9 months - wonder weeking again

baby's night-time sleep pattern was all wonky for 2-3 days in the past fortnight, and i think we have yet another mental leap to thank for her erratic sleep. she kept my sister up all night when she stayed over during the long weekend, and she was also very cranky on one of the nights we spent at sentosa. she is really a textbook baby when it comes to those mental leaps.

am hoping we've seen/heard the last of the middle of the night crying sessions for this round!
[p.s. it was not to be. but at least the crying (if any) happens around midnight and then we have peace and quiet for the rest of the night.]

this is what the wonder weeks app says:

Now, your baby is in the leap of 'sequences,' which will enable your baby to be constructive. At this point, he will start to put something together for the first time in his life. Until now, that was quite different: he threw things aside, was squeezing things or took things apart. The transition to 'sequences' is a giant leap. Going through this change implies a real quantum leap forward in the behavior of your baby.

Examples of what your baby might do after this leap:

• Answer simple questions. For example, if you ask "How big are you?," he will raise his arms;
• Says "hum" if he wants another bite;
• Points at things, people or animals if you ask him to;
• Puts together a simple puzzle of three pieces;
• Understands that you have to talk into the mouthpiece of a phone;
• Stacks rings onto the ring pyramid;
• Points where to go;
• Repeats a game;
• Tries to persuade you to help him with things he really could have done without you;
• Imitates two or more gestures that you make, one after another (for example, the gestures of 'Itsy bitsy spider');
• Tries to put on his sock by himself, but does not succeed

9 months - enjoying the ride

this video of baby "driving" her first vehicle pretty much sums up what she's like on a daily basis - always curious, full of energy and putting in every ounce of effort into whatever she is doing, and having a ready smile for us.

9 months - eating

we have been trying to be more adventurous with feeding baby now that she's more or less ready to eat anything (except cow's milk and egg white). so she's had tofu, beancurd/soy milk, blueberries, egg yolk omelette and cheese among other random things i share with her (peanut pancake, 包, toasted bread ... stuff we have for breakfast on weekends).

baby likes to hold stuff to eat, so usually i let her feed herself almost everything except her porridge and some more messy/squishy foods as i just don't have the time to clean up after her.

am still prepping various types of mush for mixing into her daily porridge feeds so that she gets her dose of nutritious vegetables. so we've had purple sweet potato mixed with peas, and pumpkin with potato. even though it all gets mixed up during the porridge cooking process, i still love blending the different foods separately so that i get very pretty bottles of food in my freezer. yes, i am particular like that.

9 months - she loves water

baby has been having a lot of splish splashing fun at various water play areas in the past few days. she has been interested in water sprays and fountains for a long time already but it's only recently that we've made a conscious effort to let her really enjoy the water and take the wet clothes and shoes aftermath in our stride.

in the past week or so, she has spent time in the pool at the sentosa beach villas, dipped her feet in the upper seletar reservoir, gotten wet at the water play area and side street fountain in USS, at sembawang shopping centre as well as kidzworld at the zoo. 

she definitely enjoyed herself, as these pictures and the video show.

9 months - first mother's day

actually, i only had less than half a day with baby on mother's day itself thanks to the work trip, but we had a good time hanging out on the saturday before, including spending some time at the nearby shopping mall and our favourite coffee joint there.

it feels good to be a mum! 

got (breast)milk? stories - 9 months

so, we survived two overseas trips quite well and i actually managed to bring back a whole cool pack of frozen milk thanks to a whole lot of ice and clever packing. it wasn't that fun spending lots of time in the hotel bathroom with my manual pump though, and having to share a room didn't make it easier. oh well. the main thing is that baby got the boobmilk she needed thanks to diligent pumping prior to the trips and also the frozen stash, plus i didn't have to pump and dump while overseas. yay me!

i don't think getting enough milk to meet baby's needs will be easy going forward, as i am back to REAL work and pumping at night takes up a lot of the time i have left after putting baby to sleep. so have started (just 2 days back) adding formula milk (trying out wyeth's S26 promil formula this time) to breastmilk for all of baby's feeds. had tried giving her formula only for one of her feeds but baby was too smart for that. she knew at once that something was different and refused to drink anymore of the milk after taking about 3oz of the milk (prob just enough to not be hungry). so now she gets 6oz of formula and 16oz of breastmilk a day. am also no longer taking domperidone ... so whatever i can't supply will have to be replaced with formula. 

hopefully i still have enough supply to last till she is 1! then i am definitely going to pack away the pump and RECLAIM MY BOOBS!

9 months - island staycation

we spent two nights in sentosa after deciding it was probably the more sensible thing to do at this particular juncture compared to bringing baby along on a holiday to australia. 

the hotel package we booked came with free entry to USS, the SEA aquarium and the adventure cove, and also had free breakfast thrown in, so i didn't have to think much before booking it.

we loved the spacious hotel room which had a great view of adventure cove and the harbourfront area of the Singapore mainland. we could also see the cable cars moving lazily along on their way to mount faber and back. i thought the breakfast spread was quite decent too. however, service wise and being baby-friendly, ritz-carlton wins hands-down. we had to wait for our room even though we arrived an hour after the check-in time, and there was no housekeeping service to collect the pumped milk i wanted to keep in the hotel freezer. i had to bring the milk down to the front desk myself. BUT no major complaints ... it was a good stay overall except for baby waking up constantly the first night (but making it up with a very long morning nap the next day that afforded us some down time as well). we are never used to middle of the night disturbances because baby is usually a good sleeper, so we were very tired!

we spent the most part of one afternoon at USS. given baby's age and height, we could only take TWO rides, which was the carousel and the super mini ferris wheel inside the souvenir shop of the far far away castle. baby enjoyed both rides. and we did have fun taking pictures with baby all over the park. 

apart from USS, we also made use of the pool at the beach villas for a short while before the rain forced us inside. conclusion: baby loves the water! 

we also went to the SEA aquarium again since we had free tickets, but it was a quick visit as it was close to baby's nap time and we didn't want her to have a meltdown.

9 months - SEA adventure

we visited the SEA aquarium today. it is the largest aquarium in the world and while i was a little skeptical at first, i do think that it is quite a good attraction with plenty of interesting exhibits and space for children to enjoy the underwater experience ... almost rivalling the monterey bay aquarium which i hold in high regard.

 

baby was engrossed with watching the various sea creatures starting from the sharks swimming overhead us and at our sides in the "shark seas" tunnel. she also spent quite a bit of time standing with her face against the glass panels of the "open ocean" exhibit, which offers a wide panoramic view of the graceful manta rays (among other sea creatures) ...

i think she liked the jellyfish displays best as she got really excited seeing the jellyfish move around like little bubbles expanding and contracting.
stopped by the malaysian food street afterwards to grab lunch. baby had her lunch then too, before we took some really nice pictures of baby and left for home. baby was out like a light when we got into the car ... all the new sights must have gotten her really tired.

9 months - zoo visit #5

made use of the labour day holiday to bring baby to the zoo. AGAIN. :D this time, we explored the great african rift valley section of the zoo, which houses a whole range of monkeys, including the proboscis monkeys (with their red bums). the hubby also got a chance to feed an arapaima, which is a giant freshwater fish that looks like a huge snake. never got close enough to the water's edge to see the creature up close, but just based on how violently it grabbed its food and the gleaming red/black scales on its long body, it is definitely not a creature that i would like to be in the same river with. *shudder*
how lucky we are to be staying relatively close to the zoo ... it's a wonderful place to spend a few hours every weekend, and there's no pressure to see EVERYTHING in a day since we have the annual pass. sometimes these things are best enjoyed in small doses.