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The solid food journey continues! As Elena is quite prone to rashes and has had mild cases of eczema, instead of following the ‘wait-three-days-before-trying-new-food’ rule, we decided to extend it to one week before letting her try something new. This week, I prepared pureed organic carrots for her…I steamed the carrots and then mashed it through a sieve. Since babies won’t be on pureed food for a very long time, I thought I could get away with using a sieve vs. buying a hand blender. So wrong! My hands were so tired by the time I finished!

During the past week, my mom fed her during the day while I was at work and she told me that if I let Elena see the spoon going towards her mouth and say 1….2….she’ll obediently open her mouth at the ‘3’. I tried that on Saturday with the pureed carrots…and you know what happened? The minute she saw the spoon, she cried! And again, she started squirming to get out of her chair…I barely got anything into her mouth before I had to carry her out of the chair to pacify her! My mum had more success when we tried again during her next feed, but she took at most one teaspoonful of carrots before she started squirming to get out of the chair again. During the rest of the week when my mom fed her, she also did the same thing…ate a few spoonfuls and started squirming. I wonder if it’s the chair or the food?

This week was also the week Elena ‘found’ her voice. She has started screaming and squealing for no reason…actually, I wouldn’t say for no reason…I think she screams for fun! She’ll just look at you, open her mouth and screeeeeaaaaammmm till her face turns red! And boy…she is LOUD! My dad could hear her screaming as soon as he steps out of the elevator… Who would’ve thought my little angel would have the voice of a little devil?

The rash at the bottom of her chin never really subsided (it comes and goes) and it flared up quite badly at the beginning of the week so we brought her back to the child specialist again. This time, she prescribed a mild steroid cream to apply together with the intensive moisturizer (Cetaphil) that she prescribed last time…I was really apprehensive about using the steroid cream, but it reached a stage where the patch became really red and raw looking. I was so afraid that it would get worse so we applied a little bit of the steroid cream for two nights. As soon as it started improving, we stopped the steroid but continued on with the moisturizer…and yay, it worked! For the first time in a long long time, the rash disappeared and the skin at her chin became nice and smooth.

Developmental milestones…she’s learning how to sit! She still needs support, of course, but she’s getting quite steady in the tripod position (hands supporting her body)! Can’t wait for the day she can sit all by herself…then I’ll have a new angle for taking photos… !

After much thought, I finally bought her the Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo. I’ve wanted to buy it for quite some time as I know she loves to ‘jump’ (she always kicks her legs whenever we carry her), but it’s so expensive! Furthermore, she won’t be able to use it for a long time as the weight limit is around 11kgs, though I suppose when she outgrows it, I can always sell it off. I did hunt around for other alternatives but this was the only one that allowed her to jump safely (vs. the jumpers that are attached to the doorframe) so I decided…what the heck…why go back to work if I can’t buy stuff for my darling girl whenever I want, right? In the end, I was so glad I purchased it!

It’s very sturdy, very colorful and although Elena looked abit apprehensive when we first put her in, she soon found her footing (literally) and she looked pretty happy in it!

We went out as a family this week for my birthday dinner. Poor girl…when she was born, we hardly ever took her out as she was premature and I was super-paranoid that she will fall sick with all the germs floating around. Then, when she got bigger, the H1N1 flu started going around, and so we kept her in the house as much as possible too. So whenever we do bring her out (usually for dinners, and it’s usually at Chinese restaurants where we can book a room), she gets so excited and starts looking around…her head swivels like a table fan! Left…right…up…down!

The highlight of this week…we started her on solids! I bought a box of organic rice cereal, and on Saturday, she had her first mouthful! She was quite eager to eat as she kept moving forward to ‘receive’ the spoon. However, she doesn’t like to be confined to the booster chair…and after a while, she got impatient and started squirming, so we had to stop. I think she ate less than half a spoonful of cereal… and here I thought she would wallop the whole bowl…

There was one night when hubby and I were out till quite late…we were shopping for house stuff again…and when we came back, my mom told me that Elena couldn’t go to sleep. We figured she was probably so used to seeing me at night that she could sense something wasn’t right that night. My mom said that she would fall asleep in her arms for awhile, then wake up, look around, give a little whine, then close her eyes again…fall asleep, wake up, look around…it went on the whole night till I came home, poor girl! I felt so bad when my mom told me about it…

She has also been doing some funny stuff with her mouth. She’ll pucker it up and make a ‘chup-chup’ type of sound…I think her gums are itchy and she’s trying to relieve the itch by sucking on the side of her cheeks. She looks like a little goldfish when she does that!

She’s smiling a lot these days, and there are times when I look at her and think…gosh, she’s going to grow up to be such a cheeky lil’ girl! She has this cheeky grin that makes her look as if she’s up to no good and every time I see her smile like that, I can’t help but to think to myself…I’m gonna have one bundle of mischief on my hands once she starts walking and talking!

A short one this week…

My little girl is learning how to crawl! When she’s on her tummy (and not busy chewing off her fingers), we can see that she’s trying to use her legs to push herself. Her bum goes high up in the air, and her legs start kicking…unfortunately, she doesn’t get very far (in fact, she hardly moves at all!) and it frustrates her so much that after some time, she’ll start crying…

She can now hold her sippy cup with both hands and direct it to her mouth. In fact, she loves drinking water so much that when we taken the cup away from her (babies shouldn’t be fed too much water…at most 3-4 oz a day when they’re not on solids), she refuses to let go and actually gets angry!

We took her to the paed on Tuesday for her monthly immunization, and gosh…she’s already 7.8kgs! As usual, she only cried when the needle went in and was fine after that…it’s a lucky thing she has chubby thighs….haha…not so painful!