Daniel Turns 32

You know you're 32 when you get a book about parenting but you definitely know you're 32 when you're wondering when you're gonna have The Talk with your offspring.

Project Baby: 5 Months Old

Getting ready to crawl. Just need to figure out where my arms and legs go,

Project Baby: 5th Month Milestones

Ju at Universal Studios

This month Ju hit all the expected developmental milestones, according to Heidi Murkoff et. al., experts on childcare and development in the first year (What To Expect The First Year), which I would recommend as the only book worth buying if you're looking for the one authoratative investment that's actually value for money. It's available at Kinokuniya in Singapore or on Amazon (which comes to almost the same price with shipping at the present sinking US dollar). 

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Gross motor skills

As mentioned, Ju now turns over, particularly in his cot after 4am when he starts to feel his stomach rumbling I suppose. I got tired of having to rescue him multiple times so I usually just plonk him in bed between us when he gets stuck in the night. He goes back to sleep and doesn't turn over anymore with the limited space between Mum and Dad.  He doesn't spend a lot of time on his tummy because he can't get around yet and it probably gets frustrating kicking around and finding yourself in the same place.  Also he sometimes finds it hard to keep his head up, depending on how much energy he has.  We can pull him up by the arms into a sitting position, and even right to standing. He enjoys being on his chubby feet since he gets a nicer view compared to the usual ceiling and mobile.  He can shift positions while lying so that he ends up turning 180 degrees.  In his active moments his legs kick furiously and he beats his arms as if he were pounding a drum, except he pummels his own tummy.  He continues to grab both feet at any and all opportunities.

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Toys

He still likes the mobile (I recommend this as the best distraction tool for babies who can't yet crawl) but he now pays attention to anything that has audio and movement. This means squeaky toys and rattles are his best friends. His fine motor skills hae picked up. He can now reach for his rubber duck and pick it up, likewise if you offer him any toy within seeing and touching range. The only danger is his sole objective is to fling things around when he's not testing them with his tongue, so hard plastic toys like rattles are not a good idea if you want to let him play alone. The squeaker (especially those shaped like a slender handle) get's my vote as he gets the best grip so it stays in his hands the longest, giving you a precious extra minute to check Facebook.

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Vocalising

Ju can now razz. It's the sound you make when you blow with your lips so it sounds like a rude, wet fart (the French make a similar sound for emphasis in their conversations but theirs is a shorter, dry one).  This, like everything else, happened overnight, and trust me, a parent can get hours of delight just marvelling at a child's new found talent for spewing saliva about. He continues to laugh, giggle and shout although he hasn't gone back to "ah-goo"ing. His only vowels are ahh and ooo. He also makes this wheezing sound like an old woman with asthma.  His perpetual preoccupation with biting, sucking on and eating his fingers baffles us. It's either an early sign of teething (it's way too early for him to grasp a teething ring - I've tried) or his body's readying him for solids.

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Interaction

He continues to be fascinated by adult conversations.  Ju reacts vry differently to me when I am conversing with another person.  He appears to pay us more attention while indicating his interest in being part of the gossip by gesturing and vocalising eagerly. He gets tremendous enjoyment from anyone singing to him (nursery rhymes). Playing a CD may not get as much reaction from him as singing along to it.  He still likes watching the TV but I limit this as much as I can because I don't want to cultivate a couch potato.  He smiles when we present ourselves to him with a greeting, usually after a 2 second lag. I'm still figuring out if he is using recall (I read babies start recalling memories after 4 months) and thus smiles in recognition or if he is just plain sociable. We've exposed Ju to many different people since birth and he allows pretty much anyone to pick him up and carry him. Attachment usuallt sets in at a later stage, nearer to the first year, so we will have to wait and see if Ju has been conditioned by us or if he really has an innately easygoing personality.

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Feeding

Ah, here it comes: introducing the semi-solids.  I was hard-pressed to start the solids even though the PD recommended formula till 6 months. She said Ju would get even bigger if we started the solids at 4 months. She had a point: Ju weights 9 kg now and his legs look like they belong on a Christmas turkey plate.  My mother constantly bemoans his size but I let him have it -- rice cereal mit baby puree (any kind with no meat or hairy fruit).  He loves it.  We just can't give it to him when he's famished because the spoon can't get the stuff in fast enough.  Still the same old impatient vielfrasse.  Strangest thing is he still needs the bottle every 2 hours, even with 150ml each time, the longest I can drag the interval is 3 hours and that's rare. If he takes about 150ml of puree + rice cereal, he can do without the bottle and this suffices for 2 hours.  We're trying the meal once a day to get him used to eating with a spoon.

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Language

We're keeping up with the trilingual parenting.  I would say I am getting quite used to using Mandarin with Ju and with the help of a handy dictionary at home, he won't know that it isn't my first language.  We're also reading to him in 3 languages and I have no doubt that his brain is soaking up the sounds. Some part of that marvellous machinery is going to make sense of it all in time and he will integrate 3 language systems eventually.  I recently read Wang Xiao-Lei's thesis on how she and her Swiss husband brought up their boys in Chinese, French and English in America. It's an interesting read, I wouldn't call it a literary masterpiece, neither is it very inspiring, I have a few bones to pick with their method but that would be for a book review. 

The one useful takeaway from it I thought was the fact that language acquisition for children works on a needs-basis.  If a child has no need for the language (to get what he wants, which is interaction and needs fulfillment) he isn't going to use it. This can be a real downer for anyone working against the "norm" of a monolingual environment such as the US by instilling the second language in the child. Even in a more or less bilingual cultural and social environment in Singapore, I found it challenging to maintain my standard of Chinese after junior college when I all but could throw it aside for University which was in an all-English medium.

I will have to think about this one.

Project Baby: Introducing the Pool

Ju had his first swimming experience 2 weeks ago, right when he turned 4 months old.  It didn't go too badly. We had a giant float shaped like a frog that he could sit in, the kind where your legs dangle in the water but your upper half remains pretty much dry.  He seemed to like it even more the second time, when he looked less worried about how his bath-tub had turned into a small lake. We held on to his arms and led him about with his head above water. He took to it a lot better, kicking his legs enthusiastically and didn't even complain much when I accidentally got water in his mouth. Just coughed and spat out the stuff.

We used Huggies' swim pants, which worked well, didn't blow up at all like your normal diaper.  The second time I put the training trunks over his regular diaper (cos that's what they're supposed to go over).  They've got an adjustable waistband for when your baby expands and cost around $24 at Mothercare.  I didn't like these so much because his regular Pampers looked like a hot air balloon after the 10-minute dip.  They're only useful if you don't happen to have any swim diapers around.

Well, there's always toilet training to simplify things.