Zethan is 4 Part I

Celebrated Zethan's birthday in school on 11th Jan 2013 a day earlier from his actual day. We were not advised by his form teacher that he is allowed to be in party clothes for his celebration which explains why he is in school uniform.

This mummy here feeling a tad guilty that nothing much done for his party in school and so at the very last minute dashed around for his goodie bags. Personally I dislike the unhealthy snacks of sweets, jelly, lollipops etc in goodies bags as they always end up in the trash bin, at least that's what it goes in my household. So stealing some ideas here and there, we had a rather different goodies bag which consists of the following: - personalised name sticker, a pack of Oreo biscuits, small pack of gummy bears all packed into a plastic folder. Okay there are still snacks included but it's kept to the minimum.

Zethan chooses his own birthday after I did the 'filtering' down to the last 2 choices. He had requested for a transformer or bus cake initially. Quite impossible to find a bus cake unless it's a home baker which is quite impossible since it's pretty much last minute. Looked around for a transformer cake but it looked so boring with a printed chocolate sheet of transformer.

Basically it was a quick celebration of singing the birthday song, blowing out candle, photo taking and digging in the cake! Judging by the looks on his face, I can safely say Zethan enjoyed himself, no doubts.

 

5th Anniversary

Our 5th wedding anniversary on 02 Jan 2013, our very first anniversary as a family of 4s.

 

Nothing fanciful, had a simple family dinner at First Culinary which wrapped it all despite raining woofs and meows.

New School

Zethan started in a new school effective 3rd Jan 2013.

 

I was pretty much in a fix last year trying to decide to switch or stay put as I have observed he is enjoying himself greatly with his teachers and friends. 'Discussed" with him a few times (just to be sure he understand to some extent) and his choice will always be "Marymount School".

 

Took this topic for discussion with the hub and he assured that children are highly adaptable and he was very quick to dismiss my concern that he will have to stay afresh in a new environment, probably a larger class size and zero friends. Even though I am not entirely convinced, the decision made was to switch him to Marymount Kindergarten.

 

I went through 3 days of orientation with him and the first 3 days was just 1.5hrs of lessons. I thought it was pretty neat for the school's arrangement of only the Pre N and Nursery starting the term first then followed by the K1 & K2s starting the following week. The Principle explained that by doing so they can have maximum manpower to handle the new children esp that of Pre N to ease the settling in process. As usual, despite the reminder of the principal, instead of the usual 1 parent to 1 child for orientation, many of the children are accompanied by both parents, grandparents, older siblings, younger siblings. The noise level and crowd were really very bad on the first day.

Although Zethan did not cry on the 1st day but it kind of upset me to see him overwhelmed in the seas of children (read 100 children without adding on the adults & siblings present), looking pretty helpless and lost esp during the assembly cum music session. He was extremely quiet with a very lost expression on his face trying to figure out what is happening. It is not tough to understand his anxiety since the setting is much larger than his old school coupled with a new environment. I started to feel a tinge of regret and guilt on what I might have subjected him to.

By and large the first day went by very well and I try not to stay with him too much in all the activities so for him to adapt and settled in faster which I do have the full confidence he can do so with no issues. Giving him the assurance that I will be back to pick him up later, I leave him alone in the class. Once in a while I will try to peep in on him without him noticing to make sure he is all good. In fact it is a brand new learning experience for mi as well since I would have to understand the mechanics of dropping him and picking him up. For parents who are driving, one would have to stay in queue with the priority given to school buses. Name and class would have to be displayed on the windscreen for the teacher to bring the child out.

What is impressive about the school is that they are very systematic not only in the above mentioned, but also toileting visiting is done by individual class without allowing 2 classes to be inside together. Once the whole class is in the toilet, the teacher will close and latch the gate to ensure that no children enter or exit unknowingly. Boys and girls have separate cubicles as well.

 

On the 2nd day, I sent him in to class again with the proper goodbye and assurance I will pick him up later and 'left'. Hiding out of sight I feel like a pink panther! Again I will peeped in without his knowledge.

By the 3rd day, I am confident that he can settled in thus just walked him into class and that's it.

The only problems faced so far that I have managed to identify would be mealtimes. He had some problems accepting certain food in school esp the porridge and noodles since he is very much a rice person. We are still working on it currently. He would returned home saying he is hungry and asked for his milk feed.

 

It is also a wee bit peculiar to see him totally exhausted after school dismissal and his naptime stretch from the previous 1 hr to even 3 hrs.

 

By and large we are pretty satisfied on how things have turned out in the new school, no major complains. No complains from Zethan too.

8 months

Can't help it but exclaimed once again, how times flies! It seems like time passed by much faster as a SAHM and 24hrs never ever seem to be sufficient everyday.

 

My little sweetie pie turned 8 months old yesterday. She can be very cheeky and adorable at times but horribly monstrous at times too. Then again that's what motherhood or parenthood is all about, if the baby does not whine and cry, it's gonna sent us into panic mode. The advantage of being able to be with her 24/7 means that I get to witness most of her milestones as compared to Zethan's which is a blessing so I ought to remind myself no matter how tough the situation/s can be, rough it out!

 

Oh before I forget, her first pearlie on the lower gum just peeped through 2 days back while the one beside is cutting too which means we are facing the horrifying teething nightmare in double dosage!

 

For this post I will mainly touched on weaning since there is a handful to recall thus most probably resulting in quite a lengthy post.

We started her on white rice cereal around 3rd Dec when she is 5months 2 days old and she loved it much more than her milk feeds. In fact she took to the concept of spoon feeding very well  and could master swallowing instead of pushing out the food with her tongue. For ease of measurement we used formula scoop so we started off with 1 scoop mixed with about 40ml of BM. She polished up everything on her 1st try which is like Wow! I made the decision to wean with white rice cereal for fear of brown rice causing constipation. It was pretty tough to find organic white rice cereal and after searching high & low, managed to get Organix First Organic Wholegrain Baby Rice. Subsequently I switched to HIPP Organic Cereal Pap Baby Rice which she certainly enjoyed more than the former. Portion was gradually increased every 5 days or so to identify how well she is taking it and of course to ensure she is not over fed resulting in bloatedness and indigestion. At the same time I adopt the 5 day rules to check for allergens which is very conservative since the recommendation called for 3-4 days.

 

We had to delay the introduction of new grains and purees as the poor little gal had a bout of diarrhoea which lasted almost close to a month. I was definitely more than worried sick and we had to make 2 trips to the PD before it finally tailed off. PD suspected that she had twice of the infection which explained why it took such a long time to recovery despite medication. It was certainly very heart pain to see her LS for up to 6 times a day and concerned about dehydration. Amazingly she gained weight during this sage instead of losing thus PD isn't very worried about the whole situation.

8 Jan - Butternut squash puree. As planned, she is fed about 40ml as teabreak but quite unfortunately she had indigestion the whole night, rejecting milk feeds badly. So the next day, we reduced her cereal from 3 scoops to 2 scoops with the puree mixed in. It was tough to gauge if she is full from the feed thus we adopt the trial and error approach. Fed her about 100ml of BM post cereal and her next feed was somewhere around 5-6 hrs later. Tried feeding her after 4hrs but apparently she is not hungry thus rejecting the milk feed.

 

14 Jan - Introduced Happy Bellies brown rice cereal. It was mixed with white rice cereal as I have read that it taste much better than on its own thus higher acceptance by babies. However we noticed subsequently she did not take to brown rice very well and had constipation despite feeding some water in between feeds and the high water content being fully breastfed.

 

22 Jan - Apple Puree. Bought organic apples, steamed for a few minutes before blending. Since the apple puree is mixed in cereal, she did not showed any signs of rejection.

 

01 Feb - Chinese spinach puree (yim choy). I steamed only the leaves till it turn dark green and blend it. The whole packet of veg only yield 4 miserable cubes of puree (estimated of 40ml per cube). The end product did not have an appealing appearance but she take it anyhow, again no rejection.

 

18 Feb - Carrot. We halted the introduction of new food since it's the LNY period which explained the 2 weeks gap. Over the 2 weeks, she continued to have apples and butternut squash on alternate days. We had to make sure that she has apples puree for a few days before having carrot puree so as not to have continuous yellow food to prevent building up of carotene. Now carrot is the only food so far she is showing disinterest in. For most of the other cereal-puree meals, she simply can't wait for the next spoonful to be served. With the exception of carrot, she took a longer time to finish her meal, not looking forward for the next spoonful to be fed.

 

25 Feb - HIPP Buckwheat cereal. Introduced together with carrot, she did not fancy it. However taken on its own, she showed no sign of rejection.

 

At this point of time we are feeding her only 1 meal of cereal at lunchtime (4 scoops of cereal, 40ml of puree, 120ml of BM). Toying with the idea of introducing 2nd meal at dinnertime but have been shelving off till later date since her daily intake of milk totalled up to merely 700ml which is considered very little. We have discussed with her PD and she agreed that her milk intake is a little on the low side and if we introduced 2 meals, it will reduced it further.

 

Typically this is her feeding pattern daily.

8am - 180ml BM

11am - 4 scoops cereal + 50ml puree + 120ml BM

5pm - 170ml BM

8pm - 170ml BM

11pm - 150ml BM

 

Since she is 8 months old now, I do have the intention to feed her cereal at dinnertime perhaps with a smaller portion to see how well she can take it and how badly affected her milk feeds might be.

 

Introduction of porridge will most likely be carried out when she is 9mths old or even later. More vegetable and fruits puree in the pipeline.