Hannah is 4.5 months old to date. And here's some updates about her. (and us)
Well she can flip over onto her tummy effortlessly now. It started off as a major event that we celebrated with great joy. Then Fear. Then Fluster.
Why?
Joy: It's a new step! A new trick! A new development!
Fear: Will she suffocate? Will she get stuck in some corner? Will anything happen to her? Fall off?
Fluster: She flips non-stop! Then she will be stuck in some corner or get tired of the position and she will start screaming her head off. (" Help! I am stuck! Rescue me!" or " Hey! Somebody come and relief me of this tiring position!" or " Give me some attention. " or " I cannot turn back! Flip me back!") You get the gist.
At first it was pretty bad... she could wake up in the middle of the night to do her stunts and wail. And overcome with anxiety of her suffocating, I ran out to her and flipped her over. Only to see her smiling at me and flipping back again and again and again. She thought it was funny. ... ~bleah~ I was certainly not amused. I told her sternly it was not funny at all as I flipped her back and asked her to sleep. Surprisingly, she did.
But at least we got assured, knowing that she is capable of crying out for help. That took our worry away (a little at least). At least we know she won't be stuck and keep quiet in that position. Though, when I think about it too much, I can still get paranoid.
She is also very very aware of her environment now. So much so that everything excites her. From the fan to the air con to lights to anything else except daddy and mummy's face. So... it's pretty hard feeding her at times. She has to be 'coerced' back to the breast or bottle. Goodness... sometimes I will just cover her eyes with my palm or just pull her close. Boy! She won't succumb without a fight! She would scream and straighten her body and....
I think my angelic baby is starting to 'chut pattern' already! Soon, daddy and mummy will 'chut' ours too! The battle is about to begin.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Pictures are easier to post... take less of my brain juice yet speak volume
A whole new perspective for baby Hannah. She loves this Bumbo seat( But I prefer to call it the bobo seat)that we've got her a couple of days back. We realised that she's getting a bit restless when made to lie down most of the time. We saw her attempts to pull herself up(which she obviously could not). So we were contemplating on this. Then we met a 'new mummy friend' and she recommended it to us again. Anyway to cut the long story short, we got it. Mummy went shopping with Hannah alone and lugged the seat and pram and Hannahand diaper bag through Parkway to the carpark and home! It was quite a feat and mummy is so proud of her achievement! :)
I guess, that's life. Every new step that we take or enter into, it gives us a whole new perspective of things around us. For a little baby, it may just be the way things look like in her surrounding. For an adult, it could be the way people look, the way they view things, mindset, their thinking... Interesting isn't it? The only difference perhaps is, babies are always ready to accept these changes with no resistance rather with lots of enthusiasm and optimism. Maybe we should learn from them.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
From another perspective
February 16, 2009
Vicarious Living
The thought swiftly flashed through my mind when I first saw her early that day, caught in a gaggle of giggling colleagues, fresh from the bathroom or wherever they had come from. She seemed like she was half-bursting from keeping a secret. But the thought disappeared before I even thought about it. And then later, an indiscreet colleague gave the secret away. I had to stop myself from shrieking.
After the company function we decided to take a slow walk to Parkway. The weather was perfect, with sunset hues painting a pastel background to the old condominiums that dotted the Amber Road area. Our voices were muted, excited girlish tones.
“What is it like?” that was me, barely 7 hours from touching down from London after a whirlwind Europe trip. Part of my mind was in a half-jet-lagged fog, while the other was spinning at the idea of a friend my age with a child inside of her. It’s like a whole new world, I summed it up when she too, still stunned at being two weeks pregnant, had only words of surprise, shock and a general sense of awe at what was slowly going to take over her gym rat’s body.
Motherhood!
A month went by, then two.
She got very hungry. So did I.
She felt sick and wanted to vomit. And since I was having cramps, so did I.
I almost thought I was pregnant too, somehow, vicariously.
The months went by, and her stomach grew bigger.
Still, every time we met for lunch or coffee or happened to cross paths enroute to somewhere else, the conversation would centre around the same old girlish concerns. Putting on weight, having stretch marks, overeating...perhaps there is only so much you can talk to a single 26-year-old who has neither experienced marriage nor pregnancy. While pregnancy seemed to me so much nobler than all those narcissistic concerns, she seemed almost determined to make it only a temporary pause to her gym and shopping routines.
Today, she gave birth. Two weeks ago, she had had a false alarm that got me all excited, and it was the same today during the real thing. From the time I got the first “In labour” message at 5.25 am, I couldn’t keep still, couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t resist running to my phone to check on it throughout the day.
My mind has been going back to the day when I first saw her. I thought she looked like an air stewardess then; I told my friend that my new colleague was really pretty. We exchanged polite nods, I think, and remained at that same cordial distance until about 2 years later, when I got used to her habits and she to my quirks. Then at some point, we were close enough to talk about God, a topic close to both our hearts. I think it probably happened over our once-a-week gym sessions. She was about to be married by then. Young, I thought.
She talked about her renovation plans for months on the bus rides to and from the gym, and then the photo shoot experience and the printing of the cards, and The Gown. They had a lovely church wedding that I missed because I was away on an escapist holiday to Taiwan, possibly the only one of the 12 weddings I really regretted missing that year. The wedding album commentary itself, however, continued for the next two weeks at her table, which was next to mine. After listening to it ad nauseum, I think I can still give a decent commentary now if I had it in front of me.
True, through her eyes and her sms-es at ungodly hours on festive occasions, I caught a glimpse of the not-so-rosy side of her seemingly-perfect life, but the fact that I was even awake at strange hours on Christmas morning doesn’t say much about me either. The bright side of my life is that I can spend (and have been spending) much of my leisure and salary shopping or reading or holed up in a private psychological bubble thinking about an assignment for days on end, without worrying about the practical needs of spouse or child or whatnot.
To whitewash everything and give either singlehood or marriage life a blanket approval is just not possible. It never was, and never will be.
And while there are times like these, when I wonder how long I will vicariously live the lives of the married and the parented, there are others when I hug my shopping bag in near delirium and point a snooty nose at a screaming brat in the middle of a shopping centre, or gaze with heartfelt pity at the sight of an emaciated mother trailing after the stroller and her husband while lugging several bags of milk bottles and other random items of motherhood.
In the last 3 days, one close friend got engaged while another became a mother. In two weeks’ time, another one is going to be a wife.
The taking on of these new roles at 27 is perhaps an accepted passage of womanhood, and while “compulsive shopper”, “the attempting to be ambidextrous one”, “new tea drinker” and "vicarious life-er" don’t have quite the noble ring to it, I guess they’ll do, for now, at least.
One thing I know that'll really cut it, though, and always has is "child of God."
Yeah. That rocks.
After the company function we decided to take a slow walk to Parkway. The weather was perfect, with sunset hues painting a pastel background to the old condominiums that dotted the Amber Road area. Our voices were muted, excited girlish tones.
“What is it like?” that was me, barely 7 hours from touching down from London after a whirlwind Europe trip. Part of my mind was in a half-jet-lagged fog, while the other was spinning at the idea of a friend my age with a child inside of her. It’s like a whole new world, I summed it up when she too, still stunned at being two weeks pregnant, had only words of surprise, shock and a general sense of awe at what was slowly going to take over her gym rat’s body.
Motherhood!
A month went by, then two.
She got very hungry. So did I.
She felt sick and wanted to vomit. And since I was having cramps, so did I.
I almost thought I was pregnant too, somehow, vicariously.
The months went by, and her stomach grew bigger.
Still, every time we met for lunch or coffee or happened to cross paths enroute to somewhere else, the conversation would centre around the same old girlish concerns. Putting on weight, having stretch marks, overeating...perhaps there is only so much you can talk to a single 26-year-old who has neither experienced marriage nor pregnancy. While pregnancy seemed to me so much nobler than all those narcissistic concerns, she seemed almost determined to make it only a temporary pause to her gym and shopping routines.
Today, she gave birth. Two weeks ago, she had had a false alarm that got me all excited, and it was the same today during the real thing. From the time I got the first “In labour” message at 5.25 am, I couldn’t keep still, couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t resist running to my phone to check on it throughout the day.
My mind has been going back to the day when I first saw her. I thought she looked like an air stewardess then; I told my friend that my new colleague was really pretty. We exchanged polite nods, I think, and remained at that same cordial distance until about 2 years later, when I got used to her habits and she to my quirks. Then at some point, we were close enough to talk about God, a topic close to both our hearts. I think it probably happened over our once-a-week gym sessions. She was about to be married by then. Young, I thought.
She talked about her renovation plans for months on the bus rides to and from the gym, and then the photo shoot experience and the printing of the cards, and The Gown. They had a lovely church wedding that I missed because I was away on an escapist holiday to Taiwan, possibly the only one of the 12 weddings I really regretted missing that year. The wedding album commentary itself, however, continued for the next two weeks at her table, which was next to mine. After listening to it ad nauseum, I think I can still give a decent commentary now if I had it in front of me.
True, through her eyes and her sms-es at ungodly hours on festive occasions, I caught a glimpse of the not-so-rosy side of her seemingly-perfect life, but the fact that I was even awake at strange hours on Christmas morning doesn’t say much about me either. The bright side of my life is that I can spend (and have been spending) much of my leisure and salary shopping or reading or holed up in a private psychological bubble thinking about an assignment for days on end, without worrying about the practical needs of spouse or child or whatnot.
To whitewash everything and give either singlehood or marriage life a blanket approval is just not possible. It never was, and never will be.
And while there are times like these, when I wonder how long I will vicariously live the lives of the married and the parented, there are others when I hug my shopping bag in near delirium and point a snooty nose at a screaming brat in the middle of a shopping centre, or gaze with heartfelt pity at the sight of an emaciated mother trailing after the stroller and her husband while lugging several bags of milk bottles and other random items of motherhood.
In the last 3 days, one close friend got engaged while another became a mother. In two weeks’ time, another one is going to be a wife.
The taking on of these new roles at 27 is perhaps an accepted passage of womanhood, and while “compulsive shopper”, “the attempting to be ambidextrous one”, “new tea drinker” and "vicarious life-er" don’t have quite the noble ring to it, I guess they’ll do, for now, at least.
One thing I know that'll really cut it, though, and always has is "child of God."
Yeah. That rocks.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
photos galore
Ha!!! So cute!
Check out my baby!
Happy being in her mercedes. :)
Mummy and Hannah at Gelare.
Daddy and Hannah at Gelare.
Taken at Seah Street Deli on Mother's Day:)
My Favourite dress. Made in Spain! Doesn't she look like a princess?
That's my cure for her rashes!!! Cotton wool wet with diamond water! lol... (aka SKII)
I love taking her close-up pics.
That's how cute she looks when she is fully fed and sound asleep.
Hannah wide awake! Wearing a 9mth old top!
Hannah was so sleepy when we were at marche. Daddy carried her and she dozed off abeit that awkward position.
BAD HAIR DAY!!!!
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