Baby Idol

Apart from the well-known fact that Faith enjoys holding conversations with lots of people, the lesser known interest that she also has is .....*drum roll*.... SINGING.

Yeah! Faith can certainly sing and hold her own with the best of them. I kid you not! She is able to sing with me on occasions to the songs "Head and shoulders, knees and toes" and "Three little ducklings". And with her daddy, she's also been introduced to a repertoire of Mandarin songs, all of which are sung by Sandy Lam, cos its his favourite singer for now.

Definitely, she's got loads of talent, style and is able to engage the audience too. She wouldn't just join in and sing the song from the beginning. Oh nooo.... She waits and makes a grand entry by bursting into a song midway. And best of all, she knows the lyrics to any and every song. Cos there's only one word repeated throughout and its one-syllabus too. It goes "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" ;) When the mood strikes, she breaks out into a laugh or a giggle, enticing her "audience" to join in too.

Now, with such potentials, I think I'm going to sign her up for the next audition of Singapore Idol. Watch out, Singapore! ;)

She flipped!

I was telling my mom to watch out for Faith when we put her on her back on the sofa, daybed and flat surfaces elsewhere in the house. Becos I've observed my little girl has been arching her back to reach behind her head and pull at a panel of toys which we've tied on the back panel of her cot. Many a times, I've seen her half-turn her body while pulling at the toy panel as if she is almost ready to flip from her back onto her stomach.

True enough, she managed to flip by herself again (after the previous one-time feat) on Sunday night while Louis and I were with her on the daybed in our living room. All along, we've been giving her some tummy time to allow her to practice flipping from her front to the back. However, our little girl has a mind of her own and would instead scream and cry after a while in frustration at not being able to flip.

Monday night, she flipped again when we had her on the daybed while watching TV -- alright... I know some subscribe to the belief that children under the age of 2 should not be allowed to watch TV, but what can I say? And she seemed rather pleased with herself for finally managing this little challenge. As if to underscore the fact that she's now "mastered" the skill, she kept flipping every time we put her right on her back.

Louis and I were rather concerned that she might over-exert herself. Firstly, it was getting late and near to her bedtime. Secondly, even though Faith might think she's now a pro at flipping, she hasn't really been able to deftly prop one side of her arms forward in order to support herself while on her tummy -- its the arm that gets trapped by her body on the same side that she flips over. Hence, Louis and I were afraid that she might even hurt herself. But I guess babies are build to be resilient cos that's how they learn.

Eventually, Louis and I decided to take turns carrying her cos no amount of telling her so will she stop flipping. Just as I'm happy that she's finally managed this significant milestone, I can no longer afford to leave her unattended on any flat surface now. Yesterday morning, as I left her in her cot to go prepare water for her morning bathe, she again flipped inside her cot.

Last night, Louis lowered the mattress of her cot for safety reasons. And now, I know what E meant when she said that diaper changing would never be the same again once the learn to flip. Indeed! Its a constant struggle! :)

Baby Smiles

Like all parents, it amuses us no end to see Faith smiling incessantly at us. I decided to Google a bit more about baby smiles - after all, how do babies learn to smile?

As it turns out - there are different types of smiles. First, there are reflex smiles - smiles which are prompted by babies' internal body reflexes - such as passing wind. These smiles often occur during the first weeks' of growth. Between one and two months of age, a different sort of smile emerges to replace these reflexive smiles. Then, babies smile indiscriminately at things or people they see, touch or hear. Whereas reflex smiles are driven by events within the infant's body, these new smiles are driven by external events in the baby's immediate environment. However, they are not true “social” smiles.

Social smiling makes an appearance at around two-and-a-half months. Newborns have very poor eyesight and are unable to focus on objects more than about 25cms away. However, by two months, babies can see further and are better able to focus. This means they can see clearly the smiles of others. Now, not only will a baby respond with a happy grin to the smiles of others, she will elicit smiles from others. Needless to say, smiling cements the bonds between baby and carers, and is a vital means of sharing the joy and feelings of warmth we get from such simple human interaction.

If babies need good eyesight in order to learn about smiling, how do blind babies learn? It seems that parents are a lot more tactile with their blind babies. They nudge, bounce, and tickle their children far more often than do the parents of sighted babies. Touch serves to elicit social smiles from blind babies.

Theory aside, we're just glad that Faith is such a smiley baby - she is not only showing such warmth to us, she is also gradually showing this to people she finds familiar or who play with her. But as very biased parents, I think Faith shares a unique smile with us - I think the same way we reserve a special warmth for her in our hearts. This smile is broader, sustained, more instantaneous and it lights up her entire face - the type of smile that can melt ones' heart. It's almost a trust and bond between us and her now...when we look at her now, it's a reaction that we look forward to. And it's a reminder that this is also probably the way she feels when she looks at us - if we don't smile at her, I think she might just think that something is amiss with Daddy and Mummy. This is why, no matter how tired I am, it is this smile that reminds me that it is a privilege to share this moment with Faith.

More importantly, we've always had simple wishes for Faith - for her to be happy and healthy. Her smile, is to us, a clear signal that she is developing well emotionally and feels loved with those around her. For that, we'd always be grateful.

Her very first solids

I'm brimming with excitement and some amount of trepidation this morning as I attempt to give Faith her first solid. Last night, I was busy referring to a few books and putting tags to mark important pages about weaning my little baby from milk to her first solids (hmmm... its a misnomer to call it solids when the first food is so liquid-y).

Eagerly, I told my mom to come in earlier to help me. And thankfully she did, cos I wouldn't have been able to manage to feed her on my own. Partly becos we still haven't gotten an infant seat/high chair for her as yet and as a stop gauge, I've put her in Bumbo. However, she tends to flop forward, making it difficult to feed her. So, my mom's had to put her hands on her shoulders to stabilise her.

I was in a dilemma deciding back and forth between feeding her Earth's Best Organic Whole Grain rice cereals or organic avocado. Finally, I decided on the former as I figured she might need some time to get use to a different texture in the mouth. Since the introduction of every new food item requires about 4 days to check for any allergies or reactions, I thought the 4 days of practice with rice cereals might allow her to accept eating avocado better, and hopefully result in less food wastage.

At first, I started out with a spoon supposedly for solids (its the one with the yellow handle on the picture below), but it had a very shallow surface and maybe Faith couldn't quite gripe the food with her mouth. So, we changed to the other spoon, that was meant for juices and soups. Faith loves the soup spoon better and she loves her cereals even more. She eagerly opened her mouth to receive every spoonful of the cereals.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take a picture of her eating cos I was doing the feeding and my mom was holding her. It was a messy affair for Faith, of course, as with any baby's first feeding. She had cereals dribbling all over her mouth, on her nose, chin and neck too. But it doesn't really matter cos she's enjoying her food and that's more important. I had mixed about 1 tablespoon of the cereals with 4 tablespoons of breastmilk. At the end of the feeding session, there was only about 1 tablespoonful of cereals left behind in her bowl. Not bad for a start.

Either I'm not very adept at this whole feeding thingy or I haven't gotten the ritual down to a pat yet. But, it certainly takes longer to prep and feed her than it is to breastfeed her. I had a cup for water, a bowl for her cereals, then I had to warm the breastmilk in a milk bottle before mixing it with the cereals and use a total of 2 spoons in all to feed her. Sounds like a lot of things at a go. Oh well... I'm sure there would be more once she really starts to eat porridge.

Despite the many cutlery's and all, I'm glad Faith is taking to her first food well. It is heartening and I'm full of pride at how happy she seems to be with solid food. The picture at the beginning of this posting was taken after she was done with her feeding session. See how happy she is and the big, toothless gummy smile she bestowed on my mom and I after the session. Cute!

Hubby's back and Hip hip hooray to K-dramas

Finally, Louis is back after 5 days in London! Brought Faith to the airport to welcome her daddy home. Daddy was extremely pleased and happy to see his little girl. In fact, gave his first kiss and attention to his little girl while mommy stood waiting in line to receive due attention. Sigh... how the times have change. Hahaha... no, I'm not jealous of my little girl.

Louis and I are looking forward to watching the recorded version of the K drama, "The Snow Queen", showing every Saturday night at 10.30 pm. Prior to this weekend, we could only record shows on the Free-to-Air channels. After much pestering and nagging by yours faithfully, Louis' quick-fix solution was to call on his elder brother to help *shrug shoulders*.

And its thanks to my BIL that we can finally record the cable channels that we've subscribed to. So far, I've recorded "The Sound of Music" -- my all time favourite musical. And right now, we're recording every Saturday night's airing of "The Snow Queen" to watch on Sunday afternoons.

Yeah, night times are always busy for us. I would be busy preparing to change Faith into her PJs, feed her, put her to sleep, express milk and shower, while Louis would be helping to put ours and Faith's clothes into the washing machine and hanging them up. So, its kinda rush for us to be able to finish all the chores in time for us to sit down and watch our favourite shows at its airing time.

Happy 5th Month, Faith!

Thank goodness for small favours. After her 2 jabs, Faith was only slightly feverish on the 2nd day. We continued to give her Progessic and by the 3rd day, she has fully recovered.

Unfortunately, my dear daughter has decided to give me some amount of grieve last night. I have absolutely no idea -- could only hazard a few guesses but am not sure really what's the real reason --- but she was up at midnight, 2-ish, 3-ish and 4-ish am. The first 3 times, she more or less went back to sleep after I fed her. But at 4-ish am, she decided that she just wants to wake up and play. I fed her but she remained wide-eyed after a 30 min session of feeding.

Tried to pat her to sleep, but to no avail either. Tired and frustrated, I put her back in her cot and went off to my own room to get a breather. She continued to kick and play around in her cot for a good 15-20 minutes, before she started crying for attention. After nearly 3 hours of struggle, I finally managed to put her to sleep at near to 7 am in the morning.

At 8-ish am, she woke up again. I fed her, then again patted her to sleep, with some slight amount of resistance put up before she went back to dreamland. We both woke up at close to 11 am, with me being blurry-eye and extremely grouchy.

Geez... hope she wouldn't repeat this again tonight. Can't wait for Louis to get back home! My posting today is all over the place, but frankly, I'm really not at my best with interrupted sleep for the last few nights. I don't know what's plaguing my little one. Is it her teething that's bothering her (but she's not crying when awake), or maybe she's ready to be weaned onto solids or just that she's waking up for no reason other than to play? Whatever the reason, I'm zapped.

All the same, here's wishing her a happy 5th month!

Easy guacamole

I've currently into eating avocados. I love the creamy, rich texture that on its own seemed rather tasteless. But it absorbs beautifully the flavours of whatever dressings that goes with it. Of course, the other reason for my enthusiastic eating of said fruit these days is that I would like Faith to eat avocado when she starts weaning. I figured that the more I eat, she might get a taste of it through the milk and hence develop a taste of it herself *grin*.

Since I've been hankering after some not-so-healthy junk food like chips, I thought it would be a good idea to pair some junk food with health food by making an avocado dip to go along with my organic tortilla chips. That ought to balance things out a little.

So, here's my version of guacamole:

Ingredients

2 ripe avocados
1/4 onion, roughly chopped
Juice from about 1/4 of a lemon juice
1 tomato, diced
Salt, to taste

Method

1) Cut and scope avocado into a blender, along with the onions.

2) Squeeze the lemon juice in, add salt and blitz everything until smooth. If you like, you could pulse the blender so that the avocados don't get too mashed up and you have some rough bits for a different texture.

3) Scope pureed mixture into a container that can be refrigerated. Add in the diced tomato and mix well. Refrigerate it and eat with tortilla chips whenever you like *Slurp* :)

Personally, I don't like the strong taste of raw onions, therefore, I only use 1/4 onion. For onion lovers, you could even add in some chopped onions along with the tomatoes at the end for a nice crunch.

Next week, I think I shall make avocado salad. Hmmm.... Yummy!

Final vaccination...

...well, at least for this year. As of yesterday, Faith has gotten her last innoculation. The jabs she has taken include the complusory 6-in-1 vaccination as well as additional jab for pneumococcal, as well as rotavirus. She had her jabs at the 2nd, 3rd and 5th month.

As of now, she's all cleared and "vaccinated" to be able to travel. Yippee!! As a precaution, I've given her fever medication when we went home. The very first time, I didn't and she had fever for 3 days. So, I've wisen up and given her the fever medication from the 2nd vaccination so that she doesn't get any. Cos she doesn't rest or eat well when she has fever and if I could spare her the discomfort, I would rather do so.

Crossing my fingers that she would sail through the next few days without any fever, just like the last time :)

At nearly 5 months...

Its been a while since I've posted on Faith's developments. Physically and emotionally, my baby has grown quite a fair bit... ok, maybe less about the physical development as in she's not grown much in terms of size or weight. But definitely the emotional and also some level of gross and fine motor skills.

For the last few weeks, Faith has occasionally experienced an early onset of stranger anxiety. Usually, that hits babies at about 8-9 months. But we've noticed that she sometimes cry when we leave her with my in-laws or when not so familiar folks or strangers carry her. To help smoothen out some of her anxieties, especially about being left with my in-laws, Louis and I had taken to bringing her to their place after dinner on weeknights to just sit and play while the both of us are in the house. We think it might have helped becos she's mostly alright now. However, at times, she might purse her little lips still as if to start crying. When that happens, my FIL quickly shuffles her downstairs for a while or to the NTUC supermarket to distract her.

On her physical development, Faith's latest feat is to clutch both her feet with her 2 little hands and occasionally, bring one or even both feet up to her mouth to gnaw on them. Its rather funny and amusing, although diaper changing can be a little of a wrestling match as she would stick her two little feet up in the air and I'm struggling to bring them down so that I can fasten the sticky-tapes of the diapers.

I think my little baby is teething or exhibiting signs of teething. I've been trying to feel her upper and lower gums, as well as to gently pry her mouth open just to see if there are any white-ish marks on her gums. So far, it doesn't looks as if any tooth is sprouting soon.

However, for a few nights last week, she hasn't really been sleeping well. While she used to wake up naturally and smile in the mornings, a few times last week, she would be thrashing and flailing her hands about while sleeping. In the afternoons, she would sometimes fuss a lot more than her usual too. She had a one-time diarrhea as well as rashes around her diaper area. And mostly, she likes to stick her hands into her mouth, generating lots of saliva as well. Sometimes, I would let her catch hold of my fingers, where she would draw them into her mouth and start biting hard with her gums. Our paedi thinks it might still be early days for her to actually start teething. So, we'll just have to wait it out and see if any tooth/teeth starts sprouting over the next few weeks.

And the most exciting thing that happened today is that the paedi gave us the go-ahead to start giving some solids to Faith and get her exposed to the different textures of food. Louis and I have just bought her a packet of organic rice cereals over the weekend and finally, we can start feeding her. Even though I'm very very eager to start feeding her tomorrow, I've decided to hold off and wait until this weekend or next Monday to start her on the rice cereals. Why? Becos Louis is away in London this week for a business convention and I would like him to be able to participate by both feeding and watching his little girl take on the next development milestone.

Frankly, Louis and I are absolutely hopeless when it comes to bottle-feeding our girl. Faith is so distracted when Louis feeds her cos he would be singing or rocking her to cajole her to drink and our little one would just be so entranced or she would be busy gurgling back to her daddy (Yeah! She's a regular daddy's girl) that she wouldn't drink. And me... well... you all should know by now why I'm not able to feed Faith. So, feeding her solids would hopefully be a feat that both of us are able to do, preferably, without her spitting out those contents right back at our face *grin*

Faith's now able to hold her neck sturdily while sitting in the activity station (or exersaucer). When we first brought it home and placed her in it, her head would flop forward and she would actually end up sucking the front of the rotatable seat. But now, she's able to sit up fairly decently and hold her neck steady while playing with the toys. Of course her back muscle hasn't development fully yet, so, she's kinda slouching in the seat with a pillow propped behind her back.

Now, I'm just waiting for her to learn to flip from her stomach onto her back. I wrote before that she could do it. Apparently, it was a one-time feat, yet to be repeated again. So, more tummy time is in order :)

Pain a l'ancienne

I've been having consistent, if varied, success with my focaccia-making. With the exception of the book by Beth Henspergn, the 2 other bread recipes I have are meant for bread-machines. Deciding to extend my bread-making repertoire, I eagerly scouted Amazon for bread making books that could make use of my KitchenAid -- I always have good reasons to buy cookbooks.

And so it was that I chanced about the book titled "Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart. It won the James Beard book award and IACP Cookbook Award -- I have no clue what IACP stands for but I figured it must be something good (kekeke). Its gotten fairly good reviews and most importantly, there are recipes for artisan breads, many of which are European-type breads -- or are all artisan breads from Europe anyways?? After reading through it, I was rather proud of my purchase. The reason being that the author aims to provide a good foundation and explanation on the science of bread-making. What I like is that the author has attached a formula for each recipe providing the percentage component of all the ingredients. Meaning to say that if the recipe calls for a 1-pound bread but you would need to make a 3 1/2-pound bread, you could use the formula to calculate how much of each ingredient would you actually need. I found that really neat.

I've also found little nuggets of useful information that is not explained in a lot of cookbooks. For example, it explains that while the use of commercial yeast is helpful in leavening breads (i.e. make it rise), the maxim in good bread baking is to use the minimum amount of yeast because you do not want the bread to acquire a yeasty taste. Another useful info was that you only knead as long as it takes for the bread dough to form, not any less or more. What is more important is to allow the dough to ferment (or to proof) as that constitutes towards developing about 80% of the final taste of the bread (fyi, the remaining 20% are attributable to factors such as quality of ingredients, oven temperature etc).

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the bread requires at least 2 days to make. The first day is used to make a preferment (known as starter or sponge), before making the bread proper on the 2nd day. Hence, its tough to decide that you want to make any bread spur-of-the-moment, especially if you entertain thoughts of making your own bread for a dinner at home with guests.

Anyways, I decided to make the pain a l'ancienne The author had visited Gosselin in Paris and was given the idea to refrigerate the preferment. The rationale for doing that in gist (since my chemistry was terrible back in school) what that refrigerating the dough retards the action of the yeast, but allow natural sugars to build up within the dough. Hence, when the dough is taken out from the fridge the next day, the return to room temperature will activate the yeast to start digesting the sugar. But becos the dough has produced more sugar after sitting overnight, there's better flavour to the bread.

Now, back to the all important question... how did the bread turn out? Well... it was certainly edible, but far from being good. If you could hear my mom, she kept saying that the crust was sooo haard, blaming it on the flour. Overall, with the exception of the teeth-aching hard crust, the taste of the bread really wasn't too bad. The interior of the bread didn't have that many air-holes, unfortunately.

The lessons learnt were:

1) It was a little tedious having to convert ounce and pounds to the metric system. Thus, when I was making the preferment, I had wrongly read and convert the amount of flour needed. Hence, the flour was rather wet. Took a while of kneading before I reread the quantity and realised my mistake. For ease of reference, am going to paste a conversion chart in the book or pencil in the weight in kilos and grams next to it.

2) Secondly, during the handling of the dough, I might have degassed it a little. Also, while dividing and cutting the dough to form the baguettes, the original dough was a little too long. Hence, transferring the baguettes was difficult as they slipped and slithered. Becos of the size (or length) of a home oven, the baguettes were more like demi-baguettes rather than the store-bought long ones.

3) Slashing the baguettes to form nice splits wasn't as easy as I thought. Some slashes were too deep, while others too shallow that the final output didn't even showed any slashes.

4) The book instructed to put the baguettes into the oven after shaping and transferring to a baking sheet without the need to proof. I felt that this might be a reason why the baguettes didn't spring more in the oven and partly resulted in the lack of airy holes in the interior. The next time, I think I will allow another 10-15 minutes of final proofing in order to allow the dough to relax.

5) Length of time that the baguettes baked in the oven was around 20 minutes. But becos my baguettes were a little skinny, I should have adjusted for that and not left it in the oven for the specified length of time. That was the reason why my bread crust was a little too hard. And when I measure the internal temperature of the bread, it was about 270F instead of the 205F, which was the optimum internal temperature.

6) I was reluctant to sprinkle too much flour on each of the cut baguettes, except for one loaf. However, in the final output, I realised the one loaf that I sprinkled more flour actually turned out more rustic looking. I shall be more liberal with sprinkling flour the next time.

I think I shall have another few more attempts at the pain a l'ancienne. It tastes a little like the baguette au levain that I loved in France, although when I googled the latter, the method was different. While pain a l'ancienne uses commercial yeast, the au levain type of bread relies on wild yeast (i.e. just water and flour, relying on natural air-born yeast to ferment).

Wish me luck!

Buzz buzz buzz... busy as a bee

Haven't posted in a while cos I'm pre-occupied with a few things over the weekend. Ajay, Manisa and Saniya, our old apartment friends in France are here in Singapore for work cum leisure.

Then, I've gotten myself a new book on artisan bread baking... am rather excited to try out one of the breads, mainly pain l'ancienne but am a little tied for time cos most of the breads require about 2 days to make, the first day of which to make either the starter dough, before adding them into the bread mixture the next day. Hmmm... shall reserve some time next week to do it.

Also, am trying to swim twice a week. Desperately trying to shed those extra weight that I put on post-pregnancy, while I was busy stuffing carbo into my face to fill me up. Stupid move! All the carbo certainly made its way to my tummy and thighs now. Urrgghhh!!!!

Shall post more next week... meanwhile, wish me luck with my pain l'ancienne next week :)

I heart blogging

When I first came to know about blogs back in 2004, I wasn't particularly impressed with it. Perhaps it was becos the author was a rather obnoxious individual, writting longwindedly, whinning and complaining about his sentiments of his boss(es) at work. Specificially, he was rather detailed about situation of his dissent, downright describing numberous instances of their arguments.

In 2005, I knew of another handful of friends who had their own blog and I would once in a blue moon visit their site. Finally in 2006, my SIL shared at a family dinner that she has started her own blog. And becos she was posting quite regularly about herself, her baking exploits and the kids, it became a favourite bookmark that I would check every other day as a "reward" or break from the monotony of work. Then, it dawned on me that I should have my very own blog site too so that we could update the extended family of our progress as our soon-to-be little family unit might be expected to travel due to Louis' work (click here to see our very first humble beginnings and posting).

Indeed this blog has served that very purpose and more. More than the extended family, it is a way for friends to get updated about us and Faith. Especially a number of friends from Louis' MBA days that are now scattered all over the world and for one reason or another, our blog has served to update them about our developments, on Faith's entry into this world, our little parenthood trials and tribulations and new happenings in our daily lives.

For me, blogging is an outlet for me to voice my thoughts, preserve my sanity and quite importantly, to maintain my writing skills. You may laugh at the thought of the last, but I kid you not. While I took a one-year hiatus from work to accompany Louis for his MBA studies, English, which had all along been my first (and key) language of communication at work and in life took a nosedive. I forgot how to spell simple words and writting lost its structure -- frankly, IM could be the bane of proper English language use due to its casualness, number of abbreviations like LOL, BRB, TTYL and of course, Singlish. A typical conversation with friends could go...

Friend: Yo!

Eve: Yo!

Friend: Wahh... you now then log on ah?

Eve: Yah lor! Sleeping mah.

Friend: Wah say! So lucky. I got to wake up early today. Y'day, I slept late somemore... went out to "chiong" with my clubbing frens... drank until puke. This morning, really din wan 2 wake up man!

Eve: Serious ah?....

Well... for all the non-Singaporeans reading this, you might be flabbergasted and scratching your head at the thread of sample conversation above. And so you see...its easy to know why my English deteriorated. I'm not trying to pin the blame on anyone, least of all, the friends that I enjoy chatting with using Singlish and these days, the whole gamut of emoticons that peppers all IM communications that Louis finds it hard put to read becos it contains words and emoticons all jumbled up to the uninitiated.

When you are at work, the endless number of emails that you could be writing to your bosses or CEO (necessitating the need to spend an incredible half a day just to write a few paragraphs in an email), potential business clients, responses to public complains etc etc at least ensures that you put more thought into your writing instead of shooting from the mouth. Or how about that strategy paper for a 3-year programme that's supposed to justify your existence in the organisation that will potentially be scrutinised and poked holes by the senior management?

And of course, blogs are also a nouveau way to make friends. Well... you would occassionally click on an unknown link on your friend's blog and return often to read updates, drop an occassional comment or two and initial the start of a new friendship.

Most recently, we've received emails from 2 friends whom we have not contacted for a while. They were most curious to know what had happened since our last communications when they remembered our blog site link. And presto! They got their answers by reading our blog. In fact, one of them remarked that our blog kept her company one night when she couldn't sleep due to an upset stomach :)

So technology does have its many pros and alongside, some cons as well. Well... you've got to take the good with the bad, but for us, the goods have outweighed the bads so far in blogging.

That's why I HEART BLOGGING :)

Another new toy

It used to be that I would long for the weekends while I'm working. Now that I'm a SAHM, I still look forward to the weekends. That's when Louis is home and he would get to bath Faith in the morning, spend some quality time together with our little girl and mostly for us to spend some couple time while Faith gets interaction time with my in-laws.


On Sat morning, after we left Faith with my MIL, we went down to HF's place to borrow her LeapFrog Learn & Groove Activity Station for a few months. Its a pretty cool 5-station stationary activity center, rather like a walker sans the rollers, that babies could play with. And the babies can turn 360 degrees to play with all the 5 activities.


It was really great that HF loaned us the toy as firstly, we weren't too sure if Faith would take to it. Secondly, it eliminates clutter in the house/storeroom cos once Faith gets bored with the toy, we can return it. Thirdly, we definitely saved a lot of money by buying one less item. In fact, I'm starting to like the idea of rented toys very much, especially for big chunky items that once babies grow out of it, becomes a white elephant collecting dust in the house.


We tried putting Faith in it that very night. While her neck muscle is fairly sturdy and she is mostly able to lift her head without flopping, her back muscle hasn't really developed as yet. Hence, when we put her in, she kinda flopped forward. Thankfully, HF and her hubby told us to put a towel in front of her, so that if she flops forward and/or starts gnawing at the material, there's something soft on hand.


For now, Faith seems to be enticed with the microphone device. I would say the toy is fairly interesting, at least for a baby. There's lots of sounds, lights and music to entertain and enthrall a kid. Let's hope she would continue to be entertained by it as she grows, giving us some 15-20 minutes of "spare" time to do some household chores while she plays in it *fingers crossed* :)