Music Time

Faith has always enjoyed music and her lessons at Kindermusik.

Last week, I put on one of her Kindermusik CDs and the 3 of us were listening to the music in the living room. Faith was inspired to take out her bell shakers and maracas to dance, prance and wriggle to the tunes. She particularly enjoy bending her knees and doing a little jiggling and wriggling of her tush :)

Meanwhile, Saige was on her playmat, observing and just looking around at the house.

Updates on Faith & Saige

Saige is now 9 weeks old. I can't wait for the 3rd and 4th month to go by quickly, cos that's when the little one will (hopefully) be more settled into her routine and life gets a bit easier for everyone with an older baby.

Unfortunately, the nights haven't been great for this week since Saige started sniffling and sneezing over the weekend. Finally, what we have been dreading for the longest time has happened. Saige is down with a stuffed nose.

Since Saige was discharged from the hospital, Faith has been sick virtually every single week - I've been told by many the tendency to fall sick on a frequent basis for the first six months of school. In all the excitement of having a new sister that she can finally see and hold, Faith's been clamouring to kiss, hug, touch and play with Saige. We tried our best to let Faith do some of these when she wasn't too sick. We didn't want her to resent the baby after all.

I had to bring Saige in to the PD and for a young infant, there's really not much medication that she can be given, except for some nasal drops, to be used sparingly. And so, Saige has been a little fussy, especially at night. Just at the time when I thought that she was settling down nicely into a routine of only waking up once a night for feeds. Now, we are back to her stirring or nursing at least 2-3 times. Oh well....

As for Faith, she's been a great little sister to Saige. She loves her sister so much. She would talk to her a lot, try to play with her and elicit the social smiles since Saige was capable of giving at since she turned 6 weeks old. Of course, she has her moments of temper throwing, seeing that she's still a 3-year old who has been depraved of what has been heretofore been the sole focus of Louis and my attentions.

Louis copes a lot better with her and she's almost her normal self when Louis is at home on the weekends. At least then, she gets all the attention from him, while I am gratefully able to spent whatever amount of time needed to nurse Saige, change her and put her to sleep without feeling guilty. It is on weekdays and days when Faith is sick and at home that proves to be bit of a challenge.

On her sick days, the tempers come flaring easily. She insists on having things or doing things her way or purely, wanting me to spend time with her playing, feeding, sleeping, reading, regardless that I have to put Saige to sleep or nurse her.

To Faith's credit, she has never once transferred any of her frustrations or temper at not gaining my attention onto Saige. There's no worry that she would hurt Saige by hitting or pinching her. She still plays, coos and talks to her sister lovingly.

It is a period of adjustment for Faith and everyone at home too and there are many moments of ups and downs for me, having to spread my time and attention with 2 kids. While my mom is thankfully around to help on weekdays, especially with the chores, it is still very much my attention that she wants, rather than that of my mom.

I am sure with a little bit more time, Faith would adjust and cope much better, knowing that I can never give her that same amount of attention I did, pre-Saige. I only hope that as Saige gets older and can respond better to her sister, they would be great companions and playmates to each other.

And finally at 9 weeks, I've managed to capture a single picture of Saige smiling on camera. Here's another picture of the sisters together. Faith is pretending to read while Saige is all comfy in her swaddle sleepsack.

Sisters

Have been wanting to take pictures of the 2 sisters together and put them up. That way, folks can comment if the sisters look alike or not at all. Sometimes, when we go through some of Faith's old pictures, there are some resemblances here and there between them, depending on the angles the pictures were taken.

Faith doing "monkey faces" whenever I try to take pictures of them together

At 6 weeks, Saige is starting to respond and smile at me this week. I'd tried to "induce" her to smile for the camera, but to no avail :) She's still waking up twice a night for feeds. I don't know how long she's going to keep at it, but I hope she would be kind to me. Soon.

Saige @ 6 weeks

Faith has been great so far as a sister. She shares her favourite bolster and isn't too upset at having her sarong being utilised by Saige most of the time. By and large, she is loving towards Saige, wanting to kiss and hug her all the time. These days, when she returns from school, she would tell her little sister, "Hello, Saige. Jie jie is back from school" :)

There's not much response from Saige so far. Hopefully in a month or two, she would be excited to hear the sound of her sister's voice, as I've read and also been told that babies of about 4 months are capable of doing.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Faith!

It was her 3rd birthday and the first time that we are letting her celebrate it with her friends in class.

Faith was excited. When asked, she immediately said she wanted a Mickey Mouse cake -- fresh from receiving Mickey's stickers and her pictures being shown in the March Playhouse Disney Birthday Book. She also firmly decided that she wanted party hats and some noise makers to be included in the goodie bags for her friends.

We made plans to get the cake and put together the goodie bags. Unfortunately, she's been sick pretty much the entire month of Mar. In fact, she's out of school more than half the time. Faith first came down with runny nose and cough a week after Saige's birth. Since that time, as soon as she more or less recovered and we sent her back to school, she would came back 2 days later with something else or the same symptoms, but conditions aggravated. The week of her birthday, we decided not to let her go to school at all until she recovered.

On the day of her birthday, we had to bring her in to see her PD for the 3rd time in a row within a period of 3 weeks. I do not know whether to be consoled when her PD sang her a birthday song when she noted that it was Faith's birthday while looking at her record sheet. She had to be put on the nebuliser and becos the cake was already pre-ordered, we decided to head to school after the doctor's visit to celebrate in class.

And so it was, our little darling girl celebrated her 3rd birthday with her friends in class, runny nose and cough in all. I brought her home after she had lunch.

At night, the daddy bought another slice of cake home and we sang her a birthday song and cut the little cake since Louis was busy at work and couldn't make time to be there when she celebrated it in class.

I've been forewarned that Faith's going to fall sick very often during the first 6 months of school. I only hope that next year, she would be hale and healthy on her birthday.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Faith!

Saige's Full Month Celebration

The little family of 3 has expanded to 4

On hindsight, its much easier coping with 1 baby than 2 kids, although Louis and I seemed very busy and flustered when we were first-time parents with Faith :)

Nonetheless, the one month had passed pretty quickly and before we knew it, we were celebrating Saige's Full Month.

While I would have liked to blog more about our #2, a lack of time, energy and pure sleep deprivation have led to tardy and greatly reduced posts about Saige. We are ever apologetic. However, even as we cut down on the number of posts, at least, we make effort to put up some pictures of her.

The first two weeks of her birth was relatively relaxing in that she mainly nurses, poops and sleeps a lot. You can dump her in the cot right after burping her for a feed and she drops back to sleep with nary a care or fuss. As the 3rd week came along, she started to fuss, wanting to be carried and cuddled. That's where the challenge started and how accidental parenting arise.

I'm sure we would still have our fair share of accidental parenting in the months to come. Only this time, we are resigned to it and have better managed our expectations -- i.e not to have any expectations. We know things would work out eventually and we will get a full night's sleep. We just don't know when. With Faith, it took us 18 months :)

On the flip side, Saige latches and nurses very well, right from birth. Its tiring when you have to do an all-nighter of 2-hourly feeds, plus those in the day, all of it while recovering from a c-sect. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. It beats being an on-demand cow for 24x7 with no fixed timings and trying to rouse a sleepy baby from her sleep to take more than 5 minutes of nursing each time.

For now, its another milestone that we have reached and there would be more to come.

Happy Full Month, Saige!

陈 姿 颖

As with most traditional parents, we took to choosing a good Chinese name for Saige, with the help of a geomancer. For those of us who are uninitiated, it is believed that each child is born with what is known as a 'ba zi' which tells us his or her fortune/luck when born. As with all fortunes, there are ups and downs with all future paths. However, with the right name, one can give the child a good chance of "counteracting" the negatives post-birth, without going against the nature of the child at birth.

Which parent wouldn't want to give his child the best?

Before we go to Saige's Chinese name, it is worth mentioning how Eve and I thought of Saige's English name. It had first started with "Paige" as both of us liked the name. As it turns out, when Eve Googled further, she came across Saige - which meant "to be healthy and have "wisdom" in doing the right things". We both liked that so much since we always wanted these for our kids, that we settled on it very quickly. btw, this was before we knew that our number 2 is a girl - and even before we had number 2 :)

Anyway, back to the Chinese name, we had been advised, based on Saige's time of birth, that she would be better off using not the same middle name that Faith (陈诗 颖) had. When we told our family this, Terence, my younger brother suggested then to make the third character the same. This was something new to me. But according to Eve, it is actually quite common to have folks having the same third name. As such, I asked again for advise, now based on having the same third character. This time round, we were given the option of 陈 姿 颖.

姿 beauty; disposition; looks; appearance

颖 clever; gifted

When I saw the name, I thought the name was meaningful not only in that it would emphasise the feminity and beauty of Saige, but also fitting since she was our second daughter (次 女).

For our friends who are non-Mandarin speakers, here are other words with 姿...


姿
zī
beauty / disposition / looks / appearance


姿貌
zī mào
( n. )
a woman's looks

姿媚
zī mèi
( adj. )
charming, enchanting

姿容
zī róng
looks / appearance


姿色
zī sè
good looking


姿势
zī shì
posture / position


姿首
zī shǒu
( n. )
(of women) a pretty face and beautiful hair

姿态
zī tài
attitude / posture / stance

Faith receives a letter from Mickey!

It has been a practice now for Faith to open our letter box. To her surprise today, she received a letter from Mickey (well, actually it was from Playhouse Disney). In it, she found a set of stickers of Pooh and Mickey, and a note wishing her "Happy Birthday".

Faith was so excited and happy to receive her first letter that she was all smiles the entire day. She kept asking who sent her the letter and when she learnt it was from Mickey, she even insisted that she write a letter to thank Mickey! As I type this blog, Faith is reminding me that we have not sent the letter to thank Mickey (as daddy hasn't bought the envelope).

To all parents, in case you were wondering what this is all about - just check out ..http://www.disneychannel-asia.com/DisneyChannel/playhouse/friends/birthday_babies/ (we'd be monitoring the site to see when Faith's pictures appear! :))