ReNe: learning words

Sometime in late August, just before we left Singapore, Ryan started to pick up words. It was slow at first. He started with a more definite and deliberate pronunciation of "daddy" (which he had been able to say for quite a while) and "mummy" (he was only able to say "mama", and not very reliably at that). Then he picked up more words while we were in Kyoto, words like "baby", "airplane" ("eh-pwane"), ice-cream ("ai-kim"). However, it was when we got back to Toronto that his vocabulary really increased. At last count, more than a week ago, he could say over 50 words and understand a lot more. That is to say, he learned over 50 words in a month. Well, he probably understood quite a lot before he started speaking. I read that it's around the 16-18 months mark that babies start to talk.

I noticed some interesting learning behavior:

(1) He roughly has mental groups of words, e.g. parts of the face, and a mental sequence of the words learned. "Nose" was the first he learned, followed by "eyes", "ear", "mouth". And when we attempt to teach him a new part, say "mouth" and he gets confused, he'd start over by going back to "nose", then "eyes", etc. If the new word does not appear to belong to a group, he'd retreat to the ultimate set of 'first words': "daddy", "mummy" and "baby". Those he can say very well and will not forget. I think going back to the words he already knows reassures him. 

(2) Either he cannot or will not pronounce his name. He know very well who Ryan is (we call him Ryan all the time and rarely use some pet name), but he always refers to himself as "baby". When asked, "Where's Ryan's nose?", he won't do anything. When asked, "Where's baby's nose?", he'd point to his own nose. We have no satisfactory explanation for this odd behavior.

(3) He also has his own words for objects. For example, he'd call a train "choo-choo", a cow "moo", or a monkey "na-na" (for banana). We know he does know the correct word because if we ask, "where's the train/cow?", he point to the correct object and go "choo-choo/moo". 

(4) He has learned "no" (very well in fact) but not "yes". When asked, "Do you want a bottle?" "Nooo no no nonono nooo~oo no no no nOOoNo~" and etctera. 

(5) He gets nouns quickly; no surprise there. Numbers and colors are much harder (he can only count to three and not too reliably at that, and the only color he really knows is yellow, maybe orange). Abstract stuff (like letters), he just looks blankly at me when I try to teach him. I guess it means he needs to understand what he's saying and not just repeat, which is a good thing.

ReNe: 12 months -- walking

Just in time for his first birthday, Ryan learned to walk!


He could stumble a couple of steps for the past week or so, but last Friday (7th May), he took his first few steps. Then, he'd walk from me to Mike and back again, and he always lunges the last couple of steps in impatience.

His initial steps were wobbly and cute; we called him 'drunken baby'. He always threw himself the last few steps when he's walking towards me, expecting me to catch him or perhaps just impatient to get to me? It's just adorable, yet heartstopping too, to see his unsteadiness.

But he improved very quickly. He still stumbles, but now he's already walking from one end of the room to the other, or from room to room, usually even daring to carry a toy. Or a toy in each hand. Which makes his stumbles quite painful... (Yes, that's my cell phone in his hand in the photos above. I occasionally let him hold it, which delights him to no end.)

We were overjoyed and utterly focused on him when he started to walk. Now I wished we had a video of his first wobbly steps, but at least we have the photos.

ReNe: pretend play

Ryan engaged in imaginary play yesterday. He probably had been doing it for a while, for example he'd stir a stick in a cup, but I wasn't sure if he was doing it just because he wanted to stir, or insert a stick into something, or because he was imagining something else. But yesterday morning, his actions were very definitive.

We (me, Ryan and Mike) were all lying in bed Sunday morning, and Ryan was nursing. When he was done, he grinned and sat up, and fingers closed in a pincer grip, pretended to feed me something carefully a few times. Then he turned around and pretended to feed Mike as well.

For a few weeks already, he has fed us food (usually food he doesn't want). For example, I was feeding him grapes a couple of days back (giving them to him to feed himself) and when he was full, he turned to Mike and gave Mike the grape instead. When I stopped handing him the grapes, knowing he was full, he opened his mouth instead. So I popped a grape in. And he promptly took that grape out and fed Mike again.

ReNe: 11.5 months -- regarding a growth spurt

It felt like Ryan underwent another growth spurt lately. (Checking 'The Wonder Weeks', a book about growth spurts, yeah, it was about time.)

When we got back from Philadelphia, he was extra cranky and clingy, and I was worried it was to do with the trip. Perhaps he was upset about all that traveling. Then we noticed he was cutting his upper front teeth and the gums were quite swollen, so we thought that might be the reason instead. Moreover, on top of his crankiness, he was on a solids strike. Definitely teething, we thought.

Now we know it was probably a combination of a growth spurt and teething. Once his upper right tooth came out, he started eating more. His mood improved as well. At the same time, I got him some new toys since he appeared to be bored with the current lot and he became very engrossed in them. More interestingly, he suddenly figured out old toys that he previously didn't quite know what to do with, such as the stacking rings.

Previously he used to only increase entropy (i.e. create a mess) but now he also became interested in stacking things together, or putting objects into a larger container. Oh, he still likes to go around pulling things from shelves or drawers or upturning containers, but he might put back a couple of objects before moving on. He'd hold a stick in one hand and try to slide a stacking ring or a block with a hole through it, or he'd try to slot one object into another. It so happened that after noticing all these, I read that after a growth spurt around this time (~46 weeks), the baby will start to exhibit all the aforementioned behaviors. A-ha.

When he was a newborn, we could see obvious physical growth after a growth spurt. Now, a growth spurt usually meant a mental developmental boost as well. It's weird, but he would almost seem smarter overnight; the mental growth is not linear. It's really fascinating.

Right now, I'm highly amused that he's concentrating very hard on pushing his stacking ring dowel into his sorting toy. Hah.

ReNe: philadelphia 2010

Philadelphia, March 20-25

It was such a long time since I took a trip! Well, I did go Montreal with Mike and Dez last March but because it was local (4 hr drive, it's like driving to KL), it didn't feel like a huge deal. Though it was a lovely trip, the last I had as a free woman...

This year, Mike was attending the NARST conference in Philadelphia and of course I (and Ryan) must go! I was also eager to see how Ryan takes to traveling, and if we can handle traveling with him. This trip is really a practice run for summer. For example, we could have chosen a direct (more expensive) flight to Philly but we thought to try a stopover. Total flight time including stopover was about 4 hrs each way, not too bad right? After all, we'd be flying 24 hrs to S'pore....

It's Ryan's first trip!

Ryan is a restless flyer. On the first leg there (Toronto to Newark), he passed out because he was woken up too early (6am, for a 9am flight). Then he was awake and curious for the next flight from Newark to Philadelphia. On the way back, he was awake for both flights and very active, often cranky. (Turned out he had a Cheerio stuck on the waistband of his diaper the entire time!) He's an energetic, inquisitive kid and that's great; it's just very tiring for us too.

One problem I didn't foresee was with the hotel room; it's not very baby-proof and it's rather boring. The lack of a high-chair meant chasing him down, literally, during meals. One mistake I made was to take a day off on the third day to decompress in the hotel room. If I was by myself, great. But with a bored baby crawling about, it was anything but relaxing. We were both crawling the walls in frustration by the time Mike got back in the late afternoon. The next day, I brought down to the 'Love Park' a few blocks from the hotel and he loved it.

Ryan looks awfully cute in this outfit.

Yelling in the park.

In front of the famous LOVE statue in JFK Plaza (or Love Park, as it's more commonly called). A requisite tourist shot. We walk through here almost every day since it's so near our hotel (Sheraton) and it's on the way to the Marriott (where Mike's conference is held).

Sitting in Love park, Philadelphia City Hall in the background.

"Arrgh! Stop taking photos already!" Yes, Ryan's had enough.

Philadelphia City Hall. An imposing, majestic structure. Mike says it's ostentatious, vulgar and ginormous.

We didn't know that Philadelphia was the seat of the American Revolution but we do now. There's a lot of America's history in Philadelphia. We joined the tour of Independence Hall (it was free). Though it's short (30mins, plus an additional 10mins to screen your bags), Ryan was bored by the time the tour started. We liked the way the teacherish park ranger who was giving the talk emphasized the important dates and people. "And in seventeen-thirty-two," she'd paused and looked intently while the kids wrote in their Junior Ranger Workbooks. I don't think I learned anything though, with Ryan fussing in my lap.

Independence Hall at the Independence National Historic Park. Here's the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

The Liberty Bell with its crack. (Another place where our bags were checked. And between Ryan's stroller and Mike's camera bag, it was rather troublesome.)

One can't visit Philadelphia without trying their famous cheesesteaks. We dropped by Campo's Deli (located in the Old City) after visiting the Independence Park. The cheesesteaks here were great; we're fans now. The soft pretzels (something else Philly is famous for), not so much.

Traveling with a baby was quite a huge change for us (especially me, since Mike would be at a conference most of the time). This time, we traveled with a suitcase (!), we had way more stuff than we normally would pack, and I had to scale back on the sightseeing. I normally love to pack the days and see/do something unusual, if possible, but this time, I had to plan around his nap times and attention span. Transporting him was also a problem. I wasn't too sure if the subways and buses were stroller-friendly (some were, some weren't), but the stroller was a great way for him to nap and extend our trip out. Oh, and for the first time ever, I looked up (and went to) kid-friendly places to see (something I used to actively avoid).

Here we are at the Please Touch Museum (a kids' museum, great place, I highly recommend). Mike was at the conference and I didn't like the thought of wrestling the stroller up the bus so I used the carrier. Not the best idea in hindsight, and I was pretty tired by the end of the day. Ryan was initially a little quiet and hesitant when we got there but warmed up soon enough.

Of all the stuff on this activity wall for babies and toddlers, he liked the button that produces a cricket sound the most. You can't see it but his right hand is continually pressing it. The speaker is just in front of his face.


Most of the stuff at Please Touch is geared towards older kids though, such as the water feature below. Oh well. We'd definitely visit Please Touch if we're ever in Philly again.

All tuckered out after we came back.

Helping us to pack. Somehow he looks chunkier here.

Detroit airport, our stopover on the way back. It's surprisingly impressive. (Yes, for the cheapest flight, we ended up with two different airlines and hence stopovers each way.)

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: 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.

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.

ReNe: stunt baby

Ryan had a big adventure last night.

But, backtracking a little, the eczema on his face was flaring up last night, so before we went to sleep, we applied some cortisone to his face and bound his arms with a swaddle cloth. The cloth is folded in a long strip and placed under his back. Then the ends goes around his arms and are tucked in again under his back so his body helps to keep the cloth in place. Recently though he has been getting pretty good at escaping --- if he arches his back to lift his weight off the cloth and if he yanks his arms out at the same time, he can pull himself free. Apparently, that was what he did.

I woke up sometime around dawn to his crying and got off the bed to attend to him. Luckily I opened my eyes instead of stepping out blindly. When I sat up opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Ryan, on the floor beside our bed! He was lying on his back and bawling away, arms held out in his 'pick me up!!' position.

His crib is located on the other side of the room and there's a tall shelf in the middle of the room, as a room divider. To get to our bed, he would have had to free his arms from the swaddle cloth and his blanket (which was tucked in around him), push himself off his crib (which was about 40cm off the floor), and somehow crawl and make his way around the shelf to our bed (perhaps about 2m in total distance).

Most amazingly, he hasn't learned how to crawl yet. Not even an inch. He isn't even good at turning himself over. So how the heck did he get all the way from his crib to our bed?!?

Maybe the monster-under-his-crib carried him over... *cue dramatic music*

He must have squirmed a lot since the top few snaps on his sleeper were opened and his left arm had slipped out. Plus, he must have spend quite a bit of time on the floor since he was pretty cold. After picking him up, I fed him and tucked him into bed with us. It would have been too cruel to put him back in his crib after his monumental effort. When I tucked him in between our pillows (so we can't roll onto his head), while half-asleep, he immediately spread his arms out in an 'X' position. It was obvious he hates to have his arms bound...

We had joked about his stubbornness, but last night's Big Escape puts that trait in an entirely new dimension.

ReNe: ryan the roomba snail

Ryan has never sat on a hardwood floor before, but tonight I put him on the floor for fun.

He looked interested at the new perspective and was examining the floor. Then, he discovered that if he pushed the floor, he'd scoot backwards. He'd push, move back about 1cm, then look up expectantly with a huge grin. When we clapped and cheered, he'd laugh and look extremely pleased with himself. Sometimes he didn't push properly and hence he didn't move, but he would look up expectantly anyway. In this case, we didn't clap, and he would wait for our claps, cheering and aughing himself on anyway.

Speaking of roomba, I checked his pants after I picked him up, but fortunately I vacuumed the floor earlier so his pants weren't dirty. But he did leave a trail of drool as he pushed himself along...

Photos galore!

I'm guessing that followers of this blog, if there are any left—you stalkers (I kid! I kid!)—will probably have noticed these pictures in the photostream page applet on top. Still, the object of this blog is not just to show pictures, that's what the flickr page is for. This blog is for telling stories, and while there is no neatly packaged story to tell here today, I suppose this can count as the latest instalment of the stories of our lives.

First bit of news is that we have been feeding him solids quite regularly already, as mentioned earlier. He has tasted apple, pear, carrot, rice, oats, banana, sweet potato, and now, his favourite: avocado. We mash the food portions up in a marble mortar and pestle, and sometimes we add a bit of pear nectar to sweeten and water the paste. Mealtimes are his favourite—he gets to sit up on his high chair, and get to taste all sorts of interesting foods. He'd start out all clean and enthused, arms outstretched and sitting up, like this:

And after a few mouthfuls, he gets animated, tries to tell us how much he likes the food and about the time when he went out and had a lot of fun, his hands will wave about:

As the meal progresses, he gets messier and messier, with food all over his mouth as he mumbles, and plays with his food, blows bubbles, and starts leaning forward and generally making it hard for food to enter and remain in his mouth. Eventually, he winds up like this:

And then we get the pleasure of cleaning up after him. While the plastic bib works very well in catching food and preventing him from folding it up to taste the drippings, he is also very adept at spewing food away from the bib. So we have to clean the high chair, the floor, and of course, his mouth, chin, and neck. Not surprisingly, this whole process takes the better part of twenty or so minutes, which is amazing given the amount he consumes.

You'd probably notice in the pictures that his cheeks are still badly rashed. It's been months already, and we're not exactly sure what to do. We've gotten steroids, topical antibiotics, moisturiser, and now hydrogen peroxide (to clean the open wounds), but they don't seem to get rid of the condition. It gets a small reduction, but it seems like his skin adapts to the help and gets worse before stabilising at a bad level. We'll be seeing his paediatrician next week for his scheduled vaccinations, and we'd ask if he can do something about it, but we're not enthusiastic. Seems like Western medicine is not too good at treating chronic conditions, so we'll see what happens.

---

This last weekend, the confluence of conditions finally made it that we could go to the park to take pictures. Unfortunately, we were a little late, the peak autumn colours had faded and mostly fallen off. Still, we did what we could, and here are some of the results.

This first picture we took looking along a wooded path, the kind where it is all shaded, forming something resembling a tunnel, with light at the end of it. We walked past it, and realised we had to take a picture there:

Another picture, this one you can see that the leaves in the background are quite brown by now. They are supposed to turn red, yellow and that's the time when it is ideal for viewing. Ah well, there will be next year...

We moved on to another site, and took this picture. Somehow, Ryan was in a ticklish mood, and laughed every time Serene patted the mat that he was seated on. Laughter being the contagious thing that it is, she also started laughing as I tried to hold the camera still and quickly fire off the pictures, resulting in this:

Babies. Infuriating sometimes (like right now as I type—he is having difficulty sleeping), but it's times like these that make it all worthwhile.

ReNe: starting solids

For a while now, we've been involving Ryan more during our mealtimes, showing him (in exaggerated motions) how we chew, letting him see what we're eating, and so on. Once in a while we would bring the spoon to him to see if he's interested. Initially, he wasn't.

Then a couple of weeks back, he started to exhibit a greater interest in our foods -- looking intently at our food and opening his mouth. So we stopped offering him our spoon (no sense in frustrating him because we're clearly not going to feed him what WE are eating) and started to prepare some foods that he can eat. So far we've let him try prune juice, white grape juice, banana, apple, pear, sweet potato (all mashed) and oatmeal. Thinking about it now, that sequence may not have been the best -- some say we should start with bland foods and work up to the sweeter fruits. Some websites also say we should cook the fruits and not offer raw fruits until later. Oops.

Most current literature advises waiting until the baby is 6 months old (he's 4.5 months now) before introducing solids. Mostly because his digestive system isn't ready for solids yet. However, about the same time he started to exhibit an interest in our food, his diapers also started to stink, so I figured some enzymes must have woken up.

I had also let him lick a couple of Ricola sweets, which he liked very much. In fact, when I offered him the second sweet to lick, he *lunged* forward. I think I shouldn't do such things any more.

Initially, he would spit up everything we gave him, whether or not he likes it. He would go through the chewing motions he learned from us, but he hadn't figured out how to swallow. After a few times, he's now much better at it. His current favorite is sweet potato, followed by apple and pear. He likes these foods so much he would lunge for the spoon after tasting the first mouthful, and cry out angrily when (once he has finished) we remove his utensils and bib. And he does finish all of his food. We were feeding him about 2 teaspoons and today we increased it to 4 teaspoons; he finished everything eagerly.

Because blogspot.com's pictures suck

Baby sits up, unassisted, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

That's why I'm posting this picture from flickr instead.

The resizing algorithm degrades the image quality quite significantly. Flickr does a much better job, sometimes to the extent that it becomes over-sharpened.

Oh well.

ReNe: sitting up unassisted

As the title says.

For the past month and half, Ryan has been able to sit upright if assisted, whether in his high chair or stroller, though he tended to list to one side. Recently, his progress accelerated abruptly. Perhaps it was the increased amount of tummy time?

Last week, he was able to sit up when partially propped by pillows.

He was also able to use a stuffed toy for support.

Two days ago, he started to sit unassisted for a few seconds. He'd hold himself rigid, fingers sometimes clenched tightly to his toes or arms held stiffly in front, but will topple over quickly. He tended to topple to his front.


Yesterday, he discovered if he pulled himself upright, balancing his head over his center of gravity, it helped greatly. Here, he looked more natural and not so rigid, and he could sit up for a few seconds.

Today, he's able to sit unassisted for a couple of minutes. And look at the camera instead of concentrating hard in front of him.

ReNe: 1st public meltdown

So far, we've been lucky. Ryan can scream like a banshee at home but he will hold in his frustration while outside. At most, he would fuss a little. Until today.

We went to Ikea today and he just wasn't able to nap properly. Perhaps it was the crowds and overstimulation, or perhaps it was the different stroller -- a friend gave us their old stroller and we tried it out instead of his usual stroller. In any case, by the time we finished lunch and were shopping, he was starting to get tired and fussy, demanding to be held and refusing (loudly) to be strapped into his stroller. By the time we paid, he was wailing away. We settled onto one of the couches in the lobby while waiting for the shuttle bus that would bring us back to the subway station, and he managed to sleep for about 20mins in my arms. It was hardly enough and he woke up as we got down from the shuttle bus. For a while, he was quiet and ok, then on the train back, he started to fuss and then, proceeded to have a total meltdown, ultrasonic screams and all.

Standing (because he screams louder if I sat down) and jiggling him with all the stares of the other train passengers on me, it was, for me, a little embarrassing. When I was single, I would not think too kindly of parents with screaming kids in public; now I am much more understanding of their plight.