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You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2010.
Ethan: Mommy, I want new babies!
Mommy: Huh? What do you mean?
Ethan: Mommy, I want 5 new babies; 2 more baby girls and 3 baby boys!
Mommy: And how are we getting those new babies, Ethan?
Ethan: Buy them Mommy!
Mommy: Buy the babies? Where do we go to buy babies?
Ethan: At the Baby Shop, Mommy! The same place we got Hannah from!
Who doesn’t like desserts, eh? When we dine out, if the kids are behaving well at the dining table, we occasionally indulge in a serving of dessert at the end of our meal. The dessert is shared, because the serving is often way too big for just one person, and also because we do not want the kids to be super-hyper-sugar-charged afterward.
This here is the delicious scrumptious Molten Chocolate Cake we ordered from Chilli’s. It’s warm chocolate cake at the bottom, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzled with yummy chocolate sauce at the top.
In any case, we’ve discovered that these special dessert time moments are awesome family time moments too. Look how happy the kids are…
Ethan loves it…
…and so does Hannah (see how she’s giving a “thumbs up”?)
We also love the simple pleasures of the sundae cone from McDonald’s:
You know that distinctable starting sound of that Glee song “Don’t Stop Believing”? Yes, the part at the beginning when the cast of Glee sings, “Da-da-da-da-da…..”?
Well, this is what Hannah does whenever she hears this song, be it on the radio, on the TV, or when we play the CD..
…and errr… the last bit of that video is just Ethan trying to get part of himself into the shot. LOL
When Ethan was much younger, he loved dogs. In fact, his close encounter with a golden retriever was a really fun and loving one.
But somewhere along the line, he began to have a fear of dogs. We would be taking our walks in the park when we were in the States and he would scream, “Aaaaahhhh!!! Dog!!!!” and run away or hide behind us.
So a few weekends ago, when we were vacationing in KL and decided to pay his Aunty Adelle a visit, we were bracing ourselves for some major screaming. Adelle has a labrador and we figured Ethan would be afraid.
But we were so wrong…!!!
Look at how well they got along together…in fact, I think the lab (Hazy) was a bit scared of him for following her all around the house. Even Hannah was not afraid of the dog.
When we asked Ethan why he wasn’t afraid of the dog, he said, “Because it’s a friendly doggie, Mommy. It’s not a barking one!”
Scrap Credits
Plentiful Kit from Shabby Princess Designs
Elegant word art (she’s adorable) from Bethany
Weight
11.2 kilos
Height/Length
81cm, roughly a head shorter than Ethan.
Teeth
8 incisors (4 top and 4 bottom), with a few more teeth appearing at the back, possibly pramolars.
Hannah has me brushing her teeth every day. We try to do it twice a day, morning and night. And whenever she hears me saying, “Let’s go and brush our teeth!”, she’ll open her mouth, say “Aaah!” and point to her teeth. Yeah, she’s cute like that. 🙂
I’m brushing her teeth with a fluoride-free kids’ toothpaste, and we started with gargle-training using a cup with boiled drinking water (just in case she swallows and drinks it). After about a week, Hannah can now spit out the water (still working on the gargling), so sometimes I just use tap water.
Motor Skills
Communication and Social Skills
Food and Feeding
Hannah eats almost everything we eat now, with the exception of herbal stuff which we don’t know the contents of and food high in sugar and salt content. She eats porridge on weekdays and mostly rice and noodles during the weekends.
As for milk, Hannah is still on 100% breast milk, with a little sampling here and there of chocolate milk and fresh milk.
She took a little bit of porridge with some peanuts in it (she just took the porridge part), and the following day, she had some rashes on her body and face. Not sure if she’s allergic to the peanuts though, but we’re keeping a close eye.
We should have done this a long time ago…but we had always thought the Green Mamut table from Ikea would not be able to fit into our trunk.
We took the risk anyways, and were surprised to find out that it fits!
So the kids now have a new table. They use it for just about anything under the sun: for their activities, for the coloring and drawing, for their meals…and errmmm…for climbing on too! Sometimes Daddy and Mommy will join them at the table for their meals as well (we get that Japanese vibe cuz the table is lower).
Ethan loves the table because he can do almost anything there, and Hannah loves it because she does not need to be strapped into the high chair for her meals now. I love it because it’s round and has absolutely no sharp edges (and also because crayon and pencil marks wash off super easy!)
The green table has taken over the place of our dark brown side table in the living room, making the room brighter and more cheerful.
We should actually be counting our blessings that the phase had lasted this long. For after 18 months of sitting in the stroller when we’re about to go out, pushing Hannah all the way in the stroller to the car and then loading her in the car and unloading her back onto the stroller when we get back home, Hannah finally decided to *put her foot down* and now refuses to get into the stroller when we are going out.
It started with her in the infant carrier, where all I needed to do was carry her in the carrier and place it in the carrier base in the car. Then when she outgrew the carrier, I pushed her in the stroller and loaded her into the car seat in the car. Sometimes she would refuse, but we’ve always managed to get her into the stroller with the lure of a toy or a book. The use of the stroller has made it so much easier to handle both kids, especially when we have other stuff to carry.
Not anymore though.
Now she wants to walk with us all the way to the car. So now I have both my hands full, one hand holding Ethan and the other holding Hannah. She also insists on slinging her bag whenever she walks. Looks like I will not be able to carry a lot of other things with me now.
And the picture above was taken just yesterday, just after we had parked our car and were preparing to go upstairs. Don’t they look happy and cheeky at the same time?
I ran out of videos to show the kids the other day, so I finally decided to show them the song segments from The Sound of Music DVD. After a couple of times watching the Do-Re-Mi portion, Ethan started singing the song over and over again…in a style that is all his own…
I recorded this while we were waiting for our food in a restaurant .. here is his version, albeit a little cut short.. LOL
Thanks to everyone for all your prayers and support. She’s well on her way to recovering from herpangina. The doctor had given Hannah the green light to be discharged from the hospital yesterday morning, after 2 nights of being warded.
Her appetite had improved, although not yet back to the voracious intensity it once was. She loves eating her favorite “nana”, drinking lots of water and before we left the hospital, she had some chicken noodle soup. Oh, and of course, she’s on the super special diet of Mommy’s milk loaded with lots and lots of antibodies!
She’s back to her cheerful self, although she’s very “clingy-koala-like” sometimes. Get well soon, baby! 🙂
I knew something was amiss last Friday night when I was dressing Hannah up in her jammies after her night shower and noticed that her upper right gums were unusually red. Yet, she seem unperturbed by it and did not complain of any pain.
I should have trusted my motherly instincts…
On Saturday morning, she registered a fever of more than 39ºC, but after a dose of paracetamol, she was her usual active self. She had fever the whole of Saturday night, but on Sunday, she was okay for most part of the day. She was giving us mixed signals and we actually thought it was because she could be teething.
On Sunday evening, she started refusing her milk…yes, I am still breastfeeding her, and it is very very unusual for her to refuse the breast. She was also biting many of her toys and seemed very contented when I offered her a teether instead. She drank a lot of water, but didn’t seem interested in anything else. And her fever was still fluctuating up and down.
Thankfully, she accepted the breast after her bath and slept soundly after that for the whole night.
Enough was enough. I took her to see her doctor the next morning. Doc said, “Didn’t expect to see you guys in here so soon…” You see, we had just been to the doc’s a week ago for Hannah’s vaccination.
After checking Hannah (her fever had gone up to 39.2°C!), doctor confirmed what Hannah had was a case of herpangina, an infection of the mouth and throat caused by the coxsackievirus. The ulcers were present only in the mouth, thankfully. However, the doctor recommended that Hannah be admitted to the hospital for monitoring and observation, because in some cases, the virus could affect the brain and cause fits.
Hannah also had to do an electrocardiogram (ECG) and take a blood sample, from her arm. She was a perfect angel through both procedures, not crying at all! In fact, she’d also taken a blood sample from the left arm a week before to confirm she’s no longer iron-deficient (she’s not anymore!) and now the blood sample is from the right arm. For a child her age, it is indeed heroic to go through these without shedding a single tear…
So, we got admitted into the hospital yesterday evening, and despite the fact that she is active and her mouth ulcers were getting slightly better, we have to stay on for one more night because her fever is still yo-yoing. Thankfully she is back to her normal breastfeeding routine and is willing to drink water. This morning she even took a few spoonfuls of fish porridge and half a banana for lunch. The recommended diet for someone who has herpangina is lots of cold fluids, including yogurt drinks, probiotic drinks (like Yakult), yogurt and ice cream.
So when Daddy came to visit just now, he brought some of these stuff over. Oh yeah, we decided on the single-bedded room this time round, given that it’s better for Hannah not to share a room with someone else, since herpangina is highly contagious and she will be in isolation. Anyway, we have a mini fridge in the room now, that’s why we can store all this cold stuff! 🙂
Because herpangina is caused by a virus, antibiotics will not work, so Hannah is only on Paracetamol for occasional fever and/or pain, oral gel and spray, Vitamin C and another type of Vitamin C to improve her appetite.
Ideally Ethan is not allowed contact with Hannah, but we really had no choice because they are both very close to each other. Besides, Pete is caring for Ethan now while I am in hospital with Hannah, so Ethan will have to follow Pete when he comes to hospital. What we could do was to keep reminding Ethan not to touch anything in the hospital room and keep his hands clean at all times.
I’m praying that Hannah’s fever will be stabilized by tomorrow morning, so we can be discharged. I know she has a strong will and determination, just like me…
