Party for Aloysius.

We held a party for Aloysius on Saturday (22 Jul 06). We are not supposed to celebrate full-month for Aloysius because according to the chinese calender, it's a "broken" month. To thank those people who had given us lots of gifts, Terence and I decided to hold a buffet reception.

We had two sessions - 4.30pm-6.30pm, and 7pm-9pm, in the function room of our condominium. Session 1 was mainly for my friends and hubby's colleagues. Session 2 was mainly for our relatives and very good friends. The caterer came at 2.30pm to set-up the tables and decorated the buffet table. Someone just had to oversee the decoration and double check the list of food. Everything was easy :). The food arrived at 4.30pm. Some of Terence's colleagues started to arrive at 4.30pm.

There are many babies during session 1. I had a mommy group of friends and they brought their cute babies along :) I think throughout the two sessions, we had more than 20 babies... hahaha... We have not had any party before with so many babies togather...

It was indeed a busy day. Luckily, we catered the food. We had many compliments on the food and the set-up. We were impressed with the decorations and the quality, disposable plates and bowls used. My parents made curry puffs, "soon kueh" and "green koo kueh" for the party :)

From the party, I realized that most people do not like raw salad. We had a bowl of almost untouched garden salad… Throughout the party, I mainly had the garden salad. hmm... salad is healthy food :) and good for breast milk production.

Parenting.

I have finished the 21 shapes cards which comes in a set. hmm... among the cards, Aloysius will cry when I showed him the "hand" and "fish". To me, these two cards looks scary too. I will be going on to the words cards next week. I will start on the English cards first, then perhaps, one week later, the Chinese cards as well.


About parenting:

2 weeks ago, I borrowed a book by the "baby whisperer" (Tracy Hogg). I read and tried the recommendations given. Tracy said that her method is in between the "letting baby cry it out" and "attachment parenting". I followed the recommendation of having a schedule for baby called "EASY" (eat, activity, sleep and your time). She reasoned out why there's a need for a schedule, and described how to "train" baby to have a schedule. Eat - let baby eat for 20-45 minutes, A - then activity for that includes bathing, diapering, etc for 45 mins, S - let baby take 20 mins to fall asleep and have a nap. Y - your time to do your own things while baby is asleep. After trying to follow this "EASY" program, I ended up with a crying baby, and felt distanced from my baby. I will not follow this already... There are some useful tips on deciphering different types of baby's cries... and attending to their needs.

I am looking for books by William Sears and Martha Sears. They advocate "attachment parenting". I think I will follow "attachment parenting", though it may be time-consuming. But for the well-being of Aloysius, anything goes as long as I can cope :)

Confinement - the Chinese way...

Hello Blogger,

I am still under confinement :) My confinement is 40 days which will be ending this Saturday. So far so good. I started my first shower with herbs with very hot water, including washing my hair, on the 13th day after giving birth. So far, I had showered a few times already. I did wipe myself with hot water daily though.

As for my confinement food, I did not eat those fattening and oily stuffs. I avoided chicken, eggs, etc. I had lots of vegetables, such as, broccoli, cauliflower, kailan, peas, stir fried using sesame oil and ginger strips. The only meat I took is pork, which will be stir fried with the vegetables, or in my lotus root soup. I quite enjoyed the food though :). I am still not sick of it... I am certainly enjoying my mum's home cooked food :) I eat brown rice, instead of white rice. Brown rice becos it is more nutritious, and high in fibre. I also read that brown rice is good for baby's brain development. Despite eating a lot already, more than before my pregnancy, I still feel hungry easily. My breakfast is usually milo or horlick with oatmeal, and whloemeal bread with sugarless jam. Too much sugar intake is not good for the baby too. It can cause hyper-activity in baby and hence reduction in learning ability. Sometimes I will eat "mee sua" with vegetables, stir fried in sesame oil and ginger... Very delicious... yum... I will have lotus root black bean soup daily. Sometimes, my mum will add in lotus seed or lotus bulb. These are very nutritious.

My mum will go back to JB during the weekends. Then my MIL will cook for me and my hubby will bath baby. My MIL and FIL will play with Aloysius whenever he's awake. There's one weekend when baby was overstimulated, and we were left with a crying baby to soothe after they left home.

I am breastfeeding Aloysius. He's now 100% breastfeed. I used to pump out the milk and gave him via Dr. Brown or NUK bottle twice a day. I am trying not to pump too much as it will stimulate my milk flow. There's too much milk, and baby cannot finish which is a waste of the nutrients from my body. I had stopped pumping for about two weeks. I just started to pump once a day 3 days ago to bottle feed when I bring Aloysius out. So far, we went out twice already :).


Glen Doman method:
I have received emails regarding Glen Doman method, asking me to write about it. So, I will write a little here. The following are the things that I do from the book "How smart is your baby".

Checker boards:
I made 2 checker boards and put beside Aloysius' baby cot before his arrival :). I did not follow the dimensions given. I made one side with checker of 15cm by 15 cm, and the other 7.5cm by 7.5cm. When we first brought Aloysius home from the hospital, he saw the checker board. We were surprised that he stared at the board. He started with the bigger checker. When he's at 2 weeks old, he's not interested in the checker anymore. So, I thought maybe he's tired of it already. I changed to the smaller one. To our amazement, he started staring at the checker board again! Indeed, babies get bored easily. He's still looking at the checker board till now - 5 weeks 3 days old.

Flashcards:
I started the "bits of intelligence" cards (black and white shapes) when Aloysius was 2 weeks old. This is the 4th week into the flash cards already. I followed the schedule illustrated in "How smart is your baby". We tried to flash the cards 10 times per day or 10 times before changing new cards. Sometimes, when he's cranky or tired, we will skip the cards for the day.

Crawling:
My hubby and I DIY the crawling track. Before we finished the track, we let Aloysius lie on his tummy on our bed. Then used our hands to put at his feet for him to kick and move. Now the track is done, but it's still quite alien to him. He only look around him when I put him on the crawling track.

The first time Aloysius slept on his tummy during the second week of his life, we were surprised he could lift up his head. During the first time, he could lift for a few seconds and not high enough to turn his head. On the second day, he could lift and turn his head already. As the days go by, he could lift his head higher and longer.

Stimulating his feet:
We tried to stimulate his feet for the "Babinski reflex". It's not very interesting though. When we followed the book to stroke from the heel to the toes, we did not see the "babinski reflex", but when we stroke the opposite direction, there's "babinski reflex". hmm... I wonder why... Nowadays, Aloysius will try to withdraw his legs when we stimulate his feet. Recently, he started to make "ah ah ah" noises during the stimulation, so we stopped.