“Mommy, Mommy, can I have your Coach bag when I grow up?”
“PLEEEEeeeeeeeaaaaaasssssssssse?????”
Definitely a trait inherited from Mommy 🙂
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
When Ethan was much, much younger, we took him once through the automated car wash, and he cried his lungs out. After that, we only ever washed the car the manual way.
But I recently discovered a couple of automated car wash coupons stashed away, and decided to use them.
So one fine day, I asked Ethan if he would like to accompany me to the car wash. I explained the whole procedure to him and he was VERY excited about it.
And when we actually drove through it, I guess it did not disappoint him.
He was giggling away when the *uncles* sprayed water and soap on the car.
And he laughed when the bristles of the gigantic brush cleaned our car from top to bottom.
And after the entire process, he exclaimed, “That was so FUN, Mommy! Our car is SO clean and shiny now!”
I bet he would LOVE washing the car next time! 🙂
…and no prizes for guessing who had the most fun! 🙂
I had an enjoyable little birthday lunch treat at McDonald’s with Ethan:
Then in the afternoon, I took Ethan to the playground for a few minutes:
We had dinner at home. I cooked a simple dinner of conchiglie (Ethan calls it “shell pasta”) with pasta sauce and steamed sausages:
And Pete surprised me with a birthday cake, much to Ethan’s joy, of course!
It was a carrot, walnut and raisin brownie-like cake topped with cream cheese frosting. A healthier option to the regular birthday cake, and it was also an ingenious idea to get some carrot into Ethan 🙂
Ethan told me specifically “I don’t want the raisins Mommy. YOU eat the raisins!” (but he ate the walnut and carrot willingly!)
Last Saturday, October 17 2009, little Hannah was baptized in church, in a simple meaningful ceremony. She didn’t really put up a fuss at all, although at times it was hard to keep her hands away from everything; from grabbing the book, from grabbing my hair, my pendant, and from being ever-so-wriggly!
In fact, she was so active that I could not position her properly for the holy water to be poured over her head. This here is my attempt…
Hannah was curious to see what was going on…
I had to pass her to Daddy, the expert…and that also, some of the water entered her eyes!
Of course, there was the compulsory family photo after the end of the ceremony,…errr… positions all a bit out, but everyone was there nevertheless. (baby in front is NOT Hannah…that’s Phoebe, her cousin. LOL… Hannah too busy with *other* things at the back)
I also wanted a family photo of just the 4 of us. We didn’t have many of those, but I discovered that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get a proper shot.
Hannah’s baptism of course calls for a reason to fill our tummies…and fill them we did, at Mama’s… No photos of the food, sorry! 😛
With 2 kids to attend to, it’s rather impossible to whip out the camera, set the macro and focus…but trust me when I say the food was definitely scrumptious! To quote Ethan, “Smells…..LEEECious!!!!” 🙂
Two days ago, on Monday, Daddy lowered Hannah’s cot level. It was beginning to look really dangerous, the way she would very quickly hold onto the side of the cot and hoist herself up on her feet, sometimes trying to reach over the cot. At that time, the cot side was at the level of her tummy! Now, it is the same level as he mouth…and she has discovered that the cotside tastes incredibly yummy…
At least now I can safely put her in the cot sometimes, when I have to urgently attend to her brother.
My little girl Hannah has been growing up so rapidly the past few weeks, I find that it is inevitable that I need to post a milestone post now before her 8th month update comes along!
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She has begun crawling really really well now. Sometimes when she doesn’t see me around and wants to look for me, she will crawl all the way from our living room to the dining and kitchen. If she is in her *manja* mood, she will wail and cry while crawling!
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She can stand, while holding the edge of her cot or the couch, or our hands, for support.
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Sometimes we have even caught her beginning to cruise!
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Since she can now sit steadily, we can put her in a baby chair when we dine outside in restaurants. (soon, when I introduce rusks, she will have more things to occupy herself with)
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She has cut her first two teeth! I can see two bottom incisors sprouting!
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And she is getting increasingly difficult to bathe. Each time, she will want to grab onto my stool or the bath tub and try to stand up!
Last Friday, when I picked Ethan up from school, he greeted me with a big smile, holding a plastic vase filled with a piece of sponge with some stalks of flowers in it. On the plastic vase was his very own name, and he was VERY proud of it, I could tell.
He told me he made it in school. (I just LOVE all these stuff he brings back from school!)
And when we reached home, he wanted to water it, so I assisted him in sprinkling some water on the flowers.
And then he wanted to give his plant some sunlight. I asked him to put it near the sliding door. He put it there for 1 second and said, “That’s too much sunlight…”
So we put it on our shelf instead.
Last weekend when all our relatives came over for a visit, Ethan was proudly showing off his plant to everyone.
I’m wondering if I should get him new flowers when these wilt away in a few days’ time….
We do not believe in forcing our child to write or forcing him to hold a pencil or pen, when he is not ready. We would rather he take his time to play and learn and discover it on his own. That being said, Ethan has always loved numbers and alphabets. And he LOVES experimenting, especially on his doodle pad.
One fine evening, he surprised us by using the square-shaped mold from the doodle pad to *write*. He calls it “draw numbers”. At first he wrote 1 and 2, and he was mighty pleased when we applauded. He then proceeded with other numbers.
And writing this was his own idea…watch…
Ironically, that is also how Pete and I write the number 9.
But when I ask Ethan to write 6 after that, he looked at me with those sweet adorable eyes and shakes his head, “I don’t know how to write 6, Mommy!” LOL
Oh, how I love my little boy!
Yesterday morning, Ethan ran up to me and told me he was scared of the *monster*.
I asked him, “Where’s the monster, Ethan?”
He then pointed at my derriere and went, “There! There’s the MONSTER BUTT!”
What?? Now he is calling my butt a monster butt…and he kept repeating it over and over again, until he was so tickled by my reaction. (It didn’t help that Daddy thought it was funny too).
SIGH…maybe it’s time I really started on my exercise regime…
Anyway, later that day, Ethan was fiddling and messing with my hair during dinner (somehow he likes to do this), and suddenly he said, “Uh-oh, Mommy…your head’s breaking…look!”
SIGH…must be because of the very fine and thinning hair…
And even later that night, I asked him again, “Ethan, do you still see the monster butt?”
He took one look at my behind, and said, “No Mommy, it’s not there anymore. Now you have shorts on!”
Maybe it’s time I put away that “monster butt” pair of pants forever, eh? LOL
This could be the start of another very very chatty chatterbox in future! 🙂
What’s behind a name? After I did a whole detailed post on Ethan’s name, it’s now Hannah’s turn.
When we found out we were gonna have a baby girl, we had already pretty much decided on the name Hannah. I have loved the name Hannah since I was a schoolgirl, and it was only apt that I name my daughter as such. We definitely wanted a Biblical name and one that is meaningful both for us and for her. And we also wanted a name that’s not too common. That’s why we chose Hannah, which means Favored (or Favored by God), or Grace. In Biblical context, Hannah was one of the wives of Elkanah, and she was blessed with six children, one of whom was Samuel, the glorious warrior and judge of Israel.
With the Christened name decided, it was time for the harder part: deciding on a Chinese name.
Thanks to the internet, while we were in the US, I contacted a friend of mine in Penang to ask her hubby to help me ascertain a good number of strokes for Hannah’s Chinese name, based on her birth year, surname and also Mommy and Daddy’s birth year. This friend of mine was also the one who helped calculate the number of strokes suitable for Ethan’s Chinese name.
She then came back with the results, which stated that based on Pete’s surname, Chua (蔡Cài), there were 4 stroke combinations that would be a good match for the 2nd and 3rd Chinese character for Hannah’s name:
- 7 + 18
- 18 + 7
- 8 + 17
- 18 + 7
So off to the drawing board we went. Referring to some Chinese name books we had brought along, we wanted a name that had the water radical or water element in it. I used the internet to list out the various combinations that would sound good and mean good, meeting all the criteria we had set out, and then we gave the list to another friend of ours in Santa Clara to help us decide or recommend. After a few tweaks here and there, we arrived at a name that we all thought would be perfect for our baby girl.
We chose the name Xi Ling (Xǐ Ling: 禧泠), which is a combination of 17 + 8 strokes. Xǐ (禧) meant Joy and Ling (泠), which also contained the water radical, carried the meaning “sound of the water flowing“; and together, Xi Ling (Xǐ Ling: 禧泠) means Joy Overflowing, which Hannah is living up to really well, seeing what a happy little baby she is! 🙂
So Hannah’s full name is Hannah Chua Xi Ling (蔡 禧 泠 ~ Cài Xǐ Ling), carrying the meaning of Favored by God and Full of Grace, with Overflowing Joy. Isn’t that a pretty name for a pretty baby? 🙂
