28 wks+

Boo's little boats
You see what I mean about the veggie ice cubes coming out looking like little boats? I've just made some of pureed peas as well. Ah, they are the cutest! If it's true that babies grow up wanting to eat more of the same things they first start eating I'm going to have trouble keeping Boo away from the brightest neon orange and green things.

Boo the gourmand









I tried her on soft-boiled new asparagus last night. She seems to quite like it, contrary to her expressions above. Either that or, as Alex pointed out, she likes having something to hold in her hand and to chew.

She quite likes fresh carrot sticks as well now. My previous fears of her biting off a huge chokeable beads were unfounded. She mostly gnaws them with her gums and uses her little bottom front teeth to nibble tiny bits off. Each stick amuses her for about ten minutes before they end up on the floor and, eventually, in mama's tummy. Double whammy feel-good food.

Development notes
She can pass things from one hand to the other now - as predicted a few weeks ago by Dr Mark - instead of having to shake something so hard it eventually flies out of her hand. Apparently the next step is learning to let go of things on purpose.

Boy am I looking forward to that. It's not as if she doesn't already do it to anything within reach when we plonk her in her chair for meals.

Alex claims she is also able to call me now. But I don't think crying 'muuuh-meh' plaintively everytime I leave her with him to cook dinner counts. Especially since she is apt to make the same complaining sound even when she's on my lap sometimes. I'll admit it sounds darn convincing when she's sitting in her chair, and holding her arms out to me, tears streaming down her cheeks, once she's had enough to eat. But I still think it's a complaining sound rather than a British-ised 'mummy'.

She also sits up really quite well now. And if you tell her 'i-chang, i-chang' and let her hold onto your fingers - if she wants to sit up - she'll pull herself into sitting position from lying down.

What else? Oh yes, she understands peek-a-boo and thinks it's a hilarious game. Especially if you play it by wiggling a piece of cloth over her face. If you drop it onto her, she'll pull it off with a huge grin. It's a current sure-fire way of distracting her from crying.

Poo-wise, her bowels seem to be starting to cope with solids. Either that or the current mix of carbo and vegetables I've started instituting is working and she no longer seems as constipated as when we first started giving her solids.

She pooed this evening and there were definitely bits of lunch in it - I could tell because I gave her some finely cut-up roasted and skinned red peppers with her potato mash at lunchtime. They are the first red things she's eaten. And they were completely identifiable in the poo.

Eczema watch
We think we know what's making her itch: seafood. The last noted outbreaks have all coincided with me eating shellfish or Boo eating fish. She was scratching like mad at bedtime Monday night after I gave her a few mouthfuls of steamed sea bream. The last time an outbreak happened was after I'd had sushi for lunch. I think it's not so bad if I eat fish, but not shellfish. And it looks like she's going to have to skip brain food for a while. Having said that, I still don't know if it's just an intolerance - the eczema didn't really flare up the next day after she ate fish, though we did apply the steroid cream at bedtime - or really linked to the eczema. Anyway. No sushi for a while, sigh.

My first mother's day
I had a lovely day. Woke up to Boo being taken off to the other room by daddy and then had a bouquet of balloons and two books as presents - Alexander McCall Smith's latest Mma Ramotswe and a reprinted pamphlet given to US GIs coming to Britain during WWII. Is hilarious. Had lovely pancakes with bacon and maple syrup for breakfast and a surprise tea where the lovely Malaysians in London came over (and somehow managed not to retch at Alex's sweet gesture) and ate cake. My cup runneth over (with champagne too!).

PS Moms at home, we haven't forgotten you! Happy British Mothering Sunday! Your cards will be timed, however, for the Malaysian celebrations in April!

You take your eye off the kid for one second...

















... And she grabs for the bowl of mini pasta in butternut squash puree, lands her palm on the spoon and splats herself with it. Good thing it wasn't hot and she missed her eye. Boo was a little perturbed though to find us both cackling like jackals and Daddy running for the camera.

Boo's first week in nursery
The staff keep a little diary for us to read of what the kids get up to there. This is what she did. If you can't read it, hold the cursor over the picture and then click the left button, it opens up a bigger picture:

28 wks+

This is the week in which:

We resurrect Boo's bathtub












Mainly because Alex says he wants more practice bathing her. Up till now I've been smearing her all over with Epaderm and then showering it off with baby on my lap. It's tricky now that she's much more wriggly and wants to eat anything she can get her hands on, but I may convert to bathing her in the tub too since it affords me the joy of the sight of her pudgy little self playing with the toys Alex's colleagues bought her. I am restraining myself from buying her anything else, much as I am dying to get a rubber duckie.

We return to my current favourite brunch place (Pacific Grill and Bar)
Nothing to say by way of news except boy was it a lot more crowded than the week before, but Elaine took such a nice family picture of us I wanted to post it.

The nice waiter recognised baby and smiled at her on his way past saying it was nice to see her again (too darn right too after the hassle we had getting a table there).

Food was still good. I had a rib-eye steak this time and boy was it tender. They get it from Donald Russell apparently so maybe we should really convert and begin ordering our beef online too.

Boo learns a little kung-fu fighting
Alex was delighted with this action shot. But rest assured parents baby has not developed sudden extraordinary martial skills, I was just taking her off my shoulder when Alex snapped this. It only looks like she's giving me a flying kick.


She goes mad for pizza crusts
Boo loves bread - any sort. She quite happily ate most of a bowl of mashed potato and apple and pear puree but when we brought out the pizzas we were having for dinner she suddenly looked most dissatisfied with what she was having and wouldn't stop whining until I shoved a bit of a pizza crust in her hand. She wound up chewing and half-eating about four pieces - two of them rather large.

We've since discovered she really likes being able to chew on bread crusts, not just munch on the soft insides we pinch off for her - so little rounds of baguette are ideal.



































I buy a cute new ice tray for her frozen veggie blocks
There's nothing like buying cutesy accessories in the kitchen to make you want to cook. The best thing about this ice tray is that if you leave a little bump of food at the top of each cube - which I originally did to stop them sticking to each other when I put them all in an old ice-cream tub - they look like little boats! They are so cute!

Especially when contrasted with formless blobs of yellow parsnip or green courgette or little triangles of dried apricot. Whoo hoo baby food is fun!

Scarface
Horrors! Poor Boo got scratched on the nose on her second day at nursery. Apparently one of her little friends, Alessia, was kissing and hugging her and got a little carried away.

I don't know how on earth that resulted in such a horrendous scratch but sigh it was hard to be angry at the little girl in question because I saw her in action when I dropped Boo off in the morning and she was treating her like a little doll - caressing her cheek, kissing her, cuddling her. In fact when I left they were in the midst of a little love fest - baby was drooling all over the girl's face and trying to eat her nose in return.

And while I'd love to be angry at her parents as well it was also difficult because I bumped into the girl's mom leaving the nursery with baby and she immediately went 'Oh that must be Isabel!' And I went 'Yes, how did you know?' And she said 'Oh Alessia's been talking non-stop about her since she came!' Mutual aaaws. Anyway the scar is healing quite quickly and as long as there is no permanent mark I will not give little Alessia the evil eye the next time I see her.

27 wks+

Boo's full day
Boo's been really good the last couple of days - not too many tantrums and lots of smiles. I think part of it may be due to the fact that - I have to face it - she actually has more fun at nursery than at home. She seems to get way more stimulation there, because she gets to watch a bunch of other children running around and playing and is absolutely fascinated by them. And possibly because the nursery ladies know way more nursery songs than me.

At the moment Old MacDonald is an enormous hit with baby, so I run with it: Old MacDonald doesn't just have a chicken, goose, duck, cow, pig, sheep, horse and goat; he has a dog, cat, owl, pigeon, donkey, turkey, mouse, hamster and anything I can think of with a distinctive noise. And when she tires of Old MacDonald, she likes The Wheels on the Bus too ('The daddies on the bus do sudoku, sudoku, sudoku...'). But after that and Incy Wincy Spider I'm stumped as to what else to sing her. So nursery is, actually, kind of good I'm thinking. I'm just trying not to be jealous of the fact that they get to have so much fun with her.

So anyway baby had her first full day at nursery on Friday and she seemed fine in the morning - I left her at about half past eight and then came back at a quarter to twelve. She woke from her nap just as I arrived and seemed quite happy if a little dazed at the unfamiliar surroundings.

She gets to sleep in an enormous Silver Cross pram, which is the size of a cot, and she has her blanket from home and the soft white bear Uncle Simon bought her, which she always has when sleeping.

Thankfully, despite their earlier warnings that they sometimes let the babies sleep outside, each time I've come back, she's been warmly tucked up in the pram in the nursery room or in the office. Hopefully they'll keep doing this until the weather improves. I don't see how they can do otherwise - the temperature was about 7 degrees Celcius and it must have been way lower in the biting wind. Last year at this time it was about 18-20 degrees so we are getting really shortchanged on warmth.

After a quick feed and cuddle, I had to leave her again to go and hear what was happening with the restructure in the company. The news was better than expected but the process has dragged on so damn long it wouldn't have mattered what it was, I think, because morale has already plummeted so low. Somehow though, at the moment, it's hard to care about that. All I can keep thinking of is I hope she's OK when it's three days in a row next week.

Onto cheerier topics
Boo can now play her little xylophone, by which I mean of course that she's taken to swiping randomly at the keys with the little stick instead of constantly trying to eat it, like in the pictures below. I just have yet to capture her on camera doing so. Have also tried offering her a small carrot to bite on instead of the stick and she was wary at first but seemed to catch on to the idea later so will try it again and see how it goes. (Mom, don't worry, she is not eating the big raw stick of carrot, just biting on it. And I watch her like a hawk to make sure she doesn't bite off a piece.)










She also roll over with ease, though still shows no inclination to wanting to do so from her back to front - she can do it, she just doesn't see the point - and she sits up by herself really well now. When we first came back she used to have to lean forward, balancing on her arms, but now she can sit up straight for a minute or two maybe, before losing balance and toppling sideways or backwards.










She can also play by herself for a bit now, as long as she has enough things to keep her occupied. When I started this blog, I left her by herself with two teddy bears and the bag of toys next to her. After she'd been suspiciously quiet for five minutes I turned round to find she'd emptied the bag and was chewing on the lid, and looking immensely pleased with herself. Of course she was even more pleased another five minutes later when she'd gotten bored and started yelling for me to come over.










On the eating
She's on about a teaspoon or two of mush in the afternoons and maybe a teaspoon in the evening. Sometimes she's kind of grouchy by then so she doesn't want anything. But in the afternoon she's usually quite happy to eat stuff. Especially the sweeter things like the apple and pear puree and the dried apricot puree. She'll also eat the rice and carrot and sweet potato just as happily, but boy does she really, really like bread.

I tried giving her a little toast soldier as a finger food, since it's supposed to encourage her to chew and develop her jaw muscles for speech, but when she first bit on it, she started in surprise and then gave me a look of utter disgust. She went on to suck the toast but then gagged and brought up the feed she'd just had. I haven't tried toast again.

Banana, however, she still loves. She loves banana. If you carry her and eat a banana she's going to want some. I think it's mostly because she can hold onto the fruit and then bite it, but now we've decided not to give her so much, so she has it in competition with me or Alex and probably gets about four bites of a banana before either of us finishes it. It's her favourite tea-time snack.













Other food failures so far: baby pasta and spinach. I tried this on her Saturday night, since Alex and I were having linguine carbonara for dinner. The baby pasta is so cute! It looks like tiny spaghetti O's and is good because the bits don't stick together when they get cold.

I boiled up two tablespoons and finely chopped some spinach that we were having for soup. But once baby had the pasta in her mouth, she looked like she wasn't sure what to do with it and ended up bawling and depositing the pasta, all those perfect little O's, back on my shoulder.

Alex thinks we might be rushing her a bit with the new texture and I guess he might be right. But I'm not convinced she didn't like it. Maybe the taste of spinach was too much to go with it. Will try again soon with some other, more tasty binding food, maybe. Roast pepper puree? Very soupy butternut squash puree? I think these might work. And if they don't I'll gladly eat it.

6 mths, 6 days

What we did this weekend:

1. Eat: On Sunday we scoped out the new Pacific Bar and Grill on Goldhawk Road, after reading a favourable review about it. The food was excellent. I had the most tender and crisp-skinned roast chicken (actually a poussin) I've ever eaten, rubbed with 16 spices and grilled so they were all lightly charred. Alex had roast pork that also came in a dry rub and was accompanied by a bourbon chilli sauce. Yum yum. Only disappointment was the corn bread, which was highlighted in the review, which tasted a bit old. But the accompanying rye bread was delicious. Even baby liked the bits she was fed.

As we were sitting right by the window, I got a couple of great shots of her and Daddy, hamming it up for the camera:













Here's daddy trying to teach her to identify cars - something he's given up trying to teach me.










Recognise that look on her face?

2. Eat some more: On Saturday we had lunch at Wizzy, a great new-style Korean restaurant on Fulham Road. We dragged Elaine, Weif and Lucy there for lunch, with the udang di sebalik kuey teow of getting them to move to Fulham eventually ('prawn behind the flat rice noodle' to all you non-Malay-speakers; ie hidden intentions). The call of the office was too strong for Vik.

But Wizzy is sadly probably going to go out of business, if our lunch was any indication. We were the only people in the restaurant that lunchtime, probably because the lights were so dim that no one knew it was open. I felt a bit bad for requesting the table right at the back near the counter after realising no one else had entered in the two hours of our lunchtime, because I felt that if people had seen us, and mistaken us for Koreans, perhaps it would have given the place some kudos and attracted more custom. It does deserve it because the food is fantabulous. But you have to wonder too. I mean there were only five of us and still our food took ages to arrive.

Afterward we dragged poor Elaine to Holland Park because Alex wanted baby to get used to the idea of being among other children. He reckons it'll all help ease her going to nursery. So we headed to Holland Park's super-cool adventure playground, but baby wasn't too impressed. Maybe because it was bloody freezing when the sun went in. Then we visited the Kyoto Garden, which wasn't so impressive in the dull light of a grey spring day, and then adjourned quickly to the cafe for hot drinks.










3. Check out Chiswick: We viewed another two flats in Chiswick. One was an outright no (furniture too dated) and the other was a definite possibility but a little small, so on the backburner of possibilities. Very good value though: £250 pw, free gas and hot water, one decent-sized bedroom, one tiny one, and well refurbished. Also free parking I think. But you have to walk along a slightly dodgy path to get there and I'm not happy with the thought of Alex having to do that in the dark winter evenings.

We are getting astounded at the massive hike-ups flats are advertised at. A £320 pw possibility we viewed last week, we were told, would not refuse an offer of £270 if we took it unfurnished. I reckon we could bargain further to £260 at least unfurnished, maybe £250. Amazing. So hard to take estate agents at their word.

About nursery
Wound up leaving Boo for three-and-a-half hours at nursery on Thursday, instead of the planned four, since er we woke up a bit late. Apparently she was 'a bit sad in the morning' after we left but was otherwise OK.

She was too interested in the litter of toys on the floor to look round when Alex and I said goodbye and left, but I don't know whether to be happy or sad that she missed us too. Sigh. Full day this Friday. Don't know if I'll be able to stand it although I must say being able to read a newspaper again - not in the dead of the night like now - is rather nice. Not that I did; had to use the time to fill up an application form for an attachment at work, sigh.

Her eating
Boo's cut down on her eating again. She'll eat any number of pinches of bread we give her - although I suppose they don't amount to much - but she hasn't regarded any of our other offerings too highly since she started eating again this weekend. She's back down onto about a teaspoon and a half of food each time. But I suppose that's not unusual and we should be glad she's not wolfing everything down otherwise her grandmothers are going to be onto us again about childhood obesity!

This week she's been turning her nose up at the mashed potato but seems happier about carrot and rice and apple and pear puree. And tonight she had just a teaspoon and a bit of our lovingly boiled rice porridge (stock made of pork ribs, sea bream heads, red dates and dried scallops) and a few tastes of the steamed sea bream we gave her. She was more interested in chewing on the chopsticks I was feeding her with, darn it.

But she also took readily to her first taste of formula, which we are trying out, for the eventual likelihood of my not being able to express enough milk to see her through each day at nursery. We gave her 2.5 ozs and she scoffed the lot. So I made another 2 ozs and Alex says she took that readily too (I was showering).

What Boo does
Currently, she flails her arms about a lot when she's upset. And she's learned to push things away if she doesn't want them: spoonfuls of food, mama's patting hand, daddy's profered bottle of water. But she's complaining less than she did when we first came back from Malaysia a month ago - about everything in general.

And today, when I took her food shopping and then had a quick coffee in Costa before coming home, she perched delightedly on my lap and stared at everyone walking by with a huge smile on her face. The only difference with her behaviour pre-stranger anxiety is that now, if they smile back, she turns to hide her face against me for a bit before eventually turning to look at them again.

Ah, and she's still garnering admiring comments by the tonne. Nearly every female waitress at every restaurant we go to - and one lovely waiter at the Pacific this weekend - seems unable to at least smile at her when she looks at them. We get told so frequently that she's beautiful or cute (the cheeks are still the main attraction) that I almost get offended when people don't admire her. I know it's obnoxious but surely this is one of the slightly forgiveable things about being a first-time parent, right? Right?

PS Dad
You'll be pleased to know the toy you bought baby serves a double purpose. It entertains her and, if you turn it slowly, hypnotises her to sleep!

26 wks+

Boo was right...
... not to keep eating I guess. On Friday there were four consecutive, quite solid and large poos and she continued to refuse all solid food. On Saturday there was an almighty enormous wet poo and lo and behold, after that, her previously impacted bowels must have released their pressure on her tummy and she was scoffing food again. Either that or she really likes the apple and pear and dried apricot puree we gave her for dinner.

Not entirely sure about the dried apricot puree because, even though the fruits are organic, unsulphured and obviously haven't had any sugar added, the puree is almighty sweet. But I got them for her after browsing through the Mumsnet bulletin boards and finding them recommended as something to assist any constipation and because they are a good source of iron, apparently.

According to said bulletin board banana and mango can make babies constipated. Which might explain it all considering her fondness for the stuff. Anyway since then she's gone back to eating mashed potato and carrot, rice and carrot and, tonight, broccoli, lovingly boiled and pureed by daddy.

One freezer drawer is now full of the cutest triangles and bumpy lumps of solidly coloured food. Next on our menu to try out with Boo: porridge and fish!

6 mths+

Nursery = runny noses
Oh no Boo has caught a cold - mostly a runny nose - and cough from her three-day introduction to the nursery at work. It's not too bad but not what I would have wished though I suppose I'm just going to have to deal with the other inevitable infections to come.

A halt to proceedings
Also, a bad reaction to parsnip mash (ie lots and lots of gas) on Wednesday night and what appears to be a little constipation seem to have put poor baby off her food. She refused a feed of mashed potato and carrot last night and this afternoon. So tonight I tried rice and carrot and batons of courgette, in the hope that allowing her to hold her own food would tempt her to eat again, but she just started crying after a few mouthfuls of potato, and called to be breastfed instead.

Maybe it's the cold, maybe it's the gas... maybe we need to give her some mashed prunes.

25 wks, 6 days
4 big tsps pureed courgette
4 tsps rice and carrot
2 cm banana
40 ml boiled water

She likes the green stuff









And yells if you make her wait between spoonfuls at dinner








Boo eats some more
Today I introduced her to greenery: courgettes (or zuchinni to you American-speaking folk). They were the first easy-to-cook-looking green things I saw on the organic shelf in Sainsbury's. Yes, we figure baby can eat organic while it costs about 20p per meal. We'll see later whether we can be asked to fork out £8 for half a chicken. (I think the answer will be yes - daddy already couldn't bear to go with anything else to make the stock for her rice porridge.)

Today she upped her quota of food to three little meals by being greedy and grabbing for my banana at tea time. I think she ate about two centimetres of banana in total. It would have been more, but I was quite hungry too. I know solid food is much less calorific than milk, so maybe she misses the calories?

I was only going to feed her lunch and dinner. At first I thought she just wanted to bite on the banana. So I let her. Then she wanted to hold it. Fine. Then the biting went from tiny gnaws to rather large chunks the size of half her fingers. I was quite alarmed at first, but she seemed fine with the quantity, and was munching quite happily with no sign of choking, so I let her be.

Towards the end, when she'd obviously had enough, however, she started pushing the banana mush out with her tongue, so it dripped down her face and onto her unprotected shirt. And then she started squashing the banana with her fingers. When I stopped her doing that, she rubbed her face and hair in distress. Banana everywhere! Argh!

Boo's triple whammy
Fortunately, after this, she had an enormous poo - the first in three days - so I got to wash her down all over anyway. The contents of what she's been eating were reasonably evident in the consistency: very mushy; and boy did it smell. For some reason she gave absolutely no indication while pooing though - or maybe I was too distracted by the banana mess. So the poo went all over her back and all the way up to her shoulders before I finally realised. It was one of those panic-inducing poos because there's so much and she keeps moving, smearing one part of herself while you clean another.

When I'd finally wiped all of it off, I went back to the toilet for another bucket of warm water, and came back to see her sitting in a little puddle of pee. At this point I decided she warranted an impromptu shower.

But baby had one last trick up her sleeve. After the shower, I put her on a towel on the mattress in our living room to change her, as the changing mat was still wet with pee. While I was choosing a sleeping suit for her she peed again, taking out the towel and mattress cover. Yeesh.

But she was sleepy by then and, after a little massage with moisturiser, she was off to the land of nod, leaving me a good 40 minutes to clean everything up. She had two small teaspoons of rice and carrot and almost two heaped ones of pureed courgette for both lunch and dinner. I love the look of the pureed courgette - it's a really vibrant green and, frozen in little puddles, looks like some alien life form.

We are now quite well stocked-up on rice-and-carrot, sweet potato and courgette ice cubes. And banana will obviously be a good anytime fallback since she seems to adore it. Need to think of what else to feed her though. Am holding off on the apple for now since she didn't seem to like it as much (too acidic?). I'm thinking next up should be parsnip or normal potato mash...

Nursery tomorrow!
Oh and tomorrow (well, later today) is the first time I leave Boo at the nursery for an hour. Without me. I think I'm in denial. Everytime I think about it my heart sinks and I go well it's only an hour. What's an hour, right? It's just one hour. I don't want to think about the fact that in two weeks' time it will be for three days each week, then four... and then every day. Thinking about it makes me want to cry!