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Progress with her fingers at last! She’s finally getting over her ‘fear’ somewhat, and has occasionally reached out to hit her rattle and touch her storybooks. She’s very adept at grabbing my fingers though…I love how she squeezes it so tightly with her teeny tiny fingers (she also grabs my hair and yanks pretty hard…me no likey that… !).

Doesn’t she look like a little boss in this photo? Looks like she’s gonna fire someone (probably me) for not doing a good job…”

As Elena has started to show an interest in books and the TV, hubby and I hunted high and low for a small chair where she can sit comfortably in. My mum saw the Fisher Price Space Saver booster chair at Mom’s Care @ Ikano, but I wanted to hunt around to see if there are other options first before purchasing it. Can you believe it…I went to SIX baby shops at 1U (Mom’s Care branch @ 1U, both branches of Chicco, Mothercare, Bebehaus, JJ’s baby section), and NONE of the shops sell booster chairs. In the end, we drove to Ikano and bought the chair that my mum saw. It’s actually a booster where you can strap onto the chairs at the dining table when baby starts on solids (instead of using a high chair which I’m pretty afraid of coz I’m paranoid that it’ll topple). However, we’re placing it on ground level for the moment so that she can use it as an armchair to watch TV and for us to show her books and flashcards.

Here she is, watching her DVD…

Now that she has her own armchair, I’ve started her on the ‘Your Baby Can Read’ DVD series which I read about at Babylicious’s website (which is a veritable treasure chest of information!). Initially, I expected her to get bored after a few minutes, but surprise surprise…she sat through the whole starter DVD! Since then, I’ve let her watch the show everyday. After three days of watching, I noticed that she would make little sounds or get excited at certain segments…I wonder if it’s because she’s starting to retain information in her head?

I’ve also been the unlucky recipient of many kicks and pinches from her recently. She delights in kicking me in the chest, and the more I pretend to be hurt, the happier she gets… Her fingers are also always on the move, opening and closing, opening and closing, and whenever she can grab any part of my body, be it my neck, face, arm…she’ll give me a nice hard pinch! Unfortunately, my…erm…nipples came in close contact with her fingers recently…she not only pinched, she pulled AND pinched at the same time. Twice. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…owieee….

Taking a break from all the baby updates…

Our maid arrived about a week or so before Elena was born, which means she has now been with us for about four months. Overall, I think we’re pretty lucky as she’s quite good, but of course, there are some hits and misses here and there. Some of the ‘funny’ stuff that she did so far that I can remember:

1. Picking her nails with the vegetable knife… …so I gave her a manicure set after that…
2. Sifting through some of our food after we’d finished it…
3. Eating one of my muffins but denying she did when I asked her (am quite sure about this as both hubby and my parents didn’t eat it). Actually, I don’t mind that she ate it, it’s that she denied it afterwards…that’s what infuriated me, sigh.
4. On her second day with us, she climbed out onto the aircon ledge to clean the windows from the outside. I got a shock when I saw her as my parent’s unit is on the 18th floor! From ground level, it probably looked as if she wanted to commit suicide or something!!!
5. She knows what I put in Elena’s diaper bag even though I’ve never packed it nor opened it in front of her. The only conclusion I can come to is that she opened it herself to see when she was cleaning my room while I wasn’t around. That is quite worrying if that’s the case.

The main thing that exasperates us about her is that even though we’ve told her not to do, or to do certain things, she won’t listen and she’ll do things her way. She seems to think she’s the boss… …and she can be pretty bold at times. This is something I really need to talk to her about before we move to our new place as looking at her character, she’s likely to step all over me once my mom is not around to keep an eye on her.

However, she does have her good traits as well.

For one, she takes the initiative to do things. A good example: one of the ribbons on Elena’s pjs was unravelling. The next time it came back after being washed, I saw the bottom of the ribbon has been slightly burnt to seal it up.

She’s interested in cooking and at the beginning, she used to watch my mom while she cooks and asks questions about the ingredients and method of cooking. My mom realized that she was itching to cook, and after teaching her how to prepare the ingredients, she started teaching her how to cook different dishes. Now, she actually does most of the cooking and she takes the trouble to decorate up the dishes…eg. cutting the carrots into different shapes, and she’s very meticulous in cutting and chopping the ingredients - the garlic is always sliced very nicely, the beans are always cut the same size, etc. However, she does sometimes go overboard and add in ingredients that we didn’t ask her to…sigh.

She’s also making the effort to learn Mandarin! After hearing us speak Mandarin at home, she listed down quite alot of Malay words and sat down and asked us for the Mandarin translation. After that, I saw her ’studying’ in her room at night, practicing and committing some of the words to memory!

Well, I suppose with the good comes the bad. Anyways, I hope her behaviour will improve after I’ve spoken to her…

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now. And no, it’s not because of the environment. I’ve read so many opinions about disposable vs. cloth and how each one affects the environment in it’s own way and I believe both has it’s pros and cons. It’s also not because of nappy rash as I’ve also read that both disposable and cloth diapers can cause nappy rash. It’s because…

CLOTH DIAPERS ARE SO DARN CUTE!!!

I’m just drooling and drooling over the assortment of different designs out there! And my head is spinning from all the different terms and types and materials and stuffings. All-In-Ones, pocket diapers, fitted diapers. Inserts. Boosters. Liners. Hemp. Bamboo. Terry. Minky.

So many brands! BumGenius. Imse Vimse. Minilala. Goodmama. GAD. Dream Eze. Happy Heiny. Blueberry.

Lots more research needs to be done! I need to read reviews! I need to figure out how many I need to go full-time into cloth diapering! I need to know what type of diapers to buy! I need to know how to use ‘em!

Whoever said using cloth diapers will work out cheaper than using disposable has gotta be kidding. With so many lovely lovely diapers out there, I think if I make the switch, I’ll end up spending more! I mean, who wouldn’t want to see their baby wearing something as adorable as this on her cute lil’ bum?

Photo from Blueberry’s website

Those of you who’ve never seen Elena’s early photos on my Flickr/Facebook would probably be surprised to know that my little princess has an extra toe fused to her last toe on both her feet! The sixth toe doesn’t have any bones though as we only saw 5 bones on each feet when we did the ultrasound while I was pregnant. I’ve been meaning to take some close-up shots of her funny feet but never really got around to doing it till now (and I’m still not too happy with these shots).

The toenail on her left feet is continuous, ie. she has only one nail on the two fused toes.

However, the toenail on her right feet is separated, hence one overlaps the other and it’s near impossible to trim cause the overlapping part is so close!

I hope that she won’t have problems walking in the future, although the paed did reassure us that this will not in any way impact her development (in walking). However, I think we might have some difficulty buying shoes for her in the future as the extra toe(s) would mean that normal shoes may be abit snug in the front. Open-toed sandals, maybe? Her daddy said that she’ll untung when she goes for pedicures next time though…6 toes for the price of 5… (if I have a rolling eyes icon, I’ll definitely use it here)…

Yup, she’s definitely sleeping through the night now! For the past week, every night without fail, she’ll fall asleep around 11+pm and sleep through till the next morning, waking up at around 7+am. We hardly have to pat her to sleep either…she absolutely loves her Tiny Love cot mobile, so all I have to do is to switch it on and she’ll watch it till she falls asleep.

Before putting her to bed, I always give her a quick wipedown with a warm washcloth, change her diapers, rub some Ban Leng oil on her tummy to keep the ‘wind’ away and change her into her pjs (long sleeve top and pants). It’s a nice bedtime routine and perhaps she now knows that once we’ve done all that, it’s time to sleep? I don’t read her bedtime stories though as her attention span is still way too short…besides, she prefers talking to her friends, Bird-bird, Frog-frog and Hippo (the three toys hanging from her cot mobile)…

After a few rounds of trimming her nails, we’ve finally removed her mittens! She has scratched herself twice since then, but nothing serious. However, I noticed that she’s very hesitant when it comes to touching her toys. Some babies are ‘grabbers’…they are very quick to reach their arms out and grab anything that catches their attention. Elena, however, doesn’t do that. I can see that she wants to touch, say, the toy hanging from her gymini, as she keeps leaning towards it. Her hands would stretch out a little bit, then she’ll draw them back in towards her body, her fingers all curled up. And if we bring the toy to her, she’ll start crying! It’s very strange…it’s as if she’s afraid! Well, we’ll just have to let her explore more with her fingers now that her mittens are off and see how it goes.

She’s definitely finds her fingers delicious though… …she delights in trying to cram her whole fist into her mouth, and the noise she makes when she’s sucking her fingers goes something along the lines of ‘sluuuuurrrp slurrrrrp slurrrrppppp’ with lots of saliva thrown in!

We brought her to the paed on Thursday for another round of vaccinations and my my…this girl is gaining weight so fast! She’s now 6.3kgs! The paed said that she’s growing well (duh, obviously!), no need to worry, and continue feeding her on demand. Weightwise, she’s somewhere around the 50th percentile for her age (but counting the fact that she was one month premature, she has actually caught up really fast!). Again, she developed a slight fever after the jab, but it went away within a day.

She still doesn’t really like being put on her tummy, preferring instead to be carried upright. She keeps on trying to straighten her legs…I often tell her, “Baby, please learn to sit before you learn to stand, can?” Her legs are definitely strong coz the paed carried her to test if her legs can bear her own weight and they can! I don’t plan to buy a walker for her though as I’ve read quite a few books that said that walkers do not actually help the baby to walk, and in fact, some research says that walkers may instead slow down a baby’s development when it comes to walking and crawling as the movements that the baby makes in a walker is different from actual walking! Instead, I just let her use her feet to propel herself upwards whenever we carry her upright. I was quite tempted to get her the Fisher-Price Jumperoo but it costs a whopping RM599!

We also tried putting her in her Bumbo seat for the very first time! Her head is quite steady now, but I kept my arm on the back of the chair just in case. She looked so cute sitting in it though, that I couldn’t resist and quickly snapped a few photos of her. When it was time to get her out (as in she started crying and kicking her legs), her little drumstick thighs got stuck at the opening…

She smiles and laughs alot more nowadays. She absolutely loves it when we sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ with accompanying hand movements and will always give us a big grin! Like any other baby, she loves attention, and it always makes her happy whenever any of us ‘talk’ to her. One thing’s for sure, she loves company and dislikes waking up from her nap and finding herself alone in the room…that’s a surefire recipe for crying! As long as she wakes up and sees either my mom or myself next to her, she’ll usually go back sleep. Many times, I caught her opening her eyes slightly and peeking through her eyelashes to see if we’re still sitting next to her…and once she has reassured herself that she’s not alone, she’ll give a satisfied sigh and go back to sleep!

Although I’m still expressing milk, the amount has decreased drastically since Elena started sleeping through the night. I hardly breastfeed her now, unless she wakes up at around 6+am asking to be fed (and she doesn’t cry either, nowadays…she just tosses and turns and whimpers a bit), which was one or twice in the past week. I used to be able to express around 5oz of milk each time, but now, I’m back to 2-3oz each session. She also doesn’t seem to be able to latch on that well anymore, taking a bit of time before being able to suckle properly, and I found that let-down is a little bit slower as well. Oh well, looks like practice does make perfect… …and boy, are we both out of practice nowadays! Well, I’m still planning to carry on expressing till I run out of milk…a little bit is still better than none, right?