Hannah should be eating lumpy foods now as 1) she has more teeth and 2) chewing helps (indirectly) in speech.
Just the other day, I made cream of mushroom soup for our dinner and used some of the soup to mix with steamed rice for her too. I’m glad she took to the taste of mushrooms positively as both Yang and I love mushrooms. :)
Okay, dinner tonight. I heated up 100 ml of frozen, homemade tomato sauce and added minced beef. At the same time, I had a small bowl of rice steaming in another pot. The whole process of preparation and cooking took no more than 30 minutes.
Once the minced beef tomato sauce was ready, it was poured over the steamed rice (I added more water to get very moist rice). Just before feeding Hannah, the rice is mixed thoroughly with the sauce.
The play yard we picked up several months ago has been experiencing minimal use recently, since Hannah doesn’t react very well anymore to roaming about with plastic partitions. We routinely let her walk around the living room and study these days, and she’s learned to sit by herself at the entrance of the kitchen and not enter unless one of us asks her to. Wonderfully learned behavior of the part of our little girl.:)
That said, our favorite spot – as in for Daddy and Daughter – still remains our bed in the master bedroom. She’ll climb all over the mattress and linen, play hide and seek with the little red clock, and – of late also – sprawl herself on the bed, giggle and on the occasion stone too. All under my watchful eyes though. While she’s learned to recognize the danger areas, e.g. where the edge of the bed mattress is, there still is always the possibility of her accidentally falling and hitting herself on the bed’s wooden frame.
Plenty of photo opportunities when she’s at play with the little red clock, though it no longer works very well anymore since she’s been pulling at its knobs and dials.:)
There’s a very useful facility at church: a cry room for worshippers with infants and toddlers! It adjourns to one side of the sanctuary, and reasonably sound proof so that whatever goes on in that room won’t bother the Sunday services too much. Ling has made use of the little room before but not for myself. So, this Sunday morning I decided to join Ling and Hannah in it.
The room’s pretty cozy with wood parquet flooring, toys and baby books. Hannah seemed to like the room a lot, and interacted also with the other toddlers in the room. The first three pictures here were taken just after service ended and before leaving, and the last three at NTUC Hougang Mall where we’d just had morning brunch. I passed her a box of Earl Grey tea bags I was picking up to keep her occupied.:)
Playing the Frontierville Facebook game has been a bit of a bonding activity for me and Hannah at home. I’m quite certain that she doesn’t understand what the game’s about, but she’s attracted to its colorful visuals and folksy and rhythmic music for sure.:)
Hannah learning how to harvest crops on Daddy’s homestead.:)
But in reality, I’m just lucky if she doesn’t delete any of my neighbors, the way she goes about banging the keyboard!
I finally completed the last day of the certification course on basic practical counseling this afternoon, and boy – has it been utterly draining! Not in the physical sense, but learning the procedures for counseling and suicide assessment intervention, the underlining principles involved and also of the many case incidents shared has on one hand been really illuminating, has also been at times both shocking and sobering to the point that you start feeling pretty inadequate with what your meager skills can offer.
I’ll be reflecting on the lessons learned and experiences shared in the coming days and maybe writing a post or two more of my experiences in the course – but not at the moment as the mind’s pretty much saturated.
The one comfort each evening has still been getting home and or going out with dinner as a small family. Hannah was in a pretty chirpy mood when I met her and Ling for dinner at Hougang Mall. We didn’t bring along a camera, so the Samsung Galaxy S phone camera had to do:
Yeah – decent pictures of Hannah and Daddy for a change.:)
Now that Hannah’s happily seconded during day hours at the nanny’s, our weekday morning hours have become pretty routine. On Wednesdays though, Ling starts in school a little later, and that’s given us a weekly opportunity for us to get prepped a little more leisurely, and also for some pictures in the new morning light coming into the house.:)
She’s become quite attached to Mommy, and will always gravitate towards her when she has a choice between Ling or myself. Not unexpected since Ling’s still the primary caregiver between the two of us.
That said, this morning there was a really lovely bonding moment between Hannah and Daddy. She was happily contended to rest herself while hugging me as I sung to her.:)
Hannah now loves to pinch things from around the living room, study and her own room, and walk around the house with them. She’s a little less attached to the sheep doll these days too, an item she could not tear herself away from earlier this year.
These days, her repertoire of toys include memory card boxes, talcum powder bottles, her baby books, dinner mats, coasters etc. At the end of each day just after we set her down to bed, we’ll have to scour the entire house to pick up all the ‘litter’ on the floor.:)
Our baby girl has been grumbling quite a bit at home. She’s become increasingly assertive, and will become quite vocal if the adults around her aren’t doing things that make sense to her. E.g. if you take a toy away from her, or if you try passing her from one person to the next.
In view of this, I was remarking to Ling just now that I can’t wait for Hannah to grow up quicker. But Ling rejoined that we’d just be trading one set of challenges for another haha.:)
Anyway; here’s a small selection of pictures taken at a family event: the first month baby bash for cousin Ying Jia’s daughter. The event was at Peach Garden @ Novena. Greatest impression of the lunch: the wasabi prawns were marvelous.:)
Outside Revenue House. Parking on Sundays just $1 per entry. Cheap.
With Mommy. Hannah was pretty cranky for a good part of the event.
Auntie Jasmine to the rescue. Thrilled Hannah’s not an iPhone fan.:)
Completely knocked out in the car on the way back.
Just some random sampling of cute and endearing moments with our little girl. Such behaviour of hers might not repeat again.
When I squat down, open my arms and call Hannah’s name, she would giggly make her clumsy baby walk towards me and hug me.
She’d let us hold her hand and walk with her.
When she stood up on her high chair to play, I would give her a displeased look and told her firmly to sit down. It might take her a while but she would eventually ‘guai guai de’ squat down. I would continue to stare at her and say “leg leg” and then she would slowly put her legs down to a sitting position. She might avoid my glare and then afterwards check whether she had gotten my approval by making some eye contact.
Hannah would shake her bum bum to the beat of songs played to her.
She would walk over and sit on my laps when I hold out a book to read to her. Sometimes she would look up to me and make eye contact while I was reading to her.
She would laugh at us when we make funny sounds.
She would put her little finger to dig my nose and poke through my lips.
She would sit at the entrance to the kitchen where I prepare her meals and ‘wait’ for mommy to play with her.
She could understand the meaning of my words even though she could not utter them herself yet. For example, I have asked her to hang her towel back on the rack where she had pulled it off (I didn’t expect her to do it actually) and she understood me and tried in her own messy manner to spread the towel on the rack.
She would blow me a kiss after I put her down to bed for the night.
She would open her mouth widely and say ‘ahh’ for ‘amen’ during our bedtime prayer.
She plays ‘hide and seek’ with me when it is time for bath. She would disappear from my sight and then reappear to check whether I’m still around. Upon seeing me, she would giggle and go back into hiding. :)
She yaks on her pink diaper cream tube (pretends it to be a mobile phone).
Of course, we had our share of exasperating moments with her too. For instance, she would sometimes cry without apparent reason.
Below is a recent video taken of her trying to get her hands on her wet laundry and her latest play-thing (green cushion). :)
A couple of months ago I wrote here that Hannah has a thing about car washes. Specifically, whenever we put the car through an automated wash, she’ll be hollering in tears! Evidence here.
Thing is; the car needs a wash every now and then. Of course we could wash our Latio the old and manual way – but nothing beats that sinking feeling of spending a good hour of your life hand-washing your drive, and 30 minutes later when you’re driving out, there’s a flash rain here to ruin all your effort!
So, these days it’s the auto carwash. How do we solve Hannah hollering though? Easy – we put Mommy in the car beside her in the passenger seat. Here’s the outcome of one such exercise last weekend:
The calm before the storm and time for pictures first!
Even Daddy flashes the V sign to encourage our girl.
And here we go. The minute the first water jets sprayed onto the car, Hannah looked about to break into hollers!
Mommy quickly stuffs our girl with the Dory cushion!
Warning… Warning… Baby about to burst!!
Mission Failed.:(
The funniest thing is that we actually have a much easier time having Hannah vaccinated by her PD than with the carwash! But that Ling was beside her in the car did helped… somewhat.
We’ll redo this exercise the next time we have the car washed and report on the next findings soon enough.:)
A few more pictures of Hannah and Daddy – this time shortly after lunch at Din Tai Fung on Tuesday afternoon.:)
She looks awfully cute here, but over the long weekend she was a bit of a little tyrant at home! She went about bawling whenever she sensed the both of us was doing something else at home and not playing with her.
Given that we haven’t totally baby-proofed every part of the house yet apart from the living room and the workroom, Hannah’s movements are restricted to just those two places – and even only when at least one of us is in the same room and keeping an eye on her as she baby walks about the room, exploring every surface, and pulling out everything she can get her little hands on out of its place.
It’s indeed a little scary watching how fast she’s growing. Just a month ago she was still walking unsteadily, but right now she can easily stay right up.:)
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