Ethan's first "REAL" MEAL.

Today was SPECIAL - Ethan tried solid food for the first time in his life! He had recently shown great interest in what we had been eating and even tried to take and put food in his mouth himself. These are two of the many indicators of the baby's readiness to start on solids. I am glad I followed the doctor's advice and stuck to giving him solids at 6months. There have been MANY people nagging at me to start giving him solids earlier because he seems small and is not putting on weight at a rapid speed.

I must say, I don't appreciate such pressures. I think lots of new mums go through the same kind of pressure for the same and many more different reasons. These 3 gu 6 por had used their "old school" way of bringing up children and try (very hard) to get the new mums to subscribe to them. Alan's grandmother constantly asks me if I've enough milk or not. Sometimes I want to squeeze my breast in front of her just to prove that there IS! :P

Anyway, I digressed (again) hahaha. OK back to the current topic:

I fed Ethan milk in the morning and then, after a short short nap, he woke at around 1230pm and I thought that was an ideal time to introduce solids to him. You should do it at lunch time. I milked 2 teaspoons of rice cereal with 40ml of breast milk but it was so watery that I decided to add in another teaspoon of cereal. All throughout the preparation, Alan videoed the process.

After stirring to eradicate any lumps in the mixture, we put on Ethan's huge waterproof elephant bib we had bought in Australia before he was born (!) and sat him in his Bumbo Seat and started the feeding experiment. Ethan showed great interest in his food but had problems (naturally)trying to keep the food in his mouth. He's so used to the tongue thrust reflex that it is going to take a while for him to get used to putting food in the mouth and swallowing it.

We took half an hour to feed him and half of the meal probably went onto the bib and down his neck but both Daddy and Mommy were very pleased. :) Our little boy is all grown up now and is eating SOLIDS!!! We caught the feed on the video cam of course!

We tried something new today...dinner at SmokeHouse at Bangsar Telawi 3. The decor reminded me of Lakehouse in Cameron Highlands - the place we celebrated my birthday a couple of years ago. Very quaint and victorian styled, complete with dirty-looking flora printed sofas and a fake fireplace with logs that were (literally) lighted up. hahha

I opted for the Phad Thai (RM15) (yes, they have hired a chef from Thailand) and Tom Yam Kong (Rm12). The soup came in a small bowl but was very satisfying and 4 big prawns floated in the spicy red soup. The main course was nutty and very sweet, quite delicious if I may say so, but it will leave you feeling full halfway through the meal.

Alan had his usual red meat - this time it was the very affordable lamb shank (RM32) whose meat was so tender it slid off the bone and cream of mushroom soup (RM12) - not worth the money cause I can make better ones.

After we dined, and before we left, we were informed by the waiter that next month they were celebrating their anniversary and all items on the ala carte menu will be on 20% off! WooohOooo.
We popped into Bangsar Shopping Village to pick up a couple of items:

(A) We wanted to buy two short hoses - one for the front garden as it was leaking and one for the back garden for Ening to water the plants with more ease. NOT AVAILABLE.

(B) We popped into the Organic shop next door and I chose a box of millet porridge. I had found Ethan's rice cereal (Nestle) to be very sweet and I wanted to buy something more expensive and organic for a greater peace of mind. ahahaha. Kiasu! :P I also didn't like that the Nestle rice cereal I had bought contianed traces of gluten and soy. :(

After comparing rice / millet/ semolina porridge, I read that millet contained the most protein, fat and iron and the least fibre (which makes the kiddo full fast) and sodium. I bought Holle Organic Millet Porridge, 250g for RM19.90. The nice lady at the counter gave me two packets of samples (spelt porridge and semolina porridge) to try as well. :)

We proceeded into Toys R' Us next to buy Coco and Jay Jay a ball - They (Coco especially) had shown so much interest in Ethan's ball that we wanted to give them their own personal one as well. :) Also, sadly, because the silly dogs keep going upstairs to poop on the green furry carpet( which I think they mistaken as grass), we had to buy a safety gate to prevent them from doing so. The bloody gate cost RM299.95 and the manufacturers purposely made it a tad shorter than the normal standards so you HAVE to buy the extension (another RM64.95). I had thought the cheaper alternative was to give away the dogs ;P hahaha

Anyway, after spending a bomb at Toys R' Us, we zoomed home to be with our son who was still having a slight fever from the two injections the day before.

Ethan's Jab No. 3

Ethan was due for his third 6in1 jab today. We did not want to go back to Dr Yong's clinic and be subjected to Pantai's atrocious charges so we had no choice but to head back to Dr Lim's clinic at GlenE.

Again, the whole clinic was PACKED by the time we arrived at 11am and we started our long wait again.

Monkeying around in the clinic again.

Thankfully, this time it wasn't that bad and by the time Ethan had his ass pierced twice (6in1 and Pneumoccocal) and drank the horrid liquid (Rotateq), it was only noon. The offensive tools of torture...

The poor dear was tired out and fell fast asleep in the car. We got home swiftly and then Ening took over looking after him whilst we zoomed off to MVMM for some lunch at Ding Tai Fung. Alan had his usual beef noodles and I opted for my usual fix of hot and sour noodles. We shared some pork wontons and also an appetiser and a dessert of red bean paste with two sesame dumplings.

At 2pm, we popped into La Mode for our haircut. It was our last opportunity to use up the 50% discount (till the end of April) as Bill was going off to Jakarta for a performance. :) After the haircut, Alan headed to Ace Hardware to pick up fertiliser for our garden and I bought a ball for Ethan from Toys R' Us next door.

Alan and I shared a gelato and bought two dvds (Avatar and Baby Can Read Volume 2) and then went home satisfied. :)

p/s: I have since given up the chase of Ethan's length / weight etc. hahaha. Just a quick update here that he only put on ard 200g since 16/3/10 and his length is 62cm now. The previous measurements at Pantai MC were utterly inaccurate :P Picture mirroring Mommy's agony when taking Ethan's measurements :P

Strawberries are a No No!

The grandparents have left last evening and the house is a quieter and less active one... at least there's no one to ask Ethan to do monkey tricks (e.g. jump / kick / touch his nose etc). I think poor Ethan was tired out from all that attention. He slept sooooo much today that I was a bit concerned. hahaha He hardly naps at all normally.

Anyway, the excited grandparents let Ethan try sucking on a cut strawberry last evening against my wishes and his poop changed colour / texture immediately to a weird green (instead of mustard yellow) colour and there were strips of solid poop lining his diaper - normally all is liquid. AND THEN, my friend told me today that berries should not be given to babies till they are 1 year old due to their likelyhood to trigger allergies. *faint* " Come, let por por and nai nai feed u some strawberries!"

Our Water Baby

I am Ethan Tan, the Waterbaby!

The sun was out again this morning and I decided to let Ethan try out his swimming pool for the second time. Ening and I busied ourselves filling the pool with buckets of pipping hot water and soon, the water was a delicious temperature. :)

Again, Ethan was changed into his cars and trucks red swimming diaper and nai nai put on the float for him. Then, I got into the pool and in he came right after me. After only a few seconds, I could see that Ethan was not adverse to the water and etc and so I got out of the pool. True enough, our little water baby started enjoying himself. He kicked and did turns and took turns to pose for the different cameras / video cameras held by every single one of us. hahahaha.

I am glad he had a good time. :) Thank you Ye Ye and Nai Nai for the useful and wonderful present! :))))))

A Feast at Robson's

The grandparents devoured two dvds and played with Ethan today. We had En's speciality Mee Siam for lunch. Alan came home (finally) to bring us out for a scrumptious dinner at Robson Heights. Luckily, he did not order like there was no tomorrow and the five of us had 2 crabs (salted egg and chilli), sea cucumber and fish maw with mushrooms and brocolli, stir-fried kailan, a steamed cat-fish. It was certainly a delicious meal and everyone went home with smiles on their faces.





The pictures are not representative of the satisfaction of the photographer after consuming the meal.

Ethan's First Swim

Ethan didn't really enjoy his first dip in his new swimming pool today. I think the below were at fault:

a) The water was too cold - he always bathes in VERY warm water.

b) The neck float was irritating the $h!t outta him.

c) There were too many peering eyes (Grandfather's, grandmother's x 2, father's , mother's and maid's).

In the evening, we left for a massage at Liang Xin Massage Parlour at Jln Alor. For two sessions per pax, the damage was only RM84, instead of the usual RM110. PROFIT! *claps hands excitedly*

After that, we picked up En and Ethan from home and then headed to MVMM for dinner. Mum 2 wanted to make a pair of specs but didn't in the end as she would not be in KL to collect it 2 weeks later. We then decided to have dinner at Canton-I.

We ordered and ordered and ordered. There was this promotion and we could buy a roasted chicken (whole) for only RM1! PROFIT II! We were stuffed by the time we exited the restaurant.

HELLO GRANDPARENTS (cryyyyyyyyyy)

Ethan's grandparents are in town. We drove (it seemed for hours) to and fro to LCCT to pick them up from the airport. Alan parked illegally and sprinted towards the car when he saw Uncle Sam (what do they call them here in KL?) whip out his notebook eagerly whilst approaching our Volvo.

Finally, they appeared (carrying Ethan's swimming pool) and we drove home in time to enjoy a delicious spread of steamboat - nutritious and oh-so-yummy! Now they are luxuriating in front of our 50" TV and watching "WooHoo".

Ethan's not taking too well to all of them though. Especially they love to come up close to him and STARE... They have become unfamiliar faces to him already since we are living in KL and worse still, he has come of age to recognize faces and clings to me now like my personal Koala. *big sigh* Hope things will improve in the next few days...