An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Baby 101

Guess where Hin found these? A gaming forum. These illustrations simply make us chuckle and joke about how many WHAT'S NOT have we been practicing on Elle.

Red

Here's a sneak peek of Elle's outrageous red cny outfit picked out by her daddy from New York. The tiny, silly pony tail just giggles me.

Reaching

Poor froggy! He can no longer escape from Elle's constantly pulling and torturing.

Hair wash day

See! One hand

Baby don't you cry

Listen to Baby don't you cry (a pie song)

When the world is gray and bleak
Baby don't you cry
I will give you every bit of love that's in my heart
I will bake it up into a simple little pie.

Baby don't you cry
Gonna make a pie
Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle
Baby don't be blue
Gonna make for you
Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Gonna be a pie from heaven above
Gonna be filled with strawberry love
Baby don't you cry
Gonna make a pie
And hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

Baby here's the sun
Baby here's the sky
Baby I'm your light and I'm your shelter
Baby you are mine
I could freeze the time
Keep you in my kitchen with me forever
Gonna be a pie from heaven above
Gonna be filled with strawberry love
Baby don't you cry
Gonna make a pie
And hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

Gonna bake a pie from heaven above
Gonna be filled with butterscotch love
Gonna bake a pie from heaven above
Gonna be filled with banana creme love

Baby don't you cry
Gonna bake a pie
Hold you forever
Hold you forever
And hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

I love brocolli

We're having problem of making Elle eat and drink since she has been sicked. We have not introduced juice to her yet so it seems to be a good idea to give her some apple juice to keep her well-hydrated. To our surprise, she doesn't like it at all. She makes a face that simply intepreting as "Yuck, it tastes horrible" and keeps pushing the bottle away. Since she loses apetite to all the foods we always give her, we need to brainstorm some new food that will spark her interest. Brocolli is a hit right on. She totally loves it!

Sleeping bug

Elle practically slept in her daddy arm for the past two days during the day. At night, we co-sleep with her in our room. She is tired all day long and falls right back to sleep after awake for a little while.

After shock

We're exhausted, with tiny seed of after-shock still lingers.

The incident happened around midnight when I was going to wake Elle up for feeding. I found her sleeping soundly on her tummy with the blanket underneath her. At a closer look, there're two big droplets of blood-like stains spattered on her blanket. Immediately, the parent panic button began to flash. The first thing came across my mind was to check her mouth, with the worst thought of she could have coughed up blood. I was relieved when seeing no blood around her mouth, but then began to wonder where could they come from. When I turned around her and picked her up from the crib, I was horrified to see her nose was covered with blood, lots of them. The thoughts of her being attacked by fever + cough + flu bug, together with this bloody nose-bleeding image just freaked us out. We couldn't see if she's still bleeding since her nostrils were all clotted with dark red blood. These bloody crusts were just too impossible stubborn to be wiped off. To make it worse, I had her head bang to the wall when I carried her around to get ready to the emergency room.

We spent 2 hours in the ER and had been assured that there's no biggie with the nose bleeding due to the inflammation of the inside of the nose, which is very common during winter time especially when the baby is having flu. The doctor also had her lung checked out to make sure there's no risk of pneumonia. She has no ear infections and the fever's going down, so we're good to go. We're thankful for a peace of mind. On the other hand, we'll keep an eye on the medical bill when it's arrived. It may sound silly to bring a baby to ER because of nose-bleeding. The nurse told us that there're a lot of first-time parent like us do the same.

Don't hit the panic button is easier said than done in time of crisis.

Sick like a dog

Cough, flu and fever come back all at once with a vengeance just like that. Elle is sick. On top of her rising temperature worries us so much, hearing her cough and sneeze squeezes our hearts. She is tired all day long and loses her appetite for food and fluid. We have a rough night. The cough keeps her awake almost every hour and then she falls right back to sleep after cuddling.

Grow me a rainbow!

Self feed

Picture this: We're having dinner and Elle's sitting in her booster seat screaming and growling, wanting to have bites of whatever we're eating.

Her daddy happened to have the spur-of-the-moment idea of putting a few spoonfuls of rice on her tray. She stopped whining immediately and turned her focus to the food on her tray with a delighted face. She's so into this new experience: Picking them up and stuffing them into her mouth. She had a swell time of feeding herself.

Tonight, while we were all sitting on the floor playing together, Elle suddenly turned around from us and moved her little butt towards the door. She left us held in suspense, wondering what's she up to. She looked very determined to go somewhere else from her behind. Right by at the door, she stopped, picked up something, turned around and sat on the floor, with a door-stopper in her mouth. Oh mine! We bow to the great power held in a door stopper!

Hands up, girls!

It's time for laundry again. We ran out of clothes for Elle so I picked this 12-mos red shirt from the next-size-up clothes pile for emergency situation like this. I can't believe that it's already a tight fit for Elle, barely covers her belly. I think it'll be retired after a few more runs.

I love this picture of her, lift up her hands and cheer like the 3 little girls on her shirt.

Bedtime

Since the long Christmas break, Elle's bedtime routine had become a long hauling hours of playtime on our big bed before falling asleep. Bedtime always ending up past midnight. It's funny that no matter how sleepy or tired she is, the moment we put her down on our big bed, her eyes spark up instantly and then she's in the roll of having fun. It makes me feel like she pretends to be sleepy so to get in her way to her favorite playground. We let her wear herself off on our big bed and then carry her back to the crib when she starts dozing off. A lot of times that we're already so beat and fell asleep, whereas she's still in full swing of twirling her body around, standing against the wall, banging and licking it, and hands all over our faces.

We put a stop to this restless nighty-nite-time the night she fell off to the floor, for the third time, by pushing against the pillow fort we built around the bed. Third time's a charm, eh? She was grounded by her daddy in her cage. She wailed and screamed, and no a soul dared to bail her out.

So, her daddy's new approach becomes rocking her to sleep. He is a real rocker. I can't do better than him simply because I don't have much patience and I afraid she'll hook up with rocking. We gotta endure little hands brushing all over our face, hand pulling our mouth and nose, fingers poking into our mouth, hair playing, chest scratching and her other little silly habits, just to get her to close her eyes. Just because we are the only fun she can have while she's in our arms. It's not an easy task. So, I cheat, for the sanity of both of us. I put her down in her crib right after I calm her down. The next 20 minutes is all screaming, kicking, pulling up and sitting down, for a bad day. On a good day, she goes into her dreamland after a few thumb-sucking. On a mischievous day, she tries to pull every possible things on top of the dresser next to the crib and makes as much destruction as possible within her reach. The bright yellow warning labels on the baby monitor's power cord is her fave.

Last night was a disaster. She was calm when I put her into the crib. It's a good sign that no noise coming out from her room for 10 minutes. Then, there's a bit of grunting and groaning. I ignored them, but kept my ear to the ground. Suddenly, an unusual growling noise spiked up from the room. I rushed into the room and saw her drenched in her own runny poop and massive of poops all over the crib. I was like standing at the scene of a crime, except there's no blood but plenty of poops, and the smell was horrible. That's the first time I ever heard Elle made such a traumatic, trembling noises. She looked like she was in a tremendous shock that she yelled her chest out. A freak-out baby covered with poop and the poopy crib almost collapsed my world. Somehow, I gathered strength from out of nowhere and pulled myself together to deal with this shit. It's tough and I'm glad when it's over.

I can't believe I gotta deal with so many poops fears factor in this new year.

Baby BumbleBee

Yay! Elle is officially a baby BumbleBee now! She's graduating from the Pooh room and moving into the BumbleBee room today.

8 months old

Dear Elle,

You're in such a mellow mood today, just like the foggy weather we have outside. A little sunshine peeps through when we cheer you up, but quickly you hide behind the mellow mists again.

7th month has been an insane and interesting month. We're entering a whole new era, starting off with the humping, rocking n' rolling, sitting up, scooting backward, pulling up, and then crawling forward.

Moving around on your fours has got you into troubles, big ones. You dropped off the bed, 3 times, including the one happened tonight. Mama's heart is pounding everytime I hear the thumps. We're thankful that you're not hurt. On the other hand, we'd like to spank your bottom for your spunky energy.

Mama enjoys watching you crawl. You always take your own little sweet time on crawling. Nothing hurries you. You come to a halt by the wee things that catch your attention on the route. You stop, touch it, and then move on. In between, you take many little breaks, get yourself into sitting position, flapping your arms and shrilling in joys, and then get back on all fours again. You're everywhere now and we keep pulling your away from the places intrigue you the most: the yucky poopy diaper can, the power cords, stacks of magazines, and TV cabinet.

You're such a mouthy baby yourself. You furrow your brows when something tastes funny. But, it never keeps you from putting everything into your mouth. Licking the wall is one pet peeve of yours that makes us scratching our head and rubbing our chin wondering what's so tasty about it. Wait till you get a lick of the heavenly chocolate, you'll laugh about how silly you were thinking wall is a delish.

Happy 8th months old, baby! How we wish we could hold you back from growing up so fast!

Love,
Mama

Opps! She did it again!

Picking up Elle at daycare this evening, the lady greeted me with "We have an issue with Elle today" in a cautious, mellow tone. Thousands of question marks just flashing ballistically in my mind.

What could it be? She bit another baby for revenge? She cried colicky all day long and drove everyone nuts? She swept her food to the face of the person feeding her? Would she be expelled from the daycare? What could it be?

All these speculations just kept popping up until the lady eventually cleared up the suspension saying, that was, Elle rolled over during diaper changing and got her socks, her clothes, and herself smothered with yucky poop. Well, she did it again! A poopy bag came home with us today.

2008

We woke up to 3 inches of snow this morning, and more snow's on the way. The first day of 2008 started off with a beautiful snow, all white and fluffy.

Today, we had the shear horror of poop incident while I was changing her poopy diaper. She swung her feet into the pool of poop. Immediately after making smears of poop all over the place, she's in the action of rolling over. Holy Moly! Without a second to spare, I just scooped her up and rushed her to the sink, let the water running down this poopy baby.