he's flipped!

no.. ethan hasnt gone bonkers. wat he has done tho is flipped from his back onto his tummy! and he did it so discreetly i didnt even know wat hit me :) there he was lying on our bed last nite, as i was busy going thro some bills that had to be paid. from the corner of my eye i saw him turning onto his side like he usually does, n then b4 i knew it, he'd flipped right over onto his tummy! well done my fat little boy :)

Guffaws!

look at the boy laughing his lungs out!

My Little Bear

ethan is finally sturdy enough to sit in his ergo without the infant insert!
it's so much easier to carry him around now in the ergo and i'm enjoying every moment of it :) and i think he looks like a little koala bear!

the professional

look how comfortable ethan is on his tummy these days!! altho sadly, he still shows no signs of flipping. hmmm... i wonder if it's cos he's too heavy?!?

heartache

today i had to do a stock-take exercise on the frozen breast milk we have accumulated in our freezer over the last 4 months. i had to throw out about 7 packets (that's over 1 litre!), even though they hadn't really expired, cos we figured we'd have too much anyway, and it made more sense to give him the 'fresher' more recent ones right? well, i must say seeing those packets of milk go down the chute really is quite a heartaching experience! imagine all those hrs spent expressing the milk and there they go... :P well i guess on a positive note, it means ethan's got plenty of milk to last him till he's 6 mths old n ready for solids :)

so today, we have over 50 packets of milk in the freezer. all waiting to be used (else down the chute they go again...)

Super Size Me?

not a chance, ethan! although today marks the first time you've stepped into a mcdonald's fast food outlet, there's no way in hell we're gonna allow u to stick any of this greasy, unhealthy, loaded-with- trans-fat stuff into your mouth. it's only for mommy n daddy's consumption (wont make a difference to us since our body is already beyond hope anyway :P ).

well, daddy says perhaps on your 12th birthday, we'll let u hv your first Happy Meal - and that i'm sure would be a REAL happy meal for u! ;)

TGIF

thank god the wkend is here! u know, i hvnt actually worked a single full 5-day wk since i started work a month ago? terrible isnt it... i just feel so sleepy all the time n i sometimes catch myself dozing off at the PC in the office! totally embarrassing :P i've already 'weeded' out my 2am pump so now my last pump is at 12am n i get to sleep all the way till 7am the next morning. but y am i still feeling so tired?!? guess i'm just getting old huh.

anyway ethan's 'pattern' is now quite consistent. he usually goes to bed around 10pm (he normally dozes off as i nurse him) and then wakes up around 7am the next morning :) but two nites ago he decided to give us a little surprise n woke up at 1am n refused to go back to sleep! after much coaxing, he finally fell asleep again at 3am. i was such a zombie the next day at work :P

i gotta go zzzz now... cant take it anymore!

i can scream!

ethan has recently learned how to scream, and he keeps practising his new found skill over and over again!

1st quarter

dearest darling
today u are exactly 4 mths old. we hope u hv enjoyed us as much we hv enjoyed having u!

happy 4 mths old :)

what a voice!

see? this is wat ethan subjects us to every morning at 7 or 8am when he wakes up n wants attention. how on earth can we get any sleep with the din that he makes?!? i miss the good ol' days when i used to wake up 12 noon...sigh

me in my bumbo

"mommy bought a 2nd hand bumbo for me cos i'm getting too heavy to be carried all the time! and it doesnt help when i hate being carried in the cradle position cos i cant see a damn thing - our ceiling's not exactly the sistine chapel type u know...

"but with the bumbo, i get to be upright all the time :D it's mighty comfy n i just loooooove sitting in it (i'm just saying this for mommy's sake cos otherwise she's gonna scold me for making her waste $$ again)."

... ethan

after the jab

n wat was my brave little boy doing after the jab? watching tv!!! see the intense look of concentration on his face? now, if he could only put the same amount of effort into his studies next time...hmm....

not that bad...

ethan surprised us at the PD today when he didnt cry even tho he got 2 jabs! well actually he was crying when dr ng poked his 2 fat drumsticks, but that's cos he was lying on the table n he hates lying down! so the minute the jabs were done, n we picked him up, he was all happy again :) my brave little boy!

anyway he's 7.18kg and measures 64.3cm long. head circumference is 41.5cm. dr ng said his height is average but he is a little heaver than other babies his age. i've got a heavy-boned baby boy (no, he's not fat!!!)

this photo was taken just b4 we left for the clinic. see those esprit shoes he's got on? cousin cheryl bought it for him n this is only the 2nd time he's worn it, n it's already very snug! sigh... hope he can wear it at least one more time b4 it goes into ethan's 'museum' together with all the other clothes he's outgrown...

testing our patience

ethan has, of late, been really difficult. he struggles and cries when i try to latch him on, so in exas- peration i'll give him the bottle, thinking he's too hungry to suckle right? well, he doesnt finish his bottle when we give it to him either = he aint that hungry! that makes me real mad n i feel like smacking his tiny little bottom (even tho he has such a cute angelic face) when he does such things. aaaarggh! so now we keep having half finished bottles of milk n i see my precious 'gold' going down the drain!

keeping my fingers crossed and hoping this is a passing phase...

will be taking him down to see the PD later for his 2nd 5-in-1, 2nd pneumococcal, and 2nd rotavirus. too bad we dont get bulk discounts for taking these these vaccinations at one go :P

stroll n play

we finally got our stroller! we wanted to get a super lightweight one cos we just couldnt see ourselves dragging a 10kg monster (no, i'm not talking about ethan) around - esp since we will hv tonnes of other stuff to be lugging around too (ie ethan, diaper bags, etc...)

so on sunday we decided to go stroller shopping at kaki bukit ave 1 (yeah the baby hypermarts there!). after several demos, we finally settled on the combi WellLite TJL250 cos it was the lightest that we saw, weighing in at only 4.5kg! here's ethan lounging happily in his new combi :) the 1st time we put him in he cried like mad and we thought "oh shit! dont tell me we wasted a couple of hundreds!" but then just a few nites ago, he insisted we push him around in his new 'car' all the time! so u can imagine how silly we all looked - going round n round in circles in the living room of a hdb flat :P

oh and while we were stroller shopping, we saw the graco pack n play playard and decided to get that too! cos it's gonna come in real handy when we travel - plus ethan hasnt got a proper bed at grandma's house so this will double up just fine.

new outfit!

here's something aunty wendy got for ethan when she was in shanghai recently. its for the winter and the pants are really cute cos they have this special stitching at the back that allows u to open the stitch if u decide u wanna let ur child "go" in public. it's convenient n especially useful during winter when the kid doesnt need to pull down his pants n expose his buns to the cold freezing air... wat an invention huh! apparently this is rather common in china, but i've never heard of it here :) i think it's mighty useful tho!

a wealth of knowledge

we were out over the wkend and managed to get this 3D Activity Book from TinyLove for ethan cos we figured it was high time the boy started to learn how to 'read'!

so there i was carrying him on my lap tat nite n 'reading' to him when he managed to shock the hell out of me by turning the pgs himself! at first we tot "nah it's just a fluke" but when he did it over n over again, hubby quickly got the phonecam n recorded it down :)

the boy cant wait to delve into his books!

all time high

if i've never shared this info before, during my confinement mth i had the air conditioner switched on 24 hrs (maybe tat's why ethan is so afraid of the heat now :P) to keep the room cool. plus all the gas n water needed to boil those herbs n stuff for my baths, to cook the confinement food (yucks!), it's no wonder my bill looked like this!! our avg bill is usually about $120+ so this really is eye-popping for us. i think u could easily run a 2-storey terrace house on this kinda utility bill!

PS: this post is inspired by a similar post i read on my fren's blog about how much his utility bill had risen after the birth of his son :)

back to normal

ethan's poo is finally back to the normal mustardy yellow colour - wat a relief! and he is getting better n beter at his tummy time exercises now (or so i've been told cos he's at my in-laws during the day while i'm slogging away in the office trying to make enuf $$ to buy his diapers). i cant wait to see this for myself tmr cos the wkend's here again!

so wat else has been happening? well i guess ethan's at that stage where everything around him is so exciting that he gets easily distracted while he's having his meals. so that makes each meal time rather challenging as he will turn his head left right centre - basically everywhere - at the slightest sound.

oh.. n he has started watching TV programs!!! :P we tried blocking his view n he actually cried in frustration hee hee

off colour

ugh... i've been having the runny nose the whole day n feeling absolutely terrible! doesnt help that i'm in the office n not at home with my little one

:( can u imagine trying to express milk with a drippy nose? i literally had to stick the tissue up my nose so i wouldn't drip icky stuff onto the milk bottles :P i bet i'd have made an interesting subject for a candid photographer ...

anyway i'm not the only one who's a little off colour.. ethan has been having green poo the last few days!!! i'm guessing its cos of the imbalance of foremilk/hindmilk that he's been getting since i started latching him on, and i've been so obsessed with his poo since then! just couldnt WAIT for him to go. and every time i change his diapers i'll secretly be chanting "pls be yellow.. pls be yellow..". i never knew i could be this obsessed over shit - motherhood sure does strange things to a person's value system! anyhow i hope it's a passing phase n that it gets itself sorted out soon. otherwise i sure will miss the bonding time with him. u know, this bond i feel when i latch him on? its just indescribable n irreplaceable :) i know its just me, n ethan probably couldnt care less whether the milk came from a cow or just rained down on him from above (but i think he does have a preference for the bottle!). so long as there's milk, we've got a happy little camper!!! if only we could all be as easily contented in life. perhaps that's y babies make each day seem brighter n full of hope :)

happy baby

caught a shot of ethan laughing away happily as his daddy was carrying him :) it seems his moods are always better in the mornings... gee. how unlike mommy n daddy!

anyway its back to work tmr for me after a nice long wkend. only another 3 days to go b4 the wkend's here again!