ReNe: santa claus parade

Took a quick look at the Santa Claus parade today. Though we arrived late, we were just in time to catch the last few floats and the finale, the Santa Claus float. It's just as well; Ryan's too lightly dressed to stay outside (his stroller) for long. (His stroller has a sleeping bag-like thing that keeps him quite warm.)

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...

ReNe: warm fall

Fall temperatures this year are higher than last year. I remember walking home one day in late October and it was snowing. The flakes were tiny and melted as soon as they hit the ground, but it was definitely snowing. This day last year, we went to catch the Santa Claus parade and it was, again, snowing. I remember feeling very, very cold, and ducking into a Tim Hortons for a warm chocolate.

In contrast, it hadn't snowed yet this season, and the temperature for the past couple of weeks have been hovering in the low teens. It's rather nice, actually. Cool and brisk, but not bitingly cold.

ReNe: 6th month ped visit

We brought Ryan to the pediatrician yesterday for the rash on his face and for his 6th month vaccinations as well.

He's been having a rash on his face for the past few months, but it was just a smallish patch. Then in early October, he scratched his face and the next day, his face turned red and swollen. It was clearly an infection, and he was prescribed an antibiotic cream. It got better after a few days, then it got worse again. Recently, the rash became really bad; the patch on his right cheek was weeping so much plasma that it dripped down his jawline and ear. Yesterday, the doc prescribed another antibiotic and recommended that we apply both the antibiotic and steroid creams together; the former to control the infection and the latter, the inflammation. Yes, steroid creams should not be used for too long, which was the reason we stopped it some time back, but the doc said it was more important to bring down the inflammation.

Then we weighed him (8.1kg) and Ryan got his vaccinations. One thing we noticed about Ryan; he has a pretty high pain tolerance. Whenever he falls over (from a seated position), even if he hits his head, he doesn't cry for long. Once we pick him up, he usually calms down within a few seconds. It's the same for vaccinations — he'd wail when the needle goes in, but in a few minutes, he's all right.

Having fun before the nurse called us in:

Sunset

A nice way to cap off the weekend, spent taking a lot of pictures. I don't have the exact count, but I think I easily exceeded 1200 pictures over those two days. We were at the local big box mall, to get Ryan some diapers, and as we were walking in, we saw this:

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.

Happy Halloween!

Savaged vactioners II, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

It's Halloween again, the time where people celebrate the dead by dressing up like them, and when the Great Pumpkin rises out of his patch to deliver toys and goodies to all the kid who have been good for the year.

Or, if you live on or near Church Street, a chance to do a Pride Parade Redux. Annually, Church Street at Wellesley will host a huge street party—road closures, stage, super loud sound system, deejay, open air dance club feel, but fortunately no alcohol/food, though that never stops people from getting... delighted by the substances they bring along.

And of course, the costumes. all sorts of themes, from the usual horror and gore, like the man in the picture above, to celebrities, politicians, sexy outfits, and completely weird, unplaceable genres. There was this one guy who came dressed in only a trenchcoat. How did we know? He showed all standing nearby!

I went to take pictures again this year, and got a few good pictures, the whole lot can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike-tan/sets/72157622712708134/

Halloween is also the day before the change in time—from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time, which means the clocks shift one hour behind, and for the first day or so, we feel as if we gained an extra hour. Which feels good. Except that now, the sun sets at about 5pm. It used to be a more decent 6+pm just a week ago. No wonder people get more easily depressed in Winter.

We got out to the park to take a few pictures over the weekend. I'll post those and some other pictures of him eating solids soon.

mother & son

mother & son, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

We were talking the other day, about how to Ryan, we must appear like gods—we could do everything, were so much taller and stronger than he was, could go to places he could only dream of, and he was totally dependent on us for his very survival.

Which reminded us of something we read/watched some time back, about how the hypothesis was that many of the 'sky-father' religions (e.g. the Big Three religions, and also, the Big Three of a certain religion) are modelled after this very first relationship we humans have with a supreme being, relatively speaking. Think about it—the major parts of the mythology is the same: omnipotent, omniscient being which occasionally will punish underlings because ultimately omnipotent being loves underlings, and all that...

Which makes a lot of sense, now we are able to see how dependent this kid is on us.

Anyway. Beautiful picture to share with you today. If/when Ryan grows up and sees this for himself; well, here's a picture of you with your goddess who loves you. Hope you'll like it.

Baby tries to eat links

Baby tries to eat links, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

So, his face is rashed. And has been so since he was about two and a half months old. It actually went away for about a week or two, then came back again, and stayed, and got worse, better, worse, we got Hydrocortisone cream from the pharmacy (1%), and it got better, worse...

You get the picture.

Seems like nothing we do helps. It's certainly not an allergy, unless he is allergic to breast milk, which would be quite unfortunate. The one that gets us really worried is the hydrocortisone cream. That stuff is a steroid, and is supposed to reduce inflammation by mimicking a body substance and/or blocking the effect of an inflammatory agent. (If you want the details, wikipedia has it). Which is fine. Except that even for the over-the-counter preparations (0.5%), there are explicit warnings not to exceed seven continuous days of use.

His drug came in a urine specimen bottle sized container, and we had been using it on and off since August 13.

Hydrocortisone, among the crazy things it does, thins the skin, in excess, the skin becomes almost translucent, vessels become visible, and the skin is exceptionally liable to breakage and tears.

Which is scary.

In even larger amounts, it affects the adrenal gland function, and that is something you really do not want to be messing around with.

But then, he scratches himself. A lot. Especially at night. And he cannot get to sleep. And he cries, which wakes us up. So we had been using the cream to get the rash to go down.

Just 20 minutes ago, when we attended to his crying, we noticed that his cheek, the place where the rash refused to subside, was bleeding.

We're stopping hydrocortisone use with immediate effect, indefinitely.

I just hope this will not have any long term effects on him.

playing with bead puzzle

playing with bead puzzle, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

well, not really. So yesterday, when Serene was off at the dentist's, I had to take care of the kid. We expected him to be napping for almost all of the time Serene was supposed to be away; however, of course the boy had to wake up early, and refuse, very firmly, to go back to sleep. Of course, that meant a mini-tantrum, with him managing to corral up whatever he had to tell me that he was not going to sleep. That included very high pitched screams, body arching back so he could not be put on his side (we like to put him to sleep on his side), kicking me in the throat, poking my eyes when I put my face close, and using his legs to thump the mattress.

So, ok, awake he is. And I was going through the usual routine of activities for him, and I sort of ran out of things to do. I looked around and found this bead puzzle that someone passed to us. I know this is probably for older kids, but decided to let him try anyway. Interestingly, he actually started to play with the beads, but then, he quickly got bored with the toy, and started to use the wire as a support (he can sit up unassisted, but not for too long). Soon, he got tired, and then frustrated, then this:

So, right now, we are keeping the toy away from him - the blue wire is starting to come loose already...

Hi!

Hi!, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

Ryan may be teething. Or, at least, his adventures with discovering the world with his mouth and hands has taken its natural course and now he's stuffing those fingers into his mouth. Which is very cute, especially when he puts one tiny finger into the corner of his mouth.

I suppose this picture would look even cuter if he had his left index finger in the left corner of his mouth, but on balance, his right hand really makes the picture. Almost as if he's saying: "Hi! Yes? What? I'm not supposed to put my fingers in my mouth? What fingers?"

Of course, he's not at the stage where he knows how to wave. But cute anyway...

Gimme!

Gimme!, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

... so young, and so demanding already.

He can be really stubborn when we try to put him to sleep; he has such great persistence that he can wail and scream and struggle for up to half an hour. The only reason we've not timed him going for longer is because we gave up and eventually did something right by him.

Not as if we were simply ignoring his cries. We will shush pat him, pick him up, put him down (yes, Tracy Hogg's methods), make sure his diaper is clean, and he's not hungry, all that. Besides the rash on his face, he has no physical need. He's just (from our perspective) being difficult.

How do we know he has no physical difficulty affecting his sleep? Change the soother from me to Serene, and he co-operates, progressively fussing less, until he falls asleep.

I dunno. Any ideas?

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.

recalls a fluid pugilistic manoeuvre

recalls a fluid pugilistic manoeuvre, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

Nice picture. Nothing else to say. :)

mmm. tastes like chicken

mmm. tastes like chicken, originally uploaded by mike.tan.

So, Ryan's been eating solids. More like he's sampling food that we've been feeding him. We realised recently that he was ready to try new foods when he started to lose the tongue thrust reflex, the reflexive urge to spit out anything that comes into his mouth. Also, he was quickly becoming extremely curious with regards to the food we eat - he'd stare intently as we ate, and almost had that "gimme some of that!" look on his face. And it was nearly time anyway - one gauge that paediatricians go by is the doubling of birth weight, and yes, he's doubled.

So we started preparing foods for him. Apples, pears, sweet potatoes, boiled, steamed, and then macerated with a mortar and pestle. He loves it!

This one time, I was preparing dinner for ourselves, and as usual, we'd like to plop him up on his high chair as he watches us cook and potter around the kitchen. In what seems like a pattern now, we'd turn our heads away for a minute to attend to something, and then we'd turn back, only to notice surprise us. This time, he was slumped over and tasting the high chair. I wonder if he was feeling hungry, or he's at the stage where he's exploring his world with the new sense that has woken up - his sense of taste...

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.

And in the next scene...

tummy time..., originally uploaded by mike.tan.

Can you predict what would come out of our brilliant idea?

You see, he's been resistant to being on his tummy, vastly preferring instead to be standing up, supported by us, of course. Which is tiring. On a day with a good mood, he'd allow us to plop him face down on the mattress, then he'd squeal for a couple of minutes, before squeals becomes fussiness which become all out cries: "Let me up! What makes you think I like to be on my tummy? It's so boring down here!"

So today, when we were re-arranging the furniture, we lowered his mattress height, and got out the alphabet tiles made of soft foam. When we were doing this, he looked very interested and curious, no doubt attracted by the snazzy colours and big blocky shapes. So we thought, why not put him on his belly overlooking the edge of the bed?

Which worked.

Well, kinda. He was happy, not fussing for quite some time, staring at the colourful new things he'd never seen before, and then we turned our backs to do some re-arranging and packing.

Then we heard a dull thud, and then a scream. He had fallen over.

Fortunately for us, he seems to have a high pain tolerance; picked him up, cuddled him for a bit, and he was back to normal, looking like nothing had happened to him. Guess he was more shocked that something strange happened to him, than actually hurt. I guess the padding helped.

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.

ReNe: buskerfest 2009

Toronto's Buskerfest (27-30 Aug) was on last weekend, in front of St Lawrence Market. We strolled down the first evening (Thurs), and even though we didn't see anything very much, we liked it enough to go back down the next evening. Actually, it was also because we didn't see anything that we wanted to go back again.

The great thing about street performances is that it's free (of course donations are welcome) and the atmosphere is fun and lively. The not-so-great thing is that unless you're there early to grab a good spot, it's hard to see what's happening...

Festive and quite crowded. Lots of booths in addition to the buskers. I got a free women's razor.


A 'sculptor clown' called Pedro Tochas.


We heard about this Alakazam guy -- he's able to squeeze his body through a tennis racket, squash racket and toilet seat -- but the crowd was so thick we weren't able to see his performance. In this photo below, that's a squash racket around his waist!


We managed to catch a front row performance for the Piano Juggler's performance. It was humorous and well-paced, and Ryan apparently likes it as well. I was quite surprised he watched the entire half hour long performance quietly; then again, he does like watching things being thrown in the air. When we toss his toys in the air, he usually laughs. I suppose this 'like' is cute now but it won't be a year from now when HE starts to toss things into the air...



I've never been a huge fan of street performances but since coming to Toronto, I'm starting to appreciate them more. The piano juggler's performance was the first for which I sat through from start to finish, and actually left a small sum of money at the end. =)