Saturday, March 20, 2010

Renzo's development - Month 07

There is no vaccination for Renzo scheduled in March and thus we have to do our self measurement for him at home:
07 Month vs. 06 Month
Weight: + 0.3kg
Height: + 1cm
Head Circumference: not measured

I feel that his motor skills have improved greatly during the past one month.

Major development
1. He is able to pick up snacks from plate with his fingers, bite and chew with his gum and 2 little teeth.
2. He called “papa” on March 06.
3. He called “ma” from March 11, and often call “ma”, “ma” when he cries.

4. He claps his hands often.
5. He is able to pass items from one hand to another.
6. He has great interest in crawling although he has not mastered the skill.
7. He is able to drink water from straw.
8. He is able to do “high five” with us, he responded to “high five” since he was about 4 months old, but now he can do it very well.
9. He knows the meaning of certain words, when I say “car” and show him his toy car, he will play the wheels with his fists, and when I say “C for CAR”, he will look at the alphabet poster on the wall. So I think he can relate these two together.
10. He is able to use his potty!!! He’s not potty trained yet but he started to use his potty very often and we do not need as many diapers as before nowadays. Ever since he got his new potty (for almost 2 weeks), he only passed motion onto his diaper twice, the rest of the time, he did it in his potty!! (Make me feel that this blue puku potty is the best investment I’ve made so far!!!) And I can’t agree more with my sister and parents that bad habit is formed not because our kids are not doing well enough, it is because the parents are just too lazy. If we are willing to bring our babies to potty more than 10 times a day, and clean up the mess whenever they get wet or dirty without diaper, every parent can figure out our babies’ pattern and get them toilet trained as early as possible.
11. Unfortunately, he’s still drooling like crazy, as always, and here’s our “solution” to it:
Scarves, a lot of scarves

I’m starting to feel that the bonding between AyeAye and Renzo is getting stronger, although our boy still cries hard for mummy’s hugs, he likes to see AyeAye and to be carried by her. And we believe that we are lucky to have her in the family. On a few occasions I really left only the two of them at home for almost a whole day and she was able to manage Renzo very well, and even noted down his sleeping and feeding times without being asked to do so (she’s smart as she knows we are tracking such information). When Renzo tries to crawl, she’s on all fours and chuckles besides him; when Renzo wants to poo poo, she sits beside his potty and makes “en en” sound to stimulate him; When Renzo cries, she sings her Myanmar lullabies which no one in the house understands; When Renzo achieves his “firsts” milestones, she is as excited as us parents. I think she plays an important role in Renzo’s growth and development. And I am sure she’s also grateful working for us, as she told me that she didn’t expect us to buy coffee mix for her daily consumption and her mother planned to send that to her from Myanmar, and she even brought her own lunch box here as she didn’t expect that we would let her eat with us together on the dining table. I think she’s a sincere and hardworking girl, and I am sure if she works with us for only 2 years, most probably Renzo will have no impression of her in the future even if we have all her pictures well kept.

And these are the picture we asked her to post back to her family, new clothes, nice food and cute baby of course, haha, hope her mother will allow her to stay with us for longer time, LOL..


On a side note: Renzo has received his passport, and I have to praise Singapore Immigration for their efficient service. Despite the super crowded waiting area and long queues (as always), we managed to collect his passport in less than a minute, that all should attribute to the convenience of online application and e-appointment through ICA website!! (applause!!!)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Renzo's Feedtime Videos!

Ever since our little poopersaurus laid his little round finger on his first biscuit, Renzo has been wanting to taste different things, including Daddy's thumb, Mummy's hair, his toys and basically anything within a reachable 30cm radius from his butt.

We get as much enjoyment watching him munch through his snacks and much as he enjoys the snacks themselves... Below are a few vid clips of the little guy in action!

Here is our little hero eating bananas...


A Cookie Monster gnawing on his Morinaca manna baby biscuits. I LOVE IT when he claps after finishing each biscuit. ^_^


Lastly we have him showing off his motor skill dexterity by picking up his little GERBER® GRADUATES® Puffs from his plate.

Friday, March 5, 2010

All about sleeping through the night..

I am wondering how many parents are like us, for the past half a year, the number one baby topic we key into search engines is always "baby sleeping through the night". I believe nighttime waking is one of the most common dilemmas for us parents.

I said goodbye to uninterrupted beauty sleep ever since Renzo was born. Though I have been trying extremely hard to establish a daily bedtime routine for Renzo, he was only doing relatively well during his 4th month. And by "relatively well", I meant only a good 4-5 hour sleep after his shower time. I would still have to carry and cuddle him to sleep after his midnight feed. Then the 5th and 6th months were just nightmares to me as I was overwhelmed with his occasional 7 - 9 times of wakeups, meaning I need to creep to his cot almost every hour at night (that's no joke because I really had to pick him up and rock him or feed him water before he could sleep back again). He had never ever slept through the night for the past 6 months+, not even a single night!

Look at our beautiful record on this little boy's sleeping pattern:
Month 00 (Aug 09)
- Longest sleep after shower: 3 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 3
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Yes

Month 01 (Sep 09)
- Longest sleep after shower: 3 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 3
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Yes

Month 02 (Oct 09)
- Longest sleep after shower: 3 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 2
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Yes

Month 03 (Nov 09)
- Longest sleep after shower: 4 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 2
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Yes

Month 04 (Dec 09)
- Longest sleep after shower: 4-5 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 1
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Yes

Month 05 (Jan 10)

- Longest sleep after shower: 6-8 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 1 and down to 0 from Jan 13 onwards
- Carry to sleep in wee hours: Stopped from Jan 04 onwards
- Number of times wakeup and drink water: 7-9 times

Month 06 (Feb 10)
- Longest sleep after shower: 8-10 hours+
- Number of feeds during midnight: 0
- Number of times wakeup and drink water: 7-9 times

You can see around Jan to Feb this year, he started to form this pattern that he will keep waking up at anytime after his last feed, although no more night feeding is a remarkable milestone achieved. After ruling out teething pain, soiled diaper, hunger etc, I decided to start training him and change his habit, because the fact that he's been behaving this way for more than a month, and the thought that it might even take me years to correct him if I let him continue this way, really horrified me.

So, the training started on Feb 24. I am never an advocate of the famous Ferber's Cry-it-out method, but there are a few variations and I must say some tips are really helpful.

In a nutshell, there are a few things I followed that seemed to solve the problem:
1. Never pick him up from his cot when he's tossing and turning around.
- Challenging, because sometimes he wiggles as he needs to burp, so I have to make sure I burp him well before putting him to bed. But at least I am happy to find out that my cuddling triggered him to wake up so often in the past.

2. Put him into his cot while he's drowsy and let him sleep on his own.
- He's quite good at playing on his own till he falls asleep, but a lot of times he will cry and scream, and since I cannot pick him up, I give him water instead (which is not something very right, and might become habitual).

3. Do not feed him.
- Well I don't feed him milk, but I am still giving him water. This might be the reason why he is still waking up, as cuddling, feeding or talking to him might prompt him to wake up each night for such attention. But letting him cry his eyes out is still something I am not in favour of, especially during middle of the night.

4. Give him a few fussy minutes before responding to him.
- Sometimes we are lucky enough that he can struggle back to sleep on his own.

I thought about blogging on this topic last week, but decided to monitor him for a longer period of time in order to prove that I've found the cause and my solution is really working.

We have not achieved the ideal result yet, but at least we can see some improvement there as nowadays he awakens about 2-5 times, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that things will only get better and better..

(just for records, both picture here were taken in January 2010)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Copyright © 2009 ~ 2011 Watch Renzo Grow | Design : Noyod.Com | Edited by: Gamersaurus | Icons by: FastIcon.com