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Another remarkably uneventful week IF you exclude all her poo-ing episodes!! LOL…how my life has changed! The highlight of my day is whether Elena poos or not… *faints* She usually goes once a day, and each time, it’s a little drama by itself. The amount of poo is amazing; it saturates her diapers and actually overflows. Once, I was carrying her and accidentally….urm…pressed the bottom part of her diaper right after she poo-ed. The poo actually got squeezed out of the top of her diaper like toothpaste…ugh!! Yes, exciting days indeed…

She has started babbling a lot, and there are new sounds everyday! It’s so fun to ‘talk’ to her when she’s in her talkative mode…within one to two days, her ‘vocabulary’ suddenly expanded to include all sorts of sounds. Even her cries have taken on new intonations! And boy…her cries and coos are soooooo manja…just think of a little kitten mewing, that’s what she sounds like sometimes!

She has recently developed this bad habit of biting her mittens and rubbing it all over her face. She has little patches of small rashes on her chin, behind her ear and on her eyes…I think it’s caused by all the rubbing as her mittens are wet with her saliva and milk residue. I really need to buy more mittens so that I can change it more frequently as we are still hesitating about removing her mittens permanently in case she scratches her face.

Hugs anyone?

Lately, she decreed that mommy shall now become her all-day pacifier - not only does she suckle at my breast at night, she now sucks my arm/shoulder/neck whenever she gets the chance while I’m carrying her! She sucked so hard that I actually got a little hickey! And this mischievous girl does it covertly…she’ll first angle her head so that her mouth is just touching my arm, and then all of a sudden…slurp slurp slurp…

We noticed that she’s now very fascinated with moving objects. Her vision must have gotten a whole lot clearer now as she can very clearly focus on her cot mobile when she’s lying down. She ‘visits’ her friends, Mr. Frog, Mr. Bird and Mr. Hippo a couple of times a day whenever she has her diaper changed, and each time, she’ll talk to them excitedly. She really likes her cot mobile and actually protests when I carry her away!

She also loves looking at the pendulum of the clock in the hall, her pink Disney rattle, the movement of my hair when it’s not tied up, the curtains, or any reflective surface…as long as there is some movement in the object. However, she doesn’t have a very long attention span and she gets bored pretty quickly. Hence, we have a ‘tour’ of all her favourite objects where we start off from my mom’s room to my room, to the hall and finally the kitchen… …enough to keep her entertained for a good 10-15 minutes!

We’ve also increased her feeding amount and I’m glad to say that she is now able to take 3.5-4.0oz! This means that the time in between feedings can now be stretched to 2.5 to 3 hours…yay! I’m still expressing milk daily, but I’ve now decreased the number of times to 3 times a day, and am able to express about 4-5 oz each time. Elena is doing pretty well on Enfalac A+ as she hasn’t had any problems with her bowel movements. I hope she won’t have any constipation problems once we wean her completely off breastmilk! Yes, we do plan to wean her off breastmilk gradually, although I still hope I’m able to continue to include some EBM feedings till she starts on solids. Am glad to say that although I haven’t been able to exclusively breastfeed her, her daily intake still consists of at least 50% breastmilk vs. formula.

Her movements are extremely quick and we have to be really careful when carrying her as she squirms a lot. She has also developed this new tactic of moving from a burping position to a snuggling position when I carry her (and she only does it to me, never to my mom). I usually carry her upright on my right when I burp her. At first, she used to use her head and bang it against my neck, then my chest and finally come to rest on the opposite side in the crook of my arm. I then started to use my chin to block her from moving downwards. When she realized that she could no longer bulldoze her way down, you know what she did??? She bent her body backwards from the waist, and swung herself in an arc to land on the opposite side of my body on my left arm! Future stuntwoman for hire, anyone?

As for mommy…well, mommy is now facing a dilemma of whether or not to continue on as a stay-at-home-mom…or go back to work? More on that on another day, in another post…