Starting solids soon?

micro-b is 5 months old today! And a month (or less) to go before introducing solids! Hip hip hooray! The sleep-through-the-night routine is a distant memory. In fact, ever since he got the cold in early Jan, he had begun waking up in the night. Ok, so I thought he'd settle back into the old rhythm after the cold but no, he's still at it :( Yes, I've read that these things happen...illness, teething & growth spurts do that. Recently however, it becomes clear that he's increasing his feeds and over a month, he has increased the amount he drinks by nearly 30% which is phenomenal.

Last night, he got me up twice. I'm so sleep deprived as a result. I know it's bad but I'm so tempted to start popping a spoon of cereal into his mouth right now. Why don't I? There's an increased risk of allergies by starting solids too young.. and since micro-b has eczema, I'll just have to grin and bear it for another few weeks or so :P


microbeanie is 5 months old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

My 2.5 yo knows more about cars than me!

mini-b is a petrol-head just like his dad ;) He probably knows all the makes and our favourite activity on the ride back from school is to identify cars on the road. And the condo carpark is a close contender with the playground as his favourite place to be outside. Let's see, he knows the usual sports car marques such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus and of course the more familiar Volkswagon ("Vokk wagen"), Merz, Beemer, Nissan, Toyota, Buick (a very popular MPV make in Chengdu), Honda ("HON da", in a low voice in the likes of a stiff Japanese man. Hmm, I wonder where he got that from), Seat, Citroen, Suzuki, Audi, Volvo, Skoda....

A couple of days ago, it became apparent that my 2 and a half year son knew more about cars than me. When he asked, "this one", and pointed to a car on the road, I replied, "Seat". Whereupon he replied in a most confident tone, "no mummy, Seat. Suzuki-ni". I was surprised and a little insulted but made a mental note to check up on their logos. Damn! I was wrong! :D

ps. just in case someone is as clueless as me, the silver logo on the right is Suzuki & the red one is Seat ;)

microbeanie is 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

It's all in the name

EtonHouse has a practice of putting each student's picture followed by his name on the classroom's door. In the Chinese division class that's beside mini-b's, there are a couple of names that caught our attention. 3 boys named Sunny, Grace, ....and my favourite is, Leakey. I feel sorry for that kid.


microbeanie is 4 months & 3 weeks old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

Thursday = pea soup + crepe

There's a quaint tradition in Finland where pea soup (hernekeitto) and crepes (lettu) are traditionally eaten on Thursdays. I've no idea why Thursday. And for that matter, no other day of the week has such association. This soup isn't the usual starter; instead, it's a main course because it's so heavy that it goes thump in your stomach. It's one of those things I read about Finland many years in a list that went, "You know you're in Finland when..." along with "silence is golden" or something about whipping one's body with a bunch of birch twigs in a sauna. How cute, I thought. But it wasn't a few years later that I actually tried pea soup.

I think if there's any dish that sums up the Finnish psyche, it's this. Hearty, down-to-earth, unpretentious.

Hernekeitto
shelled peas, dried or fresh
potatoes, cubed (optional)
onions, minced
meat stock (I used chicken bones left over from a roast)
bay leaves
ham*, diced
butter
salt & black pepper
mustard

1. Put the bay leaves, bones, peas & potatoes into a large stockpot. Add water until just covering the peas or potatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer until peas are soft or until a good stock is made from the bones.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan and saute the onions until a golden caramel colour. Add into the stockpot.
3. Remove the bay leaves & bones.
4. Use a potato masher to mash the peas and potatoes into a thick paste. (Alternatively, a blender could be used as well but I prefer a chunky touch to the soup)
5. Add the diced ham. Season to taste with salt & pepper.
6. Serve with a dollop of mustard mixed in.

* I really don't recommend thin slices of 'picnic ham'. I'd go for a whole chunk of smoked ham then dice it to your liking. I had frozen portions of my Christmas ham and it was wonderful.

And as for the crepes (lettu), I whipped some cream and chopped up strawberries to go. Traditionally though, strawberry jam is eaten with the crepes along with cream. I love food traditions!


microbeanie is 4 months, 2 weeks & 1 day old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

Share and share alike

"Share" is an alien concept among 2 year olds. When we have playdates, mini-b holds his car to his chest and proclaims, "mine". Nevermind that he hasn't touched that toy for ages. Same goes for the long forgotten rattle that micro-b plays with these days. While I'm anxious not to raise selfish brats, pediatric psychologists say this is pretty normal behaviour for 2-3 year olds.

But there's one thing that mini-b has shared pretty well. He brought home from school a cold last week. Over the weekend till today, gooey stuff has been dripping from his nose followed by a rackish cough. Yesterday, it appeared that mini-b shared his germs with his little brother. micro-b now has a heart wrenching phlegm-y cough. Great, 2 sick cry-y kids on my hands :(


microbeanie is 4 months & 1 week old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

this past few weeks

I can't believe how fast time flies... (yep yep, don't we hear that all the time?) micro-b is 4 months old and the elder one is 2.5 years old. Developmentally, mini-b is talking a lot more now. School has been great. The exposure he has been getting, the socializing with children his own age, drawing, running.... all the kind of stuff I wish I can do with him on a daily basis but can't because my hands are tied (almost literally ;) Last week, his class baked gingerbread cookies because the letter of the week is 'G' :) And the next week, there will be a school excursion to an organic farm! I wish school was half that fun during my time.

And micro-b is a very jolly fella. He loves to squeal and laugh wholeheartedly when someone engages him - what a wonderful temperament... am I lucky. Last Monday, just 2 days before he turned 4 months, he flipped over from back to tummy and since then, he has been going round in circles on the playmat. Back-tummy-back-tummy.... I can probably get him to clean my floor if I attach scouring pads to his jumpsuit.

Anyhow, here are the past few weeks in pictures.

Gingerbread - a family tradition by now and there's my elf.

The Gingerbread house from the 2005 template. This year's cookies were a disaster. I over-beat the butter & sugar resulting in cookies that s-p-r-e-a-d horribly in the oven but I managed to work around it by using very cold dough from the freezer.

Christmas Eve dinner. No, I didn't bake the ham. Thank God for a local butchery run by a Kiwi couple!

micro-b's first Christmas!

Zzzzz... (Chinese Ah Pek in the making)

microbeanie is 4 months & 4 days old
minibeanie is a 2.5 year old toddler

Sleeping through the night ... at last!

Last month, I was wondering if it was a fluke that micro-b slept through the night. It turned out that it was ;) Then, we were still in Finland and a week later, we returned to Chengdu. Miraculously, micro-b began to sleep through the night consistently upon our return. I wasn't about to celebrate prematurely in case it was jet lag but it has been 3 weeks now and I didn't have to wake up at 3am once in that period! ....[victory dance]....

In fact, micro-b's quite the perfect baby sleep-wise. The last feed usually ends at 10pm, we zip him up in his sleeping bag (he'll kick off his blanket otherwise) and he sleeps until 8 the next morning. Bliss!!

Here's a series of pictures I took while in Finland in mid November.



microbeanie is 3 months, 1 week & 3 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year & 4 month old toddler

Potentially embarrassing moments

I may be wrong but I think it may be a rite of passage for every parent to be embarrassed by her toddler. Since we had been eating a fair bit of pomelo, mini-b often gestures that he wants his share with, "anna (Finnish: give) porno".

And because it is tricky for a 2 year-old tongue to wrap around the 'tr-' sound, it often sounds like he's saying, "f**k, f**k, f**k" when he was simply pointing to his 3 trucks. We have some explaining to do in front of friends.


microbeanie is 3 months, 1 week & 2 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year & 4 months old toddler

Linguistic sponge

For a few months, mini-b has referred to himself as "boy". It always brings a smile to our faces when he says, "mama, dada, baby, boy", "boy cwwhy" (cry) or "BOY!" when he wants to express that something belongs to him. On this trip to Finland though, he has finally learnt how to say his own name. Quite a feat considering how long his name is...we could have been nice and chosen a 1 or 2 syllabi name like John or Tomi. mini-b introduces himself as "Hasasan" or sometimes "Hassan" :D

It also amazes me how fast he's picking up language now. Before we came 2 weeks ago, he said, "hands pois (Finnish: away) please" and from his playschool teacher, he apparently said, "Everybody 洗手 (Chinese: wash hands)". I suppose it's inevitable that he mixes the languages he's learning everyday.

Thanks to his fav Ten Little Ladybugs book, mini-b can now count to 10 in English & Chinese. We also talked a lot about colours. M&Ms are great teaching tools ;)


microbeanie is 2 months, 1 week & 5 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year 3 month old toddler

A fluke

Yes, it was a fluke! Judging by mummy's red eyes this morning at 7, and micro-b's wailing that woke up dada and minibeanie. It was time for the boys to get up anyway and go get flu-jabs for mb. Well, we can't expect micro-b's sleeping pattern to change in one go. The trend is for the better anyway

-dada

microbeanie is 2 months, 1 week & 3 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year old toddler

Through the Night!

micro-b slept through the night for the very first time last night! He had his last feed until 10pm and I thought, well, he'd be up 3 or 4am as usual. But no, I woke up at 10am. Yes, 10 o'clock, a sane hour to get up when it's considered day, not 4am when the only things up at that hour are drunks lumbering home and crickets. You see, I got to get up at 10 because dada took the 7am shift AND micro-b was a perfect baby.

Was last night a fluke? We'll see...


microbeanie is 2 months, 1 week & 2 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year old toddler

A Finn in the making

There's always something that makes one distinctly Singaporean, Finnish, Chinese.... It could be eating certain strange foods or some ritual that's totally based on culture. Today, mini-b climbed onto the dining chair and started rummaging through its stuff. He came to me all sheepish and said, "eat". I thought he had found the bag of M&Ms on the table and helped himself to a chocolate buffet but when I went to the table, lo, it was the box of salmiakki.

To non-Scandinavians, salmiakki is the black stuff that everyone else on this planet hates. It was once banned because it was made from ammonia. And this particular box was actually bought from the pharmacy :D Personally, despite my adventurous spirit towards exotic foods, I stop short at salmiakki (even if I crave for salmiakki ice-cream, go figure ;) mini-b is more Finnish than I thought.



microbeanie is 2 months & 1 week old
minibeanie is a 2 year old toddler - and up to no good

October 09

It had been FOREVER since the last post :P I do know that some of you are following this blog so I'm sorry to disappoint. Besides the fact that I hardly have time for anything these days, it had proven impossible to log onto Blogger (& Facebook for that matter) recently. Either the proxy server I'd been using needed some new config or that China's Great Firewall had finally caught up with it, I don't know. My tech support guy had for some reason been quite busy as well ;)

Well, tons had happened in the last month or so. In a nutshell, here's what happened in October 2009.

• We took a whole week to 're-tune' mini-b's sleeping habit back to sleeping alone in his own room. A month of molly-coddlying by his paternal grandmother did some damage. The worst night was when mini-b came to our room crying for the 3rd or 4th time after being accosted back to his bed and I was ready to cave and let him climb into our bed at 6am. Thankfully, DH held his fort.

• mini-b started half day playschool at Eton House! We're really proud of him for he didn't cry a single bit. All he needed was to be shown the train set and he would settle right in :D The main focus was on gaining independence such as eating by himself, washing his hands, putting on his shoes etc. He also learnt boundaries, respecting others' rights & group work such as there's a time for art class and Chinese class (<-- I was told by the teacher, Miss Lauren, that he isn't so hot for Chinese class... fell asleep once! :D the apple didn't fall too far from the tree, I thought. I think school had done mini-b a world of good. Just 3.5 weeks into it, I noticed that he'd begun using a lot more words. The stimulation he received in that 3.5 hours everyday was certainly a lot more than what I could give at home even without a certain bundle.

• Speaking of the bundle, micro-b had grown! He had started smiling and sleeping for longer stretches of time. Hallelujah! Right before we left Chengdu for Finland, the longest he slept at night would be 5 hours - waking up just once to feed in the night. It was a huge improvement over the last week when 2 night feeds actually meant at least an hour of sleep less.

I'd put up some pictures if I could. Here are a couple from the first week of micro-b's birth. Already feels like ancient history.

19 days old

Big brudder the tutti pusher

microbeanie is 2 months & 3 days old
minibeanie is a 2 year old toddler