Guilty of mischief

And here's the incriminating evidence.



minibeanie is 1 year, 1 month & 4 days old

Sights

6 months in Chengdu and we still haven't been to any sights :D I was about to say we haven't gone out of Chengdu city then I realized we haven't even seen Tianfu Square, Chengdu's equivalent to Tiananmen Square. (Ok, it's not as significant or impressive but at least it has Mao's statue!) So, in a way I'm looking forward to my MIL's coming because then we have a reason to go somewhere.

Unfortunately, places that take more than 3 hours are out of the question, and that includes the travelling time. But besides a couple a couple of nice, peaceful bamboo parks, swan lakes & tea houses in the city, we are intending to hit the Panda Breeding center. Hopefully, the pandas won't be too sleepy when we're there.


minibeanie is 1 year & 1 month old

A matter of taste

While minibeanie can't be persuaded to try drinking from a cup, he has been very receptive of new foods :) Thank God!

His first birthday had been like an invisible line for me. Now he's technically able to eat everything we eat. Foods which had been advised against for allergy reasons are now off the list - egg whites, tomatoes, honey (still holding off on this one..) etc. Thus, these are what I'd been cooking up for minibeanie. So far, he'd loved all of them!

• noodles in pork broth with meatballs, pumpkin & cauliflower
• alphabet pasta with meatballs & pumpkin in a tomato sauce
• chicken breast in pork broth with peas, pumpkin, potato, onion & garlic
• Aloo Gobi, an Indian vegetarian dish of cauliflower & potato

Aloo Gobi had been an afterthought when I was making Chicken Briyani with Aloo Gobi as a side dish. Then I thought there was nothing in there that he couldn't have so I cooked it sans sel, then reserved a portion of it to be frozen in little cubes. I can't believe it still, this little guy is trying real Indian cuisine with the full works - cumin, mustard seeds, tumeric, garam masala (itself a blend of cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, nutmeg) & chili.

My goal is to introduce a diet as wide ranging in taste as possible without comprising on nutrition. While he may choose to prefer burgers & crispy chicken in future (I draw the line at fastfood though), he will have a palate that's not restricted to the blandness of typical baby porridge.

I think I'll make some maple syrup cookies for minibeanie now.... [in Cookie Monster's voice] I knows it, u knows it, DH will eat most cookies.


minibeanie is 1 year, 3 weeks & 3 days old

C is for Cup... not for now

After 5 days of the "offer cup, push away with pudgy hand" dance, I decided I'd give it a rest and take up the bottle weaning challenge a few weeks later. Did I start too late? After all, babies are creatures of habit, at least where minibeanie is concerned. And the more entrenched a habit/thingy is in a baby's life, the more resistance he's going to put up to change.

Well, at least I got him to accept cow's milk without much ado. In fact, he is totally impartial to it. In fact, some days when I didn't have formula milk ready, I'd just pour milk from our carton. So, that's a relief :)

Speaking of which, weaning the tutti (Finnish for pacifier) isn't something I'm looking forward to at all. Currently, he needs it to fall asleep and I'm not ready to go without sleep for a week :P Hence, the current strategy is to wait until he's 2 or 3 or at least until he knows baby pandas. The game plan is to bring him to the zoo/panda breeding center and say, "look, the baby panda needs your tutti & we will give your tutti to the panda, ok?..." Then a few days later, he'll receive a thank-you card from the baby panda ;) So there.

Rise & Shine

As recounted by DH,

"oh man this morning I got up at 7 when he was saying "kakka* kakka kakka" :D The problem was not the 7am time, it was the HUGE back-poop! biggest I've seen. Even his shoulders and upper arms had some by the time I carried him to the sink...

After I first used the sink, then gave him a quick standing shower in the tub (sans hair), and put new clothes on, I had to clean the mess in the 2 rooms..

-I had to wash the baby changer's top and mat
-even the _underside_ of my bathroom's sink had 'kakka' handprints!!

Then off to feed him. He finished all porridge like a good boy and 120ml milk too. By the time he was happy and back in his bed, it was 08:11 and I just managed to rush out to the bus :P geesh.."

* kakka = poop in Finnish. It's the 3rd word minibeanie has said after dada & down; and the 1st Finnish word.

minibeanie is 1 year, 2 weeks & 2 days old

Happy Birthday Singapore!

Happy 43rd Birthday, Singapore :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O67SyJiyzY (Thanks Mari for sending me the link)

minibeanie is 1 year & 2 weeks old

C is for cup

Day 3 of Cup Training

It's not going well at all. minibeanie for some reason hates the cup! He wouldn't even attempt to drink from it. Still, there had been progress, however slight. For the first 2 days, he wouldn't bring the spout to his mouth - today he did and made a motion to drink but stopped short when the cup was tilted. It's driving me nuts! Still, I must persevere :P


minibeanie is 1 year, 1 week & 5 days old

Pink is for boys

I was certain I didn't want to be a parent who enforce gender stereotypes. But like so many rules, such as no tv before the age of 2 as recommended by pediatricians, they are turned on their heads once we actually confront them.

Recently, in the bid to wean minibeanie from the bottle, I was trawling taobao.com for suitable Tupperware training cups. Alright...Tupperware isn't exactly known for kiddo stuff but I did hear from a friend with 2 boys who had used it when transitioning from the bottle. And so coming back to the issue. I found a suitable package with a 200ml cup (the perfect size that's not too large) with a lid on the spout. I was adamant it wouldn't be a sippy cup because research had shown there would be further problems when transitioning to a real cup. It came in blue and, of course, pink. And as it was a March package, supplies were running awfully low.

My first inclination was to go with blue. For some reason, it proved really difficult finding blue stocks (more boys in China?). Then, I turned the assumption on its head - why am I limiting my selection to blue? Honestly, I find the pink package more cheery than the muted blue. There was an internal struggle that lasted for half a day (hahah, see what I'm preoccupied with? :D ) before deciding that I wouldn't put minibeanie into a preconceived culturally influenced mold. Why can't little boys wear pink? Or big boys either? ;) In the past, I'd bought minibeanie a Ralph Lauren pink polo shirt. I also know of a 3 year-old precocious boy who would consciously pick out bright coloured clothes for himself, even pink ones. So, pink it is :)

Why do we put little children into straight jackets of colour conventions? I remembered having a hard time choosing 'nice' clothes for minibeanie in Finland. Little boys' fashion palate seems limited to browns, blues and greens - all of which can be somber and dull, imho.

For the sake of an academic discussion, the current idea that "pink is for girls & blue is for boys" didn't come about until mid 20th century. In fact, an American newspaper "The Sunday Sentinal" wrote on March 29, 1914,

"If you like the color note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention."

And in the Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918,

"There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

So what changed the trend? According to a website "Gender Specific Colors", by the 1930s, pink had already become associated with girls. This was demonstrated by the NAZIs use of a pink triangle to identify homosexuals. (The NAZIs had a complex system of colour and symbol coding such as the yellow star of David to identify Jews.



minibeanie is 1 year & 6 days old