Baby Kayla is 10 months old!

Another 2 more months and Kayla will be 1 year old liao! How fast time passes, with a child in our life.

This mummy of hers has already thought of her 1st birthday party theme, have started work on a handmade scrapbooking guest book, sourced for the birthday cake and caterer, and ordered the party decorations! Haha.. Prefer to do it earlier, rather than having to rush through things at the last minute.

At Kayla's 10th month's old, she has learnt how to sit up by herself (thus making her very difficult to stay still during diaper changing/ clothes changing times ) and also making more progress on her crawling (actually looks more like pushing with her feet rather than with her knees). Hope she can crawl properly by her 1st birthday!

She has started on fish and meat porridge, specially prepared by her paternal grandmother. They are so delicious that she always finishes a big bowl! And she being "picky eater", prefers the more expensive cod fish to other types...Occasionally we'll also let her try some other variety of the baby food jar, e.g. pumpkin and sweet corn, pumpkin and beef. She likes them all!

We brought her to her 1st, and also our 1st family trip, to Bintan to celebrate her 10th month birthday!

On the ferry to Bintan

The Yammies in Bintan!

Well, this trip involves a lot of packing although its just a 3D2N trip! We've to pack her clothes, milk powder, cereal, washing stuffs, her toy, swim wear and float, and most importantly, her diapers! Lots of diapers! haha... This is more like a trial trip for us, and not any much relaxing one. The whole day we are busy with washing her bottles, sterilising the bottles, changing her diapers, making her sleep when she's tired and cranky..Most of the time we stayed in the resort room and seldom get to go out. Haiz... We didn't even go to the beach cuz she happened to fell asleep while waiting for us to finish breakfast, then next is we've to go back to the room to start packing and check out. Haizzzzzzzzzzz......

This is the only time we went to the swimming pool. 15 mins. The reason why we only spent 15 mins in the pool is because the winds started to blow and get chilly, so the father is afraid Kayla catching a cold, so we've to quickly get out. We should have chosen the morning time to go to the pool so that at least we have some sunlight... Haizzzzzzzz...


Regardless of all these, I find it a great bonding time with her! The 3 of us spent 24/7 with one another! Eat together, play together, sleep together.

Some of the shots of her in Bintan:

Sitting up by herself

Kayla's in her swimsuit!

Eating her biscuit while we eat our buffet..

Baby Kayla is 9 months old!

At 9 months of age, Kayla has reached her first 10kg (in fact its 10.1 kg HAHA!), equivalent to a packet of 香米. Well, she has never fail to amaze people who see her for the first time that she is actually not yet 1 year old, and keep thinking that she's of an older age! I should be glad that she's eating well and absorbing well! 

Some of her developments in this month happen kinda fast, and can quite take us by surprise when she demonstrated to us!

• Clapping hands! (She can also understand the instructions when we said in English, Mandarin & Cantonese version of "Clap Hands")
  

• Standing up on her own, when holding to the bed frame (and she being proud of herself when she did it everytime!)

• "Climbing" - she likes to use her legs to climb up our body whenever we carry her, as if we are trees!

Kayla's favourite weekend activity:


Watching Doreamon at 9.30a.m. every Saturday and Sunday! hahaha... She simply loves the song and will get very focused on the TV once the music starts! She even smiles to herself as she watches it! We think she's more of a Doreamon fan than Winnie the Pooh fan!

Kayla's first (independent) haircut session:


Giving a sourish face after drinking apple juice:


Kayla's at her first trial Kindermusik class:

Are you ready for your first musik class, Kayla?

Outside the Kindermusik

Realised that Kayla quite like music, and that whenever we sing song, it will calm her down and keep her quiet. So decided to let her go for a trial class @ Kindermusik and see if it interests her.

At her first lesson, she has been quietly observing the people and things and sounds around her.

Occassionally she will respond to the music instruments given to the students, e.g., the drum, the sticks, the 'egg' shaker. She likes the 'egg' shaker the best cuz she always like to grab things in her hands and shake it up and down. Other than playing the instruments, I dun really see her laughing/enjoying the class which I later come to read and understand that this is a form of "First Lesson Blues"- Some of the children will sit quietly and observe during their first lesson as they are unfamiliar with the new surroundings and people. So hopefully with more introduction of the music to her when at home, she will grow to like it and enjoy the lessons!
I've been trying to sing her the songs/play the music/read the book that are provided as home materials (included in the package when I signed up for the lessons). So gradually she has became more used to the songs, and we shall see how she reacts at her next lesson.

Baby Kayla is 8 months old!

It's an exciting month for Kayla! - She was selected for the Baby Idol Contest under the category of "Chubbiest Cheeks" and made her first overseas trip. More details to follow...

Her new developments in her 8th month:

• Waving hi/goodbye with her hands (imagine a 招财猫 hand gesture), and mimicing sounds akin to "hi" while she waved
• Calling "papa" very accurately and FREQUENTLY (*Note: Jealous tone), and stimes "yeye". Once in a blue moon she will go "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" (when she is constipated?!?) 
• Leaning forward from a sitting position to a crawling-alike position, in the end, flopped on her tummy on all fours. HA!

She still hasn't learn how to crawl yet, probably due to laziness or lack of practice bah. So we decided to buy her a new walker for her to "exercise" her legs when we saw this very interesting Chicco Dance walker at the Robinsons sale...

PAID!

In her walker, she has managed to move quite a number of steps and move around in the house. Who knows, she may skip crawling and go straight to walking stage!

"Hey! I can strike a pose with my new hp toy!"

As for solids, I've let her try more veggies over the wkends when I've the time to make:

• Broccoli & Carrot puree, with white rice cereal
• Spinach & Carrot mash with white rice cereal

We've also bought new toys for her to develop basic skills - a shape sorter and a stacking toy. I pose a challenge to my husb - to see who will succeed in training her on mastering the skills of either sorting shapes or stacking the toy.I chose the shape sorter and him the stacking toy. Wonder how long it will take her to know how to sort/stack them successfully?

Sitting on her new baby floor mat to play games (to watch TV actually)

Now more about the Baby Idol Contest!

I signed Kayla up for both the "Cover Baby" and the "Baby Idol Contest" held by Mother & Baby magazine when I happened to see the contest forms in a magazine sometime in February. After few weeks later, I was thinking that she must be not selected as I hear no news from them. Coincidentally on the very same day I received a call from them and came to know that she has been selected for the "chubbiest cheeks" category (there are 3 categories for this contest - Chubbiest Cheeks, Enchanting Eyes and Beautiful Smile) for the "Baby Idol Contest". I was so thrilled & excited when I heard the good news!

The semi-finals of the contest was held at Mother & Baby Fair @ Expo on 19 Mar and the whole Yam family, including her grandpa, grandma, cousin Dawn, cousin Dyan and their parents, made their way down to support her! What a big family event huh!


One of the parent has to give a 30sec introduction about the baby, and anything to make her chubby cheeks prominent to impress the judges.. Quite unsure what to say and was quite nervous on stage too. hee.. Luckily Kayla didn't cry seeing so many people & cameras in front of her. Instead she went dazed..... haha...

Before the final round of "catwalk" with all the semi-finalists, Kayla actually slept while waiting.. So... she is the only contestant who actually sleeps during the contest. See evidence below:

Even open mouth big big lor. Confirm sound asleep. Not aroused by any commotion around her at all.

Close-up of her sound-asleep-look in the arms of her favourite papa:

Lastly, her first overseas trip to.... JB!

Kayla with her passport (Picture taken earlier in Feb)

Kayla on the causeway

We went to JUSCO shopping centre and finally ate our long-missed A&W & had our root beer float! Yummy!
We quite like JUSCO shopping centre - big, clean & spacious. Kayla kept screaming and shouting at her top of her voice at the shopping cenre, does it mean that she likes it there too? Well, we would love to bring Kayla there again!

Baby Kayla is 7 months old!

At 7th month, finally she has completed all her vaccinations that are supposed to be completed by her 1st year old. She had become braver along the way and only whine a while shortly after her jab, then resume to normal self pretty fast.

Progress for this month:

• Being able to flip back from tummy to back (hoping she can start to crawl in the next few months soon!)
• Trying her very best to grab our handphone, TV controls or whatever within near distance.
  
• Feeding on cereals (slowly making cereals/porridge as part of her meals 2 times a day)
• Trying on new foods like Japanese sweet potato (she loves it and wants more! Hoping to progress further and let her try different kinds of foods at this development stage)
• Being able to hold her teething biscuit by herself, and putting it into her mouth
• Tossing the teething biscuit from one hand to another

Some Personal bonding time between Kayla & Mummy

She knows how to look at the camera and smile when I told her so. Now we can start to take more self-portraits together when Papa not around! haha..

Also played games with her that made her laugh out happily! Made me love her and adore her even more...

Kayla's first visit to the Singapore Zoo!

We have also brought Kayla to the zoo for the first time! She doesn't seem really keen on the animals cuz probably she's more attracted by the people (KPO like mummy!), and can only see when bring her nearer to the animals. So I think the only animal she saw at the zoo is Penguin cuz that's when I carried her near to the pool tank.

Our experience is she gets hot n tired n cranky easily so it cant be too adventurous a trip for us. Most of our time spent inside the KFC (for lunch) & Ben's & Jerry (for ice-cream!) then she will have her lunch and sleep inside the air-conditioned place too.

"Papa, where shall we go next?"

Gave her the teething biscuit to keep her occupied, if not she very cranky n keep wanting to be carried

I am tired liao..zzZZ...
Bye Bye

Our first Lunar New Year with Kayla

The Tiger Year is our first Lunar New Year with Kayla (though i was already bringing her along in last CNY inside my tummy ). It's both enjoyable, yet tiring to bring a baby along for visiting. We've to prepare many things before we can leave the house yet have to wait for the little princess to wake up from her beauty sleep, bathe her at the appropriate time (i.e. not when she's yelling for hunger!), and preparing the milk bottles for the next feed etc... By the time the adults are ready to prepare for themselves, she started to cry and demand for attention and needs to take turn to carry her..AH... We are already shagged even before we stepped out of the house.

Apart from having to carry her from place to place, the other party has to carry all the barang barang - the diaper bag, the milk bottle+hot water flask+milk powder bag, the mandarin orange bag, and the handbag which contained all the ang pows!!!!!! *Aching hands*

Bringing a baby out for too long is also inadvisable as they will turn cranky when they got tired, hot, hungry...So always have to play along with her change in mood and condition. As they are young, its also not good to expose them to too many people for fear the spread of germs to them..So we have to cut short the visitings and make sure she has ample rest along the way.

We cant really enjoy the festive goodies to our fill as we have to take turns to take care of her. Have to gobble the food fast even when our in-laws are helping to take care of her. I can take it as dieting bah?
 
Well....despite all the above grumbles, its a joy having Kayla along for our CNY visits! She gets to collect the ang pows, and received the well-praises from all the aunties and uncles! She's so chubby dubby that everyone wants to pinch her cheeks and munch her thighs lor! WAHAHA! I agree that she eats a lot and absorbs well so that explains her chubbiness. And Its a totally different feeling having to take care and be responsible for your own baby. Everything else is not important anymore, except her hearty smile and her well-being. And when you know she only wants us, and you feel like you are the most important person in her life.

We wish Kayla a very good Tiger year, with good health (most important!) and lots of happiness & love...

Photos of Kayla in this Lunar New Year:

hehe. Gong Xi Gong Xi. Ang Pow come come!

On 1st day of CNY

Kayla with her Mummy

Kayla with her Papa

Kayla with her friends
(Middle: Klaske from Netherlands, Right: Kegan from SG)

Kayla lo-hei-ing! (from afar!)