Congratulations and Happy Birthday!

To Szup and Coen David  respectively!
One of my dearest friends just have birth on Tuesday to her second son. He is adorable and she is a trooper!
Love to both of them and cheers to the entire family!

Solids Part Four

So it's porridge and fish! He seems to enjoy it if his straining forward head is anything to go by. No salt, no pepper, no oil, just rice and really expensive fish, courtesy of MIL!

Next time we go out, I should bring some of his food or else kesian, he keeps salivating at everyone else's food! Ha ha

A Prayer

Dear Buddha and Goddess of Mercy,

Please, I pray for plentiful milk to feed my baby.

Thank you.

Humbly,
Errolyn

Discoveries

I have discovered the following lately:

1. Julian does not like when someone roars at him.

2. The flat sides of a pacifier make a good teething ring especially if the shape fits baby's mouth.

3. Julian does not like it when someone makes the vibrating 'ahhh' sound at a turning fan.

4. When a baby eats pureed carrots, his poo really looks like pureed carrots.

5. A belly laugh from a baby is motivating!

6. The best shape for a teething ring is carrot shaped but kinda 2D flat.

7. There is no such teething ring out there.

8. TV? Cinema? What are those after you've had a kid!

9. I'm conflicted, positively panicked at the thought of supplementing with formula but strangely ok with it too. Though the hassles with feeding and going out will multiply three-fold.

10. Fenugreek makes me GO. I think. or it was just some bad food.

Solids part 3

Ok – recap.

 

Part 1 – May 21 - Ninolac Baby Cereal with water which Julian didn’t seem to enjoy very much – also caused rash???

Part 2 – 6 June – Organic pumpkin which Julian seemed to love with some breast milk. However, by 4^th day, he seemed bored.

Part 3 – 12 June – Japanese sweet potato – needs more breast milk for easier eating. Also less portion per feeding than pumpkin since it’s a starchier, heavier food.

 

Still drinking same amount of milk but increasing – sometimes 4oz, one time he went to 5.5oz!

Nursing

Everytime I have a dip in production, I freak out. Today is no different. When I, AGAIN, check the internet for why milk production reduces and how to get it up again, I think back on these past few days and I can understand why.

 

I have not had near enough fluids the past couple of days, no water in the night.

Baby is not nursing as much during the night.

I have been rather stressed out and working late this week.

Reduced amount of fish.

Stress! Especially on Tuesday, Wednesday and this whole morning too.

Haven’t been pumping very regularly (4 hours or more each time – aiyo!) since last week.

 

So, I should be grateful I’ve at least gotten 3oz out of myself this noon. Sigh. Gotta get back to it. I don’t have a goal in mind but every time I slow down, I panic and feel really sad.

No Words....

 

I’m crying. I just read in The Star about the 2 year old little girl who fell into a tub of water and drowned in her nursery. I saw the photo of her mother carrying her out of the clinic, her little body covered by a cloth but I spy her arm, discoloured and blue. The paragraph where it says (and I paraphrase), “The mother, uncontrollably distraught, carries her child out of the clinic and rushes into a waiting van” sets me off. I do not see how any mother can recover something like that. The little arm, the picture of grief on the mother’s face, the way the child lies over her mother’s shoulder - the way she would have in the morning the last time her mother carried her, alive.

 

I can’t bring myself to say no one is at fault. Why is the tub filled with water anyway when no one was using it? Why did the nursery guardians not take adequate measures of care and attention when they know they are dealing with precocious, inquisitive children, children who are helpless and naïve ….and innocent. Dead. Dead means gone forever, never to be warm again and held lovingly over and over again in parents’ arms. Dead means no more laughing, no more giggling, the child has no future, no wedding, no children of her own.

 

Dead sometimes means the mother dies too.

Pumpkin Man!!!

After 1 week of no solids since Julian didn't like his Ninolac (yeah, all this time I thought it was Minolac!!!), today we tried mashing steamed organic pumpkin and lo and behold, Julian seemed to like it. He finished the entire bowl I made (about 1 oz worth I think) and bobbed his head around towards the spoon, opening his mouth and such.

So proud of him!

Bad Food Galore

Just recently, we tried out The Blue Cow Café at Plaza Damas which was highlighted in the papers for burgers that were out of this world. We also ventured into The Cookbook at Sunway Giza. Actually that one was a second visit. So here are our reviews of these two eateries.

 

The Blue Cow Café was a little below expectations. We couldn’t get past how the food and the décor and the waiters all didn’t seem to gel. There was just something off about the entire environment. The waiters weren’t very helpful or maybe they just didn’t know their food; I saw a girl in the kitchen (open to public viewing mind you) using her hands when building a burger, I later saw the same girl go off to the freezer and used the same pair of hands (yeah, she only had one pair!) to open and close the freezer door as well as handle all sorts of Tupperware containers. There was a giant refrigerator stuck all over with Tiger beer stickers whilst the wallpaper and wall treatments didn’t scream cheap coffeeshop. A simple visit to the place will have you wondering the same thing – did I wander into a meat house that is just using an-ex restaurant locale while it looks for its own home???

 

Foodwise, I did not enjoy my lamb burger. I like my lamb and this burger was most definitely a disappointment – it wasn’t lamby in the least. I could taste a mish mash of items but not really any lamb. Hubby had a bite and liked it but when he had to finish the rest of my burger, finally understood my disappointment. His dish was the Pork Platter – the bacon was wondrous but that’s about itlah.

 

Overall, the place left me wondering what the reviewer was talking about. We paid a lot of money for nothing much by way of good food. It’s a no no for me on a return visit – we don’t actually award it the Sakae Award for suckiness but it won’t get a Recommend that’s for sure.

 

And now, for The Cookbook. This was actually a second visit because my parents were visiting and my mum mentioned that the place had been reviewed in the papers. Ok, after our experience there that night, I should treat all reviews in the papers with high suspicion. In fact, perhaps the moment an establishment is reviewed in the paper, it should scream ‘AVOID AVOID AVOID’ to me!

 

The first time we visited The Cookbook, I didn’t like it. I have a genuine dislike for places selling coffeeshop hawker fare for high prices. And what’s worse is when they don’t even do it as well as the old men and women out there sloggin away in non-airconditioned kopitiams. The only thing this place was good for to me, was their novel way of decorating the café and presenting their food.

 

By the way, DO NOT have the Homemade Sour Plum drink – yowzers!

 

This second time around that we were there, out of 4 dishes ordered, only 1 was good – however, everything was too salty! The worst thing is that my poor mother struggled through her Dry Curry Noodles for so long telling everyone it was salty til we actually tried it. It was unbelievable! I mean there is salty and then there is The Cookbook’s salty! YIKES!

 

When we referred it to the manager, he took it back and brought back a new plate – but this time without the chicken rolls that come with the dish. Hmmmm….if you’re going to replace a dish, it’s only professional if you replace the entire dish, not half a dish! And he tried to offer a lame excuse that at the end of the day, the sediment of the curry was more salty. Ummm….a chef who valued his name and his job would never allow that to happen. If that was acceptable, that means if I go to Shangri-La’s Chinese Restaurant at the end of the day, I would have to accept bad food??

 

The manager further went on to say that he had had a lot of orders for the dish that night and we were the only ones who complained. THAT really got JH’s goat! It was error piled upon error – replacing the dish half-assed was bad enough, now it was compounded with a lame excuse for the poor quality of the food and then aggravated further by an employee telling the customer he was basically wrong. And to top it all off, the cherry on the shit cake – the new dish had mee as bland as dishwater.

 

Caveat emptor if you’re trying out The Cookbook at Sunway Giza – the wait staff is inefficient (don’t even get me started on how they didn’t know how to give us proper utensils etc), the food is mediocre at best, the manager is lousy and customer service is atrocious. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

 

We felt so badly about it that we were about to rename ‘The Sakae Award’ with ‘The Cookbook….NOT’ award!

 

Practice Makes Perfect

The last two nights, Julian hasn’t been showing much love for his Minolac rice cereal……last night too, feeding him was like trying to catch a Noddy Head that goes left to right and back again…..BUT when the nanny started feeding him, he was just fine! AIYAKS!!!! Perhaps she has experience feeding little children back home??? Hahahahahha – Well, I sure as hell need to do better at it! J

 

Hope to start Cerelac soon, and check out all other brands, just in case it’s Minolac he doesn’t like.