Animal sounds

Our little budding vocalist has just started to be able to mimic animal sounds. Here, I mean the term "mimic" very loosely becos her little tongue's still trying to get around all the difficult words and vowels, even simple animal sounds :)

A friend had given Faith a book titled "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. The story featured different types of farm animals and the sounds that they make. I had been reading them to Faith as part of her bedtime ritual. And was quite taken by surprised myself one day when I casually asked her as usual what sound a tiger makes and she said "rrrr...".

Encouraged, I tried asking her to tell me the sounds of other animals that were commonly featured in some of her books and was rather tickled when she tried in her still somewhat babyish babble to make coherent sounds.

Just so you'll know and be amused, these are the animal sounds that Faith's capable of mimicking at this point in time.

Me: What sound does a tiger makes, Faith?
Faith: rrrr.... (a very meek tiger if there’s one)

Me: What sound does a cow makes?
Faith: mmmm... (like the appreciative sound one makes of a good meal)

Me: What sound does a dog makes?
Faith: hoo-hoo-hoo (makes huffing noises)

Me: What sound does a cat makes?
Faith: mmmm... (same sound as that for a cow)

Perhaps she'll get better at it soon, or perhaps not. Either ways, it doesn't really matter very much to Louis nor myself whether Faith speaks clearly or not. The key thing is that she's learning how to speak, at her own pace, in her own time.

Meantime, we get most of what she wants to communicate with us, either through words, baby signs, grunts or her pulling us to show us what she wants.

There will come a day, sooner than we would have like, when she would be speaking so clearly that we wish we could pretend we don't understand what she's saying.

For now, we're getting a lot of amusement, laughter and parental pride at her mini achievements at learning to speak.

One of the boys

We invited the L family over for dinner yesterday. Faith seemed to have a good time with the boys, playing her toys together with them. At one point, I see her sitting on the lap of their helper, Julie, and even reaching out to pull Julie's hand to bring her somewhere.

Our little girl usually doesn't warm up to strangers or new friends easily. So, it came as a surprise for both Louis and me to see her snuggle up to Julie in a short span of time. Maybe Julie has "The Touch" with kids. The 2 kids, Alex (older one) and Nicky seemed equally enamoured of her... both of them slobbering her with wet kisses at one point :)

It was a good dinner and we managed to get the kids to pose together for some pictures. A little interesting tidbit of info is that Alex (in orange t-shirt) has recently done 2 modelling jobs onstage. They are both such cute and adorable kids, and Alex is going to grow up to be one good-looking kid.

The guys brought over a big bunch of flowers, which M wrapped them herself. It was a big and beautiful bunch of flowers and they are now in 2 vases, sitting on our dining table cos neither of our vase was big enough to hold the entire bunch together.

Showed my mom the pictures today and she commented that Faith looked like a boy in all the shots, together with Alex & Nicky.

Ramblings in the wee hours of the morning

I've been part lazy and part busy that I've not spent much time logging onto the laptop these days, to talk about having any new post.


Weekends are two days of the week in which I absolutely do not log on unless for rare reasons. I spent them with Louis, having some couple time, run errands, having dinner with families, friends etc.


Weekdays are not any better. To maximise and optimise our time, we'd decided to not jostle with the majority of working Singaporeans in the supermarket doing our weekly grocery shopping on weekends. Instead, I now grocery shop for the entire week every Monday, when the supermarkets are largely empty and I do not have to stand in line in long queues to make payment.


Wednesdays through Fridays, I bring Faith for her classes at LG and JG. Which leaves me with Tuesday afternoons free. Becos I've been a little too liberal charging to my credit card for the last few months, I've been bleeding from the nose paying for my monthly bills come that time of the month.


Thus, I've decided to spend my only free afternoon of the week doing activities that hopefully does not involve money. For the last one month, that involved going to the library next door to borrow books and browse through the cookbooks section. Each time, I can spend up to 3 hours or even more in the library. Imagine that? Three hours spent doing things that I like for FREE.


The good news is that my eyes wouldn't bulge out of its sockets when I next check my credit card bill online. The flip side is that I hardly find much time with all the things that I am doing to turn on my computer. Plus, if I'm not busy with all of the above, I'm either in the kitchen cooking or vegetating in the living room with part of my attention on the TV watching Korean dramas/serials and entertaining and picking up after Faith.


Given the mess she leaves behind each time she enters and leaves any part of the house, I'm starting to think I should nickname her "Hurricane Faith" - toys strewed and splayed out on the floor, DVDs/VCDs thrown every which way, kitchen cabinets opened with contents spilling out etc.

So there you have it! I've finally found time to put up a post at the ungodly hour of 3 AM in the morning becos I'm suffering from my usual insomnia. Instead of staring up blankly at the ceiling or worse, counting sheep, I thought I'll do something useful.

Now that that little bit of update about myself has been said and done, let's move on to my daughter.

Hmmm.... as we all know, Faith's a late walker and a late talker. She's still not doing a lot of talking these days. If she does, its mainly one syllabus words. For the last few weeks, she's slowly but steadily opening up her vocal chords and trying to get herself to pronounce certain words.

Her repertoire of words are yes, no, mama, papa, ye-ye, nai-nai, chest, nose, more, cheers, bye, wah (Singlish which I'm trying to get her to say "wow" instead), toes, nuts (she pronounce it as "nuzz"). Not a lot although she's definitely picking up more each day. Her favourite word is of course "no". That she uses for different purposes and situations.

She was stirring from her sleep just now and as I was entering the room, I could hear her say distinctively: "No-no-no". No idea what she was saying no to though.

In the mornings, as I tussle with her whether or not she should shower or bath in the bathtub, she would grab her bathtub in a dead grip and if I try to wrestle it away from her, she would scream and cry persistently: "No-no-no-no-no...". The reason why I rather shower her than to put her in the bathtub is that nine out of ten times, I would have to haul her wet, slippery body out, struggling not to drop her as she kicks and screams bloody murder for pulling her out of water.

Don't be shocked... I really find it funny and even look forward to the times when she says "no. Her "no" is kinda cute. She wouldn't say it with the curt finality that most toddlers would say it with. Instead, her "No" ends very softly, with her stretching her "o" such that it sounds more like the word "know".

I think she's starting to move on to string more words together. Again this morning while she was in her bathtub, I had left her Barney VCD show running on the TV. She was watching it halfway when I'd told her to go and take a bath. Halfway through her bath, the show ended and the TV switch from DVD/VCD mode to normal TV channel. Faith looked up at me and said "no more".

I was surprised. It was the first time she uttered anything more than one syllabus. Of course, when I asked her to repeat it again, she just smiled at me. At night, as we got ready for her to go to sleep, she said "bye-bye" to Louis when she's only said "bye" so far.

In no time, she'd probably be stringing together words to form proper sentences. And I think I would miss her at this stage. I really love this period when she's not able to speak and enunciate her words properly and that they are mainly monosyllabic.

Sigh...its the usual parental dichotomy that I'm facing. Do I or do I not want my little baby to grow up? Do I want to freeze this particular moment in time when I'm having so much fun with her or let her grow up and amaze me even more with each and every step of her growth and learning?

Toddler food challenge

I'm not sure when did this happen - probably around the time when we started to be a little more liberal in giving Faith some food off our plates/table and the time when I started transitioning her to rice - our heretofore hearty eater has now become a fussy little eater.

We've pretty much been blessed that Faith enjoys her food since the time I had started her on solids. With very very few exceptions, she eats nearly everything that I've given to her. Even food that I feared she might not take a liking for in the past, she's mostly eating them now as she got older. Smelly yucky cod-liver oil, unsweetened yoghurt that's a little tart, kiwis and all types of berries that might sometimes be sour - no problems. She would eat them all.

Up until recently.

Now, we would have to chase, cajole, threaten, trick or bribe her to finish her food at every meal and sometimes, without much success. Lately, if she's not interested in her food, she would spit it right back the moment you put it into her mouth, splattering that spat-out mouthful of food onto her lap, her baby chair or onto the floor if we're not quick enough to put a hand out to catch it.

I had spent hours using the slow-cooker to make all sorts of what I deemed to be nourishing chinese soups to go with her rice, only to have her take a few spoonful and spit them all out. Pastas with tomato-based sauce, pesto, bolognaise have all been cooked and tested on her with mixed results. Some day, she would finish them all. On other days, she would eat half or less of what I lay out and refuse to eat any more, although tomato-based pasta seemed to be preferred.

Last Sat, I made a western version of pumpkin soup, served up with a pan-fried piece of cod seasoned very lightly with a wee bit of soy sauce and chinese rice wine. I had thought that she might not be keen on cod and would lap up the pumpkin soup, which would be great cos I had made it with pumpkin, potatoes and carrots to ensure she gets her dietary fulfilment of vegetables and carbohydrates. In the end, she loved the cod and would only drink about 1/3 of the pumpkin soup.

On Sun, I had slow-cooked some carrot and corn soup for 5 hours, of which she only took maybe 1/5 of the portion and some spoonful of rice and refused to eat any further. To be fair, that was the day that my elder BIL returned home after 2 months overseas and we had an early dinner at 6 pm after picking him up from the airport.

Faith only had her milk at close to 4 pm cos she had a long afternoon nap prior. It was too much to expect that she would be ready to eat her dinner that soon after her afternoon milk and so early when her normal dinnertime is at 7.30 pm.

All that I've read warned that as babies turn into toddlers, they do not require as much food to fuel their tummies as their growth rate is slowing down. Of course, toddlers are more intrigued by the world around them and are not keen to sit down for long to finish their food either. And don't be surprise if one day, they stop eating whatever food that they seemed to lov from young. Add to the mix that once they have had a taste of food that is seasoned and salted, their bland fare seem even more unappealing.

As much as I've read all the literature on the challenges of feeding a toddler and that parents do not have to worry that they will starve themselves or become malnourished, there's an anal part of me that still worries when Faith's not eating all her food. Especially when her weight range has always been hovering around the 25th percentile i.e. she's underweight.

However, the spitting out of food and not finishing her entire meal has been happening so frequently that these days, I don't panic as much when she doesn't finish her food. I am trying to follow the advice of these books and ensure that I lay out as much nutritionally healthy food for her throughout the day and hope that even if she does not eat much, every mouthful and morsel that she eats adds to her daily dietary requirements.

And so apart from her usual meals, I try to ply her with fruits, yoghurt, nuts and dried fruits in between her meals so that even if she eats little for dinner, her total food intake for the day would still be acceptable.

Faith had had her 18th month inoculation yesterday and I had the chance to talk to her pediatrician about her "fussiness" in food.

He concurred on all the challenges faced in feeding a toddler.

However, his point to me was that baby food is very bland and sooner or later, we would have to transition Faith to food on our table. There is thus a need for balance -- do we continue to not season her food at all and let her eat whatever pitiful amount or adopt a very light touch with salt and seasoning so as to titillate her taste buds and arouse her previous interest in food?

Hence, it might be better for everyone if Faith gets to eat our food as she's more interested in them anyways. On the matter of salt and seasoning in our food, that is something that we can do about it i.e. reduce the amount of salt.

With that bit of advice in mind, this evening, I made mashed potato with unsalted butter and milk and grilled another slab of cod, seasoned lightly like the way I did it on Sat. We also gave her some chinese style pumpkin soup that we ourselves were having for dinner, although we scooped out her bowl of soup before we added a little bit of salt to the rest.

She had the mash potato first as I was still grilling the fish. She loved it and asked for more until we gave her the fish. Thereafter, she only wanted the fish. As for the pumpkin soup, well... let's just say that it didn't rank up on her first nor second choice of food.

So there you have it! Her taste buds craved and lapped up whatever little bit of seasoning I added to her food.

Anyways, I would continue to rise up to the challenge of being creative and inventive with cooking dinners for my little one, experimenting food with and without salt/seasoning to see what she would appeal to her.

It certainly helps to know that Faith isn't the only finicky little eater. There are 2 other mothers at Faith's JG class, who are right up there with me, tearing their hair out on getting their own kids to eat their meals too.

Somehow, it makes me feel a little better when we all lament together about the amount of time we spent labouring over food preparation for our little ones only to have them turn up their little nose at our "labour of love".

Blessings

Once in a while, I am reminded of how lucky we are - how lucky Faith is, how lucky we are that we have Faith and how lucky that the three of us have each other.

Just yesterday, Eve told me that another one of the mothers in the Julia Gabriel class had commented, unprompted, that Faith looked so much like Eve. The way she smiled and all. This was the same comment that one of our close friends had recently made when she was at our place for dinner - "She is a splitting image of you, Eve".

This afternoon, Eve and I had a chance to watch Mama Mia - the movie. In one of the scenes, I had thought to myself, I'd be quite sad the day Faith gets married. That same scene apparently prompted Eve to think the same - on our way back from dinner, she had asked me - would you be sad when it is time for Faith to get married?

This evening, Eve made one of her favourite culinary dishes - pumpkin soup for Faith, as a departure from the usual porridge or soup/rice combis. To ensure that Faith received more than just starch and vitamins from the potatoes and pumpkin, she also pan-fried a piece of cod - it was only slighty marinated to suit Faith's low-salt diet, but looked exactly like the ones we normally eat - slightly charred on the outside and flaky and tender on the inside. Anthea had commented "Aunty Eve, I think you are a good cook".

Just before bedtime, the three of us were as usual clowning around in Faith's bedroom - her usual bedtime ritual before we cleaned her up for bed. This time round, we played the Mozart CD- a vestige of Eve and my early attempt to introduce Faith to music when she was in the womb, and also read her the nursery rhyme book which Eve had purchased from Popular this afternoon. As usual, Faith was all laughing and amused at our actions. She also joined in, pretending to "sleep" when Eve sang the bunny song, and joining in the clapping and stamping of feet, when we sang "if you're happy and you know it".

In our simple life, in this little family, we are often blessed with so many things by so many people around us, but most of all, with what we share with each other.

Salamat Hari Raya & Children's Day

We were encouraged to deck out in ethnic wear for today's class at Julia Gabriel in celebration of Hari Raya and Children's Day.

Faith's finally able to fit into this pink cheongsam dress that I had bought in H&M in Dubai nine months ago. I had thought it would be fun. Turned out that there were only 2 kids that were dressed in ethnic clothes :)

As a result, she received many compliments on her dress.

These pictures are my few favourite that I took of her in her little pink cheongsam dress.

Life's box of chocolates

Life is never boring with a one and half year old toddler. There are many instances when we were amazed by the antics of our little one.

Yesterday evening, Louis told Faith that we'll go out to NTUC after dinner.

The time was 7.50 pm. Faith had finished her dinner. Louis and I were chilling out a little in front of the TV even though we had finished ours. My mom was at the kitchen sink washing up.

Our little one was pottering around a little in the living room when she suddenly got up, went to the corner near the door and sat down near the mat where we put all our frequently worn shoes. Her back was facing us and we could see that she had picked up her shoes and was trying to put them on herself.

Louis and I switched our attention from the TV and started to watch what she was doing. We were laughing quietly cos we knew she was going to ensure that Louis made good on his promise to go out to NTUC after dinner.

As she was fiddling about, her body shifted a little and I saw that she's gotten her shoe on on the right foot. The strap was correctly velcro-ed on and the shoe was worn on the correct side.

Amazing!!!

I didn't even knew she could put on her own shoes.

We know she could remove her shoes on her own most times. She had had lots of practice taking her shoes off sitting in the car seat, developing it to a knack that we now make it a point to remind her to sit down and remove her shoes every time she steps into the house. Sometimes, she's able to remove both shoes on her own without any help. Other times, she would grunt and cry for help to remove her shoes.

Eventually, Louis had to help her to put on the left shoe as no amount of struggling on her part could she manage to put the shoe on that foot.

After she's gotten both her shoes on, she walked over to the TV console, gathered the set of house keys that we usually leave there, jangled them in front of us in a bid to get us to move butts and bring her out to NTUC as promised.

To borrow Forest Gump's famous quote: "Life with a kid is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get".

Dinners

It would be great if all dinners that we held could be like the one we had yesterday.

Minimum time was spent in the kitchen preparing the 4-course dinner of:

- Vietnamese summer rolls (Gui Cuon)

- Avocado & tofu salad

- Chorizo sandwich

- Macha jelly, azuki beans & ice-cream

We pre-prepared nearly everything beforehand leading to the dinner. I only took less than 10 minutes to grill the chorizos as everyone were helping themselves to the salad and the summer rolls.

Even though one of the gang couldn't make it becos she was rushing to finish reading some 200 CVs, the 6 of us managed to finish all the food on the table meant for 7 persons.

Louis and I had to take turns entertaining Faith throughout the dinner. Still, Faith was on home ground and while it would be a long time before she turns into a good little host, she behaved fairly well throughout dinner.

For these same reasons, Louis and I prefer hosting dinners these days at home rather than to go outside for dinner with friends. Even though we still have to take turns eating and entertaining our little girl, at least, we are within earshot of the conversations.

The night before, we had dinner with Louis' colleague at his wife at Morton's of Chicago @ The Oriental Hotel, sans kids. Since we were all parents ourselves, we unanimously agreed to have our dinner at 6.30 pm.

As we chatted and ate our dinner, we all took turns to look at our watches inconspicuously. When the dessert took some time to show up, neither couples were embarrassed that one of us went forward to request the kitchen to hurry our order.

We all understood that we needed to reach home by 9.30 pm to put our kids to bed.

When dessert was served, we ate quickly, called for the bill and then each made our way home, glancing at our watches still with each set of parent making a call home to check if our kids were doing fine.

It would have seemed almost unimaginable and stark crazy that we would fork out so much to dine at a place like Morton's and not take time to eat and enjoy ourselves. That lifestyle of fine dinning and degustation type of meals that last at least 3 hours or more now seem so foreign with parenthood, as if it was something that happened in our past lives.

Truthfully, we did enjoy our meal. We were just more conscious about the amount of time we spent out and we wanted to balance some couple time with our personal desires to put our kids to bed ourselves.

I guess that's the trade-off of parenthood.

At the end of the day, reaching home and seeing Faith break into a huge smile, coupled with the smacking kisses that she doles out before bedtime makes all the trade-offs worthwhile.