Thursday, January 28, 2010

Angel Angel, our little angel..

Well if you think the neckfloat in the picture of my previous post looks like an angel's halo, then I am sure you will agree with me that Renzo is truly our little angel after seeing these pictures below:


You might wonder what had happened? I have no idea either. Renzo's hand control is definitely improving. He rakes objects towards himself and pick them up, and grasp them for quite a while before dropping them. But he was definitely not the one who put his favorite rattle onto his own forehead. Our maid Aye Aye was the one who did it, and the funny thing we found was, somehow the rattle didn't drop at all no matter how Renzo moved around.. haha he looked so innocent and it seemed that he did not feel the existence of this strange object on his forehead at all.. But we could't stop laughing while seeing our boy in his "angel look" (okay he needs a pair of wings.. haha)..

Anyway, I am sure all parents find their precious ones their angels, who can really bring bundles of joys to the family..

Yesterday I talked to my sister Kelly about my plan of giving our little boy a private space for play/study. Someone may raise an eyebrow on this, isn't it too early to talk about study when our baby is just less than 6 months old? The answer is NO, it is never too early as babies love to learn new things. And somehow I found Renzo has this fancy over Chinese language (maybe we've been speaking English to him all this while, thus Chinese sounds more interesting to him??), because he smiles and laughs whenever I read Chinese poems or sing Chinese lullabies to him. So I decided to pen down the 6 chinese poems I read out to him everyday, and I am hoping that a few years later he will be able to proudly tell his school teacher that his mummy has taught him all these since he was 4 months plus. My mother taught Cherry in the past and she could remember all when she was only about.. 16 months old?!!

《江雪》 柳宗元
《jiang1 xue3》 liu3 zong1 yuan2
千山鸟飞绝,万径人踪灭。
qian1 shan1 niao3 fei1 jue2, wan4 jing4 ren2 zong1 mie4
孤舟蓑笠翁,独钓寒江雪。
gu1 zhou1 suo1 li4 weng1, du2 diao4 han1 jiang1 xue3

《悯农》 李绅
《min3 nong2》 li3 shen1
锄禾日当午,汗滴禾下土。
chu2 he2 ri4 dang1 wu3, han4 di1 he2 xia4 tu3
谁知盘中餐,粒粒皆辛苦。
shui2 zhi1 pan2 zhong1 can1, li4 li4 jie1 xin1 ku3

《咏鹅》 骆宾王
《yong3 e2》 luo4 bin1 wang2
鹅、鹅、鹅,曲项向天歌。白毛浮绿水,红掌拨清波。
e2 e2 e2, qu3 xiang4 xiang4 tian1 ge1
bai2 mao2 fu2 lu4 shui3, hong2 zhang3 bo1 qing1 bo1

《赋得古原草送别》 白居易
《fu4 de2 gu3 yuan2 cao3 song4 bie2》 bai2 ju1 yi4
离离原上草,一岁一枯荣。野火烧不尽,春风吹又生。
li2 li2 yuan2 shang4 cao3, yi2 sui4 yi4 ku1 rong2
ye3 huo3 shao1 bu2 jin4, chun1 feng1 chui1 you4 sheng1

《春晓》 孟浩然
《chun1 xiao3》 meng4 hao4 ran2
春眠不觉晓,处处闻啼鸟。夜来风雨声,花落知多少?
chun1 mian2 bu4 jue2 xiao3, chu4 chu4 wen2 ti2 niao3
ye4 lai2 feng1 yu3 sheng1, hua1 luo4 zhi1 duo1 shao3

《静夜思》 李白
《jing4 ye4 si1》 li3 bai2
床前明月光,疑是地上霜。举头望明月,低头思故乡。
chuang2 qian2 ming2 yue4 guang1, yi2 shi4 di4 shang4 shuang1
ju3 tou2 wang4 ming2 yue4, di1 tou2 si1 gu4 xiang1


Back to my plan of haivng a baby play/study room, most likely we will let Aye Aye shift to the guest room and give Renzo's baby room back to him after this Chinese New Year.

We will then decorate the room with beautiful cartoon wall decals, learning materials and a bumper playmat for him to learn sitting, crawling and walking in the coming months, it is going to be so fun I am sure!!

P/S: I just received all these learning materials from my parents today, some for Renzo, some for Cherry, some for us as the parents.. so touched..

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Renzo's development - Month 05

We brought Renzo’s for his last 5-in-1 jab yesterday, and I must say time really flies. I could still remember vividly when we brought him to polyclinic for the very first time for his first 5-in-1 jab and he was so thin and fragile back then. Now look at his growth during the past one month:


05 Month vs. 04 Month
Weight: +0.6kg
Height: +4cm
Head Circumference: not measured

This time he did not develop any fever after the jab at all, yeah!!!
He did cried quite badly after Win brought him home (I was doing grocery shopping during that time), and when I came back and carried our boy, he stopped crying and fell asleep in a few minutes. But we still gave him 2.5ml of paracetamol since the nurse told us it can be given to baby if he is very grouchy after the jab. At the same time, he's been drinking barley water from the night before his jab and I believe it really has some cooling effect, as compared to last time, his body did not turn hot in the afternoon and evening.

This month a few of our friends visited Renzo, as were the months before. This pair is really worth mentioning, hehee.. Chang and Huiting are a super sweet couple, thus we strongly believe potentially they will be good parents and good in-laws. So if they are going to have a baby girl (really high chance since they wanted 4 kids) in the future, maybe we can introduce our Renzo to their girl girl?

Yeah a picture of Renzo with his favorite neck float and "future in-laws"? Nah, too early to say... haha..

Another great visitor is our best friend Zheng Cheng, who bought us 2 nice books to help us understand our baby better as new parents, that's so thoughtful of him. And apparently Renzo also knows who is nice to him, he was making a lot of noises at first, but the moment he saw his uncle Zheng Cheng, he flashed a big friendly smile and even tried to tease Zheng Cheng by making funny sound non-stop. (We should have taken a picture of those two laughing together..)

I mentioned in my post the previous month, that although Renzo still cannot sleep through the night, he can sleep quite well after bathe for around 4-6 hours straight. Now during this one month, there are 2 major changes to his feeding and sleeping routine, one is good, the other one is really bad.

- The good one:
Around the last week of December, we decided to increase his daytime milk intake from 150ml per feed to 180ml per feed after he went on “milk strike” for 3 days, and at the same time we finally changed his Avent milk bottle teat from #2 to #3 as before that he was not able to handle bigger teat very well. Amazingly, he can finish a 180ml bottle in 6-12 minutes, previously with his 150ml bottle, it usually took him 25 minutes to an hour. So the culprit could really be the teat I guess and I should have thought about it and changed it earlier. Anyway although it is a bit scary to see Renzo finishing his full bottle in such record-breaking time, at least the good thing is, we managed to drag his feeding interval to about once every 4-5 hours. And he is having 5 feeds per day instead of 6. The schedule goes like this:
- 1st feed around 830am (180ml)
- 2nd feed around 1230am (180ml)
(nap about 1 hour in total in the morning)
- 3rd feed around 530pm (180ml)
(nap about 1.5 to 2 hours in total in the afternoon)
**Shower around 830pm**
- 4th feed around 900pm (240ml)
(sleep from 940pm-1020pm to 400am-420am)
- 5th feed around 420am (180ml)
(sleep from 430am to 730am)

- The bad one:
In the past, he is able to sleep for a straight 4-6 hours after his last feed, but recently, Renzo has been waking up very frequently at night, averaging about 5-8 times, and only 1 out of the 5-8 times, he is up for his milk, the others were for no apparent reason. Most of the time I have to give him a little bit of water then he will sleep back again. Sometimes he also can sleep back after I pat and rock him for a short while. Till now we are still trying to find a solution to this. We came out with a few possibilities after doing some research online:
1. Some mummies mentioned that according to PD, if baby can sleep through in the past but suddenly wakes up often at night, it could be due to over stimulation. So we try to dim the light immediately after his shower and play some classical music to help him relax and calm down.
2. Some mummies suggested that it could be a sign, that our baby might need to start on solid food. Well we are still trying to wait till he turns 6 months and meanwhile we will continue monitoring his situation first before we really decide to start him on solid slightly earlier than intended.
3. We might be giving him too much water in the morning. Well I have to say in a way our maid helped to cultivate this habit because whenever Renzo cries hard, she will try to pacify him by giving him water. And most of the time Renzo cries badly because he needs to sleep. So in the end it became his habit that he needs to suck on his water bottle to fall asleep. Therefore I instructed Aye Aye not to immediately give him water when he wakes up half way from his nap. Like Win once mentioned to me, the water bottle serves as his pacifier now, so it is better that we can do something to change this habit of him, or else it makes no difference from giving him a pacifier. But whether this is the root cause, we do not know because he has been drinking a lot of water since birth but only recently this problem surfaced.

So changing his habit of waking up many times at night for water is the next challenge we have and hopefully we can get this problem resolved within a month.
And maybe it is because of interrupted sleep at night, sometimes during the day Renzo can be quite tired, here’s the proof , he fell asleep on his own while playing half way in his walker.. :)


Major development:
1. He can sit on his own without support and play for quite a while.
2. He can reach out for toys and grab them very well.
3. He enjoys playing, laughing and communicating with people more.
4. He's been drooling a lot more than before.

Well those are the only major developments for the past one month. He still cannot flip, and according to his health booklet, we need to consult doctor if he still cannot roll over by 6 months. Now it is time to get him play on his play mat more often and encourage him to flip then.

To help with Renzo’s mental development, we have been playing baby rhymes during daytime, and “Your baby can read” DVD occasionally, as well as some classical music at night for Renzo. My father advised us that music is very important to baby’s growth and he has bought Renzo a whole set of musical DVD specially designed for baby’s brain development. I also tried to read story books for Renzo, but it seems that he is more interested in Ancient Chinese Poems. And the most “kiasu” thing I did (to our non-singaporean friends, Kiasu is a Hokkien word that literally means 'fear of losing' (In Mandarin: 怕输). , was to read up on the best childcare centers and top primary schools in our area. Well one day you people will understand why when you become parents ^_^

Monday, January 11, 2010

Renzo's first haircut

Well, like we have mentioned in our older posts, we have never planned to shave Renzo's hair as we never believe shaving baby's hair will make it grow better, moreover, we have confirmed with Dr Ong Eng Keow, our paediatrician, that there's no scientific proof to supprt this old saying at all. We just made an appointment with our hair dresser Angie, to give Renzo a haircut at her house in Kallang on Jan 10, since his hair is just growing a bit too long.

But our dearest sister in law Lucretia, who just came back from UAE for a short holiday, wanted to visit us and have dinner with our in laws on the same day. Therefore we quickly cancelled the appointment with Angie, and thought that maybe we should reschedule it to this coming weekend instead. During our chit chat session with Lu, I got this idea from her that in fact we can just trim Renzo's hair on our own. Well it sounds like a great idea to me because it save us the hassle to bring Renzo all the way down to Kallang from our house.

So this morning, I did a super fast haircut for Renzo with his baby scissors while he was having a nap..
And ta-da...
Here's Renzo's new look..

Sorry my dear boy, this was definitely not done professisonally, we will get you a much better hairstyle next time, when you grow older.. hehee..

And just some older photos to share, mummy already starts to miss your previous hair style.
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