Of constipation and drinking water

Since starting Alyssa on porridge, she has been experiencing constipation... quite bad ones actually =(

At first, my remedy was pureed pear. It'll work like a charm and the next day, she'll have nice soft liquidy poo. But the magic wore out after a couple of weeks. Started giving her vege porridge and still that didn't work.

So I tried giving her water. Since birth she has not taken water. And as predicted, she rejected it. Literally took a sip, and then realised it wasn't milk and spat it out like a whale's blowhole. *sigh* So the hubby and I would forcefully restrain her and try to force down as much water as possible. Most days, that would be no water as she's gotten really good at controlling what goes down and spitting out everything else. =/

So after a month of doing this, I had almost given up. Till yesterday when I was drinking water and noticed her observing me. Lightbulb! I put my cup to her mouth and she drank! Gulp gulp gulp we heard and we were sooo thrilled!!!! So as of yesterday, I've been nicely feeding her water with a cup! She makes a mess cause she's not used to drinking from anything without a teat or spout, but heck, I don't mind the mess at all as long as she's drinking water. So I really pray that her constipation will be a thing of the past real soon! Thank God for guiding us!

Miek miek

28th January 2011, 5.20pm

Alyssa: Emmmmmmmmmmm Muuh muuh....
Me: Mama??? What did you say? Did you say Mama??
Alyssa: Emmmmmmm (whiny cryish tone) emmmmmmmm miek miek.........
Hubby: I think she's saying milk milk.
Me: Try the bottle.
Hubby: (shows her the bottle)
Alyssa: EMMMMMMMM MIEK MIEKKK MIEK MIEKKKKKKKK (more cries)
Us: Oh gosh...
Me: Her first word's milk milk!!! ARgggggggggggggg

There goes the battle for the first word. Looks like neither of us won. Milk did. =/

Nevertheless, here's a record of this milestone: First babble word: Milk at 8 months 8 days =)

Becoming a Kiasu mommy??

In 3 days, I would've been a mommy for 8 months. How time flies.

Have been taking time out to reflect this past week and I've noticed a big wart! I may be transforming into mommy-zilla, or kiasu mommy in a more Asian term.

Here's why I think so:

1. For me, the line between bragging and being proud of my daughter is slowly blurring. I keep "bragging" about my daughter's achievements on FB statuses. It has become almost a natural thing. When she does something, I feel the urge to construct beautiful FB statuses to tell the FB world about it. I rationalize that I'm just so proud that I want to shout it to the whole world. See how the lines have blurred?
2. I constantly am comparing my daughter to others, especially in terms of reaching milestones! The other day, I got a bit concerned that my daughter's pearly whites are still no where to be seen, while other babies already have nice ones at 6 months. Then my husband stopped me and made me think of how exactly would teething late be catastrophic. Needless to say, it wasn't catastrophic at all! Loud alarms went off "Kiasu, kiasu, kiasu!"
3. I feel the urge to get my daughter the best of the best that I can afford. Yes, I know the RM20 toy is probably just as good as the RM50 but still.... Oh goodness... sigh. That's where all my money has been going. To fill this crazy irrational "need". 

    The good and bad thing about being trained in psychology and counseling is that it is often very easy to spot all my craziness. To compound the issue, my husband is also trained in the same fields so when I have come up with some nice justification, it doesn't slip past my husband. =/

     I've more or less come up with how this all started and why I've resorted to becoming mommy-zilla, which is a story for another day. So this now leaves me with a question "What am I going to do with this knowledge?" *ponders*

First Photoshoot with Uncle Juan

My brother is multi-talented. One of his recent passions is photography - much to my delight! It's a plus point that he is absolutely in love with his niece! After much planning, a date was set for Toothless' first photoshoot! But due to some last minute matters, we only managed to get to Uncle Juan when Toothless was close to her nap time. =( It was tough, but she was a champ! Gave us lotsa smiles when daddy and mommy pranced around like crazy people singing, cheering, and dancing.

Here are the results!

Couple time = minimal

Since we took a trip to PD this year end for church camp, Toothless' schedule changed. It started with just one night of sleeping at 8pm then waking at 9pm to throw her beautiful sleep schedule off course.

Prior to the trip, she'd take 3 naps in the day, amounting to 2 hours max, and then sleep at 8.30pm right up until 7am. Never waking in the night at all. Bliss.

So since camp, her day schedule has remained unchanged. But her night schedule is horrendous! Especially in the past week. Her usual 8.30pm bed time has been - for the past 3 days - pushed to 10.30pm and last night, 11pm!!!!

As such, couple time has been minimal.

We still keep to the routine of spending time with her, prayers, last feed, and putting her in the cot. Only problem is, this period has coincided with her learning to crawl (Christmas) and pulling herself up on the cot! So everytime she goes into the cot, it's practice time!!! She'll spend an hour to hour and a half just practicing and feeling realllllyyy good about herself. Giggle giggle, fall, climb up again, giggle giggle again. *sigh*

So the battle begins, we've tried patting, singing, feeding, letting her loose to tire her out, and even restraining her but nothing works. Did some research and it could be the practicing period for the new skill and things should go back to normal after she's mastered the skill. I hope that will be the case.

So till then, daddy and mommy will need to have couple time while putting her to sleep. =/

Hmm...

Took a day to fiddle, and decided on this. But I'm not too happy with the fonts though. =/ The problem with fonts is, they are properly displayed only if readers have the fonts installs on their PCs. So the fonts from my library look really good on my PC but not on another if the fonts aren't installed... making my fonts look like a mishmash of funny-looking fonts. =/

Shall stick with this for the time-being. Till then, this shall be it!

Renovation Works in Progress!

I shall be taking a hiatus from blogging to work on a fresh look! Hopefully I'll get it done soon!

Ta!