16 Months Update

Kaitlyn turned 16 months yesterday and I almost lost count.

She's 8.9kg again now, finally gained all the weight back from being sick last month. I hope she keeps gaining weight, my skinny little girl.

She has 7 teeth now and last week, she started brushing her own teeth. And I am proud to say she's doing it quite well.

She talks a lot. She sings and dances even better now :)

She really started the whole "fake cry" thing now. :( She has my dad wrapped around her little fingers. Every time she does a fake cry, my dad runs to her "rescue" and yells at everyone else. She has a tell-tale sign when she does the fake cry, she fans her face as if she was hot. LOL Another little gripe that I have is that she likes to point and go "eh..eh... eh" instead of saying what she wants. She could, she just sometimes chooses not to.

She says "please" (more like 'peez') and "thank you" (in Chinese). :D

She walks up and down the stairs with very little assistance. I think it's time for baby gates.

She's such an independent little girl. If she's trying to get something done, even if she's struggling, she won't let us help. If we asked her if we could help her, she just keeps shaking her head. She fiddles and fiddles with it till she gets it. Then she claps and says "yay"! Absolutely adorable.

She has a place for all her toys. The soft toys/dolls go in one basket. The blocks/puzzles go into another, and the miscellaneous bits into another, and her books goes into a box. She sorts them and puts them away before she goes out or goes to bed!

She also started to "draw" with crayons, and to stack her blocks. She made it to a stack of 5 once, without them falling over.

She LOVES animals and animal sounds. She thinks everything except a sheep, goes "woof woof". When a sheep appears though, she goes "BAAAAH" VERY loudly. :D

Oh, and as a family event, we all watch Funniest Home Video Show. She loves that show, she just snuggles up to me and watches it.

She walks around and does her own things most of the time, and occassionally, she will look around for us, then comes to us, asking for a hug, kiss or cuddle. :) She's so adorable when she's cuddling up...

To shave or not to shave...

So, Kaitlyn has very little hair, STILL and she's now 15 months. She has some hair really, but it's quite light and very fine, so it really doesn't look like she has much.

As a result, she gets mistaken for a boy ALL the time! Everywhere we go, we get "oh your boy is cute." Even our neighbours think she's a boy, and we just couldn't be bothered correcting people anymore. Ok, I do occassionally put her in gender neutral colours and I CAN see how easy it is to think she's male...

It's a Chinese tradition that babies get their heads shaved, at 100 days after birth. Well, at 100 days, Kaitlyn had NO hair worth shaving! :D Now that she finally has some hair, my parents are harping on getting her head shaved, because supposedly it will make more, darker and thicker new hair. Riiigght. I am not convinced of it. I am not even sure I want her hair to be darker and thicker. I happen to like her hair the way it is, and the colour that it is... Although I wouldn't mind her having a bit more hair and probably to have enough hair that we can make into a pigtail one of these centuries.

So to shave, or not to shave, that is the question... What do you think?

The abortion debate

Dr George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the United States that provide late term abortions, was shot dead yesterday during church service.

Abortion, is a very controversal issue indeed...

When I was about 5, I vividly remember standing on the street, watching a heavily pregnant woman being dragged away by 2 men, while she was kicking and screaming and pleading. I found out later why she was being dragged and where she was going. She already had one child, and it was at the height of the "one child policy", she was not allowed to have a second child. She hid away but was still found out. And that day, she was being dragged away to have an abortion. I don't think I would ever forget the look on her face when she was being dragged away, I think i could still hear her pleads for help, for her unborn child. I think that early memory determined that personally, I would never have an abortion and will never allow anyone to pressure me into one.

A couple of decades later, I was travelling around China, and what do I see plastered everywhere, on billboards, behind the seats on public transports etc? Ads for painfree aboortions, with a smiling teenage girl on the ad, same day service, takes about 10 minutes, you continue on with your life as usual... Then I read in newspapers that teenagers are having multiple abortions, lunch time procedures, straight from class, chatting, laughing and joking with their friends while there. Just when, and how does a matter of life and death become so rountine and blasé?

All that being said, I do believe abortion should remain legal.

How I see it, abortion is about the individual woman that is making the choice, and having to live with that choice for the rest of her life. While it saddens me to see the statistics that such high percentage of abortions are done due to social or psychological reasons. However, I would like to still believe that for most women, that it's not a routine choice. It is often done as a last resort when all else failed.

I know women from both sides, one that carried a child that would not live beyong birth due to non-existing kidneys, to full term, and one that had 2 routine abortions in a matter of 6 months as a teenager. I KNOW that both women are in pain. The first had to watch her new born son die in her arms only hours after birth, and the second, years after the abortions, only just starting to feel the weight of her decision.

Abortion should remain legal, so that women can have a choice to terminate pregnancies that are medically necessary, such as congenital deformities that would result in neo-natal deaths, or cases that would cause the mother to die in child birth. I believe there should be a choice. Surely, like every choice in life, some people take them lightly, and yes, it can be exploited and abused. But without the choice, is it fair to make mothers watch their new born babies die after knowing they will, months before hand? Is it fair to make mothers risk their lives to give birth? Comparably, would it be justifiable to take away the c-section just because there are people who do it for convinience, while there are many who NEED the procedure to save their lives and the lives of their babies?

Whatever reasons a woman choose to abort, she is the one that lives with that decision for the rest of their lives. It needs to be her choice, either way. She definitely shouldn't be dragged to a clinic, kicking and screaming. But she shouldn't be forced to go to dodgy illegal abortion operators and risk serious long term damanges to her health or even death either because the anti-abortion crazies killed off anyone who is brave enough to provide the choice for the women.

Kaitlyn 15 Month update

My little girl is 15 months today.

She's walking very well now and started to try to run, although keep tripping herself over. Her knees are always bruised from all the falling, but they don't seem to bother her very much.

She's talking a lot and learning new words everyday. She knows all of her visible body parts and most everyday objects. She loves to sing and dance and her "tunes" are starting to sound like songs.

She's a wonderful toddler. She's almost always happy and smiling. She loves to cuddle and kiss. It's great to come home and see her smiling brightly and toddling up to me to offer hugs and kisses. She rarely wake up cranky. When she wakes, morning and after nap, she chats to herself or sings to herself for a while until people notice she's up. She's very independent. As long as there's someone familiar in the room, she can happily entertain herself for ages, reading, going through her toys etc. She loves to read and loves to bring you a book to read to her.

She cleans up after herself. Every night before bathtime, she will pick up all of her toys, and put them into the toy baskets, and puts all of her books into the book box. She now does this without even being asked.

She has 2 obssessions, hair and socks.:D She's fully awared that she doesn't have much hair, so she is obssessed with everyone else's hair. She's always reaching for people's hair, touching and pulling. Just this week, she started to insist on wearing a cap or a beanie to cover her head. I hope that's not because she's feeling insecure about not having much hair? She love socks and when she "helps" us with sorting/folding the laundry, she always grabs for the socks and tells us that she has the socks. She loves socks so much that she insists that they are to be worn OUTSIDE of her pants. Not a great look, but it keeps her happy. :D

She only has 6 teeth still, and no molars. But she eats everything now and is eating all day. She finally put on a bit of weight this month, and is now at 8.8kg. She's still skinny, but I am just happy that she is gaining weight.

I will post a few photos on the weekend.

Pillow Phobia

We found out yesterday that Kaitlyn has pillow phobia!

She's trying to pop 2 to 4 molars (I can feel quite a number of them right under the gums), so she's been a cranky, clingy little girl for more than a week. She cries herself to sleep and everytime she wakes from a sleep cycle, she cries. So I haven't slept a full night for more than a week either.

Anyways, my father, once again, in his infinite wisdom decided, oh, let's introduce a pillow and a quilt for her, because she NEEDS them. Apparently he thinks it stunts her growth without a pillow and a quilt. It's the "unwrapping" saga all over again... (for those who doesn't know, check this blog out). After a week of him nagging non-stop, I gave her a pillow. Lo-and-behold... One night after sleeping with a pillow, Kaitlyn refuses to even go into her cot. Everytime I put her in her cot, she screams bloody murder, with real big drops of tears and everything. So we took out the pillow, and she's fine again. She definitely didn't like her pillow.

Moral of the story? I wish my parents will just butt out on how to raise MY daughter. They had their chance with their daughter, i.e. me. They may not like the way their daughter had turned out, but it's no reason to try to force their ways on how I should raise MY daughter. /shrug.

I need to get my Master Degree done, and pop the second baby out as soon as possible, so we could get out of their house...

Kaitlyn's Vocabulary and Other development, at almost 14 months

Kaitlyn says the following words and knows the meaning (pointing to the right person/thing)

	English	Mandarin	Cantonese
Mum	√	√	√
Dad	√	√	√
Grandma	√	√	√
Grandpa	√
Cat	√	√	√
Dog	√
This		√
That		√
Full		√
Flower	√	√
Melon		√	√
Car		√
Hat		√
Horse		√	√
Here		√
There		√
Milk		√	√
Food			√
Bath Time	√
Bed	√
Book	√
Picture	√
Rabbit	√
Button	√
Tummy		√
Ball	√
Doll		√
Sock	√	√
Duck	√
Bear	√
Pat	√
Light		√	√
Bear	√
Quack	√
Woof	√
Meow	√

Here are the extra words she understands and responds correctly consistently in English:

In, Out, Up, Down, Open, Close, Sit, Come, block, Give, hug, kiss, Bye bye, Hi, Where is…, Are you…? Do you want or ?

She can correctly point out:

Nose, Mouth, Eyes, Ears, Hair, Foot, Hands, Fingers, Tummy, tongue, mouse, block

She also:

Blows kisses, does the “metal Horn”, points at objects that we ask her about, opens and closes her hands when I sing “twinkle twinkle little star”, dances, climbs on everything. At meal time, she drops what she’s doing and comes to the high chair, and climbs on it. At bed time or bath time, she drops whatever she’s doing and comes to the person taking her to bath/bed, and waves good bye to everyone in the room.

She just started to actually using the remote controls. She turns on the cd player, and can fast forward songs that she doesn’t like. She also turns on the dvd player and opens the dvd tray. She turned on the computer today too. My kid is a geek…

I know I probably think of some other things soon as I finish this blog. Ah well, will update next month if I miss anything. Oh, her current weight is 8.6kg (not much improvement still) and she is cutting a molar VERY slowly.

Stay at Home Mummy for a week

So I've been home for 4 days straight now and I feel like I could get used to this whole "Stay at home mum" routine. It is however, still more exhausting, being home taking care of Kaitlyn than being at work. Kaitlyn has pretty predictable schedules which is a good thing. The whole changing from Day Light Saving messed her schedule up a little. She gets so cranky and tired an hour before she should go nap or bed. I feel so mean keep her up but I am not used to having her going to sleep by 7pm and fully up by 7am either... so hopefully she will adjust in a few days.

I haven't had a chance to do the 13 months update. Kaitlyn hasn't put on any weight, again. As the doc didn't seem worried, I am going to TRY to not be too worried either. I did get a specialist referral for her eyes as I still think they are crossed at times. She's gotten taller, but it's been impossible to get her to lie or stand still to take measurements. Her pants are all looking shorter on her. She's walking on her own a lot more now and today she even walked on her own with socks on!! This is the first time she didn't try to pull the socks off. She still only has 5 teeth although she's been chewing and biting things a lot. She's saying more words and expresses herself quite well. We pretty much know what she wants most of the time.

We took some photos... but as usual, they are not sorted. :( I have hundreds to sort... but I just never seem to have time for some strange reason...