Weaning off the Pacifier : Day 1 + 2 + 3

DN's absolute, most favourite thing in the whole world is his nyeh-nyeh. Believe it or not, he never graduated from the Pigeon Step 2 pacifier for 9 month olds because the Step 3 one is of a dramatically different shape compared to the Step 2 one and he refused to have it in his mouth. So yes, up until yesterday, my 3-year old toddler was sucking a pacifier for 9 month old BABIES.

We've thought about weaning DN off the pacifier since he was a year old. Obviously, for 2 years after that, we did squat because we were too chicken. And the task just got more and more difficult as DN got more and more attached to his nyeh-nyeh. We might as well have started compiling a wedding guest list for the happy couple. -__- But I'm happy to announce that there will be NO wedding and NO happy couple! There will instead be a very disgruntled toddler, extremely unhappy with his parents and whose main goal is to turn all their hair white in a week.

He's not doing a very good job with that. Our hair's not turning white. It's falling OUT!

The days are actually alright. We've already weaned him off his nyeh-nyeh during the day. It's weaning him off sucking it in the car and at night that we needed to work on. So far, getting him to go without his nyeh-nyeh in the car has been pretty easy. We just keep him really occupied in the car - talk to him, sing with him, let him watch videos on the iPhone...

The nights are a totally different story. That's when our hair starts falling out in clumps. (Some of it is pulled out.)

Night 1 : DN wakes up at 1am WAILING for his nyeh-nyeh. Totally inconsolable for an hour. Tells PF between sobs and wails, "Papa, I don't want to be like this!" *piang piang piang* (sound of PF's heart breaking) Finally calms down when I bring him downstairs with me to watch me pack the milk I'd just pumped. Continues to wake up every 2 hours after that, wailing every time.

Night 2 : DN wakes up wailing again. Only asks for his nyeh-nyeh a couple of times and then gives up. Then starts asking for things that he knows we cannot give (just so he can kick up a bigger fuss I believe). Asks to eat "rice and fish" and then "rice and meat". Wakes up 2 more times (wailing) after that.

Night 3 : The wailing continues. Wakes up at 12am and his crying wakes DS up. (ARRRRGH!) It's not "rice and fish" today, but "I want to go out and buy bananas! Now!". Wakes up again at 3am. At 6.30am, DS wakes up for a feed. PF and I look at the sleeping DN and breathe a sigh of relief AND start counting our chickens before they're hatched. PF then (foolishly) brushes his head and that sets him off again.

The funny thing is, DN has been able to fall asleep quite easily without his nyeh-nyeh every night since the weaning started. What he can't do is soothe himself back to sleep when he rouses from those periods of deep sleep.

It's Day 4 and I feel the same as DN on Day 1 - "I don't want to be like this!"

Can't believe I'm a mother of TWO

If you had told me 17 years ago (that's when I first met PF) that I would be married to PF and we'd have 2 children, I would have been terribly upset because then, I really wanted to marry Harrison Ford. Oh well. PF ain't too bad I suppose. Ha! He's going to kill me!

So yup, fast forward 17 years and now we have two kids! Two kids! Two! I am officially a "mother of TWO"! Gosh, it makes me sound so grown-up. And responsible. And... old. I guess I'm still in denial about my age. But honestly, I really don't feel like I'm already 25 years old.

(Haha, got you! Bet you started mentally subtracting 17 from 25! I'm WAY over 25.)

Anyway, life really changes once you have kids huh? Gone are the marathon shopping trips, 2-hour gym sessions, holidays to places that might give you diarrhoea and/or rabies and parking 10 minutes away from the shopping centre just because there's free parking there after 5pm. Our lives now involve lots of rushed shopping trips to kid-friendly malls, holidays where we do research on where the nearest hospitals are and of course, actually parking IN shopping centres in Orchard Road.

Sometimes I miss those child-free days, but most times I'm loving it. Yup yup. Even though my body has surrendered to gravity and my belly gets jiggy with it (against my wishes) when I'm in a moving vehicle, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love these two little munchkins so much! When DN was first plonked into my arms after birth, I felt this HUGE rush of love come flooding in even though he looked like a wet rat. Now, when DS is quietly kicking and cooing away on her playmat, I feel like I'm going to explode with joy. I used to make fun of people who wrote about this kind of mushy crap. I'm now one of them! Ack.

But honestly, I will step in front of a moving bus for these two.

I love this photo.

Caught DN and DS staring at each other on the playmat one morning.

Almost gave myself an aneurism running for the camera.

8 weeks and counting...

At exactly this time 8 weeks ago, I had just finished pushing my baby out and was presented with a slippery little thing that looked more worm-like than human. Sorry DS, mummy loves you, but it's true. You looked like a puffy worm! Well, that puffy worm is now 8 weeks old and, I'm happy to report, does not look like the hungry caterpillar anymore. (Although she still wriggles like one.)

This time round, I tossed my Gina Ford book aside and just let my baby set the pace, instead of some white English lady I'd never met before. When I was pregnant with DN, someone told me about Gina Ford and how she was a God in the baby-rearing world, so I bought the book and was quickly converted. I mean, this lady promised that your baby would sleep from 7pm to 7am! Yeah sure I'll have some of that!

But I soon found out that Gina Ford = Chairman Mao. I don't know about her dental habits, but her objectives sounded ideal, her practices made sense, she promised heaven... and it didn't work. Smells Marxist to me!

Okay okay, I'm being a bit harsh and unfair here. I'm sure it worked for tons of babies out there, DN just wasn't one of them. Bugger that! He still wasn't sleeping through the night when he was one and a half. But I think I've paid my dues because recently, DS has been waking up around 1-ish and then again at 5-ish to feed. Which, at 8 weeks, is WAY better than DN at 1 year 2 months. But, knowing my rotten luck, I've probably JUST jinxed that and she's going to want to do the macarena all night tonight.

Hmmm, so what else has DS been up to these past 8 weeks?

Jaundice : By her 1st month party, she was still looking rather unattractively orange. Her PD said it would take up to 2 months to clear because she's on total breastmilk so I had to be patient. Even though I knew that, it was still rather unnerving staring at a carrot in the cot. Thankfully, the yellowness disappeared about a week ago and she's looking like a normal baby now!

Baby Acne : With DN, I had never heard of baby acne so when his cheeks started getting pimply, my computer almost exploded with all that googling. This time, I was the epitome of calmness. It was my mother-in-law who flew into a panic and I had to calm her down. Just call me cucumber already!

Cooing : Okay, this is a first for us. DN was always the strong, silent type. This one? She's a pigeon! In week 5-6 she started cooing in response to what we were saying. So I became a pigeon too! Although we have nothing much in common, I still love talking to her. Coo coo gurgle gurgle...

Growing : The picture below says it all!

From L to R:

What she wore home from the hospital, Her sleepsuit from week 2-5, Her sleepsuit now :)

Say cheese!

Disclaimer : DN did not learn this from us. I repeat, DN did NOT learn this from us.

I thought I'd better put that up there first, lest you think PF and I pose like camwhoring teenage girls named Apple and Prada who shout "Kawai-ne!" at each other in encouragement.

Recently, DN has been brandishing the V-sign whenever we take photographs of him. Very amusing. Sometimes his V-signs look like rabbit ears...

 

... sometimes it looks like he's pressing a pimple...

... sometimes he gets others in on the act...

... sometimes it looks like he's making a bad sign - in New York...

... and London...

... but almost all of the time, his fingers are pressed right next to his temple and, if I may biasedly say, he looks rather cute! 

 Everyone, meet Gucci Ong.

Stop moving already!

Honestly, I don't have that many pictures of DS. It's just so depressing and frustrating taking picture after picture, only to have them all turn out looking like these. In the wise words of LY, "machiam The Ring."

Take one!

Take two!

Take three!

Taking pictures of a constantly vibrating baby was clearly not challenging enough for me, so I decided to up the ante (oh, just a little) and try taking pictures of said vibrating baby AND her 10-poses-a-second brother who by the way also tormented me by vibrating non-stop when he was a baby.

Take one!

Take two!

Take three!

I love challenges.

NOT!

(DS looks lecherous in the last picture. Grrr... I give up!)

It's MY birthday! Not yours!

DN's actual birthday (2 Sept) was also a school day and because it's his SPECIAL day, I insisted on celebrating with him in school even though I was 4 days into confinement. It wasn't easy getting out of the house, trust me. Thank goodness there was not a cloud in the sky. If it were raining, that would be the end of my escapade (or escape?) because the rain here is absolutely lethal for postpartum mothers.

You didn't know?

Uh-huh. Just a drop on your skin and you will MELT, because, as all of us SHOULD know, our rain is different from the rain in other ang moh countries. That's why we have to serve confinement and they don't. You see, our rain contains cyanide, hydrochloric acid, the Nipah virus, sour milk and a flesh-eating bacteria that favours mothers who have just given birth because they are exceptionally weak, 'windy' and thus, tasty.

Betcha didn't know that.

So it didn't rain, I was safe from the rain-borne Nipah virus and wasn't going to morph into a crazy pig. Yay!

Anyway.

We wished DN a happy birthday that morning and in the car on the way to school, he told PF, "It's not Carina's birthday. It's not Daniel's birthday. It's MY birthday today!" After PF told me that, I was glad I was as stubborn as a mule by insisting on going out during confinement.

We had a really simple celebration in DN's school. We brought a dairy-free chocolate cake and some cookies for his classmates. No goodie bags for anyone because that was the school rule. A pretty good one too, I might add. Goodie bags were banned because the children would ask, "Where's my goodie bag?" when parents did NOT provide them.

We got there just before tea time and the teachers had already hung the birthday bunting in the classroom. All we did was take the cake out of the box and pop the candle on. Then DN had his birthday song moment. :)


Here's DN cutting his cake. (Can you see my greasy confinement hair???)


Happy Birthday DN!

Making Mooncakes

DN made mooncakes in school last week. He was SO pleased to bring them home and share them with everyone. Except mei mei because, according to DN, "She has no teeth!" His teacher sent me this picture.

He made red bean paste mooncakes. They were really quite nice!

Hope you had a great evening admiring the moon and the lady (or rabbit?) on it. :)