Age: 1 year and 3 months

Weight: About 10kg

Height: About 75cm

Teeth: 8

Meals per day: 3 solid meals, 2 milk bottles and one snack.

Mobility & Coordination:

- Just learnt to stand up on her own! She can then stand for awhile and take a tottering step forward before sitting down again.

- Can feed herself by poking/scooping food and bringing the spoon or fork to mouth, but still doesn’t know how to hold the spoon the right way, so most of the food will fall off before reaching their destination (Very, very messy process)

Favourite Foods: Any fruit, avocado, cheese, corn chips, anything tasty.

Language:

- Still nothing distinct. Alot of babbling. “Da da”, “Na na”, “Mum mum”, “Lo lo” etc. She might be saying “Hello” tho, it sounds like “Ah-o” when she says it. I’m not sure.

- Understands heaps tho. She understands most simple sentences that we say to her. Like “Where is Daddy”; “Go get xxx book”; “Go and play with your ipod”; “Stand up” etc. And she knows many objects around the house and in her books.

Sleep: Has just switched to a one nap day. She’ll have 1 - 2 hours from 11am - 1pm, then stay awake until 7.30pm, and sleep until 7.30am the next day.

Likes:

- Having books read to her. I know half a dozen books by hard now because she is constantly dragging a book over, throwing it on my lap and pointing at it saying “lo lo lo”, until I read it for her. She then has another book at the ready even before we’ve finished the first one… We’ve created a book monster!

- She also loves her little music player - a toy ipod.

- And now she loves her teddy bear and panda. Will drag them around the house with her. Must wash them soon, they have been kissed all over.

Dislikes:

- Being left alone.

- People touching her nose.

- New soft toys.

- Still hates water, but will drink from her sippee cup if it is mixed with juice.

The worst things that stress us out:

- Always climbing over boxes, and chairs and tables to try to get something that she’s not allowed to touch.

- Whinging and crying when she wants attention and no-one is entertaining her.

- Not sitting still in her highchair during meal times.

The best things we like about her:

- How she picks things up so quickly.

- Watching her perform her newest tricks.

- Being our very own little girl, and brightening up our days just by being around

But we’re ready for it!

In the daytime the top temperature is 10 degrees C. At night it goes down to zero degrees. Brrrrrrrrr…

Ps. She can stand on her own for a few seconds at a time now! And she’s very excited about it, as you can see

Keira used to be scared of soft toys. Actually she still is scared of the ones she’s not familiar with, like the ones at our Caterpillar Music class. (She’ll cry if you bring them near her - all the mums there feel sorry for me when Keira cries every week - hai yo!)

But all of a sudden she has taken a liking to her soft toys at home. She must have realised that they’re not real and won’t attack her, and now she likes playing with them.

She will hug them and give them kisses, which is very cute

Here’s a recent picture of Keira, Sydney and William.

They have such a fun time playing together these days, and they are very cute when they interact with each other:)

Here they were not that long ago in early 2008 when they were 4/5months old.

They were still ignoring one another then. Couldn’t crawl, rollover or do anything!

How is it possible that our babies grow up so fast???!

Usually when I give Keira fruits, I will peel the skin and chop it up into bite sized pieces for her.

But the other night she was being very naughty during dinner time. Climbing out of her highchair and onto the table wanting to touch our food.

So I grabbed a plum and gave it to her, thinking that she’ll just play with it, but won’t be able to eat it because the skin is quite thick.

Lo and behold (yeah, what an archaic word to use - shows you what a geek I am), she managed to make that crucial first bite into the plum, and after that with the skin broken and juicy flesh underneath revealed, she hoovered the WHOLE PLUM down, bite by bitty bite.

Man she loved it. She held it in one little hand, with quite a sophisticated grip I thought, and munched and munched away.

Juice was dripping all over her hands and clothes, but there was such a look of enjoyment and satisfaction on her face, I couldn’t worry about the mess. Instead we just marvelled at this little eating machine we had created.

And we managed to have our dinner in relative peace.

After two weeks of cold and grey weather, London has become sunny again.

When I say sunny I mean a top of 18 degrees celcius and going down to 9 degrees at night! But I must be adjusting to the climate because it feels nice and warm to me!

In an effort to enjoy what I think might be the last of the summer sun, Keira and I have been utilising our under-utilised balcony recently.

The bubster has been grumpy and under the weather the past couple of days - having low grade fever, diarrhoea and only want to eat fruits everyday. I just realised this might be her reaction to the MMR injection, which she had 10 days ago.

Anyway, going out to the balcony really cheers her up.

So I bring a few toys and books out and we sit and soak in the nice weather for awhile. Sometimes, we also eat lunch out there.

This is something we’ll miss doing when we go back… It’s usually too hot and sweaty to enjoy the outside in MY. Everywhere must have air cond!

Here’s a short video of Keira playing on the balcony in the natural air conditioning

Keira has just gotten over a food refusal phase.

Man that was stressful. She has always been a good eater you see, she ate pretty much everything we offered her.

Then all of a sudden her food intake went way down to maybe 25% of what she used to have.

I don’t know what was wrong - maybe she wasn’t feeling well or becoming picky with food or her growth is slowing down - but I got quite upset when she wouldn’t eat after just a few mouthfuls. Each time I brought the spoon to her mouth I would get stressed and worry that she would turn her head away.

Thankfully this last week, she seems to have regained her appetite, and is finishing her meals again.

Maybe it’s because I have started to give her very tasty food, yes I put salt, pepper, soya sauce and all in, basically whatever I make for her I season like how I would season our own food (but I don’t use as much), and she loves it.

It might not be good to teach her to eat salty food at such a young age, but sooner or later she will be exposed to it right? And I only lightly flavour with salt and pepper - makes a whole world difference though.

So far her outright favourite dish is curry rice. Yeah, she loves curry! She will sit by me with eyes big big and have her mouth wide open ready for every mouthful. Sometimes she’ll climb close and try to aim her mouth at the spoon when I don’t feed her fast enough. Haha. Of course I don’t make it spicy hot for her, just very creamy and tasty.

Yesterday was a good day, she heartily walloped everything down.

Here’s what she had:

Breakfast:
Oats with honey
Yoghurt
1 piece of bread

Milk

Lunch:

Herbal Vegetable porridge
Mandarin orange

Milk

Afternoon tea:

Cheese and strawberries

Dinner:

Creamy spinach and chicken pasta

Milk

The downside with her eating so much is that she poos alot. 3 times a day! Err… that’s alot isn’t it?

I have been taking lots of photos of Keira lately. Trying to capture all the moments in her day, because everyday she is changing.

CY didn’t see her for just one day when he had a conference on, and when he saw her next day, he said that she looked more mature already.

So, what has she been up to lately…

Likes to climb onto this box and sit on it.

Then she’ll cry cos she doesn’t know how to get down.

She likes to play with my hairband, and is quite fascinated when I wear it on my head. One day I put a headband on her, showed her in the mirror, and she was so pleased.

She likes wearing them now. And I like it too, makes her look like a proper little girl. My own personal barbie. hehe.

Oh yeah, and as you can see, she likes to lie on the floor and play.

There is one thing that has stayed the same though. Ever since she was one month old, when we experienced her first screaming session.

She is still the crybaby.

Aunty Tina did it again.

A beautifully decorated cake for Sydney’s first birthday party!

I was so worried that we wouldn’t be able to go to Sydney’s party when Keira had her high fever (40.2 degrees celcius!) 2 days before. But, PHEW, she got better the next day.

So here we are all dressed up. I’m wearing a new top by Desigual - I love their clothes!

As usual, lots of children at the party. Here we are trying to get them to sit together for a photograph. Didn’t work.

Keira was the only one that sat still. Haha.

Here’s Keira with her favourite auntie, who babysits her and plays with her all the time.

Keira was in a good mood most of the time. But I suppose all the kids had their fussy moments at one point or other, except possibly birthday boy Sydney, who looked like he was loving every minute of his special day:)

We all had fun!

I’ve just taken Keira to get her hair cut by a professional for the first time this week.

After the last time when we made a mess cutting her hair, decided to take the easy route, and get someone else to do it for us.

I took her to a barber shop, because they advertised that they do children’s haircuts, and they were well equiped for it. They had a baby haircut chair, lollipops, toys, a remote control car and more to entertain the kids.

Keira of course went through them all and still cried. At one stage, I carried her to look at the fish in the tank while the barber tried to snip at her fringe.

She has quite a short boyish cut now, but the fringe is still zig zag. Ah well.

Here she is with new hairstyle watching advertisements.

Baby news aside, I got my hands on Terry Practhett’s new book “Nation“, yesterday, yay! It isn’t a Discworld novel though, but still written in the familiar, funny Pratchett style we love so much. Yay!

And now to TV - the best thing that has come out of America - lovely, addictive Heroes, and Supernatural and Prison Break and Ugly Betty and Smallville and Grey’s Anatomy, they’re all back!

Going to talk about Heroes now, just my reaction to the new season, no plot points, but don’t read on if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know.

There was something wrong with the first two episodes. The storyline didn’t work. It was choppy, disjointed, not up to the standard I have come to expect from Heroes.

I was disappointed, but I can’t quite put a finger on exactly what was wrong. Seems like all my favourite characters were not likeable anymore and the new premise of the show is uninspiring, and it just didn’t pick up from where it left off at the end of season 2!

Disappointed. I HOPE the writers buck up real quick and get Heroes back on track!

We’re off to Barcelona tomorrow!

Keira is almost recovered and me and CY are a day or two behind. We’re going to have to take it nice and easy when we’re there.

Will be back on Sunday. In the meantime here’s abit of navel gazing.

That’s the number of times Keira has thrown up since Sunday night. Yup, a horrible case of gastroenteritis/food poisoning.

It started around 11pm on Sunday. She spewed every 15 minutes. By the 6th time, she was out of food and spewing bile. By the 9th time she was just retching whatever water I had just fed her.

Normally, a parent might be panicking for the hospital by now, but Keira seemed OK in between the vomits. Wanting to play, dozing, clapping her hands and crawling around, so I didn’t think she was that sick.

At 5.30am, two sheets and four clothes changes later, she was on her 11th and seemingly last vomit. We managed to get some sleep after that.

She seemed OK the next morning. Ate her breakfast, drank lots of water, and was her usual grumpy self. We thought she must have got it all out her system.

Until the afternoon, when she coughed so hard, (did I mention that Keira has a cold as well? Coughing, stuffed nose, leaky nose, slight fever, grumpy, clingy - the works), all her milk came out onto the sofa and on me, twice.

All this just 10 days after stopping breastfeeding. Sigh, breastmilk really does keep babies immune from sickness. Obviously against the cold, and I think her gastroenteritis was caused by bad formula milk that I used in her food… or it could be because of her new found interest in eating things off the floor.

Anyway, she hasn’t spewed since yesterday afternoon. Slept through the night last night and eating ok today, so I hope it’s all over.

I have a cold too. Am now at the chesty cough stage, after having gone through the feverish, body ache and leaky nose stages. Haven’t had a bad cold in quite awhile now, I wonder if breastfeeding helps the mother too.

Just hope we’re all recovered by Thursday when we go to Barcelona!

Update: Uh oh, she just had a diarrhoea… I think what she has is a rotavirus.

Today we went to William’s first birthday party. There were so many guests Aunty Tina had to hire a big hall to fit everyone in.

There was a long table set up just for the kids

and Keira had a wonderful time gobbling down biscuits, fruits and cheerios, making a big mess of it all at the same time.

Her food didn’t stay on the plate for long. But amazingly the hat did! I thought she would pull it off for sure. They look so cute wearing the party hats:)

Then Keira went and played in the playpen with the other kids. Amazingly again, she didn’t fuss, instead she made Sydney cry by standing on him!

She loved popping the bubbles

And us adults stuffed ourselves with delicious curry chicken, acar, fried noodles and of course the beautiful cake!

What a fun birthday party.

I just read an article that says the experiences in the first 3 years of a child’s life will determine how successfull they will be as adults.

How good they are at languages, sports, social interaction; what kind of temperament and behaviours they will have; whether they will have heart disease and diabetes - are all shaped by the first 3 years!

This is according to early childhood expert Dr Fraser Mustard who says that it all comes down to how the brain develops when kids are young. Whatever they are exposed to will shape their neural pathways and brain cells, setting the base for how well they will learn and cope over the child’s entire life.

So, to ensure that our children’s brains and body are nurtured to their fullest potential, they need lots of positive stimulation when they are young.

Positive stimulation like giving them a loving and stress-free environment, reading to them, playing ball, basically doing what all good parents do anyway… except now we know that when we are telling the baby how many butterflies there are in the picture, we are grooming their mathematics potential for when they go to school. We hope!

Dr. Mustard’s research showed that children who had disruptive environments when growing up were more likely to develop behavioural, emotional and learning problems in later life. He advises that we should invest in early childhood development programs for all children beginning from 4 months old (because by the time they go to school the brains have already developed) to ensure that the future generation is smarter and better.

Being abit kiasu, only abit I’m feeling guilty now because I wonder if I’m giving Keira enough stimulation and interaction. I have to confess that this morning i turned the TV on to The Disney Channel and let Keira watch Mickey Mouse so that I had some peaceful computer time! (TV usually doesn’t hold her attention for more than 30 seconds, but Mickey and Friends kept her attentive for 15 minutes).

Have I fried some baby neurons or is TV OK to watch? I mean Mickey was teaching shapes and map reading. That’s quite good isn’t it?

Hai, it’s so tiring just doing baby work, I actually can’t afford to worry about positive stimulation. All I can do is just slip in as much play and talk as I can without going cuckoo. I hope it’s enough fertiliser for Keira to sparkle when she grows up…

The baby brain really is an amazing thing tho. Keira started off one year ago with just a “blank canvas” inside her head. But now it is filling up with books and music and lights and stars. And she is so hungry to know more about everything around her. I bet the canvas in her head looks like this now.

Go brain!

Here’s an update of Keira’s growth and development so far.

Age: 1

Height: 75cm

Weight: 10kg

Teeth: 5

Meals per day: 3 solid meals, 3 milk bottles, 2 snacks.

Mobility and Co-ordination: Stood on her own for about 1 second the other night. Otherwise crawling and climbing all over the place.
Has just learnt how to go down backwards from the sofa.
Has finally learnt to do finger food, and loves feeding herself now.

Favourite foods: Avocado, cheese, yoghurt, corn chips, biscuits, chicken porridge, anything tasty.

Language: Says “Da da” (damn it) but mainly baby babble. Knows the meanings of quite a few things already. (Like, ball, book etc.)

Sleep: 2 naps in the day - One and a half hours in the morning, one hour in the afternoon.
And sleeping through the night 8.30pm -7.30am.

Likes: Sitting on our laps, reading books, playing with things that aren’t toys, throwing things, unpacking things, climbing, whinging.

Dislikes: Being left alone. New places. Drinking water. Sitting still. Soft toys. Yeah soft toys, it’s really funny. She’ll stare at
the toy, take it and throw it down, then quickly crawl away from it with a panicked look and come rushing over to me wailing all the way!

The best things we like about her: Seeing her laugh and enjoy herself, seeing her learn a new word or skill, seeing her “read” a book on her own.

The naughtiest things that stress us out: The crying, grumbling and whinging for any old reason. The mealtime mess.