Kenneth with his food

He is doing ok with his solids... I hope I did not jinx that by saying it aloud!!!!!!

Anyway, he is back to 2 meals a day after his bout of diarrhea. Brunch will be pureed vege/fruits with oatmeal and rice cereal, with plain water. Then, dinner will be oatmeal/rice cereal with breastmilk, with plain water as drink.

In between these 2 meals, he latches on at least 7-8 times on my breast.




We have also started him on rusks. I think I will start buying rice crackers instead. The organic ones with no salt added. Rachel had those when she was at this age. But it was so easy to find those in UK. Will have to scout for them here....

Yummy eggs

I followed (with a bit of variation) a recipe from this blog. And she loves it....
It's egg, with salsa, coriander and plenty of cheese melted on it.... Yummy.....

Starting solids

....with Ken.

So far, I think he has only taken in maybe 5% of what I feed him:) I am using the rice cereal by Gerber... mixing it with breastmilk. And also, giving him a bit of water.

His "what is this nonsense" face.....



and everything goes onto the bib, instead of into him....

What's for lunch?

These days, Rachel gets to dictate what she wants for lunch. She seems to be on a pasta phase...It's either spaghetti, or macaroni and cheese......

Expensive mangos

These mangoes (India Alphonso) cost us 1.65KWD, that's like RM20!!! and don't be deceived by the picture. The mangoes are as big as my palm only. Coz of the price, hubby thought they might be really delicious. So, he said "try lah"....

Our verdict...The elephant tusk ones that we can get back in M'sia taste as good. And they are definitely cheaper!!!!

Another favourite food

ROAST DUCK!!!!

Rachel....

...is quite a timid girl at times. She needs some time to warm up to people, before she starts opening up. When we meet any friends or relatives, and ask her to greet them, she will stay mute and hide behind us, or even look elsewhere. Trust me, she's not rude, just shy and timid....
I started getting a wee bit stressed about this, as we would have to take her for a mini-interview at her new school in Kuwait. Eventhough it's more of a formality, I would rather not give any reasons to the school NOT to accept Rachel for the August semester. So, my parents and I started "training" her to greet people nicely. "Call Aunty, Call Uncle...." etc etc... She is still shy...but she will say "Hello" or "Hi" and wave a little timid wave.
Then, yesterday, when she went swimming with my Mom in the club, she got a little overboard. She started waving and greeting EVERY single person in the club! Hahahaha... Have to reverse that a bit. So, started telling her not to talk to strangers or greet strangers....

I think I have a timid and confused girl now......

***********************************************************

My mom thinks I am sometimes overly particular when it comes to cleanliness. It shows if you see my hands and feet sometimes, as they are always in a bad cracked condition caused by the detergents and cleaning solutions I use to clean the toilets, floor, etc.... *But I must say, there is a certain other sibling of mine who's more anal about cleanliness than me!!!!! You know who you are!!!!!*
So, when Rachel said this to me....my mom said it's my own doing...

"Mummy, the toilet is smelly. Go wash the toilet!!!!!"

************************************************************

Today, I got really angry with Rachel as she was taking too long to finish up her lunch. And also, she kept on saying she was full. So, she started whining and sobbing, which made me angrier, as I know she will vomit out her lunch if she continues sobbing.
And as of this afternoon, I made up my mind to punish her. Told her no more junk food, or vitagen, or ice cream UNTIL she finishes her lunch and dinner for the day.

Then, her grand-aunty from Australia came to visit and brought her these.....
she finished her dinner pretty fast.....

and she had the easter chocs for dessert....

...look at that "not so beauty" chocolate mole!!!!
...so much for the punishment....

And meanwhile....lil Ken enjoying his dangling toys....

Food

Rachel loves everything seaweed.

She loves...

...Miso Soup with seaweed
...Seaweed soup
...Egg with seaweed
...seaweed snacks
...sushi made with seaweed


And Rachel loves mangos too. Kung Kung and Grandma have been buying mangoes nearly everyday for Rachel...but of course, Rachel only likes the ones which are SWEET!!!!

Rachel loves expensive jelly.....

My mom has made birds nest *yin wor* for us twice since we are back...Rachel loves the taste. She gets a whole bowl to herself as well.... Now, every nite, she will be asking her grandma for more NICE JELLY..... hahahahaha... expensive taste? Daddy has to work harder to provide for his darling daughter!!!!

The kids have been really pampered since they are back here in my parents' place. New games, new clothes, treats....and the most expensive thing they invested for them this time round is the mosquito netting for the whole house!!!! hahahaha.... so worried their precious grandchildren will be bitten by mosquitoes mah!!! those nasty mozzies are really really nasty!!!!

Rachel likes Japanese Soba!!!!

Cooking for rachel can be quite a daunting task sometimes, coz she does not really enjoy food, except junk food.... and it's difficult to get her to finish her meal sometimes.

These days, her favourite is pork chop (with lotsa sauce) and seaweed miso soup with rice.

Today, Daddy decided that he's too lazy to wake up to fetch Rachel to school (he only needed to get to the office before noon). So, she stayed in.

So, for the first time, I cooked Japanese Soba, and warmed up yesterday's leftover pork chops for her. She loved it! She loves the fact that I gave her an empty bowl, put some of the soba sauce in it, and she scooped the noodles into her bowl and mix it with the sauce before eating.

okaaaayyyyyy..... another easy meal to cook for her, instead of just baked beans and egg with rice!!!!!!!!

I only cook beef when hubby tells me he will not be having dinner….so…..I took the opportunity to make a ALL IN ONE POT beef stew (simple, and less work on my side). And lo and behold…Rachel loves it! She ate like maybe 6 cubes of beef, with carrots, potato and a big plate of rice!!!! Imagine how happy I was….

Ooooh, it’s my own recipe. But I doubt I can reproduce the same concoction again…hahahaha

Beef Stew:

1 kg of cubed beef
Marinate with sesame oil and soya sauce

Onions
Ginger
Star Anise
Potato
Tomato
Carrots
Green Pepper

Sauce:
Soya Sauce
Oyster Sauce (a bit)
Worchestershire sauce (just a dash)
1 teaspoon of Bovril
Salt to taste
Pepper

Brown onions and beef, then dump everything in pot, cook it a bit, then pour water in to more than cover all ingredients, heat at high temperature, until boil, then slow down fire to let it simmer till barely covering ingredients….

Simple… and yummy….if I must say soJ

weaning.....again

i looked at Rachel this morning, when giving her her milk, then I remembered this important information:

I weaned Rachel off the breast straight to the cup. She uses a straw cup since the beginning. We use the PIGEON brand straw cups, which, I think is superb. It does retain some heat as well, very useful during the difficult times to get Rachel to consume her milk. We skipped the milk bottle altogether.

hmmmm, this piece of information may not be useful for those who alternate between the breast and the bottle right from the beginning (which was something that I failed to do with Rachel....)

weaning

A friend wrote to ask how I weaned Rachel off the breast when she was 13 months..... This was the main part of the message I wrote, thought I would just blog it down. I tried really hard to remember...seems such a long time ago. Gosh....did I not blog it down?!?!?!

HI Friend,

It's the time already, I guess? For you to wean your little one?

Am writing this at 2am in the morning. So, apologies if I may sound "off" in this msg......just in case....

I took the "natural" way in weaning Rachel off.....Slowly reducing her feeds, while slowly introducing formulas (different kinds) to her.... No minyak angin on the breast or cili padi on the breast or whatsoever.... But she did cry a lot, when she needed comfort from the breast, esp at night....So, it was purely carrying and patting her back to sleep, or trying to introduce formula feeds at night....quite a lot of backaching stints, just to get her back to sleep. Getting appropriate nutrition into her was not a big worry, as she was already on solids then.....so, even if she did not feed on any formula or breast milk at all, we were not too worried. We believed this: "if she was hungry enough, she will take whatever".... but obviously, we did not go through all this without some tears....from both Rachel and I!!!!!

My supply naturally dwindled...so, no biggie on the pain or the overflowing whatsoever....

My biggest worry was to introduce the formula to her. As she rejected most of them. Finally settled on Enfagrow...again.....hahah

aha.... So, advice on that part is to get as much samples as u can from friends, doctors, relatives to try out different formulas before you start buying.

At one point in time, I thought Rachel could literally hate me for putting her through this.....hahahaha...so dramatic.... But again, I guess I am lucky that she naturally got past the difficult stage, although that part lasted pretty long.

Hmmmm, re-reading this msg again, I realised that I have nothing much to help you with....except the phrase: "If she was hungry enough, she will take anything".... :)

Best of luck, ok? Let me know if you need more info! Will try to think of more, at a more sanely hour.

And why was I up at such an ungodly hour????? That is a different story altogether!

Merry Christmas

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone!!!!!!!

We initially planned to take 2 extra days off, coincide with the weekends, hari raya haji holiday and also the Christmas holiday to get a long 6-day break. Instead, both of us worked on Friday….thankfully so, as there was so much fire-fighting work done on that day!!!

Anyhow, we headed back to my hometown on Saturday to celebrate Christmas with the family….Rachel woke up right before we started our journey, and she was pretty bored the whole way through….. it shows……

Rachel gets all the attention now in my family, since she’s the ONLY granddaughter. Just this morning, on a working day, out of the blue, her ah koo SMS-ed me and asked whether she has watched Sesame Street before…. *shake head*…..why suddenly thought of that??!?!?! (this is how much she occupies everyone's mind!!! hahahaha)

Back to the holiday commentary: she enjoyed herself with her kung kung and grandma. The moment she reached their home, all she was asking for was for them to take her swimming!!!! And she got her dose of pool water nearly EVERYDAY when we were there…….

She had a great time with her cousins Ashley and Daniel during Christmas Eve….….Ashley is exactly 363 days older than her….(two days short, and they would have the same birthday!)….. Next to Ashley, Rachel seems to be a “tofu”….not as daring, not as active, and definitely not as durable (hope this word is politically correct to describe a kid!)

Ashley is so tough! And her energy level definitely surpasses 10 of those Energizer Rabbits!!!! I gasped at one of her near “falls” and my heart nearly fell out when I saw her do a half somersault on the floor when she nearly fell!!!!! When she did knock her right cheek into a table, all she did was to tell everyone… “I am ok, I am ok”….although we could see a red patch on that cheek. Her grandma gave her a hanky wrapped with ice, and she just calmly held it against her cheeks!!!! After awhile, she was back on her feet, jumping up and down again.

Rachel got caught up with the excitement around Ashley. When it was time for bed, Rachel did not sleep until 2am in the morning!!!!! *yawn*…..it was definitely not easy for hubby and I…..

The Christmas celebrations were great, as we got ourselves a good feast on Christmas Eve. It was also a farewell for Rachel’s yee poh and aunty Amanda, Audrey, Uncle Adam and yee cheong, who are leaving for Australia in 2 weeks time. Definitely a great family get-together…..

Vitagen with Less Sugar......

Got it for Rachel today, and she likes it equally! Though it's slightly more expensive, I think it's worth getting it for her!!!!

Vitagen with Less Sugar!

Just discovered that vitagen comes with the less sugar range!!!! Will definitely have to let Rachel try this!!!

Mummy here will feel less guilty about using vitagen as a bribery then......

Orange Juice, Strawberries and Sushi

Sushi

We discovered that Rachel likes Sushi a lot. Maybe not the sashimi or the fish roe on the sushi, but she loves the sushi rice. Expensive taste? Hubby has been asking me to buy the Japanese rice to cook for her instead of our normal thai fragrant rice. But of course, it costs 5x more to buy Japanese rice for her. Hubby says it's "nicer and softer". Hmmmm.....expensive taste?????

Strawberries

Rachel had her first taste of strawberries a few days back. 2 weeks short of turning 2 years old (my target was for her to reach 2 before any citrus fruits, or strawberries), I thought it was ok to let her "taste" strawberries. Her first reaction at the first taste of strawberries was....shrugging her shoulders, squinting her eyes and pursing her lips..... sour and sweet at the same time.

I did not think she liked it. So, I just continued devouring the strawberries myself. After a minute or 2, she started reaching out for one, and voila.....she seems to have acquired the taste for it!!!! See pics of her eating strawberries!!!!

Orange Juice

No joke. Rachel loves FLORIDA NATURAL. again....an expensive item on my grocery list. If we are lucky, we can get it for RM19.90, else it can cost up to RM23.90!!!!!!! After a sip, just to taste what's in Daddy's glass, Rachel was hooked.... Now, there's no turning back. When it comes to orange juice, Rachel only goes for FLORIDA NATURAL ORANGE WITH PULP!!!! Talk about expensive taste!