11 Months Old

Baby Erin is now 11 months old. Wow, my baby is going to reach the big O-N-E is less than a month's time!

About her:

1.  Weight - approx 9.5kg

2. Getting "naughty" these days - wants to be carried all the time!

3. Hates going to sleep. When rocked to sleep in the spring cot, she SCREAMS like she's being tortured.  But she gets very cranky if she doesn't get enough sleep. 

4. Once she even fell asleep (with her forehead on the table) during mealtime. This girl really fights off sleep until she can't fight it anymore.

5. She LOVES music. Whenever there's music, she rocks her whole body forwards & backwards, claps and smiles.  A good candidate to inherit her daddy's two thousand over CDs one day  :)


6. Likes to bite - both humans and objects!

See the bite marks on the baby cot!

 Culprit in action

7. She's quite a little "samseng". Likes to climb and clamber over anything and everything.  Need to watch her like a hawk.


8. She is finally willing to hold her own milk bottle while drinking. 

9. I noticed one good way to keep her quiet is to place many small objects into a paperbag. She will remove and explore (often involves biting) each item carefully.

Exploring Elyssa jie jie's party pack from kindy

10. Very "kaypoh" in nature but poor girl has no playmates at my parents place.  Whenever the older kids play, she likes to crawl over to them, plop her bum in the middle and then play with whatever they play too. But of course her "play" means grabbing and putting stuff into her mouth. The reaction from the older kids is often "NO! Baby No!"  and  "No!  Baby Go Away!"
My poor Erin  :( 


11. She is pretty attached to the maid now. But thank goodness I'm still number one on her list of "preferred people".  I don't think I can handle it if she chooses the maid over me!

12.  Here's another photo of my baby princess  :)
(she smiled and clapped when she heard daddy's rock music!)

Teacher's Day Gift

From blogs and Facebook, I knew that Teacher's Day was coming.
I waited for Elyssa to say something  -  Nothing.
I probed her a bit  - Nothing conclusive. (she kept talking about Mother's Day instead)
I checked and rechecked her kindy message file  -  Nothing.

In the end, I decided to just call up her school.  When I asked when will they be celebrating Teacher's Day, I was told it was over already.  Oops! 
The school administrator said they just did simple activities with the kids. No big event as they don't want the situation whereby kids PESTER their parents to bring presents for their teachers. Hmmm...... good logic also. 

But since I was already prepared to do something, I went ahead with a simple gift for her 2 class teachers.

 Butter Cake

I originally wanted to make decorated cupcakes but it was a busy and tiring weekend so I baked a "simple but oh so buttery" butter cake instead.  Put into a clear box (bought earlier from a baking supplies shop), tie up with pink ribbon and done!

I also wrote out the names of her 2 teachers and asked Elyssa to colour them. She drew some flowers and wrote her name on the inside of the card.

See the letter H?  Elyssa likes to do multi-colours. She happily told me "See, I blend the colours together. Nice or not?"

Elyssa was so excited to bring the cakes to school the next day.  Hope her teachers enjoyed the cake  :)

4 Years Old Photoshoot

We finally collected photos from her 4 Year Old Photoshoot.

So, here's 6 photos of the little don't-want-to-smile Chinese Princess.....

I like the top 2 photos the most  :)

I still prefer the natural photos from her One year old photoshoot, but this one is much cheaper, so ok lar!

Hot Soup in the Office

One of my best "kitchen investment" so far is my La Gourmet Thermal Cooker. Bought it about 6 months ago and I just love it!

Main reason I bought it was to cook and bring soup to the office. Soup, particularly raw papaya soup is supposed to boost milk supply. Well, I'll do (almost) anything to increase my supply.

Hot Papaya and Corn Soup for my morning & afternoon tea break.

Yummy!

Cooking soup is such a breeze with this pot. What I do:

1.  At night - Cut ingredients for soup. (carrot/papaya/ corn/lotus root/ onion/potato etc)
     Transfer one portion of meat (I use either pork loin/pork ribs/chicken thigh/chicken breast) from freezer to fridge.
2. Morning - Boil water in inner pot. Chuck meat and soup ingredients into pot.  (if I have time, I boil the meat first then throw away water to remove scum).  I also like to add in red dates and wolfberries.
3. Boil for 10-15 mins.  (during this time, I shower, get myself ready for work and pack up my milk pump, ice-pack & bottles)
4. Carefully place inner pot inside outer pot.   DONE!


It's really nice to have hot piping soup in the office  :)    Ha ha....practically my whole office knows it when I bring my soup.  Should be good for loosing weight too, since I take the soup instead of eating biscuits.   (well, I use the word "should" since I'm actually NOT loosing any weight these days. *sobs*)

I  take it for my afternoon tea break too. By then, it's warm not hot but still good enough for me.



Hopefully, more soup = more milk supply = happier baby :)

Elyssa's First Sports Day

Elyssa had her first sports day recently!  Needless to say, I was excited as can be.

She alllllmost didn't make it though  - the night before the sports day, she was coughing quite a bit at night.  In the wee hours of the morning, hubby brought her to the loo to cough up any phlegm when suddenly he shouted "she's coughing up blood!".  Next thing I knew, he grabbed his wallet and wanted to bring Elyssa to the hospital A&E.

I checked her and saw some blood in her nose. Phew.....nosebleed only. (3rd time this has happened so far). Luckily not from her lungs which was hubby's panicky assumption!  ;)  Imagine if I was not at home that night, he WOULD have lugged her to the A&E at 3am!

The next morning, she was fine & dandy and eager to go for her sports day.

At the Stadium

Such a grand event for a kindy sports day!  Every 4 years, the sports day is on a bigger scale in conjunction with Olympics. 

Elyssa and her classmates waiting for the event to start

When we arrived at the assigned gate, we had to hand over the kids to the teachers. Parents were not allowed on the field.
I was so excited when I spotted Elyssa from my place at the spectator stand.
Words just cannot describe the feeling of seeing my OWN little girl amongst the sea of faces on the field! Definitely one of those "Oh my god, my girl is growing up so fast" moment. Ok.....I admit, I had to hold back tears when I handed Elyssa over to her teacher.  ;)

Long Wait

It took 1.5 hours between the designated arrival time to the arrival of the VIP!  I started to get a bit worried when I realised I didn't see /make her pee that morning. So I was relieved when I saw her school teacher bringing her to the loo. 

Finally, they can start!

After the VIP speech, the march past commenced. The kids have been practicing marching in school for weeks and weeks.

Accompanied by a band

After the march past, the kids performed 2 dance routines. I saw them practising the dance routines when I went for her birthday celebration in kindy, so I was looking forward to see that. I was a little disappointed that the kids performed the routine facing the grandstand area which was quite far from where we sitting.   :(


Anyway, the games started after that.

Some of the Props

That's Elyssa!

Run, Run, Run!

 

Her part was only about 3 minutes.  He he.  But I just felt soooo proud when I saw her running on the field with the flag!

Hers was not the winning team but medals were given to all participants  :)

Elyssa getting her first medal

After that, it was time to collect the kids. I kinda expected her to say "Mummy, look I have a MEDAL".  But instead, when she saw me, she happily exclaimed  "Mummy, look I have a SAUSAGE BUN!".    LOL.

What a great event and experience!  Overall, I felt it was very well organised indeed.

Sleep, Baby Sleep

I couldn't resist taking out my phone when I saw baby Erin sleeping so soundly like that on her daddy's shoulders! 

Awww......I like to see her squashed up cheeks.

Surprisingly, she continued sleeping even when hubby transferred her to me!

Ps :  We didn't use the stroller cos Elyssa jie jie insisted she was verrrry sleepy and wanted to use the stroller. (but remained awake throughout our short shopping trip!)