Phew, just came out of a pretty activity-packed weekend. I shan’t bore you with all the details, but I think it’s worth mentioning that one of the activities included a long over-due one-on-one date with hubs on Sunday afternoon.
Thanks to a couple from church who agreed to help babysit Nathan, we were able to have three precious whole hours alone in the afternoon to ourselves which we decided to dedicate to watching this…
So following the introduction of whole fruits using my DIY mesh feeders, I picked up one of those commercial mesh feeders during one of our recent shopping trips.
Nathan has taken to it pretty well, though I think he sometimes gets a little confused on whether it’s meant as a way to eat food or a toy to play with. Sometimes after a few chomps or sucks, he turns it around and starts gnawing at the plastic bits instead or just bangs it on the table or throws it around to see what happens, which then creates more messes.
Do you let your baby watch TV? A friend had posted this question on Facebook some time back and generated varying responses. Some folks said totally fine (but not too much of course) while a few others listed reference to articles explaining how TV would kill all babies’ brain cells and stunt their mental development.
As for me, I don’t plonk Nathan in front of the TV deliberately as a way to occupy him all day long. But I admit I have shown him the occasional YouTube clip to distract him if he’s having a fussy moment and just because I like to share stuff I enjoy with him… namely Veggietales!
After 35 years in government education service, my mum has finally retired. It just so happened that the first day of her retirement was also her birthday. So naturally I wanted to do something special for her.
As I couldn’t be there on the day itself I did the next best thing, I decided to send something really special to her. After trawling through myriads of online stores and websites offering the usual delivery of flowers, chocolates and teddy bears. I was suddenly struck by an idea to send her something yummy, like a cake or dessert...
Stumbled across another genius idea.
It started with introducing Nathan to whole pieces of soft pear. He absolutely loved them and was eager to feed himself which I was happy to let him do. The only thing I didn’t like was the mess it created as Nathan squished them and dropped little pieces all over himself, his chair and the floor.
I’ve seen those mesh feeders for babies which would have been perfect for containing the mess. They say that “necessity is the mother of invention” so as I didn’t have one of those little gadgets, I improvised.
7 months and 3 weeks. That’s how long since we began our parenting journey and since Nathan came into our lives.
A lot has been going since my last Nathan update. he is thoroughly enjoying his solids, even to the point that I was worried that he was overeating. But I only feed him healthy food anyway like fruit, veges, rice cereal and oatmeal porridge.
At this stage, he’s been eating a cup of rice cereal mixed with either pureed fruit or vege three times a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner). His favourites include apple, pear, pumpkin, sweet potato and carrots.
Just this weekend, I decided to introduce a number of new things to his menu - chicken, yoghurt and rusks.
I recently updated the ` page on my Serenely Made blog to give a bit more background on where on earth this whole sewing thing came from. No I did not just pull it out of a hat, there is a story.
Anyway while I was writing that About page, I started recalling my high school days which was partially where I picked up some of my sewing. Those of you from Malaysia would remember this one subject called Kemahiran Hidup or Living Skills and all the fun stuff we got to do as part of it.
The class was divided into two streams - a home economics version which was deemed to be the girly stream, and a sort of boy-version comprising of woodwork, electrical wiring, and plumbing type stuff.
I believe in most co-ed schools, girls were naturally streamed into home economics and boys into the hardware-store stuff. However as I went to an all girls school it was a bit trickier to manage. So our teacher found an easy way out...
Lovely pressie from Aunty Audrey…
When I first saw the picture, it took a moment for it to dawn on me. Then I smiled knowingly.
Brontosaur and Giraffe kindred spirits. Get it?
I recently found out someone I knew suffered a miscarriage. I really felt for her because I knew. I understood the bittersweetness of the experience. I understood that it is a loss that from the outside seems a small and fleeting thing, but in actual fact is much bigger on the inside than it may appear.
I had a quick glance at a few previous posts on my own experience. I shook my head over how long-winded many of them were. I guess at that time I was using this space to soak up all my bleeding thoughts.
As of today, it would be exactly three years and three days since my August 8th experience. I have not forgotten. But as the scars of my grief healed, so too had the pain.
Pain.
At that time it seemed to be the only thing left to hold onto after my butterfly had gone. Without it, the emptiness seemed too unbearable.
Most people do not wish to remember suffering. My concern is not to forget it. It is not merciful to forget; to obliterate the live sore of remembrance with creeping, bloodless scar tissue. For me always the unabated rawness, the fresh profitable spur of pain. But alas, in vain I wish, for I too shall suffer healing.
- Han Suyin, A Many Splendoured Thing
Melodramatic words from Han Suyin. But I understood completely. Nevertheless, like everyone in this world, I too had to undergo the suffering of healing.
But it passed and now I am on the other side of healing. And as God promised, my joy came with the morning.
So whether you are in suffering, or healing, or hoping, or waiting. It will come to pass as all things do.
I haven'’t blogged about cloth nappies in a long while. But rest assured I’m still crazy about them and love every single liberating thing about them. Liberating penny-wise, baby-health-wise, environmentally-friendly-wise and trendy-wise!
I’ve been going strong with cloth full time during the day, whether at home or out and about. I use mainly muslin flats, prefolds and fitteds at home, and for going out switch to my trusty all-in-ones or snap-in-ones for convenience and cuteness.
So you could say I was 100% on cloth. However I confess that we were not quite 100% as we still had not gone cloth at night. I was more focused on ensuring we had the sleeping-through-the-night down pat and was worried that having cloth last for 10-12 hours overnight was a bit too much to ask.
Well, that was the case until just 2 months ago. I was reorganising Nathan’s closet, archiving clothes he had grown out from and bringing out the bigger ones when I came across the Jam Tots Berry Plush nappies which came as part of the stash I had gotten through Gumtree.
These are really good nappies. Each set has a PUL waterproof cover with a plush minky finish, and includes a snap-in insert made from hemp. I had two sets of these plus a spare insert.
However at the time I bought them, they were just too large for my tiny baby back then. So I set them aside until Nathan was much bigger. Well time passed and Nathan of course did grow what with all the milk and solids he was chomping down every day.
So I tried the nappies on him and they fitted him just nicely. Well I did have to use the smallest snap setting but hey, that’s what they’re there for, right?
Then I remembered how super-absorbent hemp is. It’s four times as absorbent compared to cotton plus it also as anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. And now that he can fit into these nappies, perhaps it was time to consider going cloth at night as well.
So we took the plunge. One night, instead of laying out a disposable at bath time, I laid out a Berry Plus one. After his bath and milk, we bundled him down for the night as usual. We went to bed with out fingers crossed. Lo and behold, when my alarm rang at 7.00am the next morning I realised that we made it! We successfully cloth diapered Nathan through the night.
So now we can pretty much cut down our disposable purchases down to nil. However we still keep one spare pack of ‘sposies just in case. Especially if we run into a long stretch of rainy days during this winter season and the inserts don’t dry in time.
But come sunny weather, I think it’s safe to say that we can finally go 100% on cloth!
Lately I’ve been thinking of an favourite dish from my childhood. My mother calls it mee tomato and as far as I know, I’ve never tasted it anywhere else apart from my mum’s kitchen and this house we visited once for a raya open house. I don’t know anyone else outside my mum’s circle who’s heard of this dish.
My mum had been doing some back-to-back travelling for work so I was unable to get hold of her to ask for the recipe. I had tried googling the recipe, but could never find anything that resembled the dish I speak of.
But after some weeks, I finally had the recipe scribbled down…
I would liken it to a sort of mee rebus style dish. Basically it consists of yellow noodles and other various assortment of ingredients and condiments…
And the magic ingredient that brings it all together is the tomato gravy
The recipe I jotted down was all agak-agak or estimation. So I used a lot of trial and error to scale the recipe down to an amount for just the two of us. Basically it consists of shallots, garlic, dried chillies, chicken stock, canned tomatoes and uses mash potatoes to ‘thicken’ it up to a gravy-like texture.
I wish my mum was here to have a taste so she can tell me if I got it right. But it still tasted good. It was altogether something complete new to hubby, but he liked it too.
When I cook this again, I’ll take note of the exact measurements and quantities to produce a clearer recipe for record.
Once I perfect this dish, I shall add to my list of signature dishes along with my sayur lodeh and lontong.
My poor baby has been down with a cold this week. Well, I’m not sure if “down” is the word. He has a cough and the sniffles, but doesn’t appear to be bothered by it very much in general.
The first night it started, he woke early in the morning around five-ish in the morning coughing. I think he tried to cough out the phlegm and settle back to sleep. But after an extended coughing spell, there was definitely no going back to sleep.
Hubs had been checking on him and eventually brought him to our room so I could give him a drink. He must have been pretty tired (as were we) and fell asleep between us.
Sorry peeps, no time for a proper update today. All the action is happening elsewhere.
So instead I shall leave you with this ingenious tip…
A clever way to organise ribbons using a jar.
