brown rice porridge
8. Organic banana
9. Japanese sweet potato
   
10. Apple
11. Avocado
12. Mango
13. Organic pumpkin
14. Gerber prune puree
15. Heinz apple juice
16. Whitebaits (still have to test for allergy as some rashes appeared after his nanny fed him)
    
17. Tofu
18. A sip of herbal soup with wolfberries and ginseng (fed by my mom while I was not looking!)
    

Solid-feeding is fun and exciting! What should we introduce this weekend? Hmmm....

Ian Has A Table

Have been eyeing on this activity table for a while since there were many good reviews in Amazon. While shopping at Toyrus today, we saw it on sale, for $69.xx. It is quite a good bargain - Metro was selling it at $80+ after their storewide 20% discount, and it was not much cheaper to ship in from Amazon.

Surprisingly, Toyrus has 2 versions of this toy. The one with a handle - also seen in Metro - was actually the 2007 version. Although the 2008 version does not come with the 3 AA batteries, we chose it because we thought that there might be some improvements?


While hubby was fixing up the table, Ian watched him eagerly. Finally, he got to play...





Unfortunately, after the legs were attached, we could not detach it again. :(

The Ultimate Bib

As usual, I was "window shopping" at Amazon for waterproof bibs, in anticipation for the day when Ian will start to self-feed. I was almost set on buying the Bjorn bib, when I chanced upon the Crumb Chum bib.

It is soft (unlike the Elmo one that Ian already has) and waterproof. However, the best thing of it all is that the coverage is from neck to toe! It also has a small pocket at the waist to catch all the food bits. Unfortunately, the designs for toddler size are limited, so I chose the cloudy design.

The ultimate bib for Ian!

Cost: S$19

Ian donning his new bib

I think Ian does not like his Elmo bib because once we put it on him, he will try to pull it off. We tried the new bib on Ian and he seemed better adjusted to it. Hopefully, this will serve its purpose well, that is to keep his clothes - as well as the chair - cleaner.

A Pumpkin For Halloween

Last Saturday, we had wanted to buy a slice of organic pumpkin from NTUC Xtra, but we could not find it on the shelves. Probably, all the pumpkins were sold out due to Halloween on the previous day?

On the way home, we dropped by the organic store nearby our place to get the pumpkin. The lady told us that the slice could be kept inside the fridge for about 5 days.


On Sunday, we cut about 1/3 of the pumpkin, steamed and blended with some water. It smelt pretty good.


Since this is the first time that Ian was eating pumpkin, I added the familiar Happybellies brown rice cereal into the puree as usual. Ian enjoyed the pumpkin cereal thoroughly!