Stuck

I was taking of care of Claira last night in her room...

I woke up in the middle of the night and heard Claira crying... but i couldn't see her any where for the first few "drowsy" seconds. Finally, i found her stuck in-between 2 mattresses (both were on the floor)... i quickly carried her back on our mattress, and she was fast asleep soon after...

So, was i supposed to be laughing or worrying?
Although nothing bad happened last night, i just can't help but think of some *not so nice* scenarios...

We should be more careful next time not to leave a gap in-between the mattresses... and maybe even consider changing the orientation of the mattresses (since Claira usually sleeps with us on the same bed frequently now...)

Claira walks on her own today!

Claira walked her first 14 continuous steps today!
Steadily and unaided of course! =P

Here's the video:



I am SO proud of her! =)

Science Center Trip

We went to the Singapore Science Center last Friday...

Wanyin borrowed a membership card from her colleague, and that means we were able to enter the Science Center free of charge! (well, the entrance fee was only $6 for an adult on normal days)

Traveling from the east to the west of Singapore doesn't take much effort, especially when you have the car. But as i got a new nokia e71 last weekend (and i managed to get a GPS software to work), we decided to punch in the coordinates(or rather the road name) and give this GPS a try...



Well well well, it turns out that this piece of software is quite useful... they call it Garmin Mobile XT. The directions were clear, display was readable on the 2.6" screen, and audio was loud enough. Cool...

Anyway, we arrived at the Science Center in about 30 mins...

Here, we got the tickets, smile:



Besides having many exhibition halls and liveshows, the Science Center also have an outdoor water "theme park" where all the children were just happily and crazily jumping and screaming and playing with the water features...

We snapped a picture of ourselves using my new 3.2MP camera phone:



We then basically walked around the exhibition halls on level 1(we didn't got to the upper levels as it was time to go home for Claira's dinner) for a couple more hours before we head home.

These are some other silly pictures we took during this trip:

The First Kiss

Claira kissed me a few days ago...

Apparently, Wanyin and her mom have been teaching her how to kiss for some time already...
But on Thurday night, she peeked me on my cheeks during our regimental "Reading Time"...

"Baby, kiss Pa Pa..."

Since then, she is proudly showing off her new "skill/talent" to our family members...

Of course, she didn't kiss Wanyin's Dad for some unknown reasons.... haha...

Camping @ East Coast

A few weekends ago, Wanyin and I bought a foldable floor mat and challenged the Pasir Ris beach...
It turns out that the Koh family of 3 kind-of enjoyed the experience.
The Sun, the Sand, and the Sea. Ah... Life huh?
Oh well, to be honest, the "Sun" part was really getting to us after some 30 minutes...
"Those tents over there looks cool!" I thought.

Last weekend, we raced down to Giant and got ourselves a tent($36+). Quite a bargain.
Without having any prior experience with tents(except for the old army tents 10 years ago i had), we charged down to East Coast beach and found ourselves a good spot under a tree...

"You setup the mat and settle down with Claira first, let me do the tent up..." I told Wanyin.

I zipped open the bag and poured out the contents:
- 1 canvas looking mess
- Some long (somehow connected) mid length sticks
- 8 short length sticks/pins
- Some strings

"It shouldn't take a NASA scientist to setup a tent, rite?" I thought to myself...

Taking a deep breath, and with so many people staring around me(it's a beach mind you...), i unfolded the canvas on the sandy beach(ok, next time i will find a grassy patch to setup the tent), and began skewing the 2 long (somehow connected by strings) mid length sticks diagonally through it's "little side pockets". Both ways.

Sinking the 4 ends of the long sticks(now connected) to the ground, the tent takes it's shape and is 80% completed.

After some securing of the 4 corners, using the short sticks/pins, the tent is officially open for habitation!!!



We had some good time playing inside the tent... and Claira was so curious of this "strange" structure, she crawled a good one round within the parameter of the tent! haha....

At other times, she would be messing with the contents of our bag. Spilling the contents out, like a little terror bear...



Or playing with her toys...



She also have some fun exploring the "touch" of the sand...
Using her toys/tools, we made some sand castle/cake/blocks outside our front yard.



We should be heading back to a beach near you soon... so look out for us! :-P

Claira knows how to climb down from bed (a.k.a. mattress on floor)

I was playing with Claira yesterday evening in her room, when I realized that she can climb down from the bed, down onto the floor... in the proper way of course!

"leg first, not head first!" we were always trying to teach her the correct way... Finally she gets it! Haha...

Thank goodness it is now almost second nature to her.

Birthday Celebration on actual day

Claira celebrated her actual 1st birthday yesterday!

Wanyin and i took some time away from office to bring Claira to a Baby Gym near Roxy Square in Katong area to take a look... We are thinking whether the gym session would make her more open to strangers, instead of crying and screaming.

At first glance, the gym looks ok... hygiene level, staff, toys, colors and ambiance feels ok...

We stayed for a while and asked quite some questions from the 2 young staffs...

Claira even get to play with the bubbles that one of the staffs blew at her... 

*good marketing strategy, i thought. win the child and you will win the deal.. :-)

We left the place with a good idea of what it will be if we were to come with Claira for a trail session next week... well, we'll see...

We hanged around in Parkway Parade for some time, before heading home with a.... well. tiny cake... *who is going to finish the cake of we bought a regular sized one???

And so, we had a birthday song singing session again and the regular photo taking session...

Now, Claira is officially 1 year old! "Graduation" i would say...

End of class "year 1" and start of class "year 2"...

Good job Claira!  :P

Claira Celebrates her First Birthday on Sunday

The day finally arrived... it's time to celebrate Claira's 1st Birthday!!!

Well, the actual day is actually on this coming Friday 12th of September, but we wanted to celebrate Claira's birthday on a weekend. So we choose last sunday to invite all the people to our house for a little celebration.

Not everything turn out the way we wanted, but on the whole, it was quite a good few hours of family get together and fun... Of course, Claira was the center of attraction! :)

Claira didn't have a good sleep the previous night(maybe she is a little nervous about this big event?!) and cried when she saw the many visitors...

We put her to sleep while we tucked into the food and watched some videos of her on the TV...

After 1 hour or so, she woke up and.... still didn't quite warmed up to the occasion..

Finally, we played her favourite music cd(some children songs she normally listens to before bedtime), and she began smiling and all is well!!! :) Phew...

We decided to let Claira try her hands at her "promising future", by placing some artifacts in front of her and letting her choose her "future occupation/interest".

Claira reached for and displaced the following artifacts in the order:

1) Calculator (which is suppose to mean that she will be good in Mathematics...)

2) Dollar note (which is suppose to mean that she will be good at earning money...)

3) Ruler (which is suppose to mean that she will be good at some measurement stuffs...)

Good job Claira!

We placed the cake on the table, along with all the gifts...

Happy Birthday songs were sang and there were the usual photograph sessions, cake cutting, and gift opening(a.k.a. tearing!).

We had a lot of fun and i'm sure Claira enjoyed the party too!

Zoo Trip

We finally went to the Zoo today!
There was the usual preparation for outings, and we set off towards Mandai!!!

Well, it wasn't the best start to the much anticipated trip though... it started to pour within 15mins upon our arrival...

"damn it!" we thought.

After standing at a pathetic spot, which by the way have parrots parading on trees, we decided to head for KFC to have an early lunch.

Oh boy was that a good move. As we were happily tearing away at the good ol' fried chicken, the rain stopped. And we can even see the sun!!!

"are u kidding me?" i thought to myself. Some things are just unexplainable... or is it coincidence? haha... whatever...

We cleaned up after out lunch and (of course) Claira's "lunch mess", before beginning on our journey.

Did i mentioned that Claira was scared to tears when the Parrots were "screaming" on their tree "post"? oh well, nevermind, we hurried pass the parrots and headed towards the otters station.

Monkeys, alligators, birds, Emu and Kangaroos later, we hopped on the tram(which by the way cost $5 for each ticket) and took a good ride around the main attractions like Giraffe, Rhinos, and some animals i can pronounce or spell properly...

Here's a picture of me and Claira on the tram ride below:


After trekking up and down the many many slopes/hills along the way, we rested our butts at one of the shows the zoo had to offer... "...fight back of the tropical rain forest..." basically apes, monkey, raccoons and birds coming together to stage a play with human trainers. Not bad.

While we thought Claira would really ReAlLY enjoy the show, she appeared to be more interested in playing with Wanyin's hair at times(i didn't have it on camera though)...

Here's good family picture while at the show:


One more show after this to see sea lions and penguin perform, we headed home.

good trip!

Claira goes East Coast ... again

We bought Claira to east coast 2 weekends ago... well, again... haha.
We dine at a hong kong styled restaurant/cafe and fed Claira during our meal time too.


It was really a challenge as Claira was not at her best performance. But who could blame her? It's the first time she had her dinner outside the house. She must have felt awkward...




We had a little walk at the mini-carnival near the beach and also brought Claira to see the sand and sea later...

Finally, we headed home to watch the Singapore ping-pong team win the silver against team China. It's the 1st Olympic medal for Singapore in 48 years! Well done ladies!

Day out to Big Splash + Down Town East

We had lunch at Carl's Jr(Big Splash) today... Here's picture of little Claira waiting impatiently for us to finish our meal... "Come on, let's go somewhere else to play..." she must be thinking.

Oh well, we did walked around the beach and had lots of fun together... family time...

If not for the heat, we could have stayed longer at the beach to enjoy "the sun, the sand and the sea", but we soon head for the comfort of the car and drove off to Pasir Ris, Down Town East.

After some difficulty parking the car, we arrived at the ai-con comfort of main shopping complex of down town east...
We decided to take the Ferris Wheel ride...and parted with $11.50...

See Claira taking pictures with the ticket, before the ride:


And Claira was elated during the ride... our fear of her turning pale in the face of such height soon vanished.



She was screaming in excitement and smiling all the way through the 3 round-turns on the little cabin...

In fact, she was reluctant to come down the Ferris wheel and sounded her disagreement when we tried to place her in her pram...

Luckily for us, being still a baby, she soon forgets what she was angry with... and she was back to her good smiley mood again... haha...

Playground

We went for breakfast at one of the nearby coffeeshop 2 days ago, after we fed Claira's morning feed. We dropped by the playground downstairs and let Claira ride on the "Spring thingy"... i think it looks like an aeroplane...

Claira seems to enjoy it.

ViVo Hog's Breath Cafe

Wanyin and i were in the mood for steak last sunday... and we decided to bring Claira with us also.

And so we hopped into the wagon and drove, on a sunny afternoon, to ViVo city for lunch.

The following events happened in sequence:
- We went into Hog's Breath Cafe
- Claira was happily seated on a child seat
- Ordered Steak and some mud pie
- Steak arrived
- Claira poo-ed!
- Claira was being difficult!

And poor Wanyin have to single handledly bring Claira to the next nearest washroom to change her diapers. I was told Claira did not cooperate during the entire episode at the washroom, screaming and tossing all the time...
All this while, i was stranded at the restaurant table and waiting for both of them to come back.
I must be looking pretty lonely at the table... haha...

Luckily, the drama was over in 15 mins and we are seated together once again in the restaurant and savouring the juicy steak...

We fed Claira milk at about 3:00pm, before heading home... nice...

7.0 KG

We weighted Claira on the scales today... 7.0Kg!

It's the first time he hit the 7.0Kg mark!
Nothing spectacular, but it's a milestone nonetheless...

Way to go, Claira!

one more week and Claira is 11 months old...

7th Tooth

As soon as i got back from work today, i was told that Claira had a 7th Tooth growing on her upper jaw!

WoW!

A Trip to Library

We brought Claira to Bedok Library today to take a took at the baby books they have...
Well, some books are in a bad shape... ok, they are meant for and used by babies and children.


We found a good spot in the library and settled down for a rest... and the "just awoken" Claira was in her smiley mood when i took this picture above!



We walked around again and found a good spot on the carpet floor to read a couple of books for Claira...

We left the Library soon after, but not before we borrowed 4 titles of Baby Einstein DVDs...

Nice place.

6th Tooth

The 6th tooth arrived!

Now, Claira have 2 teeth on top, and 4 teeth below...

It's hard to get a good picture of Claira's teeth arrange, and i have given up attempting already. haha.

Airport trip

We brought Claira to Changi Airport last Sunday...
It was really a nice trip and Claira was at one of her best behavior!

While we have a snack at Secret Recipe, she was happily chewing at her biscuit...
A- performance for Claira. Keep it up and we will bring Claira "gai gai" more often!

5th Tooth

Claira is not drinking her milk these days... she hardly finished her 150ml of milk...

We tried to reason out why this happened, and even thought of changing her milk powder(yes... again!). Finally, we found the most prominent suspect: her 5th Tooth on her lower jaw.

It sure must be painful, or at least very uncomfortable for Claira.
Think of something so hard coming out from your soft gums... geez...

Iron head Stunt

We caught Claira in her famous Iron-Head-Stunt a few days back!
I wonder what went through her head when she does this stunt... haha... pure silly fun! :P

Pacifier

We bought Claira 2 pacifiers over the weekend.
So far, she is having fun playing with them...

Biscuit time

It was Wanyin's mother's birthday last sunday, and we decided to have dinner at a small cantonese restaurant in the east to celebrate.

We requested for a baby chair(apparently, this was the only known working baby chair with a belt!), and placed Claira on it.

We fished out a baby biscuit from the bag and stuff it into Claira's hand...
One moment she was happily chewing on the biscuit, and the next moment, the biscuit was on the floor! haha...

Multi-Tasking

Just look at her... Claira is so lazy! haha...

She is happily resting her head on her left hand, with eyes watching the television program, and refusing to open her mouth for her porridge!

I'm sure she's trying to do multiple things all at once...

Come to think of it, she might just be telling us "hey, i'm not interested in the porridge anymore! please take that spoon away, and stop blocking my television!"...

The wonder Playpen

Claira seems to have warmed up to the idea of being placed in the playpen...
I remembered the first time when she was placed inside... she was screaming and crying.

That was 2 weeks ago. Now, she can easily play within the "safety zone" of the playpen for more than an hour, alone. Hey, that's more than an hour of freedom* to have some meal time, household work, toilet breaks...etc. And she is loving it too!

We "flooded" the playpen with lots of toys to keep her company. And Claira's favourite is to reach out for the railings of the playpen and stand up on her own.

hm... a few more weeks and maybe she can stand up on her own without external support.

25th Percentile

We weighed Claira on our digital weighing machine today... 6.8kg!
With that, we declare Claira to be at the 25th percentile on the age-weight charts!

This is something to celebrate about! Especially since she is always hovering at the 3rd percentile mark up to now...
If you look carefully at the charts, you will notice that 500g to a baby like Claira could mean a good jump of 20-30 percentile units.

Good job! Keep it going!

Claira fell from bed

Thursday morning, while Wanyin's mother turned her head to reach for some tissue while changing diapers, Claira fell from the bed... luckily she didn't land head-first, but rather body-first. Else, her head would be bruised already...

Although there were no visible injuries that we could detect on Claira, we decided to bring her to KK hospital for a thorough check-up. She finished her milk after the fall and appears to be fine, smiling and playing.

We arrived at KK's emergency department... and within some minutes, we were queuing up for consultation... "$75... pay first then can see doctor"...

A very young doctor was behind that door number 8... i almost thought she was a nurse... judging from her look... haha...

"nothing wrong with the baby... but will have to monitor for the next 72 hours..." the doctor said.

Ok, that's what we would have half-expected her to say, but it was comforting to hear it face-to-face from a doctor.

And so, we left the hospital...

We count ourselves lucky that things turned out fine... it could well turn out to be much worse on a different occasion if we are not careful with baby Claira from now on...

We are thinking of a few "solutions" to prevent this from happening:
- Take apart the bed frame and leave only the mattress -> But the old folks at home will have much difficulty to bend down and change diapers.
- Always change diapers/clothes for Claira on the cot -> The dimensions of the cot is not well suited on these occasions.
- Change diapers only with 2 person in the room -> Not feasible.
- DO NOT leave your eyes off the baby at all times! -> This seems to be the only direct answer to our problem...

You are going "Gai Gai"?

Little Claira developed a way/method to filter out people who she allows to carry her...

Whenever you are dress-up(which is different from the usual home clothes we wear...), she will raise both her arms when u say "Claira, bao bao..."
But if she spots you still in your usual "home clothes" when you do this, she will turn herself away immediately... sometimes even crying if you attempt any further...

She should have already associated carrying by someone + nice clothes = Going out to have fun(ie. Gai Gai...)! Hey. That's smart huh?

Ok, i admit these are little/trivial stuffs to most people. But for a first time daddy like myself, this is something GREAT!

Wooooah! Little Claira is growing up day by day...
Wanyin and i will always be there beside her...
Guiding her, and at the same time, finding/understanding more of ourselves in the process.

Claira Stands

A few days ago, Claira suddenly climbed up the railings of her cot and stood up on her own!

Wow! That's news! haha... many visible developments for this little gal lately huh?!

Wanyin's mum was so concerned that she would forget to pull up the railings of Claira's cot, that she wanted me to print a little "notice" to remind herself everytime she walks in/out of Claira's room...

Claira waves

This morning, Claira waved at me when i'm getting ready to leave the house! Hey, that's enough to fuel me throughout this workday at the office!
I recalled that Claira can clap just a few days ago, and now she can wave...
Maybe it's because the "Your Baby Can Read" vcds, or maybe it's "just about time"... but nonetheless, it's heartwarming to see her grow!

That's the reward of being a parent, isn't it? To be able to see your kid grow stronger from day to day... careful not to put too much pressure on the kid though... haha...

Decent swimming picture

Some weeks ago, Wanyin finally improved her photo taking skills... and so we have this nice decent picture of me and Claira at the pool.

Because of some concerns on the recent outspread of HFM disease in Singapore, we haven't been swimming for the last 2 weeks or so.
Apparently, some co*k parents brought their ill children(infected by HFM) to swimming, totally making lots of other parents mad!!! (me included of course!)
Geez, can they just wake up and be more considerate?