Sharing

Elle is making progress in sharing and giving. At first, she keeps teasing by handing out her food to us as if wanting to share her goodies with us. At the moment our mouth approaches her food, she pulls her hand back and slowly put her food into her big "O" shaped mouth. The same trick over and over again. What a baby teaser! Now, she's all mama and dada a bite and baby a bite. Very sweet.

It's really funny to see how she imitates us. When we shake our head and utter a bunch of gibberish, she'll repeat the same after us. Her baby cuteness version simply makes a good belly laugh workout. It's equally funny when seeing her cries for ridiculous reason. Carrying her between the crib and the door seems to stir an extreme emotional reaction in her. When we carry her near the crib, she'll start "Wa-wa Wa-wa". When we step to the door, her crying awkwardly turns into giggling and she's jumping happily in our arm. We did this like 6 times straight yesterday. The crying and laughing switch is drop dead funny.

Baby Swing

Milestone

Today Elle takes a big leap towards standing all by herself without holding onto anything. Aside from standing on her own, we're in awe of seeing her jumping and landing on her feet on the bed. Although she only succeeds once and the rests have her bum landed first, we're pretty impressed by her stuns.

Talking about today's shopping experience, oh mine, this young lady keeps pointing her finger to almost everything in the store and wanna mama to get them for her. Later on, she decides she wants to do it by herself that she's standing up in the grocery cart!

Mouthy baby

We're so physced of spotting the emergence of her lower front teeth, two wee white pearls on top of her gum line this morning. This explains the fever and the fussiness she had gone through for the past week.

A baby blooper happened last night while we were lounging on the couch watching the telly. She planted her mouth on my big toe, all sloppy and drooly. It's hilarious to see the smirk on her face when she got caught for her 2nd big-toe-nimble attempt. That's one sneaky baby!

Crazy over banana!

Overnight snowfall

The thing goes through her little mind always wonders me. In a second she's all about mama and then all of a sudden her mind just wanders off. You can tell from her face expression that she just reminds of something that she needs to do it right away. She simply takes off and crawls away to attend to her urgent task, leaving mama alone in her room.

This evening, her wandering mind again interrupted our social time abruptly. Mama followed behind her to see what's she up to. She headed towards our room and climbed up to the giant tin of danish butter cookie placed beside the computer tower. No surprise, that's her favorite thing on the ground in our room. What surprised me was somehow her little fingers managed to flip the cover off and unleash the heavenly bliss inside. It took no time for her to start digging inside the tin, throwing out the cookie papers in search for the goodies. At one moment, her frantically movement all came to a halt. The next thing was seeing her pulling out her hand with a butter cookie with a wondrous expression. Though, she didn't put the cookie into her mouth right away; instead, her the other hand went pulling out another cookie. One bite from each hand at a time, and bang on the tin cover intermittently. She sure knows how to enjoy cookies. Heavenly.

Doctor Visit

Today, we brought Elle back to the doctor office to make sure her ear infection is cleared up. She was in a pretty mood all along until the nurse stepped inside the room to give her a temperature check, followed by the weight-in. Her face turned red immediately and then began to cry out at the top of her lung, shrill and loud. I can now understand what her dada had gone through at her 9 months checkup.

Good news are, her ear infection is gone and tooth is shaping up below the gum line. It has been only 2 weeks since we have followed the doctor's advice to give her tap water. The fluoride in the tap water will help baby teeth growing. We'll see how long the tooth will be breaking through the gum line.

Finally, sign of tooth. Phew.

Bub in lambswool

I was pushing Elle in her stroller around after lounging in B&N for a while. Until I found people's amuse expression on their face when they looked at my little bub inside the stroller, I realized the last time I peeped on her to check how she was doing was quite a while ago. At a quick glance of her, all I saw was a hat! Her head was falling forward into 45 degree angle and buried inside her bundle. I pulled her head up and she's all drooly and soundly slept. I almost burst into laughter when seeing her head falling forward again the second I took my hand off. Duh! Unmindful mom should have reclined the seat to sleeping position.

Grumpy baby

Elle's going back to daycare this morning. Fever gone, but crankiness remains. Soothing doesn't help much, whereas diversion seems to work for a short period. Oh, the frustration of the more we try to calm her down, the more she pushes us away, screaming and twisting her body like a snake in our arms! We have never seen such a quick change in temperament side of her. She'll go from laughing one second to hysterics the next. We know she does not feel well and frustrates for some reasons. It could be a troubled stomach, ear infection, teething, a combination of all of the above or who knows what! It's truly a guessing game now.

The phobia of feeding her comes back to us again. Feeding involves lots of arm-wrestling, coaxing, and diversion. It's real hard for us to let go when she doesn't feel like eating at all, for the whole day. We try to hang in there, lighten up a bit and try not let her erratic behavior drive us over the edges.

Sleepless night

Yesterday afternoon, Hin had to pick up Elle early from the daycare as she ran a fever of 100.9°F. We speculate the teething has something to do with the fever since she has been gawning on her hands and drooling a whole lot insanely lately. Last night, she was awaken easily and kept tossing and turning on bed when she was asleep. Aside from her fever spiked to 103°F past midnight, she was hardly consolable during the longest stretch of awake time between 2:30 am and 5:00 am. It's a relief that her fever drops to 99°F in the morning. Yet, no appetite for food.

Hopefully, we have a better night today.

Couch potato

Day out

The last time we saw Michelle was six months ago so I decided to bring Elle to visit her. Unexpectedly, a big sign saying: "Sorry, We're temporarily closed due to kitchen renovation" greated us when we stopped at the restaurant Michelle's parent owns. What a bummer!

I haven't been around downtown since our office moved to portage. To give my sore arms a break, I carried the 20-pounder to the market cafe I used to hang out for lunch. It was quiet during the weekend. I just let Elle sitting on the table flipping her arms and stretching out. After a short recharge, we went to Target shopping. It was fun pushing Elle around inside the cart. There're times that she swayed to the side when I made a big turnaround. Swell!

Rubber Duck

The era of bald head had become a history. It's obvious that Elle's hair has grown so much longer now, comparing to the spiky hair bath picture taken at 4 months old, and this one taken right after having her hair shaved.

Elle is having lots of fun in the tub with her new friend, rubber duck. Her dada bought her the ducky when they were out for a shopping trip yesterday.

Isn't it a horrifying moment when a baby makes a poopy face and moans with those signature poopy noises during bath time? It's happening to me this evening. There's nothing much I could do but to watch her pooping inside the tub. After she's done, I put her into the big tub to give her a quick rinse. She cried frantically, grasped on my arms and didn't want to let go. I wonder why she has such a phobia of being in the big tub. She'll outgrow her baby blue tub someday. We need to figure out some ways to trick her bathing inside the big tub.

My Valentine

9 months checkup

I was not there for Elle's 9 months checkup this morning. According to her dada, Elle was one cry baby, clutching on him so tightly as if holding on for dear life. She was weeping and crying so hard that her whole body was trembling. I was surprise for such a big drama going on as there're no needles involved in this visit. Anyhow, her ear infection is coming back again, which means, more antibiotic. The doctor wanted us to come back in two weeks to check if it clears up. It's sort of funny that her dada answered "Yes" to the doctor's baby proofing question. To him, baby proofing's all come down to covering all unused electrical outlet, which was already done before Elle was born.

Elle weights 20.4 pounds and 27.75 inches in length, falls within 75 percentile and 50 percentile respectively. A wee 3/4 inches increase in height over 3 months.

CNY Day 4

We got the couplets in the mail yesterday. My sister is learning Chinese calligraphy and she asked her teacher to write us a pair of Chinese New Year couplets. It's wonderful to add a splash of red and black in our living room for a festive CNY celebration.

This is Elle's party outfit for steamboat dinner at CK & Su-Ren's house tonight. Surprisingly, she was happy in the arms of everyone at the dinner, not just mama and dada. She's so greedy when it comes down to food. She yelled and pulled our hands when we acted a little bit slow on stuffing her mouth with food. She's one 9-months old steamboat baby, savouring fish ball and tofu.

CNY Day 3

CAGK (The Chinese Association of Greater Kalamazoo) is celebrating Chinese New Year with a music and dance event this evening. We are doubtful that Elle will sit through the 2 hours show. Instead, I brought Elle to watch their rehearsal in the morning. It's pretty amazing to see such a huge Chinese community gathered at the auditorium.

CNY Day 2

It's amazing how fast a baby can pick up a trick. While we were changing her diaper this evening, her dada stared at her and waged his tongue making "la-la-la-la" sounds, trying to distract her from twisting her body and rolling over. Since then, she starts wagging her tongue and "la-la-la-la" herself. So darn cute!

2008: Year of Rat

Elle would like to spread the joys of Chinese New Year to y'all and wish y'all have a wonderful year ahead! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Chinese lunar new year

A 9-months-old is all ready for the chinese goodies I baked up frenzily yesterday. Her dada just couldn't resist giving her a few bites of each. First, siew pao, then peanut cookie, followed by almond sugi cookie. Elle took all in her mouth, savouring them like the best treats ever.

To carry on some of the tradtions of Chinese New Year, we brought Elle out shopping for some new clothes. We picked out a dress for her to wear tonight since we were joining Jessie and her family for lunar dinner. Jessie's two kids were so thrilled to see the baby. Elle sat in her booster seat during the dinner. At first, she was eating the whole-grained bread. After a few minutes, she started screaming for some real food, yeap, the food we were eating. She kept opening her mouth, patting our arms, wanting more of those delicious glutinous rice. Guess what, even bro Tutu got to feed her. How sweet of a boy doing that!

Elle was super hyper throughout the night. We knew she was already overtired as she was only taking an hour of nap during the day. But with all the excitements of new place, people and noises, she just couldn't stop playing. When she began acting cranky and fussy, we knew we got to leave the party. Less than a minute after putting her into the carseat, she conked out. How predictable!

It was a fun night. Great food and great companies.