Ian On His Fours

Ian has been trying hard to crawl recently. Somehow, the edge of the mat or rather, the hard ceramic flooring outside his mat draws his attention particularly well. No matter where we put him within the boundaries of the mat, he will find his way to the edge and out.

Although he can rock on his knees now, but when he tries to move forward, he will slip down onto his tummy. He is mainly pulling himself forward with his arms muscles. Ian will have to figure out how to do a cross-crawling so as to move more efficiently.

Another new skill he has mastered is to roll onto his tummy, get on his knees, pull himself back and sit up on his own.

At 7 Month Old...

This evening, hubby weighed Ian and himself, then deducted his own weight to get the magical figure "9.2". That is Ian's weight at 7 month 1 day.

During his 6th month assessment, he weighed 8.3kg. That means, he has gained 0.9kg during the past month. Just as we thought that his weight gain will slow down since he is hitting 10kg very soon, which is the average weight of 1 year old babies.

We have been trying very hard to finish up all the M sized diapers since Ian can hardly fit into them now. After giving away 1 pack of our overstocked Pampers, we just managed to finish the remainder this week (although we are still left with a couple more Mamy Pokos).

However, Ian has officially joined the league of L-sized diapers club.

An Apple A Day, Keeps The Doctor Away

Since I took half-day leave today, I made apple puree for Ian to try.

Ingredient: Half of a Fuji apple

According to my "super" book, babies should not eat raw apples until 8 months old. Hence, I cut the apple into smaller chunks and steamed for 15mins in the steamer.


I have heard that apples turn brown after steaming, but surprisingly, mine did not. It was a beautiful colour when the steamer shut off. I blended the apple chunks, together with water collected in the steamer tray and some cooled water. However, there was too much water and it looked like a cloudy apple juice instead of an apple puree.

To make the apple juice more cereal-like, I added the Happybellies cereal into it. It did not smell very tasty.


To our pleasant surprise, Ian appeared to love this apple brown rice cereal. He eagerly gulped down to the last spoonful.

Whitebaits For Porridge

Over the Deepavali holiday, I prepared the whitebaits that will be added into Ian's porridge soon. My mom sponsored the whitebaits, which is not as saltish as ikan bilis.

First, wash the whitebaits and put into a wok to fry, using low heat. No oil is required. Keep on stirring to prevent the whitebaits from sticking onto the wok. Fry until crispy and slightly yellow in colour.


Put the crispy whitebaits into the blender.


Blend until it is of a very fine powdery texture.


The volume of the powder is only about half of the original whitebaits. Next time round, I will blend in greater quantities!

Teething Rusk

Yesterday evening, we gave this teething rusk to Ian to soothe his itchy gums since he was putting anything within his reach into his mouth. It was so hard that Ian refused to bite on it at first.

Another motive for giving this biscuit to him is to make him learn how to self-feed. However, he did not seem very interested to hold his own food. It ended up with hubby holding the biscuit stick into his mouth for him to chew on. He managed to bite off a chunk before starting to get cranky. We had to throw away more than 3/4 of it, but I think this kind of wastage is pretty normal with beginning eaters.

By the way, hubby cooked Ian's first plain rice porridge yesterday afternoon. He added a sweet potato cube into the porridge. After cooking for quite long, the porridge was still not smooth enough. Hence, we decided to use the glass blender to make it finer. Ian loves his Daddy's culinary skills, and finished every drop of the porridge!

His 1st Porridge

Finally, Ian has had his first taste of porridge this morning. I used the Super Baby Food book as a reference and prepared as below.

We bought this bag of organic brown rice from an organic store. An ant was spotted inside when I was just about to open it.


I wanted to cook the porridge on Saturday morning, but it took too long "prepare" the rice grains.

After the grains were washed, I put them into the oven to dry at 60 degrees. It took almost 2hrs to completely dry the grains at this temperature. (By the first 30mins into this, Ian was already too hungry to wait, so I fed him cereal for the day.) I kept the washed and dried rice in an airtight container before going out.


After we reached home yesterday night, we used the brand new blender to grind the brown rice into fine powder. Within seconds, it was done.


The brown rice powder were kept in a Tupperware container, and into the fridge.


This morning, I cooked the brown rice porridge and mixed in a little of the Happybellies cereal and also the frozen sweet potato puree. With the rice in powder form, it was so much easier to cook into the required texture. I have to admit that this thing did not look very appealing.


Halfway into feeding, his cloth bib was getting quite dirty with the porridge waste. So we took out this vinyl bib that we bought quite recently. It is pretty good at keeping most of his clothes clean, but it would have been better if it is not so stiff.


Ian was not very keen on eating his porridge. I wonder whether it was because the porridge was too bland, or because he was not that hungry yet? Anyway, we gave up trying to make him eat when he was starting to yell. The bowl was still half-full by that time, but Ian did not eat half of the porridge, because he kept spitting out some of the food.

After we called it a day at attempting to make him eat his porridge, we used the Magmag cup to let him drink some water. He obviously liked to bite at the sprout and refused to let go when I wanted to take the cup to refill some water.


Although most of the water dripped out of his mouth because he was not swallowing, I am still glad that he is able to hold his own cup now.

His 1st Shoos

"Recommended by paediatricians as simply the best for little growing feet", quoted from the Shooshoos website.

We bought this pair of soft-soled shoes for Ian to wear when he is a bit older. We originally wanted to buy a pair that was on clearance from a BP, but it went out of stock. Hence, we reselected another pair and topped up another $10.

Cost: $29.60.

Weekend at the Malls

It was another Saturday, spent at the shopping malls. We had some Tangs vouchers and wanted to use them to buy a couple of Pigeon PES bottles, since the Dr Brown ones are going to be retired soon and we needed a few bottles for the diaper bag.

To our pleasant surprise, Tangs had 20% discount for all Pigeon products. Hence, we ended up with more than the PES bottles. We have also gotten Ian another MagMag sippy cup to be used at home. (Ian has been using a sippy cup with a hard sprout at home, and he is not taking well to it.) The PES bottles come with a M-sized teat which is for use from 3 months onwards, so we grabbed another set of L-sized teats, which are for 7 months onwards.

In the end, we only used up a (purple) $20 voucher because the brown vouchers were not accepted for promotional items. We paid the balance of $17+ with Hubby's rebate points, which meant that all the above items were $0.

On our way back via the basement floor, we passed by a booth that had some 'innovative' blender on display. I called it 'innovative' because I have not seen this type of blender before. With this, you pour your food into a cup, screw on the base with the blade, turn it upside-down and fix it onto the motor base. It will start automatically. One thing about this machine is that there is no button to control the speed, but I guess that is fine.

The blender comes with 2 types of blades - one for grinding dry food, and one for blender fluids. It also comes with 4 cups and 2 lids. What Hubby likes about this is that the blades are very low at the base unlike other brands of blenders, and it chops better.


The smaller box is for making soya bean milk. It has a filter that surrounds the blade, and you just simply pour out the milk and cook.

Cost price: $60+
Minus the $20 brown vouchers and Hubby's rebate points, balance to pay: $5

His Two Front Teeth

Yesterday, we noticed that the other lower, central incisor on his right side has become visible. The first teeth is becoming very noticeable.

Ian must be wondering when his lazy parents are going to start brushing his teeth? Hehe

Making An Avocado Puree

We served an avocado to Ian today - half in the morning, and half in the evening. After reading through the Super Baby Food book again, I think I have finally found a way to mash the avocado by hand, and getting a good consistency. (The last time we tried, there were too many lumps.)

First, the avocado must be ripe. I think the other time, it could still ripen a little more. This time round, it was soft all over.


Cut the avocado into half. Wrap up one half immediately (if it is not going to be eaten) using the cling wrap and store into the fridge. I did not coat it with any citrus juice and it was still fine in the evening - no browning at all.


Using a spoon, scoop out the flesh into a big, flat plate, spreading them out thinly. Then, use a fork to mash the avocado very finely, removing any fiber that is visible as it can be a choking hazard.


This is how it looks like after adding some milk (before stirring).


In the first feed, Ian did not appear to like the taste of avocado. We had to distract him in order to make him finish up this nutritious food. However, in the evening, Ian appeared to have taken to the taste and he happily ate up everything.

I am going to start buying this on a weekly basis!

Jump, Jump, Jump

This Jumperoo was purchased from the internet when Ian was barely 4 months old. When it just arrived, Ian's little feet could hardly touch the ground. He did not really appreciate this huge toy which his parents have bought for him after much contemplation.

However, as Ian grew and started to explore things with his hands, he found love with the spinning lizard rattle. He could spend a while there, just spinning the lizard. He loved the red parrot that hung over his head on the canopy and would stare at it.

Now he still loves the lizard rattle and will spin and spin and spin it. He still loves the parrot and will reach out to catch it. He has also found his love for other toys on the Jumperoo - those that can spin. Since he is now able to stand with both feet firmly touching the ground, he has discovered he can jump in it.

Finally, our 'investment' seems to have paid off - he enjoys being inside and has spent time exploring the toys and jumping around.

Ian's First Teeth - Is Visible!

For the last few days, I have seen Ian's swollen gums due to the sprouting teeth. And as recently as yesterday night, all I saw was what appeared to be a blister on the gum.

However, today, I finally saw a thin white line just edging out of the gum, where the 'blister' appeared yesterday. His first teeth is the lower, central, right incisor. My guess is that, the next one to show up will be the left incisor just next to it.

Pictures of Baby Ian

Our little TV-addict... engrossed in TV.

Butts up!

Ian's 1st Cooked Puree

The new steamer that we had bought weeks ago, has finally been used today, for the purpose for which it has been bought - for cooking Ian's food. (We have actually been using it to steam buns.) This week, we have cooked Japanese sweet potatoes for Ian. It has been recommended as a good first food for babies, for the nutrients that it contains. Many people may think that this is a root vegetable, but it is actually a taper.

Sweet potatoes from an organic store, bought on Wednesday.

This is the first time that I have purchased this variety of sweet potato, without knowing that it is the white-fleshed, instead of the orange-fleshed type. I cut up the potatoes into small pieces first, so that it would be easier to blend it immediately after cooking. However, the colour started to brown pretty quickly. I only managed to peel and cut 3 potatoes before deciding it would be better to steam whatever that was on hand, in case more turned brown.

What a handy steamer! Steam and steam... for 30mins.

Once 30mins was up, the cubes were put into the blender, adding some piping hot liquid that was collected on the steamer's tray. I did not expect that it was so hard to blend this. The blades only moved for a second before the food stopped moving inside the container. I had to open up the lids and pushed the food around, then blend again. I repeated this many times before calling it a day.

Off to the freezer you go!

The 3 small potatoes actually filled up 4 baby cubes - 3 of which went straight into the freezer, as soon as each got filled up. The last cube actually went into the refrigerator, and was mixed into the Happybellies brown rice cereal a few hours later.

Probably the next time I make these purees, I would add more water in order to get the blades move a little more.

Ian's First Teeth

A few days ago, Ian's nanny said that his teeth were sprouting. My mom also felt them when Ian bite on her finger.

Although till this day, we have not seen his pearly whites, but his gums are swollen, and a small blister appeared. Ian has bitten my finger today and I have actually felt his teeth.

Ian's 2 lower central incisors are finding their way out

He has always been a drooling baby, but his saliva has seemed to increase tenfold and it is dropping every 2-3 seconds onto the floor. Hubby says that is because he is teething. Anyway, Ian enjoys stepping on the saliva that is on the floor.

Tummy Up!

For the past 3 days at least, we noticed that Ian has been trying to be on all fours - meaning on his hands and knees, with tummy lifted up. However, he can only support himself for a second before falling flat onto his tummy again. Ian, gambatte ne!

GD "Advanced" Class

We have been long overdue for this class, since we have almost finished all the big cards in the English Kit, and also finished showing 1 to 100 of the dots cards. (Just for record, for the English kit, Ian is currently on one set of smaller cards and one set of the remaining big cards which are finishing soon. For the Maths kit, Ian is almost finishing the multiplication equations.)

It was difficult to find a parking space near the shop. After driving around the area, we still could not find a 'legal' place. So, we went to Thomson Plaza for parking and walked over. Surprisingly, we were the only attendees of the lesson. It was cool to have a personalized class.

Lawrence taught us how to continue with the smaller cards, and then how to move on to couplets once we have finished the first box of the kit. We are supposed to begin making story books for Ian, to be read to him when he reaches 1 year old. At the same time, we are supposed to take out the retired cards and use them to play word games with Ian now and then, maybe on every Sundays. I guess it is high time to buy the colour ink cartridge for our printer so that we can print out the pictures for the words that we are to 'play' with Ian.

He also noticed that Ian loves the dot cards. He explained that Ian's behaviour is attributed to the fact that babies are able to understand dots more easily than words. He explained what to do after we have finished the divisions. Anyway, I suspect that we probably will go for a 'refresher' class in another few months down the roads.

Lawrence also spent some time 'checking' on Ian. He commented that Ian's development in mobility is kind of slow, because he is still not able to crawl well at this age. According to the GD chart, baby should be able to crawl by this age, even for the slowest of them. It does come as a bit of a shock, because most of Ian's peers are not crawling too. Anyway, Lawrence showed us how to teach Ian to crawl more effectively. He also mentioned that being able to sit, is not a milestone and it has no link to the ability to crawl.

After the class, we headed down to Takashimaya. They were having a storewide 15% sale. Normally, it was only 10% and perhaps this was why the whole building was super crowded. We bought some miscellaneous items, and I managed to grab some working clothes.

Avocado

Our avocado, bought on last Saturday, has turned from green to black by today. We had wanted to pass it to Ian's nanny to let her feed. However, since it had turned really black and soft, we decided to give it to Ian.

Avocado cut in half, with seed removed

Hubby scooped out the flesh and tried to mash it with a fork. However, we just could not get a very smooth consistency. It had lumps that we could not get rid of with a fork. We added some milk to make it more runny.

The pale green flesh, just scooped out

After adding milk

This was the first time that Ian had tried a new food without giving that "Yucks!" expression. However, he fell asleep after eating only a few mouthfuls. We took quite long attempting to wake him up, before he finally got awakened by the music from the Mozart Magic Cube. It helped to keep him awake, while we tried to feed him more of the avocado puree. However, he only managed to finish half of it before he refused to take any more.

The leftover

Avocado is one of the healthiest fruits that a baby can have, and it contains lots of vitamins and healthy fats that aid the development of a baby. We are going to try giving him more of this fruit next week or something. Hehe..

Ian Can Crawl

For the last few weeks, Ian has been moving around on his tummy, or trying to push himself forward using his legs. However, when we brought him back from the nanny this evening, put him on the mat as usual, he started to push himself forward. Or rather, he pulled himself forward using his arms muscles. According to the GD book, this is considered as crawling, although creeping is another stage from which Ian is still far.

He pulled himself forward 3 times, before we decided to shoot videos of him in action.

First, he was in the 12 o'clock direction, and started to move anti-clockwise. Somewhere in the middle of the short film, he pulled himself forward again.

Ian moved to the 11 o'clock position...and pulled himself forward once again.

Ian did it one more time... he started from the 9 o'clock position and moved to the 6 o'clock position. Towards the end of the video, he did another crawl.

After we decided to call it a day with filming, Ian saw the camera in my hand and followed it with interest. I managed to lure him to the 3 o'clock position with the camera, by showing him footage of himself.

Ian, you have made Daddy and Mummy so happy today!

Banana

Ian has tried only cereals so far - rice, brown rice, and oatmeal. On Sunday morning, we gave Ian his first taste of something fresh and raw - banana. It is one of the 'safest' first food for baby, as it is quite unlikely to trigger an allergy. This is also the first time that we actually have to prepare his food, not just mixing milk or water.

We bought a bunch of organic bananas ($4.40 for 7) from an organic store at the bus interchange, on last Wednesday. It was all green. Look how it has ripened on Sunday.


According to the Super Baby Food book, organic bananas are recommended for baby. The reason being that banana skin is porous. Hence, pesticides may penetrate into the flesh, which is going to be more harmful on a little body than on an adult body. Organic bananas will be darker than non-organic ones when they ripen.

We cut half a banana for Ian to try.


Using a fork, we meshed up the banana and added a little milk to make the puree smoother. However, the center of the banana (where the seeds are) does not get meshed well. We did not feed those lumps to Ian.


Yum, yum. At first, Ian gave that "yucks!" look. However, after a few more mouthfuls, he seemed to start enjoying the fruit.

Ian's First Trip To The Pool

Ian has been swimming in a tub at Punggol Plaza since he is barely over 2 months old. Since he has used up the package at Hwaxia, and our PD has given the green light to a public pool, we brought him to the swimming complex to have a dip.

We planned to let him swim at 9am to avoid the heat and the sun. However, it was 10am when we reached there. Thankfully, the weather was great - cloudy skies.

Ian looked sleepy still, when we reached the poolside. (He was pulled out of his bed reluctantly.)

We got ready his Konfidence thermal swimsuit and his float...

At first, Ian showed apprehension when hubby put him into the water. However, he adjusted to it very quickly and was starting to enjoy himself thoroughly.

The Father and Son duo were having lots of fun in the pool, while the Mummy was busy filming away.

Enjoy clips of Ian in live action!

Clip #1

Clip #2

Clip #3

Clip #4

Ian seemed to have enjoyed himself so much, that he was reluctant to come out of the water. Well, we will have the chance again!

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!

Both hubby and I have remained addicted to the ninja flick 'Naruto', even before we started to date, until this day.

Our obsession is pretty reasonable, I think. All we bought were keychains, figurines, and in our trip to Japan last year, I bought a Naruto shirt and a Pak-kun handbag. I still remember that in my first trip to Japan (without hubby, my then-boyfriend), I took 10 tries at the coin slotting machine just to get a Naruto figurine as a gift for hubby.

And now, the obsession with ninjas took to a new height. I got a ninja suit for Ian!!! Hehehe

888 Visitors!

Our HelloLavender website has hit 888 visitors on 5th October 2008, since we put up the counter on 31st July 2008. (The reason for choosing this domain name shall remain a secret.)

My hubby and I decided to have a blog somewhere in Aug-Sept 2007 when we discovered that we were going to have a baby. Hopefully, when Ian grows up and is old enough to read, he will be able to relish our journey together.

And to our visitors: we really wonder where you come from and how you got to know about our site. If possible, do drop us a message in the chatbox to say hello, and let us know how you got here! Thank you for your support!

A Not So Pleasant Week

1. I have been down with fever and flu this week. I wonder who passed the bug to me?

2. My Mio modem died on Monday. We tried installing back the old Prolink modem but somehow, it did not work. We called up the Singnet technical service but the guy did not provided much help. He only suggested that the modem was faulty and advised us to call the customer service for more advise. So, on Tuesday, we called up the customer service line to check whether we could sign up another contract to get a free modem. The person said yes. On Wednesday, we went all the way down to a Hello! shop to sign a new contract. However, the person told us that there was no plan that would give us a free modem unless we did an upgrade. Furthermore, she informed us that our modem was still under warranty, why not we try to send it for servicing? Argh, why did not anyone from the "hotlines" tell us that? Hubby sent the modem down to the service centre today and found out that the adaptor was faulty. It looked like a common problem with Mio modems! Anyway, after all the hoo haas, we are finally connected once again.

From Tummy to Back

2 days ago, I noticed that Ian could now flip from his tummy to his back. Previously, he could only roll over from his back to his tummy, and become stuck in that position. He did the tummy-to-back flip on both the mattress and the playmat.

He has been able to move around on his tummy by lying on on side, then kicking his leg to propel himself forward, somehow. I read somewhere that being able to sit independently is crucial to crawling. However, Ian is still quite wobbly when left to sit on his own. Wonder if he can crawl by next month, which is quite a common milestone?

How Tall Will Ian Be in 20 Years?

Ian has received many comments that he is a tall baby, but based on the website http://pregnancyandbaby.com/childheight.php, he is going to be 1.72m in 20 years. That's much shorter than his Daddy. We'd better find ways to make him taller now!