my boy, my firstborn

“Wow, what a nice smell! Smells like something yummy, yum yum!” You said while walking out of the shower. You seldom initiate praises especially pertaining to my cooking so that was really music to my ears.

Then, you told me again that you really like the dinner I’ve prepared today and my heart was filled with pride and happiness. Not because I was proud of my own cooking but because of what a wonderful person you’ve become. Yes, you’re still quite the oddball at times but you can be so so sweet too. I guess I must remember such moments more and pick on you less!

First lie

So 2 days ago, on a Sunday, all of us were so tired from Snow City that we concussed after getting home. All of us except yz. I told him he could watch Tobots on TV but only for 30mins then he had to do his homework. I set a 30mins timer and went to my room for a nap. I had little faith that he would really stop watching after 30mins but I was too tired to care and also wanted to see if he could actually have the self-control.

When I woke up, I immediately went into check on him and not surprisingly, he was still watching TV. When I went in, he immediately said, “The timer hasn’t rung!” And it was true, it still had 10mins left on it. Which was super strange because it felt like I took a pretty long nap. I checked the time and it was 4.51pm, which means more than an hour has passed since he started watching the TV (I checked the cctv in their room and we got back around 345pm as that was the time he went into his room to get changed). I tested the timer several times too and it was working fine. Of course, I asked if he adjusted the timer, but he insisted that he didn’t. Even with much prompting and assurance that I won’t punish or love him less if he really did, he kept to the same answer. At one point, he was almost in tears when I probed further. And he also could confidently told me to check cctv which I had replied there was none for this room. Even though the entire incident was very perplexing, I chose to believe him.

However, it bugged me for the entire day. At night, zk and I discussed about it and I told him I don’t think yz is the sort who can cover his lies so well but zk thought otherwise. We came up with a plan of bluffing him that we had found evidence that he had turned the timer to see how he’d react.

The next morning, I went with the plan and asked again, “Did you turn the timer?” Without hesitation, he said yes and even admitted to turning it twice! I really didn’t expect that. And gosh, who is this boy who can lie and still look so convincing in his act! 😔 It was certainly a heartbreaking moment for me, having my trust broken so badly for the first time.

Though it wasn’t really the first time he lied, it’s definitely the first time he lied so convincingly. In the past, it’s usually for smaller things like lying about napping in school when he didn’t but wah, after this incident, I don’t know if I could fully trust his words anymore. I really hope zk and I can handle this well, and it wouldn’t manifest into a bigger problem next time.

生儿容易，养儿难。育儿更是难上加难！

Such a gem

It was Daddy’s birthday yesterday and while I was looking for a picture of us together, I re-stumbled upon this blog and realised how precious it is! It contains a huge part of my uni and early working life and the migrated dayre posts documented wedding, first home and first pregnancy days.

Spent a long time reading and reminiscing the past. Ahh. I had so much time to blog when I was still childless haha.

A slight motivation to revive this space. Since nobody reads this blog anymore, it might just be the perfect place for me to record our lives. It’d be nice to have something for me (and maybe the kids) to look back on next time!

For a start, here are some snaps from our swim last Sunday!

Though the kids fight (and I sometimes get annoyed by my bro haha), I’m very very glad that we are close and I’m genuinely happy when we get to hang out together. ❤️

Win some, lose some

Can't believe it's been a week since we started sleep training yz! After the success in our initial 3 days I have to admit some things didn't continue to be so perfect.

1. Early morning wakes. Yz has been waking up earlier in the morning zzz. The earliest was 5.30am and he just happily played in his cot for an hour so we didn't know whether to intervene or not. Eventually he cried so we rocked him to sleep so that his day won't start so early.

2. Short lunch naps. Because of how well he took his lunch nap on Monday and Tuesday, I thought he has nailed it already. But things have gone downhill and he has been waking up after 30mins into the nap. The past 2 days he could not soothe himself so my mom had to carry him to sleep.

This afternoon was slightly better as he was able to fall back to sleep but he did not manage to do the full 2 hours. I'm thinking it's probably a schedule problem rather than inability to self-soothe so I just gotta trial and error to find the golden combination of awake times vs nap lengths so that I can eradicate this problem!

Well, despite these 2 areas that still require some work, I think yz's sleep has improved as a whole. We have completely weaned him off rocking to sleep and he doesn't have any night wakes that require intervention anymore! In fact, in the past week, he has only woken up a total of 3 times in the night and all 3 times he is able to soothe himself back to sleep.

He will usually still protest before he sleeps and the length varies. It can be as short as 10mins or as long as 30mins. But definitely not full-blown crying. In fact when he takes 30mins to sleep, the actual crying duration is only 10mins or less.

But for lunch nap and bed time today, he actually did not cry a single bit! In fact, he was so quiet that I almost didn't realised he was asleep. I'm keeping my fingers crossed this remains!

Sleep Training Day 3

Good morning! I'm in a pretty good mood because the morning has been quite perfect so far!

First, Yanze slept for 10hour 48 minutes last night with 2 mini wakes at 5ish am! Both times he managed to self-soothe and fall back to sleep within minutes. Then he woke up for good at 6.51am, which is good enough for me!

Good job buddy! 😀

Then, because 6.51am is still too early (I'm aiming for him to start his days at 7.30am) so I'm supposed to give him a slightly longer morning nap (up to 45 minutes) 2.5 hours after. Learning from yesterday's lesson, I put him down earlier, so that even after all that cry fest, his nap time will hopefully not be too different from his usual.

His usual morning nap is from 10am – 10.30am. I put him down at 9.10am and he was asleep at 9.44am! Out of the 34mins he was left in his cot, only the last 15mins was crying. The rest of the time he was just singing or at most whimpering.

And my cooperative boy slept for 43 minutes, waking up at 10.28am! ✌️ That means we are perfectly on schedule, save me the worries of troubleshooting when my mom takes over later!

Mom just updated me that yanze fell asleep within 7 minutes!!

SEVEN MINUTES!! Single digit leh!!

So proud of my baby and so happy for my mom! Happy that she didn't have to bear with his cries for too long. Maybe baby knows 外婆 is a softie so he decided not to bully her. Anyway, I'm just super duper happy la! #lackofvocab

#sleeptraining #sleeptrainingyz

My mom can FINALLY eat her lunch properly haha. Ever since we were on the schedule, she often had to hold him so that he can sleep the full 2 hours. Therefore she will either have eat at 12 plus (when she is usually not hungry yet) or starve till 3pm. Else, she will have to carry baby in one arm and eat with the other. Damn 苦命。That's why I'm hoping also that with sleep training, my mom's life will be easier.

I know there's a good chance he won't be able to sleep the full 2 hours but that can be worked on another day. Anyway, once he has mastered how to sleep independently, I'm pretty sure he will be able to link his sleep cycles and sleep for longer periods. Right now, I'm happy enough that he goes down to sleep on his own. I have so much more time to do things.

This morning while he slept, I had time to portion the chicken for his porridge, cook his porridge, wash his bottles and stuff, fold the clean laundry, and even shit in peace haha. In the past, when I had to hold him while he sleeps, I can only use my phone and how productive can that be.

I guess I'm pretty satisfied with the sleep training progress so far. My only gripe is that he doesn't seem to wake up happy anymore? I thought they should since they are better rested hmms. Both times this morning, he woke up crying but nothing a little cuddle can't solve. Hoping this is just a passing phase and I will get my happy baby back soon!

In other news,

Yanze's slightly better at this crawling thing! He now knows how to alternate his hands instead of just doing a big lunge forward, like what he has been doing the past 2 weeks.

Today is just AWESOME.

Yanze just kept surpassing my expectations! He slept independently from 1.02pm till 3.03pm, a full 2 hours nap! I can't even remember when was the last time he slept for more than 1.5hours without our help. There were actually 3 times that he woke up but he was able to soothe himself back very quickly. Even my mom was super impressed!

Bedtime was only 10mins of crying, a stark contrast from the 56mins last night! *tears of joy*

I really didn't expect this sleep training to have turned out so well. I know many babies who have benefitted from it but I was just very skeptical about how well yz's gonna react to it.

What if he's too old to be trained? What if he is too used to the bad habits? What if he just CAN'T BE TRAINED?

I seriously worry too much at times! A reminder to myself that I must always have trust in that babies are capable of learning ANYTHING, as long as given the space and opportunity to. I'm glad I gave yanze the chance to prove me what a fast learner he is. 🙂

This is me right now, chilling on the sofa just enjoying some precious me-time. I haven't felt so relaxed in a long long while. Just a week ago, work started to get more demanding and the hassle of preparing yanze's solid meals plus his poor sleep/feeding habits were taking a toll on me. I was severely sleep deprived and constantly worried.

Every day was filled with uncertainties. How long is he gonna nap for, how long will I need to rock him for, will I successfully put him down after he fell asleep in my arms, etc. Then I go to bed every night unsure of how long I can sleep for before I get woken by his cries.

Every day was a struggle and I could only blame myself for cultivating all these bad sleep habits that caused not only me to suffer, but also baby, husband and my mom.

That's why I am so elated that he can finally sleep well now. It's like our lives instantly became so much better.

I know it won't be every day that he will be sleeping so perfectly (there's a sleep regression again at 8 months zzz) but at least now that he has the ability to self-soothe, I have a lot more confidence that we will be able to conquer any dark periods.

Guess I can finally sleep through the night tonight? 😀

Sleep Training Day 2

4.22AM Guess who lost the ability to sleep through the night? Hurhur. Woke up realising husband is not beside me and I thought it was still early (i.e. 1 or 2 am since he mentioned he was going to do some work) Got a shock of my life when I saw it was 4 plus and immediately went to the study, only to see a husband who has fallen asleep on the sofa with the baby monitor in front of him. Got the husband up to go back to the bedroom and I quickly took a peek at the baby monitor…

Baby's still sleeping! 🍾

What's even better is that while I was watching, he stirred for a while but promptly went back to sleep! Can't remember the last time he slept past 4am without waking. So proud of him! No matter what time he's gonna wake up later, I'm already pretty satisfied with the results I'm getting considering it's just Day 1. 🙂

Eeeps. Stirring again. I better not speak too soon! Shall head back to bed!

Baby slept through the night!

He woke up at 6.27am this morning – that's 9.5hours of continuous sleep, the longest stretch he has ever managed! Previously there was this magical night about 3 months ago where he slept through with 8.5 hours of sleep but that was before the 4th month sleep regression.

Seriously I'm totally not expecting him to sleep through 'cause I thought the past few months of middle of night feeds would probably have caused some habitual wakes. But seems like husband is right this time round!

Despite the mini success last night, I'm still all jittery about how naps are gonna work out. Yz has never been a good napper, even during newborn days. He is ALWAYS waking up at the end of every sleep cycle and we always have to resettle him. It got so bad after the 4th month that we often held him to sleep just so he gets the sleep he needs. 🙁 Very indulgent I know and that's why I've been meaning to make him kick this bad habit for good.

Current situation

Struggling in his cot for the past 15 minutes and counting. He is not exactly crying up so we are not sure if we should intervene or just let him sort it out himself.

Ok, husband has just decided to go in and soothe him a little. Calm down and sleep soon my dear!

10.33AM Still crying 😭😭 husband just went in to soothe him for the second time. He has cried longer than his intended nap length (according to the guide this is a 30 minutes nap), so not worth it! It's so tempting to give up working on naps and just focus on bedtimes but I know I shouldn't. Let us ride this day out and see how. If it's really bad maybe we will just work on bedtimes first or something 😢

10.46AM Baby has finally gone to sleep. Took him 56 minutes this time, do I consider this an improvement from last night? I think I'm going to just let him sleep as long as he wants instead of waking him intentionally at the 30minutes mark. Anyway his naps are never long so he will probably wake up around that time too.

Enjoying his spinach cereal at lunch! So baby surpassed our expectations and slept past his usual 30mins and 45mins marks. So we had to wake him up (ya so much for deciding against it just 30mins ago) in case it upsets the long lunch nap later. Parenting is really all trial and error man, we can only hope we make the right calls at the right times.

2.22PM Lunch nap time and baby is down after only 13 minutes of crying!

💃💃💃💃💃

In fact, the cries are much much milder than last night's or this morning's so we didn't have to go in to soothe him at all! So proud of my boy! Now fingers crossed he will sleep for an hour and a half at least. If he does I will reward him with lotsa kisses hahaha

Uh oh. 30mins and baby's up. Is it longer crying = longer sleep? Sigh!

Might also be that 3pm is his usual wake time from the lunch nap so he woke up. So hard to plan the day when we can't foresee how long he is be crying for before each sleep 😦

So.. The lunch nap was crap and I didn't managed to resettle him to sleep so we brought him out of the room and he was so happy! I wished I've done so earlier, saved him from 20mins of wailing.

Since he did not do the full 2 hours, we gave him a cat nap at the usual 5.15pm to stretch the wake time to his usual bed time of 7.30pm. Did the usual bedtime routine and put him down at 7pm, hoping that he won't exceed his bedtime too much like yesterday.

And after 44mins of protesting, he's down for the night! Although it is still a very long time to cry but considering he used twice the time to soothe himself last night, I consider this a win already. Today we were totally heartless as we did not go in at all! Mainly because we felt that every time we went in yesterday, his cries got louder, it's as if we are making things worse instead of better.

Here are some takeaways after 2 days of sleep training:

1. I can take his cries much better than I'd imagined. Before this I really thought I wouldn't even make it past 10mins.

2. Support is so important! I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own and I'm very lucky to have a supportive husband and even a supportive mom! Sleep training is something my mother's generation will never understand and on normal days, she doesn't even allow yz to cry for more than a minute so I'm immensely touched that she did not object to us going ahead with the training.

#sleeptraining #sleeptrainingyz

Sleep Training Day 1

After implementing an age-appropriate by-the-clock schedule for the past week and tonnes of readings on sleep training, we (or rather I) decided that today is THE DAY we gonna let yz learn to sleep on his own. We are not letting him CIO because can't bear to just leave him to cry without checking, so we are doing an adapted version of Ferber's method as suggested by the sleep program that I've bought online.

#sleeptraining #sleeptrainingyz

It is regarded as a gentler method to Ferber because we are allowed to soothe them in their cot during the time intervals and allowed to pick him up every 6, 8, 10 mins etc (2 mins increment) but it still resulted in 80mins of crying for that stubborn fellow haiii

My poor boy. His cries were hysterical for the first 20mins or so and it was so heartbreaking for me! Even though I was just watching from the monitor (husband was the main sleep trainer). But it did get better after a while la, I became more immuned to his cries and because I knew we can't give up and waste our efforts, I had to bite the bullet and follow through. I read that if we were to give up midway, we will not only be undoing our efforts, baby may 变本加厉 and cry even longer the next time!

OMG.

Had a heart stopping moment just now as I was typing, where yz mini awoke and started rolling about and 'doing push ups'! We watched the monitor with trepidation for the whole 3 minutes until he finally settled again. Is this self-settling?? Are we tasting success already?? Well, it's not as if he has never done this before, but it's usually accompanied by some whines or cries. This time, he did not make a single sound so I'm hoping it's a good sign?

Oh ya one of the things we did differently today was to offer him his 'dou dou' (security toy). I would usually offer him at the start of naps but we seldom give it to him at bedtimes because I'm used to just nursing then rocking him to sleep. But even during nap times he merely plays with them and will chuck it away once he is ready to (be rocked to) sleep. Today out of desperation, we decided to give it to him so that he won't feel so lonely in this sleep battle.

To our surprise, it DID help to calm him down! And even during the mini wake just now, he was reaching out for his dou dou and sniffing it, which has never happened before! I know it might not be entirely a good thing that he becomes reliant on his dou dou for sleep but I would gladly bring his dou dou to 天涯海角 as long as it helps him sleep!

Heck, even a grown up like me sleeps with a sleep prop, how can I expect my son to sleep without one?

Time check 11.37pm and he has been asleep for the past 2hr 45mins. Not harbouring the fat hopes of him sleeping through the night on the first day (although the overconfident husband thinks he will), just praying for minimal night wakes!

And hoping like what many mommies have shared, the crying duration will reduce drastically over the next few days as we try to nail this sleep training thing!

I love you 宝贝！please be a good boy and sleep well k?

Boy ah, I know sleeping tummy down can be quite shiok but face down, seriously?? No wonder your nose is still so flat hurhurhur #meanmom

Anyway this photo is also to reminder to myself not to cut his hair so short and straight next time haha. Don't know why the hair at the back just refused to grow out and he still looks damn toot from the back 😂

After putting off solids for 4 days because he's having a bit of diarrhea, I finally introduced him my favourite fruit – apples! And he loves it! Definitely his favourite so far. 不愧是我的儿子

(ok but this is a picture of him eating carrots hurhur)

Recently this boy has been unstoppable at flipping, no matter where we place him! This rocker chair used to be one of the safest place to leave him alone in but nope, no longer so!

Even in his pram!

The look he gave me as I was leaving the room to get something 😍 he looks like a girl here haha

First peaceful breakfast in a long while! (first post in a long while too haha) This fella gave me a bit more sleep this morning by waking up at 6.18am! It was a series of 5plus am wakings the past 2 weeks and I'm totally drained. It's probably a mixture of leap week and teething? He hasn't been much crankier in the day but definitely much harder to put to sleep these days so I have the intention of starting to sleep train him soon.

Such a cutie when he wakes up but such a terror to lull to sleep! This boy has been a bad napper since probably 2 months old? A lot of times we need to carry him to sleep AND carry him while sleeping! We tried letting him nap in his cot, the rocker, our bed, the sofa bed, my mum's tilam, etc but he still prefers lying on our chests. -_-

When he does that we can absolutely do nothing other than look at our phones (can't even watch tv 'cause the sounds will wake him) or try sleeping too.

Ah ok great, king of short naps has awoken and end of me time for me. 😩

Ended work late today and baby's asleep before I managed to kiss him goodnight. 😢 This is the first time and boy, I'm actually feeling so sad about it! Guess I need to prep myself for more of such nights as my work gets busier.

Honeymoon period is definitely over now that the boss is back boohoo.

Some photos from the weekend

Hey there my little mermaid! (sidenote: there have been more comments on how he looks like a girl these days hurhur)

Tried this sleep sack on him to see if it can help to restrict his movement such that he doesn't flip so much in his sleep. But he's so skillful at the flipping act that this serves no purpose at all.

While videocalling Sanyi and the kids. Narcissistic baby is narcissistic! He laughs or smiles whenever he sees himself in the mirror or on the phone.

Day 1 postpartum and already feeling the fatigue from the 3-hourly night feeds (and probably all the action yesterday)! Wound has started to hurt since last night but I still managed to get some sleep albeit in a not so comfortable position.

I was told also to wear the special stockings I'm wearing now 24/7 for a week until my next gynae visit to prevent any blood clots in the legs. I'm gonna feel so hot wearing them oh my.

Oh ya guess who slept through 2 night feeds and 1 gynae visit just now? Baby was wailing so loudly during one of the night feeds and husband did not even twitch. Can already forsee the life I'm going to have when I go home 😥