Home Alone with Oliver

For one week, I will be home alone with Oliver. Boon Heng is on a weeklong break from home and serving the nation - National Service. What else? Without him around, the day seems longer and the night shorter.

My phobia of driving means I will have to take the public transport to work. Meaning I have to wake up earlier than usual. My day starts at 7.00 am. Munch the gardenia bread. Shower. Pack my bag. Get ready Oliver's day wear. By 7.30am, it is wakie time for Oliver. It is an angelic sight to look at Oliver when he is soundly asleep. Even his saliva dripping habit looks so adorable. Just too bad, you got to wake up otherwise I will be late for work. Oliver will make little noise and continue to have his eyes closed when I gently rouse him. This will usually take a while before I carried him off the bed to change his diaper. Yesterday, after changing his diaper, he dozed off again. I wish I can too. At 7.45 am, off we go to the school. Reach school, hugs and kisses for Oliver then head for work.

6.00 pm ... leave workplace, have my dinner and take a public transport to Del-Care to fetch Oliver. 7.30pm is the final hour to fetch him. What a rush and certainly quite a bit of planning to do before the start of another new day.

Oliver is 16 months old today!

Milestones of Oliver

Acknowledge fears

Drinking from straw

Keep his toys

Roll his tongue

Kick a ball forward

Run at a faster pace

Dislike brushing teeth

Still waking up at night

Blow kisses at Strangers

Love watching "Your Baby can Read"

Waving goodbye to invisible space at night

Like to push chair and his potty around the house

Baby sign very well - Please, Thank you, Eat, More

Digging Fetish

It is too disturbing to put up the picture of Oliver's latest digging fetish. For the sake of Oliver's future, I will keep his private moment private. His fans, girlfriends, future wife, future mother-in-law might just find it too revolting. Boon Heng even spotted Oliver trying to squeeze his thumb into his nostrils. Yucks!

Cranes

I always thought Oliver is fearless. Well, mebbe not fearless, but definitely reckless.

Over the weekend, we realised that he's afraid of cranes. This happened when my mum and sis were with him at the lift landing, which had a good view of the Pinnacle@Duxton and the overhanging cranes were swinging atop the half-completed blocks. He was terrified when the cranes started to swing. I brought Oliver out for a walk yesterday and again he was fixated with the cranes and kept clinging onto me, even though we were at the basketball court (normally he would be distracted by the action on the court).

Perhaps Oliver has 6th sense, with the recent spate of toppling cranes in Singapore and NY, he has every reason to fear them.

Reactions to MMR vaccine

About one week after taking MMR jab at Outram Polyclinic, Oliver has a very slight fever. Last night, I felt swelling in his neck gland while massaging his neck. Swelling in neck gland is one of the MMR reactions in 1 out of 7 children.

I was so worried that night thinking that Oliver has internal bleeding when he fell from the stairs during our walk at the CC last Friday. I can still recall vividly how he rolled down the flight of stairs, about six steps before I grabbed hold of him. Although there was no bleeding, his vomitting of dinner next day worried me. Until now, I am still concern about the impact of the fall. Hope that it is really nothing serious.

MMR stands for:

Measles - a serious disease with sometime severe, potentially fatal complications

Mumps - rarely presents a serious problem in childhood, but because it can have severe consequences (such as sterility or deafness) in adulthood, early immunisation is recommended

Rubella - aka German measles is often so mild that its symptoms are missed. But because it can cause birth defects in the foetus of an infected pregnant woman, early immunisation is also receommended - both to protect the future of foetuses of girl babies and to reduce the risk of infected children exposing pregnant women, including their own mothers.

Reactions to MMR vaccine
- generally very mild
- generally occur a week or two after the jab
- 1 in 5 children will get a rash or slight fever lasting a few days from measles component
- 1 in 7 will get a rash or some swelling of the neck glands
- 1 in 100 will get achings or swelling of joints from the rubella component
- occasionally, there will be swelling of the salivary glands from the mumps component

Diarrhea strikes again

Poor Oliver. Diarrhea strike at the wrong time. Now he has to endure twice the hunger pang. No nightfeeding and loss of water. I hope he will recover soon.

Still a Cold Turkey

Almost ten days up and Oliver still wakes up at nights crying for milk. Last night he woke up twice, 1am and 3am. Poor baby Oliver. Sebastian Chin from Del-care was also weaned off from nightfeeds recently, and Madam Lo told us it only took him two days. He would sleep from 9 pm to next morning 6am. He is much younger, probably 9 months old. Yuen Yuen, a colleague from SDS, is also weaning Nin nin off from breastfeeding. Both Nin nin and Oliver cried out for "milk". I must say that it can be really heartaching for all parents to see their baby in such a plight.

Guess I should have stopped the nightfeeds when Oliver is younger. The comforting moment comes when Oliver wakes up each morning and still flashing his cheeky smile at us as if nothing happens the night before. Is this nature's way of helping babies cope with all these changes in their life?

Rebels

Sophia likes this photo of Nate & Oliver... they looked rebellious and none too happy...

Olivia

If Oliver was a girl, he probably would look like that. Quite ugly and fat actually.

Passionista

Lately Oliver is very spontaneous and obliging with kissing us. Whereas in the past he will only kiss Sophia, and only when he's in the mood, nowadays he is throwing kisses everywhere. For the past few nights, he's also kissing Sophia's tummy... he really is quite an angel.

Cold Turkey

For the past 2 nights, we have been using the cold turkey treatment on Oliver to wean him from night feed. It has become a habit for Oliver to cry and be fed in the middle of the night. On average twice, if we are lucky he drinks once, if not so lucky he can wake up 3 times to drink. When he was younger he used to reject his milk, so it was good that he started to increase his intake, but it has come to a point that Sophia thinks we should wean him off at night as most parenting books discourage night feeding.

For the last 2 nights, he woke up as usual crying for milk. Sophia had to pacify and coax him to sleep, as he refused to let me carry him. It's a wonder that he went back to sleep eventually, although it took an hour or so on the first night and 2 hours last night (he woke up at 3am and by the time he went to sleep, Arsenal had knocked AC Milan out of the CL).

Last night Sophia even saw Oliver sucking his finger when sleeping and heard him cried "Nan" a few times, something which we haven't heard for a long while. Oliver used to said "Nan" when he wanted milk way back when he was still tiny. He is really quite a poor thing.

We are not sure how long this would go on before he's totally weaned off, but I think it might take a while. So more sleepless nights for us. Hopefully we can sleep throughout the night soon. Haven't really done that since 22 Nov 2006.

Zoo Out

We brought Oliver to the zoo over the weekend because we guess he might like it, and frankly we are bored with Singapore on a weekend. Actually on weekdays too.

The weather was great although it did rained for a while when we were at the zoo. Oliver seemed to enjoy himself, roaming the grounds of the zoo with abandon, kissing goodbyes to animals, kissing fishtanks, kissing meerkat, and kissing stuff toys in the souvenir shop.

We also took this photo during feeding time.

New Tricks

Oliver has been displaying a few new tricks over the last few days. For example, he knows how to close his eyes or open his mouth if we ask him to do so. He probably picked them up from school or from the baby video we've been playing for him repeatedly during meal time (partly because he asks for it, and partly because we only have 2 such vidoes to switch around). Then over the weekend, we noticed that he is drinking from the straw from his plastic mug.

YEAH!!! Oliver is drinking from a straw!