ReNe: evolution of play

It's extremely interesting to watch Ryan as he plays and learns to manipulate objects. When he initially learned to grab hold of a toy some months ago, he would look at it, and then put it in his mouth. He still explores everything that way, by first using his eyes and mouth. Then, because many baby toys rattle, Ryan soon learned to shake everything we give him to see if it makes a sound.

Then he learned to hit objects together. For example, he'd hold a wooden block in one hand and use that to hit the floor or table leg. Since the table legs are made of metal, a nice ringing sound is produced. Later, he learned to hold two hard objects in each hand and strike them together. It's not easy, when you think of it, to manipulate tools as an extension of each hand simultaneously.

He also learned to pull. He'd pull open drawers and doors. The only kind of drawers he can't open are those where you have to rotate your hand such that your fingers come up (palm up) and under the handle. He could pull a toy that has a string or ribbon attached, though hand over hand pulling is beyond him. When we played peek-a-boo, he knew how to hold the cloth/blanket himself to raise (pull up) and lower it.

Recently he started dragging objects along the floor. His favorite is a cookie tin; banging on it makes a satisfactorily loud sound and dragging it along the floor produces a wonderful racket.

Right now, Ryan's learning to drop things. While either seated or lying on the floor, he'd hold up a toy to the height of his head and drop it repeatedly. He does it with all sorts of objects but he especially likes the objects that make an interesting noise. I gave him an empty plastic ramekin, the kind was used to hold a mini lava cake, and the flexible plastic makes a vibrating sort of ringing sound when dropped. I guess he's learning about gravity. Interestingly, I think he's starting to understand the concept of 'falling'. He fell off the side of his crib once, and now he hovers at the edge, wanting to move forward but remembering that it hurts to fall.

When presented with a new object, his exploration sequence goes like this: examine first with eyes, then shake. Put into mouth, and finally drop it.

ReNe: nasal lube

You know the air in winter is really dry when you need nasal lube...

ReNe: 1st tooth

Last week (12 Jan), when Ryan was crying fussily and his mouth was wide open, we noticed something. "Hey! There's something whitish in his gum!"

We pried opened his mouth further, which of course made him cry all the harder, and sure enough, we could see the pair of lower front teeth still under the gum surface. The lower right looked closer to the surface, and by the weekend (17 Jan), it was out.


Funnily enough, we've always thought he drooled a lot, but last week, he was a veritable faucet! For the past five months, whenever people saw him drool, they'd exclaim, "oh, he must be teething!" If so, he must have been teething for the past five months!

And, I could be jinxing us by saying it, but it does seems like he's sleeping a little better through the nights! The past two nights, he slept through for seven hours without waking, though he still got up once around 12 or 1 to feed. Previously, he'd go to sleep anytime between 8 to 10, and get up hourly or every two hours! Of course he's not always hungry, so either the rash on his face was disturbing him, or his gums.

ReNe: ice skating at Harborfront

I went ice-skating last Saturday; the trip was organized by Charles Street Family Housing. Quite fortunately, last week was also the January thaw. Yes, oddly enough, there's always a week in January where the temperatures rise, giving people a false hope that winter's over and spring's here. So temperatures on Saturday was between 0 to 3C, and cloudy, which is also great because there was little glare from the ice.

There were quite a lot of people at the Harborfront outdoor skating rink (actually a frozen pond), including kids. Some were at the side, learning in an organized class, and some were being led by their parents at the rim of the pond. The older ones had kid-sized ice-skating boots, while the younger ones had plastic strap-on's, either one blade or two (I think these are called bob skates). The youngest were around two and a half!

teething pains

teething pains, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

You can't see it in this picture, but his lower front teeth are coming out. Little white things on his gums, barely there, just below the surface, and the part of the gums over the teeth a little raised.

Apparently, we've read that babies can be very irritable when their teeth come in. So far, so good — he's not been more irritable than usual, although we do notice that he likes to bite on things slightly more than usual.

What's really curious is friends who tell us their kids started to sleep through the night once their teeth have come in.

We are definitely waiting for his teeth to arrive then.

ReNe: 8 months -- crawling, cont.

Now that Ryan can crawl, he rarely wants to sit up (much less lie down) anymore. And with all the practice on his front, within a month, he has gotten pretty adept at moving around, turning, picking up toys and, recently, moving to a seated position from his front. He also shifts up on his hands and knees quite often, rocking back and forth, however he isn't sure what comes next. I suppose coordinating the hands and knees to move in an alternating manner is not easy.

Knocking down blocks

So, the latest toy he's been playing with are wooden blocks. Or rather, should I say that we set them up, and he knocks them down:

Baby can crawl

Baby can crawl, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

Now that he can crawl, he does not like to stay seated for long. Seems like this boy is quite the adventurous one, refusing to lie down once he could sit up, and now, crawling. In the bathtub, he's been trying to hook his arms at the edge of the tub and pull himself to a standing position, clinging on to the edge like a shipwrecked sailor clings on to a floating piece of lumber.

And he's quite the cheeky, curious boy — there are some areas of the apartment which are out of bounds, for example, near the place where we park the stroller, as the floor there is quite dirty. Somehow, he is magnetically attracted to the stroller; not one day passes since he started crawling that he has not made an attempt at going close to it. He knows we forbid him from going near it. And once in a while, after a few minutes of us leaving him alone, we'd turn, see him with his head turned back at us trying to catch our eyes, then when he's satisfied we saw him, he'd chuckle, then cheekily make a break for it.

Fortunately, he's not too fast a crawler. Yet.

We wonder when he'd start running.

I expect we'd lose a bit of weight trying to run after him to stop his mischief.

ReNe: 7.5 months -- crawling

Early in December, Ryan started to exhibit an interest in some motion independence; while seated, he kept leaning forward on his hands, rocking back and forth slightly. However, unable to do anything further, he would then end up falling on his front. Clearly this was a precursor to crawling, but I thought that it would be quite some time before he would manage to actually crawl.

At the same time, he was starting to get more comfortable on his tummy. He used to hate lying on his front, much preferring to sit up, but rather suddenly last month, he was content to spend time on his tummy. And around the middle of December (18th), he started to pull himself forward. It involved a lot of flailing and any movement forward was quite accidental. Sometimes he'd end up pushing himself backwards.

Amazingly, within a week, his movements became more focused. He is now able to pull himself forward using his forearms, leopard crawling quite efficiently. It was really amazing how quickly he progressed. For months he had been content to sit and play, despite our attempts to put him on his front, then within a couple of weeks, he learned to crawl. Well, it's not the hands and knees type of crawling, but he gets around. Already he is trying to push himself up (he can do a push-up) and he can hold himself on his hands and knees; he just isn't sure what comes next.

Thus, we had to baby-proof the apartment. In addition to discovering the electric sockets, he also managed to open a drawer and catch his fingers on it. He shrieked of course. Fortunately, his fingers were all right, the flesh only slightly dented.

Just like the ones she used to know

IMG_3617, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

Baby's first Christmas...

The sleeper reads:

MUM'S DREAMING OF A QUIET CHRISTMAS, JUST LIKE THE ONES SHE USED TO KNOW...!

As mentioned in the previous post, we went to Carl's place for dinner on Christmas eve.

It was an interesting experience to get him to Carl's place and back. Carl lived slightly off the public transit, so we had to take the TTC subway, and then wait for a pickup by Carl's wife, Rachel, who would then drive us to their place. However, in order for him to be driven, he had to be in a baby car seat, which we did not have.

Hooray for living in student family housing, and having friends who do. We borrowed a car seat, but were surprised to find out just how heavy one of those things were. The cradle part was already fairly heavy, and then our friend emailed and told us we forgot the base which allowed the whole thing to be strapped down; the base was easily the same weight or more.

So, we had to lug baby, his toys and accessories so that he could play/fall asleep in a strange place, car seat and my photographic equipment all over the subway, and then struggle to secure the seat outdoors while the temperature hovered around 0ºC. The total load: seat—7kg; camera bag—5kg; camera accessory bag—3kg; gifts—2kg; baby—9kg; baby bag—3kg. Total load: 29 kg, and we were dressed in winter wear, which is not light. All of these were split amond the two of us...

Fortunately for us, setting up the seat was not difficult at all, and we managed to get to Carl's place not too exhausted, although I was somewhat confused why babies needed strapping down in cars but could be held in arms in public transit...

At Carl's place, he was fairly well behaved, not throwing any tantrums, and only panicking once when Rachel brought him into a room full of strangers while we took off our shoes at the door. Other than that, he shared food with us nicely.

Putting him to sleep when he eventually got tired was tough though. The place was obviously not home, and he initially refused to sleep; but after some encouragement, he decided that he could sleep after all, and amazingly, slept through for about 3 hours, something that he does not even do at home at that time of the night.

When it was eventually time to go home, at about 3am, we were fortunate that he woke about the same time, so we did not have to wake a sleeping baby. Sleepy boy could barely hold it together to make a notional protest at being strapped into the car seat before the car started to move, sending him into dreamland.

We even managed to carry him up in the car seat, place him in the living room, get changed ourselves, before putting him to bed.

All in all, a fairly interesting adventure for him, I guess.

Christmas 2009

IMG_3708, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

This last Christmas eve (2009), we visited our friend Carl and his family and friends. I met Carl as a classmate in one of the courses we took together in the winter of 2008. This was actually the second Christmas dinner we had with them; we had the first in 2008, where we were introduced to his aunts, G and M, who were in their late 70s, but still full of life, talking about how they were looking forward to skydiving on their 80th birthday. It was a fun evening, filled with conversation and laughter from the aunts which still possessed a wicked sense of humour.

The aunts left before we did; Carl and his wife, as hosts, ensured that we were all driven safely home; so the aunts departed on an earlier trip. Just as they were doing the goodbye hugs, I took this photo.