What's In A Name?

Back in the days when I was pregnant and not knowing the gender of the little one in my tummy, I played around with different names for both boys and girls (but secretly praying hard that the area of selection will boil down to only female names).

Happily enough, my wish (well, me and the Husband both!) did came true but nothing that came up rang a resounding bell. To call her Isolde will be akin to incest as Tristan's name originate from one of the knights from King Authur's Round Table and Isolde was the original Tristan's beloved.

Second favourite choice Raven/Ravern was shot down by That Man cos he didn't want his precious daughter to be named after a bird. (Ok what...Ravern is a black bird and baby's hair will definitely be black so what's the problem???)

Names with 3 syllables were also shot down cos he couldn't spend an extra nano-second to pronounce that 3rd syllable *roll eyeballs*. Otherwise, Sabrina would have been a strong contender for the job. On a separate note, the Husband's name for K is Ah Girl, so I dun see why names with 2 or 3 syllables is such a biggie for him *roll eyeballs harder*.

Anyway,  inspiration came out of the blue one day as it occurred to me that T's chinese name starts with 凯, and I can kill 2 birds with one stone - one, to have both siblings named similarly in Chinese (anything ending with Tristan's last syllable 灯, or anything similar, can't possibly sit too well with Baby in future) and two, narrow down the hunt for names.

And so the name (and Baby) Kylie was born...

Of Baby Foods & Mess

Ms K started on solids just last week at the ripe old age of 5.5 months. Here's what a typical half hour of feeding looks like at home:

 

 

 

The requisite highchair (and baby bolster to prevent K from roly-polying too much)

 

 

 

Every mother's best friend

 

 

 

All the better to wash foods down with 

 

 

 

Today's menu: pureed broccoli (Editor's note: it smelled absolutely vile...and looked like something which came out of a cat litter box. The customer didn't seem to mind though.)

 

 

More of the pureed cat litter...opps, I meant broccoli.

 

 

Diaper cloth cos the young missy WOULD insist on munching on her fingers as a side snack

 

 

Mission accomplished!

 

This is typical of a weekday feeding when T is away in school. On weekends, we will have an interested big brother hovering around for leftovers after K is done feeding and then going 'Yucks!' when he had a taste of her food. LOL...

Major Milestone Achieved Part II

The past month has been a month of firsts.

1st First
Kylie finally flipped. Not as in flipped her gourd. As in roti prata flipped. And crying when she discovered that her right hand was trying to meet the acquaintance of her left arm pit and couldn't flip back.

2nd First
The first time since Young Missy was born that the Husband and I was able to have a proper date night without having to worry abt rushing home for her last feed and to put Master T to bed. We went to a concert and supper at East Coast.

3rd First
I introduced K to the wonderful world of solid foods. With T, his then-nanny was the one with the inaugural feeding spoon. The first time I fed him cereal, it didn't go down very well and resulted in a close-to-tears mummy, a screaming baby and a food-covered high chair.

It doesn't sound like much but as a working mother, I don't have many chances to witness for myself milestones achieved by the little ones. So I was definitely happy that for all the Flipper and impoverished-by-food jokes, I had a second chance to do things right this time.

K's first feed of cereal went well and today marks the 4th day of solids for her. She now knows to open her mouth at the sight of an orange object hovering in front of her cos it translates into an interesting sensation in her mouth =)

Major Milestone Achieved!

http://dayre.me/furgiemama/ZwKyoIMZD8

May Fruits

要生了, 要生了!!!

No, not me. My friend. Just got word that one of my old friends will be leaving her (bloody) mark in the delivery theatre soon!!

With her pop, this group of friends will complete a second circle of contributing to the hospital's profit margin (we all have/are going to have 2 kids at the time of this publication). Wonder who is going to start the third wave of May-fruits (private joke)?

Soldier on Mrs T!! See u after the baby has wailed (loose adaption of the singing fat lady and that crap. Not in a very sane frame of mind right now...) and the cord has been cut!!

Fate?

I was selling off the sad (sniff!) souvenirs of my breastfeeding journey over the weekend and one of them was MotherLove Special Blend Milk Plus. This was apparently a hot seller as there seem to be many mummies out there trying to up their supply with all sorts of boosters. Anyway, I was meeting up with this buyer at her block in AMK and struck up a conversation with her.

Some background info: she's a first time mummy to a baby boy. She's desperately trying to up her supply cos her son is suffering from a rare disorder which renders him allergic to protein and cannot drink normal formula milk (be it animal or plant based). Formula milk makes him poop blood. Even drinking the almighty (sniff!) breastmilk causes bloody stools in his diaper. The mummy in question, N, is trying all methods available to give him the necessary nourishment but because of insufficient supply, she has resorted to giving him porridge water and barley. He was born 3.45kg and since then, dropped to the 25 percentile. That last bit of stats doesn't mean anything to me but to hv to resort to feeding your child porridge and barley water, her situation must be pretty bad.

I felt so sorry for N and a few days after the sale, I checked up on her to see if the Blend was of any help. Happily enough, it did and we are now Whatsapp friends. Though N and I may never chill out at Starbucks together nursing a mocha (my personal favourite! ), I think we did bond over our common status as mummies and I am really happy that I was able to help a stranger indirectly when the help was so much needed ☺☺☺

Botak

K got her hair shaved off today, as with the Chinese tradition of shaving a baby's hair off when he/she turns one month or at four months. Not sure what the logic is but since K's hair has started dropping recently, we booked her a hair appointment at the Ma & Pa Hairdresser Shop.

It started badly as she was already cranky from shuttling around with us for 中秋节 visits with relatives (close ties with extended families = mini version of CNY house calls). Cue noisy shaver, cold feel of razor on her scalp and occasional washing off of shaved hair. Result? Distressed baby screaming her head (and hair) off.

Having said that, I dunno who was more traumatised: K or her parents. Imagine a stressed out papa trying his best to get a clean shave (he shd know; he had years of experience doing it!) and a heart-pained mama listening to her offspring wailing her lungs out. Halfway through the ordeal, K did herself (and us!) a favor by finally falling asleep. Thank goodness!!