Happy New Year!

It is about just another 24 hours till the new year. This is going to be my first new year and I am going to celebrate it with Mummy and Daddy as well as their friends!

So anyway, till we meet again in 2010, here's a big smile from me to all of you!

Happy New Year 2010!!

Happy Boxing Day!

Today I turn 7 months old exactly. And not only that, it's the day after Christmas, which means...it's time to open presents!! :)

Today is also known as "Boxing Day". I wonder why...is it because there are many Christmas presents in boxes to be opened? According to Mummy, she read from the internet that the reason why it's called "Boxing Day" is because the upper class people during the Victorian era used to give food, clothing and money to their servants in boxes, hence the term "Boxing Day".
Another theory is that it came about because on "Boxing Day", the alms boxes placed in churches over the Christmas season were opened and the proceeds distributed to the poor. So now you know :)

Anyway, this morning I woke up early (as usual) so we had plenty of time to open presents before Daddy went to work! Here I am all ready to open presents. I am wearing a bib that Nanna got me from Australia. See what it says on the front :)



Here is my first present. This is from Jie Jie Zhen Yi and Jie Jie Candice. By the way, they woke up early too and came over from next door so we could all open presents together! :)



Ooohh...it's a green rabbit! I like it very much...and I like to put it into my mouth too!



Next was a present from Mummy:



What's inside? Rolling duckies! According to Mummy, this toy is supposed to encourage me to crawl. Well, we'll just see Mummy!



Then came my present from Daddy...he's helping me to open the present.



Yay! Musical keys from Daddy and rolling duckies from Mummy..I love my new toys! :)



I also got a present from Daddy and Mummy's friends Uncle Victor, Aunty Judy and their baby Veronica. It's a pair of new pyjamas! Nice or not?



Here I am with all my presents. Mummy and Daddy say I have too many toys already.



Mummy also bought Daddy a present. It's a new fragrance from Calvin Klein called ckfree. Daddy has always used Eternity by Calvin Klein but since they had this new fragrance, Mummy decided to get it for Daddy to try. And he likes it! :) But I was getting bored. Daddy, any more presents for me??




And everyone said this was the best present of all...from Daddy to Mummy...any guess what it is??



Ta-daa! Mummy likes it a lot, and I mean A LOT! :) It's for her to go shopping and buy whatever she likes...good leh... :) When I am bigger, I want this kind of present too, ok Daddy? ;)

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

To all our blog viewers;

Festive seasons are around the corner... We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all "MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!"

Best Wishes,

Benson, Angeline & Hannah

Of Youth Park and other things

We finally managed to make it to Youth Park over this long weekend, without rain, without me sleeping as soon as we got there (it has happened before!), and without any bother.

So, join me on my Youth Park adventure! :)

Below are some of the activities which I did there: I sat on the swing, but I was a bit scared so Mummy quickly carried me up, I sat on the see-saw, but I was only vaguely interested, as you can see on my face. What I did like, however, was the little tortoise thingy which could rock back and forth (I don't know what you call it), coupled with the fact that Ah Mah was making funny faces at me. See my smiley face in the bottom photo.

I also took some photos with Mummy and Daddy, but I was getting sleepy by then, hence the BCC look on my face. (BCC="bin chao chao" or "grumpy look" in English).

Even though I BCC, I still love it when Daddy plays "fly in the sky" with me. I laughed and screamed loudly. Mummy and Daddy quickly hushed me however, because I can scream very loud indeed!

Ah Mah and Ah Gong came to Youth Park too! I managed to take some nice photos with them. Everybody still says I look a lot like Ah Gong.

Later in the evening, I had a nice time playing with my toys with Jie Jie Pei Yi and Jie Jie Zhen Yi. I am wearing a new shirt that Mummy and Daddy bought for me at Gama yesterday. It was only 10 ringgit, cheap and good! Ah Mah likes me to wear these type of "holey" shirts because they are cool and comfortable.

So anyway, I was happily playing with my toys. However, all my toys go straight into my mouth. Mummy and Daddy will tell me "No, no" and I hesitate for a while because I sort of understand that I am not supposed to do that. Nevertheless, I am still too young to understand the consequences, so after a while I forget and happily put everything into my mouth again! :p Oh well, Mummy and Daddy, I will learn in time!

So that concludes our long weekend. Looking forward to two more in the following weeks! :)

Happy car-ride

Yesterday was a public holiday so Mummy and Daddy did not go to work. They wanted to take me to play at Youth Park (Again! No other place-kah, Mummy and Daddy? :p) However, it was raining practically the whole day yesterday so we couldn't go anywhere outdoors.

Anyway, Daddy then decided to take a drive across the bridge to Autocity to have lunch. (Penang nowhere to eat-ah, Daddy?)

Since it was raining so heavily, I had to use an umbrella so I wouldn't get wet. I was trying to be a big girl to help Mummy carry the umbrella. I held on to it so tightly and didn't want to let go! I probably thought that this was my new toy :) See my facial expression: I was so happy and excited about it! :)

Mummy says I have the potential to be the next Mary Poppins. Or how about Rihanna? Umbrella-ella-ella! :)

Later on in the car, I was soooo excited...Jie Jie Candice was making me laugh and laugh. Mummy and Daddy think these are some of the nicest photos of me smiling and laughing.

And this is Mummy's favourite picture from yesterday-I'm giving the sweetest smile of all time! :)

My expressive faces

Daddy managed to get lots of photos of my face this morning before my bath. See all my different expressions! :) Now that I'm older, I can make all kinds of funny faces :p

Look at my face on the right-hand picture. Blehhhh :p

Mummy had a good laugh at the right picture below. She says I look like a little old lady with no teeth! Well, Mummy, it's true that I don't have any teeth! :)

The photo on the left is my cheeky look, and the one on the right, I also don't know how to describe it! But Mummy and Daddy say it's a nice picture of me :)

Daddy likes the photo on the right very much; it's as if I'm saying "Whatcha looking at? Don't mess with me!"

Mum-mum, Nen-nen!

Hannah's two favourite words nowadays are mum-mum and nen-nen! She was actually able to say these words much earlier when she was about 4 months plus but now she can say them clearly and distinctly, especially when she wants her food or milk! It's pretty funny sometimes, because she says it non-stop until she gets what she wants! Or if she's very hungry, she will say it in a complaining voice, and I mean very complaining voice!

She babbles away quite happily to herself most of the time now, and even the doctor said at her recent appointment that she really wants to talk! These past few days, she can pronounce the words "pa-pak" so it makes her Daddy very happy! :) I wonder when she can say Ma-ma or Ma-mi :)

She can also at the moment recognise certain words; for example "flower" (referring to a vase of flowers in our house), "Christmas tree" and especially "Xiao Hei"! "Xiao Hei" is her Ah Mah's dog. Whenever we say any of these words, she will immediately turn and look at the particular object.

Anyway, here are more pictures taken over the weekend which I did not post up earlier.


Getting ready to go out - all excited!


Hmm..why are we taking pictures indoors and not going out??


Road-trip! With Baby Pooh of course :)

Weekend photo collage

Hi everyone, I am almost recovered from my runny nose, but it still gets stuffy at times. I am able to sleep and drink my milk as usual, however, so it's all good :)

This weekend Mummy and Daddy took lots of photos, so we are compiling it all here in what I like to call our "weekend photo collage" :)

This was me on Saturday, playing with my toys as usual. Mummy tied up my hair like how Ah Mah does, but Daddy doesn't like it. This is what causes my "canggih" hairstyle when I wake up in the morning.

Daddy took these close-up photos of me (can you see my runny nose?). He prefers my look like this.

I really like to go kai-kai. So sometimes when we don't go out on the weekends, Daddy will bring me downstairs to our apartment playground and swimming pool. This morning, Mummy and Daddy took me so we could get some nice photos. I had a good time on the swings. Then Mummy brought me closer to the swimming pool to have a look. I like to see the bubbles coming up from the jacuzzi in the pool.

Later, we also went to Youth Park. Compare these pictures taken with Mummy and Daddy to those below when I was just 3 months old. Have I changed since then? You can read about my first visit to Youth Park here.

I was much smaller then...and my hair was much shorter too!

Here are more photos Daddy took of me, me and more me! :)

Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature BPA-free bottles

I have been intending to change Hannah's milk bottles for a while now since she already 6 months plus, but did not get round to doing it until last week. Currently she is using the Avent regular plastic bottles. I was not one who was afraid of BPA and all that but since I was going to change the bottles, I did some research on the BPA-free bottles available on the market.

What is BPA? The plastic used to make baby bottles contains a chemical called Bisphenol A (BPA). Very tiny amounts of BPA can leach from a plastic bottle into your baby's milk. This is a concern because BPA has been linked to possible health problems such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and changes to our hormone systems. Below is a chemical diagram of BPA:



Although it is said that large quantities of BPA is needed to to be consumed to be actually harmful, I suppose it's better not to take the risk. So looks like I am as kiasu as anyone else. Haha. Of course the safest alternative to avoid chemicals is to use glass bottles, but that option is totally impractical.

There are many brands which now manufacture BPA-free bottles, among them The First Years, Safety Plus, Evenflo, Tommee Tippee, Think Baby, Nuby, as well as Avent.

From my research, I found out that there are two different materials used to make BPA-free bottles, polypropylene (PP) and polyethersulfone (PES). PP bottles are not clear, but opaque looking whilst PES bottles have a natural honey colour tint. PES bottles are also more expensive than PP bottles.

So anyway, after much browsing, I came across this:



This bottle is made of PP and BPA-free. I liked the shape of the bottle and that it came in 2-bottle packaging. So I bought it online from myBBstore at a very good price, RM30.90 for the 5 oz bottles (2-pack) and RM31.90 for the 9 oz bottles (also 2-pack). Their service is also very good. I ordered and paid for the items on Friday evening; Saturday they already shipped the items and I received them on Monday morning. Fast right? Tommee Tippee is an award-winning brand from the UK and their bottles are also made in England. Click on the title above to link to their website. Since Avent BPA-free bottles are so expensive (they are made from PES), I thought it would be worthwhile to give this a try.

I also bought these by Tommee Tippee because it's high time Hannah changed her old pacifiers. She has had one of them since she was about one month old! They look cute, don't they? And the handle glows in the dark so I thought that was pretty useful since currently I have to grope in the dark for her pacifier when she wakes up and wants it.



How does Hannah like her new Tommee Tippee range products? She has taken to the bottles really well. I was afraid that she might not, but she has no problem with them. In fact, these bottles seems to be easier for her to hold on her own as well. She can finish all her milk holding the bottle (9 oz) on her own whereas with the Avent bottle she will drop it halfway into drinking her milk. Maybe the Tommee Tippee bottles are lighter? She also drinks more water from these bottles compared to the Avent ones, which is good.

However, she does not like the pacifiers at all. Maybe because the teat of it is bigger than her current Avent pacifiers, even though they are both of the orthodontic shape. Oh well, I suppose it's not as easy getting her to give up her old pacifiers. Probably because they already have the "smell" that she is familiar with.

Oh well, if she likes these bottles, then we will probably use them from now on. Can save $$$ too! :) Does anyone know where I can buy them in Penang? I have not seen them sold in the usual departmental stores (Parkson, Jusco) and I would need to replace the teats from time to time. It would be easier to buy them at the regular stores than online because it would not be worthwhile to pay shipping costs for such a small item. As for the pacifiers, we'll just have to slowly coax her to give up the old ones and use the new ones. Otherwise I'll just have to go out and get new Avent pacifiers for her. Sigh...babies can be so demanding!

Ah-choo!

I am not feeling well. I got a stuffy and runny nose yesterday and today it is still not better. I must have got it from Daddy because he was having a runny nose a few days ago. So anyway, this is the first time I have been sick on my own, meaning that it wasn't caused by my injections.

I find it difficult to breathe because my nose is blocked so I have to breathe through my mouth. Mummy says I am so kesian because I am small and I don't know how to blow my nose. Mummy and Daddy also don't know what to do to help me. If tomorrow I am not better, we have to go and see the doctor.

Since I couldn't sleep earlier, see what I was doing. Daddy had to go out for a while so Mummy put me in my play area. I was playing with my toys when it should have been my bedtime! But I was quite fussy and cranky because of my runny nose.

Not long after that I started to cry and complain so Mummy carried me from the playroom to the bedroom to the living room. Then again from the playroom to the bedroom to the living room. After a few rounds of that, I finally fell asleep on Mummy's shoulder and she then put me down on the bed. She put me in a slanting position so all the yucky stuff in my nose won't flow back and choke me.

Look at the yucky stuff coming out from my nose. I absolutely hate people wiping my face so Mummy found it quite a challenge to wipe my nose. So this is what she did. First she wet one of my face towels so that it wouldn't hurt me with the constant wiping. Then she used the wet towel and played a peekaboo game with me, which I love! Then she could use the towel and wipe my face and I wouldn't complain.

Oh well, I hope I get better soon, Mummy and Daddy!