Charis Is Now 8 Months And 16 Days!

At 8 months, Charis can now sit up very well. My mum also taught her to clap her hands when we encouraged her by clapping our hands together with her and repeating, "拍手, 拍手, 拍拍手!....". Charis always makes it a point to look at us whenever she claps her hands and when we laugh, she will clap even more enthusiastically with a hearty smile and sparkling eyes, totally immersing herself in our affirmation at her new feat :)

During feeding, I have also noticed an increasing interest in her wanting to participate in the feeding process. For example, she will try to grab the spoon from me and when she succeeds, I will exclaim a big "Ai yo darling!!" simply because the cereal will splatter onto her clothes but she remains unaffected by the messy sight and continues to "fight over" the spoon with me, leaving a frustrated yet amused mummy by her side. The word "messy" is certainly not in her dictionary yet! Ha ha... Same goes for bottle-feeding. She will try to grab hold of the bottle but instead of holding the bottle upwards, she can only pull it downwards so its mummy vs Charis - I am pushing the bottle upwards and she is pulling the bottle downwards! When this happens, I just got to pull out the bottle from her mouth and try again :) All these are part of her learning process to develop control.

So Charis says,"Mummy, I want to eat and drink by myself!!!"

And Mummy says,"Ok, be patient cos you need to learn to do it right ya?"

Here's some recent pics at 8 months:



This is a view taken from the inside of her sarong when she woke up from one of her afternoon nap. Started introducing sarong only when she's at 7 months to give her a longer sleeping time:) But during night time, it'll be back to her good old playpen.



"Look this way darling, and smile!"



We bought a jumbo walker for Charis to practise her walking, and the design is supposed to be an aeroplane. "See, I'm controlling my airplane!", says Charis.



Me having fun!



"Mmh.. The steering wheel is interesting cos I can turn it left and right, but the advertisement also very interesting lei. How ah?"

Outcome : Distraction!



A leisure time on daddy and mummy's bed..



Charis's favourite alarm clock in hand. In fact, she doesn't really fancy toys and she will get bored after playing for a while. But she likes real "toys" like this :)



"How can I dismantle this?"



Another favourite "toy" of hers - remote control! She's always aiming at it whenever I put her on my lap while sitting on the sofa, and before I know it, she will throw her body sideways to reach for it :)



At our dinner outing to New York New York... Daddy and Charis girl.



Mummy and Charis girl.. The hilarious part behind this pic was when we were taking this shot halfway, Charis suddenly turned her head back towards me and the moment our eyes met, both of us burst out laughing! All within a split second!! She sure knows how to amuse her mummy :)



The waitress was trying very hard to get Charis's attention, but to no avail :) Well it's ok, one more family potrait to our collection!

Home-Made Baby Food

Home-made food is always better than processed food!

But I guess we adults many times struggle with the idea of home-made food for ourselves. Processed food are quick and easy to prepare, and we hardly think about the actual nutrition value when buy what we need off the shelves. Convenience is the key. But for the sake of our children, mums can go great lengths and pay extra money to buy the freshest organic greens, fruits, fish and poultry and whip up the food just to ensure our little ones get all the nutrients that they need to grow..

I bought a packet of sweet peas at NTUC the other day so I thought I'll do a demonstration on how to do a home-made sweet pea puree!



Firstly, wash the sweet peas thoroughly and steam it for about 5 mins till it is cooked soft.



Then you can peel open the pocket to remove the seeds onto a strainer.



After gathering all the seeds, you can use a pestal to pound lightly so that the bigger seeds are mashed coarsely.



Now for the finer touch. Use the back of a spoon to press and scrape the sweet peas till the skin is totally separated from the fruit.



And after all the scraping action... you'll find all the sweet puree underneath the strainer!



You can prepare the puree in bulk and transfer them into ice-cube trays or a Baby Cubes container like this and store them in the freezer. Once they freeze as puree cubes, you can just remove them from the freezer and add them into your baby's favourite cereal or porridge anytime!



This is how it looks like in my freezer! I've got puree cubes of potato, chinese spinach, sweet potato and pumpkin :) It takes some effort, but certainly more cost-saving and nutritious.. and convenient too!