Growing Pains

Finally, after many weeks of waiting, Nick’s first tooth makes its appearance. It’s a thin white strip above Nick’s lower gum. Thankfully, Nick doesn’t experience any fever or diarrhea at all.

However, Mommy and Nanny can tell that Nick is in pain as he gets cranky easily and constantly puts his little fingers inside his mouth. He also wakes up a few times at night crying, which is unusual for him since Nick's been sleeping through the night since he turned 4 month-old. When this happens, Mommy has to sing Nick's favourite nursery rhymes to help him get back to sleep. Usually, "Old McDonald" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" will do the job. ^_^

Sneaky Nick

Nick has an interesting habit that Mommy’s been observing lately. He likes to “practice” new motor skills while he is sleeping at night. He managed to rollover for the first time when he was sleeping and last week Mommy saw him doing it backward in his sleep! Mommy’s never seen him doing a backward flip during the day before so she was ecstatic. To confirm, though, Mommy asked Nanny if she’d seen Nick did a backward flip before, and of course she hadn’t!

Sure enough, a few days later, we began to witness Nick doing his backward flip during the day. Today, Nick is already a pro in flipping back and forth.

Nick’s First Social Event

Nick was invited to Kak Dea’s first birthday party last Sunday. He was the youngest guest, but that didn’t prevent him from having a good time.

Nick really enjoyed the colourful balloons and streamers. He helped Mommy hold the fishing rod and caught a few plastic fish from the fishing pool. Then, he watched Abangs and Kakaks jumped excitedly on the jumping tent.

However, Nick didn’t get to join Kak Dea when it’s time for her to cut the cake. Nick wasn’t comfortable with the loud music from the speakers. So, we had to stay at a distance away from the speakers.

As usual, Nick fell asleep on the way home.

Hooray! It's Mealtime!

Nick had his first solid food, which was papaya, when he was 4.5 months old. After a week or so, Mommy introduced banana followed by Gerber’s rice cereal and a variety of Gerber’s baby food to his menu.

Most of the time, Nick is very curious about the different tastes and textures of his food and so he is a willing participant during mealtime. However, there were days when we had mealtime disasters when Nick refused to swallow his food and fussed impatiently. Luckily, Mommy and Nanny managed to translate those cranky moments to the following:

“Please, not papaya AGAIN!”
Just like everyone else, Nick needs variety in his menu. Since we started to alternate his fruit between fresh papaya, fresh banana, and sometimes Gerber’s applesauce or peach, we’ve been having great mealtime moments.

“Can we eat later? I am sleepy.”
We now schedule Nick’s meal half an hour after he wakes up in the morning (it’s breakfast time!) and right after his nap in the early afternoon. We find that these are the best time for Nick as he is fresh, fully awake, and hungry.

“When is this going to end? I am bored”
The first few spoons usually go very fast. However, sitting around without any entertainment is B-O-R-I-N-G! So, we usually put on some music and have some rattles around to make mealtime more enjoyable and fun!

Cheers to Shel Silverstein!

Mommy came across a really cool poem by Shel Silverstein...

NO DIFFERENCE
By Shel Silverstein

Small as a peanut,
Big as a giant,
We’re all the same size
When we turn off the light.

Rich as a sultan,
Poor as a mite,
We’re worth the same
When we turn off the light.

Red, black, or orange,
Yellow or White,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.

So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to just reach out
And turn off the light!

It no doubt beats the regular:

God creates us as equals, so, stop judging people based on the color of their skin, the amount of money in their pocket, the size of their brain, yada yada yada ^_^.

Trip to the Mall

On Sunday, Nick went to the Mall with Mommy and Daddy. At first he was pretty contented in his stroller… he played with his hands and hummed excitedly. That didn’t last very long, though. Nick got bored and wanted to get out of the stroller. So, Mommy and Daddy had to take turns holding him. Luckily, Nick didn’t mind sitting on Mommy’s lap while Mommy was eating. He was fascinated by the Japanese Curry Rice, which he tried to put his hands on.

Later on, Mommy and Daddy took Nick to see the open kitchen of a Noodle restaurant where Nick couldn’t take his eyes off the steam coming out of a large cooking pan.

Nick was so tired from his excursion that he fell asleep immediately after we hopped on the car.

Choco… you look sooo sweet… I can’t help but to lick you!

Since Nick was a few weeks old, he has regular storytelling sessions with Mommy. At first, Mommy just read softly from a storybook. When Nick began to show interest in colorful pictures, we started to have the reading during tummy time.

Now, Nick are familiar with a few characters from his storybooks. Among his favourites are Choco the yellow bird from “A Mother for Choco” by Keiko Kasza and Moon the dog from “Moon and Star: A Christmas Story” by Robin Muller.

Lately, Nick has shown even greater interest in his books… it always starts with Nick staring intently at the pictures and ends with him licking the page! ^-^

Lil’ Nick: A Coffee Addict?

We’ve been giving Nick a teaspoon of black coffee twice a week since he turned three months. It started when we found out that coffee can help reduce the likelihood of seizures due to fever.

Apparently, he loves the taste of it. He squirms and chatters impatiently everytime he sees Daddy drinking a cup of joe in the morning. He does the same thing when he sees Mommy holding a white mug (Nick: white mug equals coffee *_*). When that happens, we have to remove him from the coffee-drinking scene or he’ll start to whine and eventually try to reach out for the coffee mug...

“Hi, my name is Nick and I am a coffee addict…” ^_^ ^_* *_*

Greetings!

Welcome to my Blog! This is a big achievement for a notorious procrastinator (a.k.a. ME!) to finally set up and WRITE SOMETHING on my blog. I admit that I am a ferocious reader, but I am soooo slow when it comes to writing. But, I’ve promised myself that I’ll start writing and posting regularly… so expect more to come. Cheers!