Front teeth for christmas

Kay will be getting her two front teeth for christmas this year ! The best present ever. Well, abate the running nose and slight fever from the tooth eruptions, i think she'll be happy to take a real bite at her food. I just hope she gets well before our long trip to NYC this weekend. It'll be tough travelling with a baby who is unwell. Wish us luck.

Oh she is 9 months old today ! Ok better jot down those important dates first.

Dec 12th - front left tooth showing
Dec 14th - front right tooth showing
Dec 18th - front left left tooth showing

This has been a busy season for us, with tonnes of sewing, baking and meeting up with friends. The Jo's moms gathered at our house to sew tag blankets for the little ones, so we had sewing machines taking up our whole dining table for the whole of last week. As you know, it's hard to really get anything done, with the babies crawling, feeding..and napping. But it was always nice to get together. Will post pictures of the projects we made soon.

A month of craziness

Again time seems to fly by so quickly. There are so many things that happened in the past month that i don't know where to begin. First a quick note to say that I have fully recovered, wound-wise. The nurse stopped coming to visit me on November 19th. That makes it about 2.5 months since the first surgery. I'm glad it's over. It's been too long too painful. Anyway it's something that Kay has to be reminded of in future :)

Other then that we are also seeing many milestones for Kay. She is crawling really well now. And she is also pulling herself up and standing on her own without our help. Most mornings, I'll find her standing in the crib waiting for me to open her door. Sometimes with a big smile, sometimes screaming. But still as adorable as ever. She is a pretty happy baby, as long as she is played with, fed and rested. Not much complains except for her new found dislike for being in the carseat. It's been a struggle every time we get in and it often becomes a crying match until we reach the destination. I'm told it's a phase, so I'm just hoping it'll past soon. Oh, did we mention Kay cut her second tooth on the day my mum left for NZ? Yes,

October 27th - for the second tooth (bottom right). There is still no sign of the top teeth yet even though the symptoms seem to be persistently present.

November 22nd - Set up our first christmas tree. This year's theme is the Nutcracker & friends. Milo and Tea (our cats) have been catching the birds i put up on the tree. Every morning I find a "dead" one some where on the floor.

December 1st - Kay's first Santa Clause parade in Stouffville. It was freezing -15 degrees out there. She was mostly bundled up and quiet cos' of the cold...so we're not sure if she enjoyed it. It was a pretty big parade for a small town.

December 2nd - Kay's first encounter with Santa himself at daddy's Telus Children's christmas party. She didn't scream or cry on Santa's lap. Brave kid. It was fun...balloons, cotton candy, free food and good company.

Maybe i should start blogging with more dates....i'm realizing that I'm not recording down a lot of things and I forget.

Well, as you know the weather here is now getting pretty brutal. Snow storms for the last 3 days, icy driveways, slippery dirty roads, and a foot of snow in our backyard and garden. Now we wished we had a snow blower and a smaller driveway.

First halloween

Trick or treat in Stouffville can be pretty fun, especially when you have 10 cute babies all dressed up for the occasion. Our mom's group in stouffville is growing and it will be nice to be able to see the little munchkins grow up together.

Last 2 nights has been pretty rough for Kay. Poor girl is down with runny nose, cough and a slight temperature. This is the first time she has fallen sick. She couldn't sleep nor eat very well and that in another way translates into my day as well. Spent 4 hours trying to put her to bed tonight. Felt a bit like being back in the first month again. Anyway, beside having snort all over her nose she is still pretty active and cheerful during the day, so i'm not so worried. Since it's a virus, Dr Tolkin couldn't give her anything. So we did the good ol' Vicks rubs on the feet and chest....and of course Tylenol for infants in yummy White grapes flavour. Not sure if any of it worked, but it gave me some peace of mind. It's hard to see them in pain.

Now i know how my mum felt when she knew i wasn't well. Anyway, my left wound has completed healed to the surface last week. Yoohoo !! Time to celebrate with champagne and wine, maybe not yet. Can't wait for rightee to be done as well. There is still 2.5 cm to go and I have a bottle of nice Cabernet waiting to be popped. Come November 11th and I would have gone through 2 full months of wound dressing. What can i say, except that I've got a great nurse and it's healing well. Carol, if you are reading this, thanks for yanking that packing in and making sure i get my daily dose of humour as well. Hmmm...felt like i have written this before.

Realised that I haven't posted much about my mom's visit. I guess it's the heart-felt warmth and a really a sense of family that cannot be described by too many words. We are just really glad she was here to help and be with us. Wish we brought her to do more sightseeing of the city, but at least she covered the 2 main attractions: Niagara falls and Chinatown. At least one of them is in Toronto. :)

One month of getting better ...

It's been one month since i last posted anything. It's been a great one month full of life experiences, more pain, more love, more milestones and more of everything. It's all good. I've now learned to look on the bright side whenever things get bad, well you know what i'm talking about. My second surgery was essential and it ended up being a good thing. The healing was faster as it didn't get as bad. Well, things are made better with mum being here to help with Kay. It's been a real blessing. In the end Kay got the best bargain of all...she got to meet grandma and all that extra attention. Though the nurse still comes in everyday to change my dressing, it ain't as bad as the beginning. Thanks Nurse Carol, for the daily doses of humour. I have a lot to be thankful for this month. Great mum, great husband, great baby, great friends, great nurses, great health care...great to be alive.

Went for Japanese buffet today with Paul, Sarah (from NZ, doing an exchange program in ryerson) and my mum. Haven't had so much food in a long time. And Kay....she's a happy baby. Had her first encounter with Shrek today and was a little frightened. So funny. :)

First Tooth and a new boob for mummy

It's so exciting, so joyful, so heartwarming and sometimes so painful (for me, at least). Kay just cut her first tooth today. Bottom right front tooth to be exact. And she is a happy chubby baby as usual, loving her rice cereal with peas and carrots. I actually love...I mean really enjoy making baby food. Steaming the bag of organic baby carrots, blending them with the Magic bullet and routinely spooning them into little containers. It's fun. So far we haven't bought a single jar of baby food, except for the cereals. So... Kay is happy and learning the game of peek-a-boo.

Mummy on the other hand is not so great. My big infection has finally become the "worse case scenario" according to all the handbooks and internet resources. But good news is there is nothing a little surgery wouldn't fix. So I went through that on September 12th and the real ordeal of dressing/ packing the wound starts. Dr Pallister told me it was the worst abscess she has ever seen and they drew out about half a pound of green pus. Not a very pretty thought, especially when they also have to pack the inside of the open wound with 4 metres of gauze-tape. And guess what, i have to continue doing this packing and unpacking everyday until the cavity heals from the inside out. Well, at least i don't have to do this myself, a nurse would visit me everyday until i recover. For a person who totally blacked-out at the sight of blood, the thought of all these would have killed me. But I think I handled it pretty well, especially when I've got such great support from Cheeyuen and also when I see the sweet, toothless smile on Kay's face. Well, guess i just needed to get the bad stuff out of my system so the good things will follow. Just doing my time for some bad karma I've acquired somewhere along the way.

Anyway, my mum is on her way to help out with my recovery and also with Kay. She might be at the airport collecting her luggage from the belts right now. Cheeyuen's gone to pick her up. It must be a journey of anxiety, worry and excitement for her and a pretty long one from NZ. Kay will be seeing her grandma for the first time when she wakes up in the morning. All will be better tomorrow. Right now I just feel blessed to have a wonderful husband who's been doing all the baby carrying-bathing-changing-feeding, cooking, working and caring for the past week while i was in pain ...and actually for the past nine years. Thanks hon. This will just be a post without photos, but with a lot of heart.

milestones

People mark new milestones in their lives and careers when something drastic or significant happens. With a baby, however, every week or even everyday could be a milestone. Today, Kay has reached one...she has graduated to diaper size #3!!! yippee...the fat butt could no longer be wrapped by #2. Since the design has changed a little, Elmo is now on her backside and not the front. Yesterday, she also started getting on her hands and knees. You see the little butt rocking forward and back as she tries out her new found talents. She is also doing a lot of Crib gymnastics ...flipping. rolling, grabbing, daggling...

Yummy !!

Here is the action sequence for the first successful feeding.
Kay has since progressed to rice cereals, carrots and peas.

First cereals and carrots and new friends

Time seem to pass as Kay heads into her 5th month. After that routine check-up on Aug 21 at Dr Tolkin's, we got the go ahead to start on solids. First attempt was not great as Kay was still pushing the food out with her tongue. Second try was much better, she finished 3 tablespoons of rice cereals mixed with bananas. This week i started her on carrots.

Just 2 days ago, the funniest thing happened Kay actually fell asleep while i was feeding her cereals and carrots. She started nodding off in the bumbo chair, with a face full of gooey cereal. Didn't care a bit about how messy she was...just drifting off into Neverland. It was too funny....at least to me. :)

Well, we think she may be teething as there has been 'painful' cries from her with lots of gum chewing and scratching of her hair. It's good that she has met a few new friends at the neighbourhood cafe who are all going through the same experiences. They are all March babies. Niall (March 12), Paige (March 15), Kay (March 18) and Mina (March 24)....oh and one bigger brother Andreas (Feb 13). We meet every Wednesday mornings at Jo's for a cuppa and share our week with each other. It'll be fun to see them grow up together. Hopefully we'll still be in touch to celebrate their first birthdays together.

Right now, I just hope that I recover from "thy wretched pain in the breast" !!!! These demonic swells just won't go away. Yes, i got the mastitis back again. Now on my 4th course of meds. But everything will get better and we are just grateful that Kay sleeps through the night.

A day by the lake...

It was a nice day and what would be better than having a picnic by Mussellman Lake... our friend Thuwaibah was visiting from downtown. So off we went, with fish and chips "take-out", an old quilt cover, and enough milk for Kay. It was a nice 3 hours lazing by the water. Everything would've been perfect if not for the parking ticket we got !! It was just too bad that we stepped away to get ice-cream...for 5 mins. Darn ! Anyway, it was an expensive picnic but we had a good time.

Hot summer's day

Cool dude ?


My sweetie pie...


Moving around the cot as she sleeps


Kay and Niall at Jo's

You would think that summer is good for going out, but with the heat blazing at 35 degrees we are forced to go to the malls or stay at home. It is still very hot when we headed out to the post office at around 5pm today. Kay was soaked in sweat when we reach there, and it was just a 5 minutes drive away. With all that padding and tight-buckles on the car-seat it can get pretty warm for her in the back on a hot day like this.

Just wanted to note that I've fully recovered and life is back to normal. Kay is sleeping extremely well at night, usually from 9pm to 6am and goes back to sleep after the 6am feed. And we have noticed that she moves around quite alot in the baby cot during the night. She is usually in a different part of the cot every time we check on her. Even though I haven't seen it for myself, I think she is probably able to flip back from her tummy position onto her back. She wasn't able to do that last week. This week, she has also discovered her own toes.

Wednesday, we went out for coffee at Jo's cafe in Stouffville with Rossana and baby Niall. They are such cuties together. Both of them born a week apart. ...12th and 18th. We'll try to make the meetings more regular since we all live in Stouffville. It was fun.

I'm beginning to think about what i want to do after this year ends. With the EI running out, I'll have to do something for sure, even though I'm really enjoying my time with Kay and would love to continue looking after her. But it must be pretty stressful for Cheeyuen to be shouldering all that financial burden. It's hard to find romance in our lives when we're both tired at the end of the day. (Read : we just want to fall asleep in our bed) But Kay is always there to cheer things up and bring the love back into perspective.

Both Kay and Cheeyuen are fast asleep now as I'm typing this blog. It feels really nice to have some time to myself and just reflect on the day that went by so quickly. Right now, I need to find myself back again...start reclaiming my body, mind and soul. I feel as if I have given them all to Kay since she came into this world. Never thought it takes so much to be a mother. There's really so much to learn.

BBBBBQQQQQ .... !

Tis the season for BBQs... here are snap shots from the recent gathering of Cheeyuen's Telus team in our backyard.

Grandma giggles with the girls

the experienced mamas at work

girls talk
joyce, baby kay and baby cheeyuen

mmm...the spread on the grill

the crowd

grandmamas love kay

super gal !

the boss.

No pain no gain

Oopps... the little bald patch 'exposed' !


Kay on the throne...


ghetto baby


Kay and Gabe at the "sushi-nazi's" restaurant in Newmarket.




Kay the serious baby and Rachel the "wan-pei" baby


wow... it's literally 3 weeks of "pain in the boob" for me.
I have been suffering from Mastitis, apparently common in nursing mothers, with clogged milk ducts that turn into an infection. It's been pretty tough for Kay and I to go through this period. I had to take care of her alone with cheeyuen being away on business for a couple of weeks. And because of the antibiotics i'm taking, Kay has to be forced to go on the bottle 'cold turkey'. For the first few days, she was just wailing and screaming her lungs out, probably from missing the breastmilk and the closeness of nursing.

Her voice turned hoarse and husky. Her poo turn dark green. Poor girl.
But she's doing really well now... almost fully adjusted to formula milk and getting into a good sleep schedule. She actually sleeps for 9 hours at night and naps really well during the day. She's back to being a happy baby and so is mummy & daddy.

Well, i'm still in the process of recovering and would probably start thinking about stopping nursing after that. I want to start enjoying my time with Kay and not deal with my own bodily pains for a change. There is so much pressure in this society to breast feed that it's become ridiculous. Anyway, i have already done my dues for the past 4 months, enduring the constant throbbing pains. So Kay, better be thankful to mummy.

She is our little angel. A very serious one, nonetheless, who likes to watch and observe and learn. Drooling and spitting up as we coax a little smile out of her. Watching her grow has been the most fascinating thing ever. She is now playing on her own on the exersaucer and making friends of her own. Well, I set up the playdates but she makes the friends. Rachel and Gabriel are her first two pals. It'll be fun to see how they grow up to be.

That's it for now. We just had BBQ with Yolande, Jay and AJ in the backyard. Need to take a bath and continue with our 6th episode of "24" on the computer. With Kay sleeping better, Cheeyuen and I are enjoying more time together doing our favourite past-time...watching TV serials.

canada day weekend

Kay and Rachel



July 1st celebrates Canada's 140th birthday, and also Kay's first as a CBC :)
We could see the fireworks from Stouffville's Memorial Park from our own backyard...isn't that cool. It went on for about 15 mins at 10pm last night, while Kay was sleeping.

We had friends over the night before to have a BBQ and also to enjoy the strawberry festival in Stouffville. Turned out that no one made it to the festival, which was really lame with nothing more than a few stalls with miserable baskets of tiny strawberries and shops selling sunglasses. The BBQ itself was pretty fun though. Nice company good food.

Samantha, Rachel and Sean came in tow with their yellow Bumbo seat, which Kay seems to love as well. It's a great little stool, especially for little ones learning how to sit upright. Rachel has grown into a playful little baby with a great head of hair. She is almost 2 months older than Kay. Hmmm...I wonder when Kay's bald spot in the back of her head will grow hair ?

Lydia and David are the excited new parents-to-be. About 15 weeks into their pregnancy they are just at the beginning stages of trying to learn all about the journey ahead....diaper changes, types of strollers to buy, what baby needs for the first days at the hospital and listening to my ranting/ complaints about breastfeeding and stuff.

Zahra brought us a cheesecake for dessert and told stories about a drug bust in our old condo and her 99cent dinners. Well, she is our ex-neighbour at Avondale. So apparently, the guys in the flat next to us might be involved in the drug bust in some way...the story didn't really have a conclusion. And she is pretty upset by me saying that she didn't have a good photo in her Facebook profile. :) ...we were just teasing her and she fell for it. Anyway, she will be moving to Sudbury in August for a new job.

Well, as for Kay i think she is beginning to notice food that is not breast milk. She makes suckling motions with her mouth when i hold an ice cream stick in front of her. But i didn't work with chicken wings...so i think she's going to have sweet tooth like mummy.

miss bossy pants

The past week was just lotsa feeding and struggling to sleep at night. Don't know if it's just me, but i feel that Kay has grown quite a bit in one week. She is feeding constantly when she is awake. Could be one of the growth spurts that books talk about. This would be 3 months and 2 weeks.

She has started to grab things with her hands even though she still can't quite control it. During diaper changes and when we carry her, she will grab on to our collar or t-shirt. And she loves grabbing at the little skirt on her romper. She loves all things round...the shape of peoples faces, the ruffles on her bouncing chair and the circles on the underside of her stroller canopy. She'll just stare at them.

And with greater neck control and very strong thigh-muscles, she loves "standing" on her feet...with our help of course. It's a bit wobbly but really cute as she stares at you with those big eyes. She is also strong enough to do "sit-ups", when we hold her hands and pull her up from lying down to a sitting position. Wondering if we should get her one of those bumbo chairs. :)

This summer has seen extremely hot days where we were just sweating it out at home. But yesterday was great...it cooled down to 22 degrees with a nice breeze. Finally received Kay's birth certificate yesterday after a bit of a cat and mouse chase with the courier. Now we can start getting her a passport so she can travel to see her grandamamas in New zealand and singapore.

Last night was a struggle to get miss bossy pants to sleep. Spent 2 hours trying to soothe her screaming & crying. Feeding her, rocking her and committing all the no-nos in the textbooks for parenting. The minute we put her down on the crib she would start protesting. Oh well, it's a brand new day today, will worry about it again tonight. That's my life as a mom.

Mural mural on the wall...

I finally finished the drawing on Kay's nursery. Did it in 3 hours yesterday...between her screaming and crying ...and after she fell asleep after midnight.
It started as a sketch on paper, then i simply freehand the curves with a pencil directly on the wall and paint with white paint. The birds were done after midnight.
I think I like it, hopefully Kay does too.

it;s finally summer

Big kiss for the princess




The boss...sitting on our new sectional sofa



Knowing her ABCDs



Keeping cool.



The big Discovery


hey i never thought i'd say this, but the good ol' warmer season is here. Days have been hot and humid, but i guess not quite in the same intensity as in Singapore. It's still bearable if you turn on the fan.

Kay has finally hit the 3 month mark and made quite a few milestones along the way.
On June 2nd, she slept from 11.30pm to 7am....the longest ever. Then after that it is back to the 4am & 7am feeds. But it's a start and we're happy. ..sorry i meant I'm happy cos' i'm the one waking up :)...sorry hon.

The next weekend June 8th, she has also started discovering her own little hands and few days ago ...her feet. It's the most amazing thing to see her explore and inspect her little fingers and finally understanding that they belong to her.

2 nights ago, she actually fell asleep without much effort on her own baby crib, in her own room. Yes, the first steps to a little independence, we hope. Well, she's been sleeping in her stroller next to my bed all this while.

Well, as she gets more alert during the day, keeping her occupied becomes eminent to my sanity. She gets bored by the same scene/ toys more easily now. And guess what, she has started to watch the tele. In fact, we went through 85% of the movie "Happy Feet" yesterday on the computer. Currently, her favourite book is "Peekaboo" by Sesame street and "Abra Cadabra" the online storybook.

Also, thanks to aunty Kate for starting her on the ABCDs...and the ACDCs. She looks like a really cool rock-chic.

She's feeding on my left arm while i'm typing this.