2 weeks to Chinese New Year

The countdown begins. It's 2 weeks to Chinese New Year, and mummy is starting to panic!!!

So many things to do, so little time. Lucky Ah Ma will be helping us exchange new notes for the Ang Pows. Mummy needs to get a special ang pow for you.

I have taken out all the clothes that you will probably wear during Chinese New Year in Ipoh. As usual, there are a lot of things to bring along for you. I plan to make a list of what to bring in an Excel spreadsheet.. but never got to completing the list. I better do it, otherwise, I might leave out something and daddy will stare daggers at mummy! *wink*

Everyone is looking forward to Chinese New Year. They have not seen you for a while.

Visiting Great-Grandpa in hospital

Dear Evan,

You woke up very early yesterday morning. And half an hour later, your Ah Ma came knocking on the door. Great-grandpa had fainted and hit himself on the face near the eye in the toilet at home.

So in a rush daddy and Ah Ma went to Auntie Jamie's house to bring him to the hospital.

And later in the night we braved the traffic jam (as it was Thaipusam) to go to town for dinner and to visit your great-grandpa in Adventist Hospital. Poor thing, You were a bit shocked when you first saw him, as his right eye was very bruised. But later after that, you grinned at him and even stood on great-grandpa's bed.

And I guess the highlight of the day is when daddy did jumping-jacks with you sitting on his shoulders. But today, he's suffering the effects. His legs are aching. So no more jumping-jacks for a while till his legs recover!

Sleep... sleep at last!

Dear Evan,

You were a good boy last night. You only woke up 3 times after you went to be before 10pm. And each time you woke up, you had your feed and went straight back to sleep, without kicking a fuss.

In fact, daddy slept right throught the night too. He didn't wake up a single time when you woke up last night! Poor daddy, he must be very tired. We all were sleeping by 11pm!

Hopefully this will be your new sleep pattern for a while, until you learn to sleep through the night.

So sleepy today..

Evan.. oh Evan.. Why did you wake up so early this morning. My dear baby, at 3.30am, even the roosters aren't up! So why should you, a little baby, be up so early??

Now mummy and daddy feel so tired sitting here at our desk, trying to work.

Although you were up at such an unearthly hour, it was difficult to stay angry at you. Your one little grin, melted our hearts. That's why you got away with playing on our bed, hitting the wall behind our bed and rolling around. You stayed up till 5am when you finally dozed off and mummy also got another 2 hours of shut eye.

I hope you don't intend to pull this same trick again tonight. Daddy and mummy are VERY VERY tired. Unlike you, we didn't get to have a morning and afternoon nap!

P/S Daddy says you cannot sleep too early tonight.

Happy 10months birthday Evan!

My dear.. in the blink of the eye, you are now 10 months old.

Our little baby
Ever so tiny
When you were born
We could have sworn
The most beautiful thing
We have ever seen.



You're 10 months in January
Chinese New Year is in February
And soon we will celebrate
The day you will turn one.



I guess mummy will never be a poet. But I hope you like it. Not very good at rhyming. But wanted to give a different twist to this blog. Happy 10 months birthday to you darling.

More sleepless nights..

Dearest Evan,

Mummy feels so, so tired today. You were up every 2 hours. And the 2 hours starts counting from the time you woke up earlier, and not AFTER you went to sleep.

I think it's probably because of the dry weather. Daddy was just commenting to me this morning that the real Chinese New Year weather is here. So with it being dry, you had to wake up for a drink. And longer drink too. Poor Evan..

We'll try to put out more bowls of water. Hopefully that will help you sleep better. And longer too. You woke up at 5 this morning hoping to play! Luckily you went to sleep after a bit of coaxing, although you only foudn the comfy spot with your legs facing us!

Standing & Walking

Dear Evan,

We didn't even notice you cruising often. But all of a sudden, you stood up unaided on our bed last Friday. And the next thing we know, you took 2 steps while standing on daddy and mummy's bed last night! Wow!

I guess very soon you will be moving around, walking everywhere. And pulling everything within reach to the ground!

Sigh.. our little baby is growing up so fast..

Sleepless nights...

My dear Evan.. I am still wondering how come you never read the "baby manual"? Don;t you know that babies are supposed to sleep long hours. At your age, I think it's supposed to be around 10 hours during the night.. Of course you are expected to wake up sometimes for feeds.. but better still if you are able to sleep though the night.

You woke up at 1am this morning and refused to sleep.. It took you more than an hour before you could find a comfy spot in mummy's and daddy's bed! But of course not before you sat up and give daddy a big fat knock on his head, followed by the loudest howl ever from you..

Teething

My dear Evan,

My friend said it was easy for her to see whether her son was teething. His teeth shows everytime he smiles. Sigh.. for me, it took me a long time and I have finally managed to get a picture of your two bottom teeth.. with the help of your daddy & Ah Kong who encouraged you to go "bang bang bang" on your high chair.



And last Thursday I caught a glimpse of your upper tooth growing. Yup, for some unknown reason, there's only ONE tooth growing. Didn't you read the baby manual? Your supposed to have both upper teeth growing together. I wonder when we'd be able to get a picture of that tooth.

Chinese New Year is coming!

Gosh.. I don't know if you are excited about Chinese New Year, but I am. Other than the downside of giving out ang pows, it would be the first celebration for you. I'm sure you would have loads of ang pows this year. And you will get to meet the whole "Ban Clan". Trust me, the word "clan" can be considered an understatement! It's a very big family.

Wow.. so much to do, so much to get ready. Lucky for you, Ah Kong and daddy bought loads of clothes for you when they went travelling earlier on. So all mummy needs to do is start packing... Hmm.. is that too early?

Photo Session Day

It seems like a long time since we've taken photographs with you. So today mummy and daddy went home for a quick lunch and also to have a photo session with you. Here's the pictures we took with you:


With Daddy..


With mummy


And with Ah Kong

Ah Ma is camera shy today. She says her clothes looks messy because you've been pulling at it the whole day. Nevermind, we'll take another picture with Ah Ma another day.

Our New Home

Today we officially "jip choo" (move into our new home) in Tanjung Bungah. Very far from our current house, but it's a nice place by the beach. Lucky you woke up early as we needed to be in the house between 10 and 11am! Nanna told us that it was the best time.

The condo is still relatively bare, but we are slowly furnishing it. Most importantly we brought along your play mat. So you could entertain yourself while we have the workers put up the curtains and do some final cleaning of the condo.



And after a long day of playing in Ah Ma's room, you fell asleep on mummy and daddy's bed:



That was fun. So we will be going over again to spend a night there this weekend. I wonder when you will get a chance to use the swimming pool...

Food upgrade

It's time for you to promote to eating moi. Ah Ma is all excited. She's went out to buy fish for you from the market. She bought "kah lat hoo". Don't ask me what type of fish that it. All I know that it is "a fish"!

So the time came and Ah Ma cooked your yummy moi. But look at the face you showed:

Evan's First Christmas

Ah... our Christmas Tree... and all the loot!

Evan, this Christmas is the first of many to come. As you can see... we've got so many presents under the Christmas tree. And a lot of them belonged to you!

We had our celebrations on Christmas eve this year. Many relatives came for dinner. What a pity you are too young to join in the yummy food we had. Perhaps next year you will be able to join us in tucking in the turkey, ham, cakes, bread (made by Uncle Sin Tien) and many more food... I know, I know.. I'm making you drool.

I'd say the best part if this day were the gifts that you got. See:

Daddy helping you with your "loot"


Aha... these are most of your presents

Fever Scare

Scare was the right thing to describe what you gave mummy and daddy. Daddy had gone out for dinner with his visitors and I thought you had felt warm that night when you went to sleep. But you seemed fine: cheerful as ever and you fell asleep on your usual time.


See? Looking perfectly fine, playing in the cot.

But when you woke up at 3am and refused to sleep and was crying, the panic alarm started to sound. In the end, we woke up your Ah Kong and Ah Mah to determine if you were feverish. And of all days, our thermometer ran out of batteries! So in the end, we put the mercury thermometer under your armpits and got a shock of our lives. You were more than 38 degrees! Yikes..

In a mad rush we drove directly to Adventist Hospital's Emergency Room. Amazingly through out the drive you were cheerful as ever, chatting away, saying "babaaa ba aa bba". There they took your temperature and gave you paracetamol while waiting for Dr Mary to come in. After all was done, we went home.

I guess there was so much excitement early in the morning, that you could not sleep after that. It took us quite a while before we managed to get you to go back to sleep. Even though you only slept for another 2 hours.

Thankfully, you recovered quickly and had a few more high temperatures before it all disappeared... only to continue with a cough and flu!


And followed by this great big bite on your face! Sigh.. when it rains, it pours!

Choosing a name

Dear Evan,

Ever wondered how long it took mummy and daddy to choose a name for you? Well.. for us it took us a couple of months to zero in on the perfect name for our baby. Of course, first we need to know the gender of the baby.

Well, on our 16th weeks check-up, Dr Ng asked if we wanted to know your gender. Of course we wanted to know. That doesn't mean that we will be able to select a name for you: you would no longer be referred to as "baby" when mummy talks to you. Best of all... we could start shopping for you. Of course that didn't meant that we hadn't started buying things for you before that!

Anyway, as mummy and daddy are not able to read a single word of Chinese, we got you Ah Kong to help with your Chinese name. That certainly took him a long time, as we needed to screen through the long list and also we needed to ensure that no one can come up with something funny from your name on top of making sure that the name is not similar as any of our relatives. When Ah Kong and daddy finally came up with a name for you, we needed to decide how to spell the name too.

On the other hand, we took only a short while to narrow down the choices of English names for you. Of course we had a lot of helpful (not) inputs from friends and family too. Such as Sardine Ban, Kaya Ban.. and the list goes on you name all types of buns, they've been suggested! Thus, the name of this blog: myrotiban.

Anyway, finally mummy and daddy agreed on Evan Ban Khai Siong. Um.. it took me a long time to remember how to spell your Chinese name. Sadly, I still don't know how to write it in Chinese. But I promise you, I will learn how to write it.. after I have learnt how to write mine and daddy's properly... hopefully soon...

First Solids

My Dear Evan,

Today is D-Day. It's Solids Day at age 6 months and 2 days. We waited for daddy to come home from golf, have his lunch and bath before we started.

A lot of preparation was needed for this special day. We set up the video camera on the tripod and also the digital camera all ready to catch this special day. Oh.. and of course we had the food ready too... At 1.30pm we were ready to roll.

Lunch consisted of 1 (yes! ONE) teaspoon of Heinz rice cereal and 1/2 oz of breast milk, resulting in a watery concoction. Yummy.


All went quite well. In fact, you were very co-operative as you even willingly opened your mouth to be fed. Unfortunately, you didn't manage to finish all the food. This is probably because you could not understand why the food did not go into your mouth in one continuous stream like your milk milk.

So we had to stop the solids and finish off the meal with the balance of your milk. Looks like that little bit of cereal is quite filling as you only requested for the next feed at 7pm.

Look at photos of today's adventure.

Evan's First Professional Haircut

Dear Evan,

Your hair has grown long and you've got missing patches of hair on the sides. So we decided to take you for a haircut today. He's Uncle Austin, mummy and daddy's hairdresser. So we know that you are in good hands. He is a professional and he'll give you a wonderful haircut.

So there we went, right after work. We had a lot of things to bring along: your Bumbo seat, the video camera, the digital camera, your change of clothes along with the trusty diaper bag, which has your milk, diapers and many other things.

You seemed happy and contented when we arrived at the shop.Until you saw him coming with the scissors. Look at the "dirty look" you gave him:


When we started, you were seated in the Bumbo seat while mummy took pictures with the digital camera and daddy was with the video camera. In the end, mummy took over daddy's role as the camera lady while daddy had to hold you when you had your haircut! You'd started screaming at Uncle Austin! Amazingly, he is a very patient man. He took his time and let you have your say to him at every interval.

After that, you behaved as if nothing happened. You happily let anyone in the shop to carry you. Perhaps you feel more comfortable with the short hair, instead of having them poking you everywhere.

And here you are looking so very handsome after the haircut and a bath:


More pictures of you after the haircut.

Full Moon

Your full moon is today, the 28th April 2006. It's been a long 30 days of learning to handle you.Luckily we had a confinement lady who took great care of you while also cooking the yummiest food for mummy. Most importantly was the "too kar chor" that she cooked. Everyone loved it.

You were a wonder to all of us. Easy to handle so far. All you do is feed or sleep:


And when you didn't get what you wanted, this is what we got:


Your daddy was the first one to give you a bathe. He did a wonderful job. You didn't cry when he bathed you. Good job daddy..


But you have grown considerably throughout this whole month. You weighed 4.5kg at your check-up yesterday!

Bathing Evan for the first time

It was the final week of confinement. It's is now our turn to take care of you. THe confinement aunty is now our coach. So far, we had learnt to change you and we'd also watched her bathe you on many occasions. But the time has come for us to learn to handle you, as she's going home very soon.

On that day, she asked who wanted to go first. Mummy didn't dare handle you. So daddy went first.

He was a hit with you. He was wonderful in handling you. I think you enjoyed it, as you didn't cry at all throughout out the bath, and even when being dressed!


Daddy washing your hair. Does it feel like having your hair washed in the hair saloon?


Having a "swim" in the bathtub; the final step in your bath regimen. You love the water.

Look at what a good job daddy did, giving you a bath!