17 Months

Missy is (1y5m) today. I think this is my first post which is published just in time. I have more than 15 more backdated posts to be composed regarding her monthly milestones. Thankfully, I have saved those remarkable incidences/ events in my handphone all these while but putting them together is a whole new story. 

Weight

Around 9 kilos

Height/Length

Not measured.

Teeth

8 incisors: 4 bottom teeth and 4 upper teeth.

Motor Skills

• Abby is beginning to balance herself and reach for places to “walk” to despite being still a little clumsy and wobbly.  She would held to our hands to take unsupported steps or going across grilled drain at Ah Tai’s.
• She’s quite adept at climbing up the stairs by herself by holding on to the railings (if available) but insists on holding on our hands if stairs are only surrounded by concrete walling.
• Likes to make big splashes in the bath tub and wanted us to pour some ‘bubble bath’ on her tiny palm for her spread it over her body.
• Likes to press the pump (with help) on the baby lotion bottle and spread the lotion all over her legs and arms and is currently obssessed with all sort of bottles with pump head at the drugstore. 
• Likes to move to music and dance.
• Abby can point to several parts of her body, i.e nose, mouth, hands (shakes both her hands), legs (moves her leg) when prompted.
• She can point to the respective person/things correctly when asked; i.e each and every family members, moon (look around for the moon and point if it’s visible), stars (looking up and pointing upwards), piano (where the grand piano at the church is located). 
• Has the strength to carry up to a canister of cookie (approximately 2-3 kg) and her XXL box of Duplo Lego with both hands and canned mushroom (the size of canned condensed milk) single-handedly.  
•  She can distinguish shoes correctly too! She would get her deh-deh’s sandals, my slippers, her grandaunt’s slipper if we are standing by the shoe rack and if she is walking ahead of us.
• Likes wearing shoes. She would pick up her shoes she wanted to wear and bringing it over to me but wails and twist her foot around when she refuses a particular slipper/shoe.
• Loves balls and balloons. She has a myriad collection from ping pong balls, wooden balls, rubber balls, and her latest addition was a yellow soccer ball.   
• She can twirl, run with her soccer ball, bend herself to almost 90 degrees (she picked that up from ‘Six Little Ducks’ video) to go under Ah Tai’s four-legged walking stick.

Communication and Social Skills

• Loves animals especially dogs and cats. She calls dogs “wow-wow” and cats “meo-meo”.
• She is rather friendly by waving ‘hi’ and ‘goodbyes’ willingly to her friends or anyone is she is familiar with but rarely shove her smiles unless prompted.
• She would whispers whenever we ask her to parrot words she is not confident with but saying it clear and concisely when she knows them well.
• Loves to hold on the Samsung TV remote and pretend to change the channels / hand it over to us whenever she got bored with certain music videos (which I downloaded her favourites from Pink Fong & Mothergoose series and tehreafter converted them into SamsungTV mode using Freemake software). 
• Will resist by pulling her legs up when she isnt in the mood of walking.
• Says a few single words which we can decipher: “bear” (for “teddy bear”), “boh” (for “ball”), “deh-deh” (daddy), “mee” (mommy), “po” (for po-po/gu-po) to her grandma and all her immediate and extended grandaunts :P Her grandpa and aunt & uncles are still anticipating for her to call them “gung”, “gu” and “sook”, respectively :P
• To date, she has attended RE classes a couple of times. Despite being underaged (min age of formal attendees are 3yo), she behaves well and I am pleased that she gets along rather well.
• Loves to share. We have been trying to inculcate ‘sharing is caring’ with her since young. She has been generous in sharing off her crayons, toys and foods but still shows slight hesitantance when it comes to her favourite snacks and drinks, i.e Vitagen.

Food and Feeding

• She shows great interest in whatever we are eating/munching and drinking.  
• Her still loves “bob-bob” to bits, hence her diet consist mostly of milk. I am so thankful that she calls her “friends” as “bob-bob” (it took us sometime to rebrand them back then) therefore it is not too obvious especially we are in the public when she is trying to peep at her “friends” and utter “bob-bob” like yesterday night when we were at the church for night service. A slightly elder little girl followed suit and exclaimed "bob-bob" too :P 
• She loves Vitagen (less sugar) to bit and downed her first whole pack (school pack size) chilled Milo when I was trying to coax her while busy baking my tartlets crust the other day.
• We have introduced her to Tasty (among the biscuits we find approvable) and become her new favourite.
• Prefers rice over porridge if given an option. Loves soup, fish and corn very much.

Sleeping Patterns

• Still waking up twice at night to nurse.
• She rolls a lot during her sleep at night.
• Still waking up crying if Mommy is not found within the radar despite with Daddy around.
• She is getting more sensitive to lights these days. She can be woken up easily if the lights in the room are switched on. These days, I have resorted to get myself ready for work in the guest room or study instead. 

Two Months

At two months old checkup, my baby girl weighs 3.65kg, having gained about 1kg since birth and 53cm long. At her second month, she stretches a lot to the extent where her grandaunts were so worried and decided to bring her to the paed (her second trip this time after the booger issue when she was barely a week old) to get some reassurance from the paed that she was not in a great pain :).

She nurses more efficiently these days and is getting a lot chubbier, from a double to triple chin, her grandaunts jested. That certainly gives me the ‘ticket’ to breastfeed her exclusively (finally) and I really thank God that her weight gain has definitely opened up everyone’s eye in the family. Breastfeeding my own daughter can be aptly taken as a privilege especially when you are surrounded by a big family who were not brought up in a breastfeeding friendly environment. Thanks for the constant support from my hub and eldest SIL. I may have given up after their several attempts ‘enticing’ her with formula. I certainly know that they did this out of good will but I was just determined to provide the best that I could for her.  

Her hair is rather thin especially on the top side which is almost bald, that makes her to be mistaken as a boy most of the times. According to her grandaunt no.4 (she has 5 immediate grandaunts altogether, excluding those from the extended family), her rather long little fingers, feet and thin hair has the highest resemblance with her aunt (grandaunt no.4’s daughter) besides her daddy. 

She has outgrown most of the shirts, pants and mittens which were especially made/altered by her grandaunt no.4 and is finally able to put on most of the newborn/0-3m hand-me-downs from her cousin brothers. Her grandaunt then made her a brand new set of ‘uniform’ (checkered cotton) pants sufficient for one week span to be worn at home. On top of that, her grandparents thought that her baby cot at home and MIL’s shop is too ‘big’ for her thus her grandaunts ‘designed’ her a makeshift ‘bed’ modified from new bread trays, underlain by a custom sewn plywood with a mini set of comforter (checkered one again) for better ventilation. How I wish that I can be this creative and this Missy is such a lucky girl. I have all this documented so that she’ll know how much her grandparents/aunts dote her.

She started cooing and responded to our voice when she is in her jovial good mood. She exceptionally loves Old Mc Donald song and never missed cooing along when we make different animal sounds.  She socialize better as she open up her eyes most of the time these days but still, she wouldn’t allow herself to be carried for long even by the in-laws whom she meets on a daily basis at the shop. She particularly loves to be carried up straight and ‘draped’ against the shoulder especially on daddy’s broad shoulder.

On her sleeping habit, she cries and fuss when she is tired or sleepy and this happen almost every night. Most of the time, I will let her to suckle for comfort until she drops asleep. Occasionally, she can easily fall asleep on daddy’s broad shoulder while he is on the desktop or while walking.  At times, when I have errands to work on, she has the privilege to join daddy when her uncles came over for movie night or PSP gaming session in our living room and fell asleep comfortably on her daddy’s long lap. These days, her sleep lasts on a longer stretch and usually wakes up twice for her feed after midnight.

She loves her Moses basket or perhaps car ride or gai-gai (outing). Nothing soothes her better from putting her into her Moses basket. She would stop crying almost instantly and easily dozed off during a car ride. We ‘upgraded’ her to a Chicco carseat when we think that she had better support on her neck few days prior our trip back to KK on Nov 2^nd for her to meet up with the other half of her relatives from my side. It was her maiden air trip at the age of 2.5 months. It was such a huge relief when she likes her carseat as we foresee that we’ll be going out daily, with or without my family throughout our trip.

On her few firsts, she had her first bathe by papa on, had her first two nights without daddy and her grandaunts offered to stay with us alternatively for both nights. That had also marked her first lights-off night. The boss and I have been leaving the lights in our bedroom on every other night before this :P.  Despite smiling occasionally, she shoved her first social smile and chuckled in a high-pitched shrieking sound on 20^th Oct 2014 (exactly 2mo), had her first trip to KK by air (50 minutes flight) on 2^nd Nov 2014 at (2m13d) and finally had her first longest period without mommy when I was on a 2 weeks course for work on 17^th November 2014 (2m27d). 

Mommy-Abby Outing {One}

For the first month after my confinement, I have always been very apprehensive of bringing my bub out without the boss except to my MIL’s shop every afternoon during the weekday. We spent the morning on our own at our home. On 191014 (one day shy to 2mo), the church’s RE class and sisters’ fellowship were holding an event to visit 2 newborn babies. It was posted earlier on in the Facebook event and both the boss and I were invited as we know both families very well. Unfortunately, the boss had a meeting in the church on the same day thus as much as I wanted to go, I held back my intention.

On last hour, AIL called up informing that SIL is on her way back from church deliberately to pick me up to the church, to where all of us will be gathering prior the visit. Since, SIL drove over just to pick me up, I had to bite the bullet and wearing Abby in a carrier and off we went, not even having  any ebm ready like what i usually do whenever we go out. It was my first time wearing her outside. I have worn her with the carrier several times at home to rock her to sleep when she got too clingy and cranky when I had my hands full with task. Unexpectedly, she easily dozed off in less than 5 minutes and she has no problem continue sleeping regardless of bumpy road nor noisy suroundings. I guess she has accustomed to such surrounding in MIL’s shop.

After about 30 minutes of wait at the church, we convoyed off to visit Justina’s 2ws 3d old baby girl. Justina’s 6th child, second daughter was indeed a big baby weighting 4.4kg at birth. Abby woke up once for her feed when we were almost done. Thereafter, we headed off to visit Baby Chloe, who was only 2wo old then. Baby Chloe who was the forth precious princess to her parents weighing 2.6kg at birth, slighty heavier by 0.03kg than my bub at birth. Below is the photo of Baby Chloe and Abby. Looking at her reminded me of my little one, who was as mini in size back then and look how much she has grown in almost 2 months time. 

Once again, my bub woke up to nurse twice before we leave. While chatting around with some aunties and experienced mommies who managed to breastfeed for more than a year, i took the chance to ask about their milk boosting recipe. Since I dont usually cook at home, I was keen to try on meatless recipe; hence, i was given the below. We managed to drop by chinese medical hall after that and the practitioner there reassured me that this combination is excellent for general well being i.e nourishing hair, blood circulation to milk boosting.

I counted this experience a success and it sure boosts up my confidence to nurse her in public shall I need to go out solo with her again someday, to which I foresee more coming. That explains {one} in the heading of this post :). 

One Month!

One month ago, our little bundle of joy arrived. Her arrival brought so much of excitement in the family, and we had 3 separate fullmoon luncheons altogether. We received numerous visits ever since our stay in the hospital and more during my confinement period. My home is literally ‘unsafe’ as we have close relatives to drop by and our parents in law, the boss’ paternal aunts and the part time helper has full access to our house at anytime throughout my confinement :P. On a personal view, I didn't notice significant changes on my bub throughout the one month period except for her growing eyelashes (from almost none visible) and hair as well as increasing weight when I carry her to nurse :). 

The first two weeks was of the discovery for the family, especially both the boss and I. For the first few days at home, she showed feisty personality. She sleeps rather well and is such an easy going baby during the day but fusses frequently during night time. We were both clueless on what to do to soothe her as nothing actually works except to nurse her but that doesn’t last her for long though. On the second night at home, we have two aunts who camped over and help to look after her so that we could catch up with some rest. On the third night, we decided not to let her to sleep alone in her cot until she is older; instead we have been co-sleeping to provide her with better sense of security every night until today. On Day 7, things are getting a lot better and were much calmer during night time. We can roughly figure out her ‘timetable’, and her sleep during the night has becoming more predictable and I can expect her to wake up for her feed around 2am and 5am.

There’s no way to swaddle her except while she’s deep asleep. Once she is awake, she would throw a kicking fit to release her arms and we will expect to see her blanket, mittens or many booties to detach from her body. Initially, we have been wrapping her with towels and after that I thought a proper swaddle will her arms in place through the night, so I quickly ordered it online the next day. Oh boy, we were so wrong and eventually gave up after second night’s attempt and left her arms unwrapped most of the time. So, we put her on a jumpsuit every night. Once in a blue moon, she would oblige when we put her on her tummy and she definitely sleeps better. She is able to lift up her head during tummy time but still couldn’t turn her hand to the other side and knows how to suckle her fist during or after shower time (at Day 22). On the 19^th September 2014, we went for her first appointment. She is now weighting 3.65kg (then 2.57kg), gaining slightly more than a kilo. 53cm long/tall and on 95% Mommy's milk (more on this in future posts). She has also gotten her second dosage of Hepatitis B vaccine. 

Just for the record, she had her first taste on formula milk supplement at Day 4 (I'm feeling tad bad about this), her very first outing which was to the paed during Day 5 with her grandaunts when her left eye was deposited with booger for the third day and doctor prescribed her with eye drops fearing that it might be eye infection and not likely to be caused by heatiness as only one eye was infected, her umbilical cord came off at Day 6, first meeting her maternal grandma (my mom) and uncle (my bro) when she was at Day 10 (29th Sept - 1st Oct 2014) during their visit, first pre-fullmoon luncheon at Day 19 (7th Sept 2014) with my mom, brother, relatives and some of MIL’s yam cha buddies at our home, second pre-fullmoon luncheon in Day 26 with sisters’ fellowship and brethrens from the church at our home and eventually the official fullmoon luncheon on Day 30 (19th Sept 2014) with the earlier mentioned guests (second round) alongwith some other family friends, relatives, church members etc at MIL’s shop, first outing with her papa to PIL’s place during dinner time (without mommy) at Day 29. Ninty-nine percent of our visitors commented that she has her papa’s resemblance. 

On her many firsts, she had her first trip out to church on 270914 (1m7d) and subsequently to RDC on 280914(1m8d), first bottle of warmed up ebm prepared by her grandaunts on 300914 (1m10d), first comment that she has mommy’s resemblance (1m16d), first mommy-and-me time morning at home (we used to spend the morning at MIL’s shop after my confinement) at 1m17d, shoved her very first social smile and shrieking happily when when played with on 081014 (1m18d), mommy finally got over her painful joint at the end of her thumb on both hands since 35^th week of pregnancy on 171014 (1m27d), presented her first birthday cake to her grandmamma on 5^th Oct 2014 (1m15d).