Fortunately Lentor was on hand to provide assistance, but we really wanted to try to manage it ourselves without assuming grandparent assistance as a safety net that would always be there for us. By late April, we were just about fed up with poor Hannah picking up all kinds of viruses and falling sick like no tomorrow, so started making alternative plans, and\u2026<\/p>\n
Going with the Nanny<\/strong><\/a> (Win!!!)<\/span><\/strong>: \u2026 has turned out to be one of the best and most right decisions in 2010. Our nanny adores Hannah, and even her husband and daughter enjoys Hannah too. Helps as well that our baby girl has a winsome personality and seems to be developing the right character traits \u2013 or maybe that\u2019s just parental bias talking now haha.:) But it doesn\u2019t take much to see that the nanny has really pulled out all stops to give her best to our baby girl \u2013 Hannah is putting on weight, is a happy baby, and adjusts well between the three places she spends the most time in relatively; at the nanny, at home, and on the occasion at Lentor with Grandparents on selected weekends.<\/p>\n Baby Play Yard<\/strong><\/a> (Mixed)<\/span><\/strong>: We bought this as a way of helping keep Hannah within a safe play area when she\u2019s at home. It\u2019s easy to set up, and \u2013 for a while at least \u2013 Hannah seemed to adjust well to it too, learning to play with herself, develop a good degree of independency, and also learn how to take her first baby walking steps. Why is this a \u2018Mixed\u2019 verdict though? Well\u2026 Hannah outgrew the Play Yard a lot faster than we\u2019d anticipated! In fact, we used it for just 2 months, after which Hannah increasingly displayed signs of restlessness when she was kept in the Yard. Still, we were able to resell the Yard at very low asking price (Ling had a long queue of persons who all wanted the yard at our asking price when she posted up the sale), and we hope it helps the new Mommy as much if not more than it did for us.<\/p>\n Other decisions made this year:<\/p>\n Ceramic Knives (Bad)<\/span><\/strong>: This was an impulsive buy, sadly. We were at NTUC Fairprice @ Hougang Point and there was this display booth with a PRC salesman showing the use of ceramic knives. Long story short, Ling believed the sales pitch, and the NTUC Fairprice aunities endorsed the amazing quality of those knives. The two ceramic knives we bought were indeed very sharp\u2026 however, the kind of care and maintenance required of them meant that the only way it would remain sharp for us was\u2026 to never use it to begin with! Within a fortnight, our ceramic knives were chipping, even with Ling\u2019s best attempts to care for it. Wasted money. We hope the Shigeharu<\/a> knives we\u2019ve picked up last week will fare better.<\/p>\n Boston trip<\/a><\/strong> (Win!!!)<\/span><\/strong>: OK, so this was a work-trip that I didn\u2019t actually have a choice in LOL. Still, I\u2019m glad that I was at this 24 day trip. Saw Boston, Niagara Falls, Harvard University, the amazing Butterfly Garden, and whales! To say nothing of the amazing experience of working with Singapore\u2019s best and brightest tertiary student interns, and with the staff from MIT in our Singapore-MIT collaborative research project.<\/p>\n Japan trip<\/strong><\/a> (Win)<\/span><\/strong>: Visually, this trip was less interesting for me than the Boston one. But I\u2019m glad that Ling enjoyed it nonetheless, especially since she was with me in Boston and thus didn\u2019t have to go through the same comparisons. I keep telling her that the New England Aquarium<\/a> is much better than Kaiyukan<\/a>, but she doesn’t believe me LOL.<\/p>\n Well, that’s a wrap for 2010. Same post again, one year from now.:)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had three fairly significant issues we had to decide for Hannah this year: Putting Hannah into Infant care (Bad): This was initially a pretty clear decision even if it was not easy to make because of compounding factors. We<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/blog2010bostonDSC_A1200WhaleWatching.jpg\")