Noelia's Meltdown time

It's been several days after she had the last vaccinations, she refuses to eat any veggies. These days lunch is the most frustrating time for me, she simply shut her lips from any meal I offered. I usually cooked the variety of veggies and she gobbled it up real quick. From 6 months of age and now, 9 months she's been enjoying 3 meals a day.

Now she loves eating a strip of bread on her own. I choose bread without sugar and eggs, gotta be wholemeal bread not white. At the beginning, I offered the bread for finger foods but now I have no choice to give her in every meal.

Yoghurt. She lovveess it to the last bit. I notice her mouth is fully opened when I feed her with yoghurt. So I decided to give her the combination of fruits with yoghurt with blueberries, apple and nectarine. Yep, no problem too. And I tried giving her spinach tofu with yoghurt, that, she doesn't have any problem. Pffhh...

Today, we let her play with the food. Yes, the table and her high chair were in the mess. She fed herself with noodle, bread, and spinach by picking one by one to her mouth using her little fingers. She played with the spoon and foods while I took opportunity to sneak a couple of food inside her mouth. Oh yes, she looked satisfied. But how long this is going to end? Does this mean that we can't eat in the restaurant anymore with her?

Brighter Discontent

I thought I'd like to post this beautiful song. It also to present it to my beautiful friend who will leave Singapore for good to down under. I'm having a broken heart, a meltdown ...

Weekend at East Coast Park

Embracing morning exercise, originally uploaded by L'Aubergine Grillée.

It feels right with the weather to go to the park in the morning. Three of us woke up early, and I rushed to prepare breakfast and lunch jars for Noelia.

The breezes, the early morning rays of sun, the colour of the sky have made us refreshed. We saw some folks were preparing morning Tai-Ji exercises.

Noelia loves the green grass where she discovered a few interesting objects. I think she even loves scretching exercises in the morning, she laughed and giggled when I pull her both legs up to her face. It feels good with the nature rather than confined in the little room.

On Sunday, we went there again to see our friends for a strolling. We are lucky to have the house near the park.

BBQ Picnic

Looking for a second hand camera

These days I've been away to focus myself to look for a camera. I've been looking in Ebay and other e-classifieds around, but the price is a lil' bit out of our budget. Yes, we are getting the second hand camera. Besides, I am confuse which kind of style of camera to get. I love to be able to have SLR type, but it is too bulky and heavy. The small ones are not powerful enough to capture good images.

Anyway, I need to be detached. It will come the good price for a good camera for me, I believe! So, I will take more pictures during our trip in France at the end of the year....

Laundry Day!!

Laundry Day!!, originally uploaded by L'Aubergine Grillée.

Eh Oui, when the sun is up all the laundry is hang up!

When I visit some cities like Beijing, Shanghai and even other parts of Singapore there are scene which intrigued me. Those are big metropolitan cities where most of the population live in the apartments, some are not ashamed of exposing outer-garments and underwear on long bambo poles to the public.

They are colourful and I love seeing them. Some photographer may find it amusing and captured them as an art. It is an ancient and important ritual every morning in the summer.

In my hometown, Jakarta, all of mothers are doing this common activities almost everyday. We live in the region where the sun shines all year long with a couple of rains and overcasted period in between. No dryer machine is needed, it is too costly to even have it. I'll bet they can go bankrupt in promoting the products there.

Last year for our laundry, we use the drying machine which provided by the owner of the house we rented. Because the house is sold to another person, the owner asked us to take everything that they left for us. Washing and dryer machine also the fridge are with us now. We are lucky with this kindness because we don't always buy a new things for new home. It safe us the trips to look, compare and delivery those machines from the shop. The machines still work well.

This year, we decided not to use it. Although we still have it, but we rather use nature to help us for this chore.

Some of our reasons not to use electric dryer machine, are;
- Save money
- Conserve energy and the environment.
- Clothes and sheets will smell summer sunshine.
- Sunlight bleaches and disinfects

If you have not tried doing it, please do so! This simple activity is one of the way to conserve and protect the environment. We can do our part!

Long summer in "Little Red Dot" country

Red flower, originally uploaded by Patty ODIER.

When she picks small object, her fingers dance and pinch to lift it up. She turns it upside down and back a few times. A few seconds later, it will be in her mouth to taste and discover the textures.

We hope to bring her to the park this weekend. This is to let her crawl around on the green grass. It is better to discover nature with barefeet, it will make her feet muscles stronger and build coordinations of legs and feet. She also enjoys the various surfaces (sands, carpets,cold tiles etc).

When she starts discovering the world ....

Ca y est!! She is 8 months 2 weeks, 7.9 kg and 69 cm.

She is not yet walking, but she likes to pull herself up to a stand by holding the edge of the table or sofa and walk around it. She wants everything to grasp into her chubby fingers. It will then be put in her mouth to taste. She makes loud noise when she bangs my wooden bangle on the table during her meals. I found the most amazing thing is to see the movement of her fingers taking a small bean. Her fingers are like dancing!

She has fascination to my mobile phone, camera or remote control. Sometimes I am shocked to found her playing with cable wires or falling off from a standing position. But I'll try not to put away the things that she holds abruptly and keep myself calm. By raising your voice and snatch the 'off-limit' stuff abruptly from her grasp, it will create frustation for the baby. Unless it is very dangerous and life-threatening, we certainly need to raise our voice to protect them from danger.

Ludo and I agreed that until she reach 3 years old, we can introduce "NO" concept. Meanwhile, we are learning to use "STOP" if she is anywhere near danger. Although we seldom use it, but we want her to know the concept. This is the age of curiosity, if we only say "NO" to her, that important word will have so many different meanings that it will confuse and not really tell her anything useful. We learn to help her to tell what we want her to do. For example instead of saying "Do not touch this, it's dangerous!", we say "it is hot, it will burn your finger if you touch it". Haha!! It may easy to say it here, we laugh about it everytime we should say it because we are so not used to. Oh well, it is for the sake of the baby we changed for tor the better. We think that "NO" is the easy word for baby to imitate it, hearing our little girl saying it often to us may add our frustation :-))

We knew that this is the beginning of her discovery .... as parent, we have so many things to learn about these age. This is the age where we need to stimulate her senses, helping her to understand the world, guide her to grow more. I'd like to see her growing to sniff our herbal plants, touch the textures of the soils, get dirty to plant the beans, touch the slimyyy fish, play with the water spray, they are all in our garden (we are lucky to have a small garden for her to explore). Dirt is her friends now, and we bath her using good old 'DETTOL' to kill germs and bacteria.

And I believe, every parent have their own style handling their children. Sometimes it's obvious around us, the western will adopt freedom and liberty for their children meanwhile Asian parents have the tendencies to always protect their children closely. Anything will work as long as we, as parent respect our children to develop and growing.

Oh baby room ...

I've been eyeing for Jacadi Paris Baby room. It's a perfect mix between European traditional and modern. It's simple design but soothing to my eyes. I thought I can design myself when I have a chance. Right now, Noelia's room is not ready. She still sleep in our room, in her playpen.

Ok ok...I am a good procastinator, maybe it's a daydreaming....

Fruit Therapy

I am feeling crappy today!! I've been down with cold and flu for almost five days, now I still have the coughs. My husband came back from a bussiness trip in Bali yesterday with cold too. The season has been not favourable for all of us, it was raining a few days and sunny hot days for a while. All I think about is our daughter, Noelia. I don't want her to get sick too.

I found 'good things' in the supermarket for our body to have energy to fight it. So, I bought a couple of Kiwis and avocados which I thought earlier for baby food puree. Well, she needs a good baby dose to survive this season too.

This Actinidia deliciosa fruit which native in Southern China contains high in Vitamin C. And according to a study of 6 and 7 year old children in Northern Italy that the more kiwis are consumed by young children, the less likely they have respiratory problem. The respiratory illness such as wheezing, coughing and asthma.

This emerald jewelled delights also contains flavanoids that help protect our cells from oxidative damage, and are therefore considered very helpful in protecting our DNA from mutations and damage.

A couple of kiwifruit each day may significantly lower your risk for blood clots and reduce the amount of fats (triglycerides) in your blood, therefore helping to protect cardiovascular health.

Yay! I'll get another one soon...hopefully, it will kick away my coughs! I'll get a dose for a baby too....