Malacca Trip (Part I)

My parents paid us a visit in October 2010. They have not seen Ethan for almost 6 months. Ethan was already asleep when they reached at about 9pm on the 2nd Oct. When he was up the next day, I brought him to the guest room to meet his grandparents. He started to cry loudly when I left him alone with my dad. Haha...I guessed he was having stranger & separation anxiety! Anyway, he warmed up quickly & he accepted them pretty soon.

After breakfast, we went for a Malacca trip. It was Ethan's first long journey. He started to scream & got fussy after sitting in his car seat for more than 1/2 hour. After failed to comfort him, we had to get him out from his car seat. Finally we reached our destination after 1.5 hour journey. Initially we planned to have our lunch at the Marco Nyonya Restaurant but it was full. We ended up having our lunch at Bibik Nyonya which is just a few shops away from the Marco. The food were so-so but the durian chendol was good!

We checked-in to the Hotel Mimosa after lunch. Got Ethan to have a nap and took a rest ourselves before going out for a stroll early in the evening. Luckily the weather was good, not too sunny & not rainy too. We spent more than 1/2 hour to wait for the river cruise, felt like being cheated by those boatmen that the next boat will be in 5 mins, a few boats passed by but none stopped to pick us...and finally we were informed that it was their shift changing time, so we gotta wait for a while more. At last, we got onto a boat. We were expecting Ethan to be excited in the boat, excited to see the river, the houses & scenery...BUT he has more interest in the boat men!! He kept on looking & smiling at the boat men throughout the cruise...duh!!


We headed off to Jonker Street after the cruise to hunt for dinner. Failed to find the fried ice-cream as broadcasted in the The Railway show. Wanted to go to the Jonker 88 for durian chendol but it was closing already...sigh...no luck. We ended up simply enter a shop for a dinner of Nasi Lemak (which is just plain white rice), asam laksa, nasi rendang and mee. Ordered banana & durian chendol too...well...thumbs down for those dessert.

Went back to hotel after the dinner, Ethan was looking blur as he was exhausted and sleepy already. Bathed him in the hotel bathtub and he really enjoyed it. Han fed him with milk while I took my shower. To my surprise, Ethan knocked off right after drinking the milk without needing us to rock or pat him as usual. He's really exhausted...poor boy.

6th Month

We brought Ethan to the pedia for his 6th month Hep B vaccination 3 days before his exact 6 month. He was 8.3kg during the checkup, his weight gain started to slow down compare to previous month.

Ethan is finally entering his 6th month. He's encountering lots of new "adventures" since his early 6th month. He started to learn his commando crawl. First he start pulling himself forward with one hand, then two hands then his hands and legs which makes him pretty fast even on his tummy! Now he's starting to pull himself up on his feet and knees but not able to really crawl yet.

We recently bought him a multi colored ball, well that really got him excited for all about 10 minutes. He'd get so excited that he'd occasionally get on all fours only to plop down on his tummy but that didn't really slow him down. At first when he get's near the ball he's just so excited that he'd swipe at the ball with one hand which makes the ball roll away from him. What surprised me is the second time he gets near the ball again he doesn't just swipe at it but slowly extends his hands to grab it instead. It's just so much fun playing with him now because he can really get so excited sometimes.

First Tooth!

Ethan's first tooth was out on 25 Sept 2010, exactly a week after marking his 6th month. He woke up early that day around 5am and I failed to get him to sleep back. When he started to make lots of noise on our bed, I decided to bring him downstairs to enable Han to sleep back.

Ethan played on his play mattress while I lied beside him. As usual, he got bored after a few minutes & tried to get my attention by pulling my hair, patting me, rubbing his face on my body. Out of sudden, he bit my thigh!! "Ouch! Why you bite mommy??!!" I felt that he was biting hard but it did not cross my mind that his first tooth has already poked out!

Later in the evening, he bit Han when we were back to Banting. He felt that his gum was "rough" and checked his gum & wala...we found out that there is a pearly white lower middle tooth!! No wonder he drooled a lot for the past few weeks & had cold symptoms since 2 weeks ago.

Ethan LOL

Ethan's happiness is our happiness.Nothing can describe our happiness & excitement whenever Ethan laughs happily. It's not easy to trigger him to laugh hysterically. We have to use a new trick which will make him excited, however any new trick would only work for 2 or 3 times the most.

Check out his laughing clip on the day he was down with cold.

Ethan's first cold

Ethan caught his first cold on Sunday. It's worrying in a way because Jee, Eric and Caryn came to Banting during this Hari Raya holidays and Eric unfortunately caught a case of the chicken pox. Though in a way it could be a good thing to expose Ethan to chicken pox early but still he's only a few days short of 6 months old, so it is a bit scary. Anyway, we just hope for the best and if Ethan was to catch chicken pox then let it be and we'll just pray to God that he'll not suffer to much and recover quickly. It's already Tuesday and 'fortunately' it wasn't so bad since his only symptoms are an occasional runny nose with a bit of coughing and sneezing. He developed a slight fever yesterday evening at the nannys but by the time we brought him back home his temperature has started to come down. So we let him sweat it a bit by not turning on the fan. It was a pretty hot day but it was already late evening so it wasn't that hot, just enough to get him sweating. By the time we put him to bed his temperature was back to normal.
Ethan's runny nose has also seemed to clear up by this morning, hopefully it's a sign that he's getting better.

Mobility

This morning (or rather last night), Ethan woke up and in no time turned onto his tummy (he was sleeping on his back) and turn  himself 90 degrees to face the side of his cot. It was the first time I found him awake in that position and I do believe it won't be the first as he learns to move about. It had been a 'quiet' first 3 to 4 months when we could just put him on his play gym or changing mat and not worry that he might go somewhere he shouldn't be going. Of course we don't leave him alone for long periods of time but sometimes we need to put him down somewhere for a couple of minutes to get some things done around the house.
The last 3 weeks or so, Ethan has just continuously shown us how amazing and drastic the development he can go through. It's one thing to read about it in books but experiencing them first hand is just wonderful.

Ethan growing up

4 months passed by so quickly. It seems like almost everyday there's something new from Ethan. Now he's waking up every two hours at night to feed. Initially I had thought that it was another growth spurt but it's been like this for about 2 weeks now. We put Ethan to sleep at about 8pm and he wakes at 10pm, 12, 2am 4am and by 6am... he's really wakes up and starts playing. I haven't quite adjusted to him waking up at 6am and keep hoping that he'll go back to sleeping til 8am.
It's wonderful to see him grow and develope day by day. From learning to laugh, squeal, and grabbing things with his hand. Sometimes you even get a satisfying feeling knowing that your baby is starting to learn to show disatisfaction when his toy falls from his hand. Satisfaction because our baby is growing up and showing more and more of his personality. Parenthood? Bliss...