Musings

We’ve been bringing Hannah for the occasional dip into the pool. The last time round we did this Hannah while could adjust to the use of her neck float, couldn’t quite float by keeping her body vertical. So, it was thrilling to see her able to do that this afternoon. Pictures.:)

Of the about 135 pictures taken over the 15 minutes using the Sigma 18-250mm, most of them turned out delightfully, though some color temperature adjustments were necessary with the SB600 flashlight alternating between TTL and TTL-BL modes throughout.

Two more pictures below: at the start of the swim (you can see that Hannah’s hair is still dry), and towards the end in Hannah’s Jedi-esque swim-robe but looking pretty tired:

As soon as we got back home and changed her back to her normal clothes, Hannah zonked right out into sleep! :)

Ling wasn’t kidding when she wrote here last month that Hannah bursts into tears whenever our baby sees Ling coming to pick her up from infant care! Semester break started for me a week ago, so I’ve been taking a day of leave here and there – and this afternoon I saw exactly just that.

Hannah was on the far side of the room at the infant care center playing with toys, while Ling had to crouch and hide behind an ankle-height obstacle just so that Hannah wouldn’t spot her LOL! Too funny for words. As soon as Hannah spotted me on the other side of the room (about 5 metres away), she broke into a huge grin and started scrambling on all fours to me. I’d brought along the Sigma 18-250mm so managed a few pictures of Hannah on the move crawling towards me, though the uneven lighting in the room messed up exposure metering.

When Hannah was on my side of the room, she spotted Ling – and immediately started crying haha.:)  

It has been two months since Hannah started her weekday morning infant care at Punggol. She has adapted extremely well to the environment  and is familiar with all her care-givers. However, she always cry when she sees me at the usual 2.30pm pick-up time. She will only stop when I carry her.

For the record, she came down with a mild flu and diarrhea throughout the period of infant care. So far so good I’d say. I was informed by her principal that she’ll be promoted to the mobile group next week as she has been crawling quite well. This means that she will have more space to roam and roll and interact with other mobile babies. I just hope that she won’t hit other babies or ‘fight’ for toys.

Last Friday was the first time I had to stay back in school to finish setting two test papers. So it was the first time Hannah was left at her infant care center for the whole day. Yang could synchronize his timing with ours and hence he picked both of us up. Yay. He took a few photos of Hannah at the center with his D300 as well. :)

1:25 pm update: Matt’s coming earlier – Yay! He managed to bring his flight forward by 5 days, so he’ll be arriving on Tuesday early morning now.:)

Given the heat in recent days, we’ve been trying to give Hannah a second bath each evening before the last feed of the day. This will usually be at about 8 pm. Ling bathes Hannah, and I do all the menial labor (e.g. bring bucket of water, pour bucket of water into baby bath tub, carry and pour used water, wash the tub and mat, mop floor). But what we get in return is a happy Hannah and she smells superbly nice and fragrant. We were intending to use the spare time this evening to clean up the house and move Hannah’s furniture out of the guestroom for Matt’s stay, but with that postponed, we got to clean her up, do a slow feed and set her to bed a little earlier than normal.

When Hannah’s dressed in colorful bed-time wear, and especially if I haven’t taken pictures of her in that wear before, it’s opportunity to dig out the D300 and just go nuts! Here’s an outfit I thought would make for colorful pictures: the green long-sleeved shirt was from one of Ling’s long-time friends, and the purple pants a hand-me down from her ex-colleague.

Taken using the Sigma 18-250mm. The lens sure is useful – generous focal length so I don’t have to move my legs too much. Down side though is that it sometimes has problems deciding on focus! :)

We haven’t had a nice family dinner – not counting brunches at Swensen’s – for the three of us since the wedding anniversary last November. So, last night after work, we drove down to Hougang Mall to compensate.

Most of the restaurants in the mall are clustered around one side of level 2, but the lots sure change quickly. Over the years, there’s been Vietnamese food, Cafe Cartel, and Thai Express – but all of them moved out and got replaced by other restaurants.

The lot formally occupied by the latter was under renovation for several months, but was recently reopened as a Shabu-Shi Buffet restaurant. For about $18.90++ per head, it’s a free-for-all on a conveyor belt. Not that I was too interested in most of the items on the belt – I was really just there for the tempuras.:)

Anyway, Hannah was well-behaved for half of the dinner, interacting cheekily with the wait staff and even a couple of patrons from the Ichi-ban restaurant beside Shabu-Shi (the two restaurants are separated by a low glass partition). From midpoint onwards though she started grumbling, which put some level of stress on the both of us as we had to finish up dinner double quick and take turns to pacify her.

Took a couple of pictures though. Not of the food, but of our darling girl. Yeah – she was groping for the food whenever we carried her.:)

One thing we’ve been trying to teach Hannah is to, well, feed herself. Not the complex stuff like eating solids of course yet, but we bought a Pigeon brand sippy cup, which basically is a two-handed water bottle for her to try clasping with both hands, and watching if she could try drinking water on her own.

The below pictures were taken during the second of such attempts and on Christmas eve afternoon.:)

She looked like she enjoyed the experience holding the bottle at least, though whether she was doing any drinking we couldn’t tell.:)

There’s always something new we’re learning about Hannah everyday, and it’s just amazing how fast she’s learning and growing. The other day we discovered that she’s learned how to move from a prone lying-down position on her cot to a sitting-up position! Ling was exhilarated, and raced to dig out the Panasonic HD Cam to capture the moment, though by the time she returned, Hannah subsequent attempts weren’t successful anymore.

Even then, she’s also learned to prop herself and sit properly on a flat surface without support, for example in this sequence of pictures taken on Wednesday morning:

Not for long though, and that she doesn’t smile or giggle when she’s sitting up in the pictures here is likely because the sensation of sitting up without back support is still a new experience to her.:)

Continuing from the previous post.:)

The Ikea sofa (Win). We’d been thinking of replacing our living room sofa barely a month or two after its purchase from the furniture warehouse 3 years ago. The old sofa set fitted looks wise with the decor of the living room, but sitting on it felt like lying in bed with a porcupine. It’s a wonder neither of us developed a bad case of rash.

We procrastinated over purchasing a replacement sofa though on account of the fact that it was going to be a huge waste dumping something we’d just bought. So we bore with it for nearly 2.5 years until we decided we had enough and picked up a 2 + 2 corner sofa Ektrop series with Idemo Biege. And life has never been so good thereafter.

The Sigma 18-250mm (Win). This was a hard decision. I’ve taken around 9000 pictures using the old Nikon 18-55mm VR lens and despite its plasticky and almost fragile build, it’s amazingly sharp and very reliable. Unfortunately, I kept finding myself wanting a bit more range on the zoom end, and the whole thing about changing lenses wasn’t working very well for me when I was traveling alone. Nikon had its 18-200mm VR of course, but it was going for an arm and a leg and had a couple of design issues.

I’ve had a lot of luck with Sigma lenses, so as soon as the 18-250mm optically stabilized lens was released and the first reviews positive, I ordered one from B&H Photo-Video in August this year for SGD885. 2 months later and about 2000 photos later, this lens has proven itself to be a keeper. The Nikon 55-200mm was sold away, and the Nikon 18-55mm is now a backup lens.

The Nikon MB-D10 (Win). I haven’t blogged here about my purchase of the vertical hand grip for my D300. The grip costs about SGD380 at shops here in Singapore, but it’s made of the same tough and high quality material as the rest of the D300. I found an online shop based in Malaysia selling the same unit for just a shade under SGD300 though, so didn’t hesitate in picking it up right away. The MB-D10 is now a permanent attachment and hasn’t left the D300 since purchase. No more flapping chicken wings when taking portrait shots.. hooray! :)

Part 3 and the concluding post in this series next.:)

You’d be surprised at the one thing we burn through faster for Hannah than anything else – and it’s not diapers. It’s tissue paper! One thing she does a lot when she’s in her cutesy mode is drool, especially all over our shoulders when she’s carried. And when we see a pool of drool forming up, the both of us will be scrambling for tissue paper to catch the pool in time, occasionally in vain even.

See this series of pictures to see a formation of drool:

It’s just amazing to see how much saliva a baby can produce, or maybe it’s just Hannah. I think there’s enough in a single day to fill up at least half a milk bottle.:)

Ling had picked up a wet suite for Hannah from Vivocity recently, so had been planning to bring Hannah down for a pool side dip with me along to take pictures. Here’s the outcome of the second pool outing this Sunday afternoon:

Most of the pictures were pretty tight compositions as there was a lot of people having fun in three pools. Didn’t do any cropping either, so you can just imagine how difficult it was to take pictures with just Ling and Hannah in it.

Hannah was nervous in the dip and seemed unsure how to react to the water splashing around, so no she didn’t in a single shot looked like she liked the experience. Oh well – more the reason we’ll have to redo this again in the near future, but hopefully at a time and day when there’s less people in the pool.:)