migration

siyuan's new website while we're in HK is now at

http://babykenobi.blogspot.com/

please check it out. i might still update here once in a while :)

moving

we've moved to hk, and are now hunting for a shoebox to live in. okay, not as bad, but probably 1/3 the size of what we had in melbourne, and three times the rent.
will update later when have more time and settled down.

Growing Fun

Just a series of growing incidents with Siyuan, who is now about 10 months old.

What's that smell?
He was happily playing away in the living room, and I was washing up. Wife was out doing a little grocery shopping. All of a sudden he started crying. To pacficy himself, he started playing with his toys. Didn't work. He crawled, crying every step, towards the dinning floor. I spoke to him, trying to sooth him. He went to my computer table, a favorite spot, and started hammering away at my keyboard and pulling cables. 1 minute later, he restarted crying. Then he crawled away to another fav spot to play with my music discs. Didn't last either, and started crying. Finally he crawled towards me, and pulled at my pants. That's when I noticed the horrific smell coming. Yes, he's pooed. And so the poor boy was trying to escape his own poo smell, and must be wondering why is that smell following me?

Morning Routine
Siyuan has a morning routine, and one of them involves coming to the bedroom and then start yapping at the top of his voice at the foot of the bed. After been ignored, he will crawl to my side of bed, and start to pull my glasses, cup, books or watnot i have on a little shelf. Then carried on yapping away. Loudly. I wake up (wife would be up earlier to have given him his very early feed). He will follow me around then as I change, wash up, grab my keys etc. Then he stand at this little gate we have, and yapped at me. I will go over, hug him, and say good bye.

Park
Was at the park on the weekend, while poor wife sleeps off a headache. Beautiful sunny day as spring enters Melbourne (in Melbourne's own sporadic fashion...two days nice, one day wet and cold). Laid down the mat, put him down, and lie down. He happily pattered around, crawled over me and pulled the mat. I just lie back, look up into the blue sky through the trees. Heaven.

playground

couple of hours to kill before the flight home. so brought him to a nearby park and garden to play. sorry this series of entries are just so bland! photo captions really.

Crayfish

can't go to tasmania without indulging in seafood. we probably got an overkill. This was our last nite there and since wife hasn't had crayfish before, we gave it a shot. Siyuan got to test the freshness of the crayfish beforehand :)

Lenna

We stayed at Lenna of Hobalt. An old building converted into an hotel. it was built by a scot, who with his brother made their money from whaling and merchant-shipping.
And oh yea, that's a hat we tried on him.

Pier

Some pictures taken near a pier when I took him out for a walk. the best thing about the trip for us? Siyuan slept pretty well :)

Bar

we hang out at the bar drinking coffee and eating pancakes. nobody seems to be there and there's good room for siyuan to crawl.

Tasmania

Just a series of pictures from our tasmanian holiday. we went to to hobalt, and then torn up plans to travel and decided to just stay, enjoy seafood, coffee, ransack a second-hand bookstop for old books, and sleep in :)
this is siyuan looking mournfully outside on the 1st day we got there. it was a 6:30 a.m. flight and we were up at 4ish. So pretty tired by the time we actually checked in.
And Siyuan cried non-stop halfway through the thankfully one hour flight. That caught us by surprise becos he's been on longer trips than that and never behaved this way.
We reckon it was the lack of ventaliation.

Barricade

Wife reconstitued the living room, and erected a more efficient barricade to stop Siyuan from getting into the kitchen or access to my computer, where he feels an urge to play with my mouse and chew cables. We had previously used a mixture of the pram, chairs and boxes, but he's been wriggling through them or managing to push and pull aside the boxes etc.
We were at Williamstown sunday to satisfy my cravings for crepes. Laid him on the grass patch in front of the waters after that, and were prepared to just sit back, read and enjoy the spring afternoon.
Siyuan got the fright. Sitting beside me and wife, he just suddenly started crying and wanted mom to cuddle him. We couldn't figure out why since he's been at the parks before. Maybe it was the seagulls wandering around?

Doggie Ride

We've been thinking of getting one of those ponies for him to ride for a while, but haven't quite seen something we like so far. Then wife saw this one on a day out. Since Siyuan was born in the year of the dog, this was perfect :)

Growth

This morning as I was about to depart, i realized Siyuan had managed to stand up using just the wall, rather than legs of chairs and tables. I yelled excitedly for my wife. She took a look and went back to sleep, saying it's been happening. Ah, the things that are happening!
The other day, wife did an experiment with Siyuan. She laid down his food on the floor. He saw, quickly crawled over to the bowl and sat himself down quietly to wait for her to feed him. Last evening, we were out at a Japanese eatery and wife fed him some tofu, alternating with his normal dinner. He quickly decided he only wanted the tofu and screamed himself red if we tried to sneak his normal dinner back.
Who says babies don't have a mind of their own? :)

Sonny's Jacket and Hide-and-Seek

Here's Siyuan in a jacket that our friend Sonny bought for him. And then Siyuan was playing hide and seek behind my knee later :)

Late Afternoon

Now that he can crawl, the whole apartment is his playground and we're on constant watch he doesn't go into the toliet or into the kitchen when wife is cooking. He's a real quick mover, can get from one end of the room to the kitchen in a couple of minutes. He also has a tendency to follow us around, including into the bathroom and toliet.
Sometimes though he would just sit and contemplate his surroundings. This is one of those moments in the later afternoon when we got a nice spot of sunlight.

Park

Took Siyuan to a nearby park today :)

Stand

seems to have screwed up the last posting picture. Anyway, here's another picture of Siyuan standing...in his own bedroom and bed. We're still struggling with frequent nite waking. He would sleep reasonably well from 8 pm till about midnight, and then he could wake up at 1, or 2, but certainly almost always at 3 am. He might also be awake at 4 am. Its been pretty tiring.
Nurses and friends tell us he's going through a developmental stage where his brain is processing a lot of information, so that's why he's having more wakings. We can only endure!

Crawl, Sit, Stannd

The teochew have a saying, that roughly translated, meant a baby will sit in his seventh month, crawl in his eighth month, and then teething will occur in his ninth month.
Siyuan teeth in his sixth month, crawled in his seventh, and then sat in his eighth. He is now learning to stand. As you would notice, his was the reverse order.

Epic Feeding

We came back to Melbourne and moved him to three solids fairly soon after that. This was my epic struggle with him, which he won of course.
That was in the early days, and I'm now better at it. At one stage i threatened to slip a big piece of newspaper over him becos of the mess. Thankfully i've got the knack better.
Or maybe he just didn't want his dinner then.

Teething

Siyuan started teething while in Singapore, and he now has two of them on his lower gum. We're still waiting to see the rest of the teeth, though there are hints of them emerging on his upper gum. As u can see he couldn't stop chewing when teething, nor dribbling all over the place.
Unfortunately, teething, the hot Singapore weather (after coming from melbourne in winter) and lack of water and sleep meant he fell sick with flu and a fever. It wasn't much of a holiday with a sick baby!

Have Been Remiss

I have been remiss in the past two months, with traveling back home to Singapore and Bangkok, falling sick, teething, coming back and adapting to winter, siyuan learning to crawl properly and then stand with support. Here's some backdated photos and posts. Will add more later.

This is wife and Siyuan enjoying the afternoon sunlight back in Singapore.

Greedy

As you can see, Siyuan can now grab different objects with both his hand, hold onto them while he looks around. Or he could play with one of the object, and leave the other one dangling in the other hand, much more rare. the variety of noises he makes seems to widen with the weeks. Now he whines with a ma ma sound. the first time i heard it, he was protesting me changing his diapers just before his last feed near midnight, which means he doesn't know the meaning of papa and mama yet.
He also seems to have picked up this habit of making pooing sound, while spitting out saliva. We couldn't figure out where he picked it up because we both don't do that. I reckon it's just something that's easier to do rather whine.
I wonder when crawling starts? He can move around quite a bit now, just by rolling around.

Solids

So, we've started him on a little solid a day, to let him get used to it, as well as bit more formula...still breastfeeding, but just easing gradually towards weaning at some stage. He seems to like the taste of food, guess it offers him variety.
The only issue? more solid shit too. Whereas in the past when he poo, the poo is watery and so spreads out in his diapers, allowing him to poo more. Now the poo just sits there between his butt cheeks and the diapers, and he's restricted from pooing more. So he has to work harder and shit a few more times, and you can sometimes hear him grunting away. And oh yeah, it stinks.

Sickie

Siyuan, wife and myself have been sick the past week or so, with the common bug - the cough, sneezing, sore throat, congested nose etc. Doctor, other than asking for a lot of money, didn't say much more except sleep and rest. Which we try. In the early stages, he was really miserable, and kept waking up due to his blocked nose. Then he wants to be cuddled all the time.

Darn

Darn, woke up this morning to watch this man steal the big ear from Liverpool.
Siyuan got an early start to been a fan too, getting up to want his milk.

this is australia

This is australia, not some third-world country.
photo was from an article in local newspaper the AGE.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/paradise-lost/2007/05/12/1178899161080.html

I did that!?!

Siyuan hasn't been sleeping well, waking up a few times at nite. We can't figure it out the reason and have been exhausted. Here's a conversation I had with my wife

Me:what time did u have to wake up last nite?
Wife:oh, i fed him at about 4:30-5 am. he was making noise at about 4.
Me:oh, he slept till 4 a.m?
Wife with a puzzled look:no, he woke up cryin at 2 am
Me:oh, and u patted him to sleep.
Wife with even more puzzled look:no, you did! you jumped out of bed and went to pat him back to sleep. I saw you got up and was standing beside his bed, so i went back to sleep.
Me:I did?!?! I don't remember!?!

Me Drink!

He can now hold a small milk bottle and drink from it! :)

New Bed

Yeah, that's him in the new bed :)

Going to buy me a new bed

So, we had some extra hours on a car we rented and decided to have some dim sum at Plum - which turned out to be expensive but a great choice. Lots of room, good service and wonderful food. It probably was expensive because we ordered and ordered and ordered :)
We can be gluttons sometime. BabyCo was nearby and so we popped in. For a while now, we have been debating setting up his bed in the second bedroom and letting him sleep there. Wife though wants him nearby. His bed won't fit though in our bedroom. So, she spotted this travel cot which babies can sleep in till two. ``Should have got that in the beginning,'' she said. I couldn't agree more in hindsight, though I was just nervous since it does look flimsy.
Still, we're visiting family in June, so this could come in handy. Here's a pic of him in the car :) One of the better ones with natural sunlight and shadow.

Sleeping like an angel

Yeah, sometimes he's just like that after feeding :)

Belly time

After dinner one day, we turned back to Siyuan and found that he had rolled over onto his belly! That next great step has occured and it thrilled us to bits, and him as well. He kept rolling over that evening till he got tired and started crying. Since then he has shown a preference to be on his belly, and even when we put him in his pram, he would try to lift himself by the elbows to look at us. He's getting more curious about his surroundings. He's also now able to play by himself a lot more.
Wife reckons though he does want more attention now.

He is also able to stretch and touch his toes now. The only bad news, and actually the most important one, is that he seems to have broken out of his sleeping habits. He's been crying and waking up a lot more in the night. Nurse says we have to be careful or else Siyuan would unlearn how to sleep.

He Likes to Watch TV

Yes, everytime the tv is on, he would be glued to it. We try to stop him from watching it and have erected barricades with pillows and toys and such. We propped him up for his picture :)

Sunday Nite

Hard to want to go back to work having had such a wonderful weekend with Siyuan!
He now likes to roll onto his sides, and then to pacify himself, will suck on his fingers till he fall asleep.

The Hobbit and Superman

Siyuan attended his first church service today by first been totally curious about his surroundings, and then snoring through the sermon. And the best thing about attending a Welsh church? You get mentions of the Hobbit and Superman in a sermon :)
Siyuan gave us a absolutely great day yesterday, sleeping, feeding and playing well, and in general not been a bother. He was just a wonder :)

Smiley?

Siyuan smiles and laughs a lot when we play with him. Heck, sometimes he just smile and laugh when he notices us walking by and giving him a glance. Friends also noticed he's quite a smiley.
We wonder if all babies are like that, or is it just that this is part of his character formation? Nurses say the core character of a person is formed in his first three years, which is why some of them advocate not letting a baby cry too long on their own, least a part of that fear and anxiety creep into their character.
Others of course say we should let the baby cry some times so that they learn to be more independent, especially when sleeping is concerned.
Wife says she's soft-hearted to let Siyuan cry too long, so I don't think that's a parenting method we will use. Wife is a very nice softie :)

100 Days

We never got round to celebrating his 1 month birthday, which is a Chinese tradition, since we were exhausted at that stage. I recalled just sitting in a restaurant sipping soup with wife and mother-in-law then in a particular bad week. My Korean colleague tells me the tradition there is to celebrate at the 100th day, when the baby and mom are in better shape. So that's what we did. Got some friends over, catered some Thai food and had a day showing Siyuan around (and having other children get excited about him. One baby was all excited. They do look alike as babies, except Siyuan is quite a bit smaller)
Our friend had a hand in trying out been a parent, but declined our offer to stay the night and complete his experience, including changing nappies :)
Siyuan was held, tickled and talked to by friends, and he seemed to enjoy it, laughing and smiling. The next day, we realized Siyuan was suddenly making louder nosies, more variety of it, and more often. We wondered if perhaps the interaction had somehow stimulated his brain to another stage of development?

New noises

I took my recorder back home for the long easter break because I wanted to tape down his various utterances. Not having a video camera that has sound, this was probably the best option (we have an old digital camera with limited video recording). So i recorded sounds of him crying and me trying to pacify him, and also sounds of him and me playing (largely me making funny faces, sticking my tongue out at him, and rubbing his cheeks while he laughed at me.)
Then I tried an interesting experiment on a particularly grouchy moment he had. I played back his noises for him to hear. He became intrigued by the sound of him crying and stopped crying. It was almost mesmerizing, and of course the sounds of my trying to pacify him seems to sooth him a bit. Then get this, he started laughing and smiling at the recorder when it played back sounds of me laughing. :)
However it seems the recorder and noise has to be close to him for this to work. When I played those noises through my computer speakers, he seemed to ignore them as noises.
Interesting.

Blue Blue Sky

It's autumn, and there's suddenly bright sunshine and a warm day. Couldn't resist. I packed him into the pram, and out we went into the park. Must show him the blue sky, smell the greens and look at trees. So we went to a park just 10 minutes walk, and took a walk. On a Good Friday, the park was largely deserted save for a bunch of sadists running around in red T-shirts, or more accurately trying to run.
Siyuan was looking around, pacified by all the greens after an active early mornings (All mornings are active with him, and always early. If we're lucky, he wakes up at 6 a.m.)
On the second round, he fell asleep, and I took a break to read. When he woke again, I took him to the biggest tree in the centre of the park, and had him look at it. And sky so blue, you could grab a handful and stuff it like cotton wool into your pockets. Then he had a close look at the grass.
Now, if only I have a latte handy :) Unfortunately a 30 minutes search found just about everything closed up for the holiday, excluding Macdonalds.

Stephen Chow and Dreams

I love Stephen Chow - he's an absolute genius as far as I'm concerned. I've probably watched his movies a dozen times each (my wife and mom would say that's an under-estimation.) Wife loves his second-latest movie: Shaolin soccer - its about a group of losers, people who have spent years practising Shalin, only to find that its useless in today's society. one is a rubbish collector, another lives in a shack, another one works in a 7-11: you get the idea.
Stephen Chow plays a character who's still holding on to the dream - how to make in spread Shaolin's glory. Its one of those things martial artists want to do - how to spread the art. In one scene, one of his disciple, now working at a pub, tells him to give it up. To get a real job.
He says: everybody must have a dream, or else you're not much better than salted fish (yea, it sounds funny, but it goes back to an chinese saying.)
His fellow disciple points out that Chow didn't even have a pair of shoes on, making it worse than salted fish in any case.
It's not a new message, but it took a rather unusual premise and turn it into a comedy cum social satire about the plight of working class people reduced to the margins of society.

I hope Siyuan loves Stephen Chow as well :)

3 Months

Some pictures of Siyuan in this 3rd month. He's weighing at 6.2 kg now, the nurse tells us :) And now when you put him on his belly, he can stay up for a while, look around and even try to grasp toys. The other day, he was sleeping in bed with wife, and he turned himself so he can try and wake wife up to feed him. :)

They Went Over to the Dark Side

Had to go to Sydney over the weekend for a business meeting, and made the mistake of taking a 9 pm flight out on Friday nite. Well, I had wanted to have dinner at home and spend a bit more time with Siyuan and wife before heading out. In typical Melbourne-Sydney fashion, the landing was delayed and by the time the plane landed, it was closer to 11 p.m., than the 10:20 p.m. scheduled landing time. The taxi queue was long, to say the least. But it had looked manageable with staff controlling the queue. Sure, the taxis came in spurts and we might have to wait a while, but at least there was order. This was a crowd of businessmen, holiday-goers returning home, some teenagers, retirees and families. Nobody seem drunk or on drugs. At 11 p.m., the queue controllers (for want of a better phrase) went home. A fellow directed a cab heading his way to a more deserving passenger ahead of him in the queue, and civility seems to prevail. 2 minutes later, he changed his mind, and he jumped in front of the road and stopped a cab heading to the front of the queue. He jumped in and forced the cab to drive off despite protests. You could hear the thoughts that went through all the minds - its everybody for themselves.
An Asian cab driver asked if there were other passengers heading the same way as his existing passenger. He was told off (for unknown reasons) by a man in his 40s, looking serious in his suit and suitcase (strangely, or perhaps not strangely, when two other cab drivers did the same thing a minute later, there were no protests.)
The tension in the crowd snapped, and people began to curse and swear. And some at the front ran for the cabs.

At that point I was already at the front of the queue, and then got shoved further down the road...where I managed to get a cab because it became rather chaotic up front. Lucky, I guess. In the cab, the driver told me that long queues past 11 was a common problem. I wonder if the ugly scenes were just as common then?

Holiday

Suffering from a flu bug, and with me on few days break, we decided we would head out to the Dandedong for a nite. We thought some fresh air would do us some good. We asked friends, who had kids, if they wanted to come along. They declined saying they needed more time to prepare for such trips. We got an idea of what they meant when we started packing. Instead of two haversacks, we found ourselves debating bringing along a pram, Siyuan's sleeping basket, how many toys and dappers. We ended up with at least three bags of Siyuan's stuff, and that's excluding his bed and toy.
We woke up late, struggled to fix a regulated traveling basket into the car, and headed out near noon in hot summer weather. We started to realize this was a bad idea. Never mind, let's press on. We then found that our accomodation was rather more way out than we thought, and worse still couldn't find any restaurants nearby. By the time we got there, wife (who's the driver) was exhausted. It was a beautiful place, but the prospect of having bread and instant noodles for dinner was discouraging.
Worse was to come. Siyuan, who was also down with the flu, decided he didn't quite like the new environment. His stuffed nose also meant he struggled to sleep continuously. And both of us forgot to bring medicine for wife, who also struggled to sleep with her nose.
To comfort him, I slept on the floor with his sleeping basket. At about 1 a.m. realized it was a very very bad mistake. Prepared for a hot day, I didn't realize it was chilling in the Dandedongs at nite. No more short breaks of this nature, we decided after this. We're better off, giving each other a couple of hours off by taking turns with the baby on weekend, we realized :)

Are you looking at me?

Who are you looking at punk?

Every Little Thing

A friend of ours was telling us about her baby, how she has learned to roll over at just a little past 3 months. Siyuan is now just past 3 months, and I can't wait for him to start learning to do that. He hasn't shown any inclinations though. If we leave him alone, we do come back to find him having shifted his position sideways sometimes, but no hint he can roll over yet. Mom called to stress how important it was to watch him since he's still got fragile muscles. He's also supposed to be at the age when he would discover his hands. Wife caught him doing that just once the weekend. Apparently he can spend as long as 30 minutes been fascinated by it as he realize what he has been sucking on are his hands :)
As my friend say, every little thing thrills us.

The one thing this period has taught me though is new respect for my mother. Far away that she is, she has always called up with timely advice throughout the pregnancy and as Siyuan develops - from food to eat, postures for sleeping, importance of wife not squatting after birth to carry weights, how to wrap the baby to what to watch out for each week, she's just been absolutely spot on.
That's pretty amazing considering how it's been more than 30 years since she cared for a baby. She might not be able to explain the reasons well (with only 3 years formal education), but she's been absolutely spot on. Often we find that the nurses would repeat the same thing my mom said, except with better explanations, or as my wife said, explanations that us Western-educated people can understand.
As they say, when you have your own kids, u appreciate your parents more.
Cliche, but true.

Too sweet

Struggling with opening a can of condense milk, I did my usual clumsy thing and spilled it over half the kitchen sink. I was trying to clean the mess when wife called.
`Check out Siyuan now,he looks so sweet.' To which I quipped, I'm rather sweet enough now.
Siyuan is almost 3 months old now, and we're trying to make sure he learns the proper sleep association - ie to sleep by been relaxed and not needing to be rocked or held. That's probably the hardest thing to do!

He Finally Pooed!

We woke up this morning, resigned to another day of smelly farts and worries about his pooing. We checked at a pharmacy the previous night, and they decided he was really too young to have anything to help with that. And then this morning, after a kickabout with me, he finally pooed. Not a lot, like he used to. But at least it was something. We were both quite happy. Unfortunately, his smelly farts continue!
maybe i can persuade dear wife to have more greenies :)

Smelly!

Nowadays I always turn my head to look at other kids, and smile when I see parents chiding, holding or laughing at their babies. It makes me think of Siyuan, who is very cute most days. Obviously that's parental bias :) I'm sure if I was still single, I won't have paid any attention to Siyuan. I guess it's also a guy thing. Wife brought Siyuan to the office one day, and the women gushed all over Siyuan. My single male colleague struggled to say a word.
Siyuan can now hold his head up for a period if we hold him up. He is most curious during those times, looking all around him from an elevated view. A friend sent a video of her baby, about 6 weeks ahead of Siyuan, turning onto her belly. I can't wait for that happen for Siyuan!
Anyway, Siyuan went one week without pooing, and my goodness, his fart increased in frequency and potency! Poor wife would get a bellyful from Siyuan everytime she feed him. And his fart can now make us from the room. So we called the nurses, who told us
breastfed babies can go for 2 weeks without poing!

Happy Chinese New Year

Hey, happy chinese new year. Wife woke me up early this morning. and dressed Siyuan and herself all in red :) We had given Siyuan the traditional hong bao the night before, and left it under his pillow. I still remember my parents giving me that when I was a kid :) CNY was a quiet period for us since we were just happy to rest, and turned down friends invitation for a party. As it turned out, Siyuan had a very bad wind period for a day. Crying 10 minutes and sleeping 10 minutes in that cycle for 10 hours. Absolutely exhausting. :)