Yan Yan is one month old

In the blink of an eye, Yan Yan is one month old today, according to the Gregorian calendar (it was Thursday, 七月初一 according to the Chinese lunar calendar). So that's the end of my confinement and MIL will be heading home tomorrow. After that, it'll just be me and baby till I go back to work in October.

To celebrate Yan Yan's fullmoon, we distributed these for relatives and friends:

Individually packed red eggs with personalised card

Ain't the cupcakes cute?

This was a box of 10 we ordered for hubby's godparents. Love the 3D figurines.

Hands-free rocking

What do you do when your hands are dirty from eating chocolates and mei-mei is crying in the bouncinet wanting to be rocked?

Here’s the solution. Am I ingenious or what?



And while rocking mei-mei with my bum bum, I can still watch my favourite TV show.

I can lift up my head

Mummy has been putting me on my tummy lately while I'm awake, in the hope that she'll be able to catch me doing this.

I've kept her waiting for few days, but today, since I was in a good mood after a yummylicious meal of breastmilk, I decided to oblige her :-)

Mummy should have known better than to put me on my tummy for a full feed...BURP!

Holding my head upright

Mummy always holds me up straight after each feed to burp me, or else I'll have the tendency to regurgitate the milk out. Anyway, even after burping, I will still regurgitate milk out. Ha ha…anyway, that's not the point of this post.

This photo was taken when I was 16-day old. I can hold my head upright all by myself, though only for a few seconds. Mummy says I'm definitely much stronger than my che-che.



Actually mummy noticed this few days before this shot was taken but as she had her hands full with me then, she obviously couldn't grab a camera. So the other day, she had her camera ready when papa was burping me. Please excuse my startled look - mummy forgot to switch off the flash when she clicked on the camera.

Budding chef in the making

Yiu Yiu loves ondeh-ondeh, introduced to her by babysitter's sister. The kind lady will sometimes go out of her way just to buy some ondeh-ondeh for her.

MIL is down helping me with my confinement and she's also a good cook, bakes well and makes really nice local kuih. Hubby told her that Yiu Yiu loves ondeh-ondeh and asked her to make some for Yiu Yiu and being the doting grandmother, she obviously obliges.

Here's my excited little girl helping her mah-mah to make the ondeh-ondeh:

Getting instructions from the master

Close-up shot of her little hands forming the perfect circle

Getting quite good at rolling the dough

Aarrgghh!! The gula melaka is falling out

The proud little girl with her tray of ondeh-ondeh, ready to be boiled

Enjoying the fruits of her labour

She's so proud of her feat that she couldn't stop telling everyone that SHE made the ondeh-ondeh. Looks like I've a budding chef in the making.

Arts & crafts

I've always hoped to be able to do handicrafts with Yiu Yiu, but since I'm neither a creative person nor do I have a knack for arts, I had wanted to trawl the Net for an idiot's guide to making simple handicrafts. But as always, time and procrastination (and also laziness :-)) are my worst enemies and as such, I've came to naught in this respect.

Last weekend, Yiu Yiu came back from her art class with these masterpieces:

A giant octopus

And a giant lollipop

Well, at least she STILL gets to make handicrafts, and enjoy herself in the process, though it's not with me.

Spot the similarities/differences

Here's a side-by-side photo of Yiu Yiu and Yan Yan, when both were just one day old. I think they look like twins. Haha…

Can you spot the similarities? Here's what I see:

- The prominent line at the cheek (just under their eyes)

- The big nose, ala Jackie Chan :-)

- Pointed chin

- Curly hair (which is not obvious as Yan Yan's head is covered by the hood)

And now the differences:

- Yiu Yiu has a very prominent and well-defined eye brow, which was evident on the first day itself

- Yiu Yiu has a dimple on her left cheek

Did you see anything else that I didn't?

Yiu Yiu and her mei-mei

Yiu Yiu had been very excited all long with the pending arrival of her mei-mei, and we had hoped that her excitement and anticipation remains strong, and that she'll love her mei-mei to bits.

Mei-mei has joined the family for 15 days now and I'm really glad to see that Yiu Yiu is indeed behaving like a big sister by being a "happy helper".

I'm a happy helper
Show me what to do
I'm a happy helper
I love helping you
Yes, I'm a happy helper
(Sounds familiar? Yeah, it's a song from the the ubiquitous purple dinosaur show, what else!)

She's been busying herself helping me to fetch things like diapers, pyjamas, handkerchieves, mittens, etc from the drawer for mei-mei.

And most importantly, she IS loving mei-mei to bits. I'll let these photos speak for themselves.

At the hospital

She insists on carrying mei-mei so mummy had to ask her to sit on the bed so mummy can support baby's neck and head

I love this shot, unfortunately it was a little blurry

Hello everyone, this is my mei-mei

Mummy, that's the present that mei-mei gives me, rite?

At home

This is the way I drink my milk, I drink my milk, I drink my milk. This is the way I drink my milk, with my head next to mei-mei's

Mei-mei mei-mei, when can you talk to me?

Aah, mummy, mei-mei is crying. Never mind, never mind, I will pak pak (pat) her

Kissing mei-mei, and besides, her hair smells soooo good

This is how she insists on sleeping at night, with her face facing mei-mei's

And sometimes, when mei-mei wakes up crying in the middle of the night, she'll be awaken and quickly extend her arms to pat mei-mei

Footnote: With regards to the last photo, hubby and I have been trying to coax her to sleep in her princess bedroom, as we don't want her sleep to be interrupted by mei-mei's midnight cries, but to no avail.

What can a 7-day old baby do?

Yes, she turned sideways all by herself, at only seven days old!




Am I amazed or what?

When I gave birth to Yiu Yiu, I had to be induced and she was 11 days short of full term, whereas for Yan Yan, she's five days post-term. I'm not sure if this made a difference but Yan Yan is certainly heavier and longer than Yiu Yiu at birth. I also remember that Yiu Yiu felt really fragile and small, and I always handled her with extreme care, just in case I accidentally hurt her. With Yan Yan, she is generally more solid, feels much stronger to touch, and I never quite worry about accidentally hurting her. Is this the effect of a full-term vs early baby, or is it the wisdom of being a mother second time round?

Introducing baby Yan Xin

Some of you have been really observant, and had noticed that I've tagged all baby-related posts to Yan Yan :-)

So lets officially unveil our little baby's name - Yan Xin, 彦欣.


This name was the brainchild of her che-che, where out of the blue one night, Yiu Yiu simply blurted out, "Mummy, I want mei-mei's name to be Yan Xin." We thought it sounded quite nice, so we started looking for Chinese characters with the pinyin "Xin", and we liked 欣 best. Nevertheless, since we wanted a name that matches her time and date of birth, hubby and I shortlisted a few more names, just in case.

Yiu Yiu had been going around telling everyone, even before I gave birth, that her mei-mei's name is Yan Xin, so we were really hoping that the name 彦欣 matches her time and date of birth. And luckily, it does. Otherwise, we'll have a hard time explaining to her why her mei-mei's name is not Yan Xin :-)

欣 is pronounced as Yan in Cantonese, so I guess we'll be calling her Yan Yan, just as we've been calling Yiu Yiu by her Cantonese name (the Mandarin pronunciation is Yan Yao, 彦瑶). But somehow, I think Yan Yan doesn't sound quite as nice as Yan Xin, or Yiu Yiu for that matter :-)

Anyway, Yan (彦), meaning elegant, learned, authoritative and influential, is the middle name that we started using with Yiu Yiu, and subsequently, hubby's brother's two sons also used the same middle name. Xin (欣) on the other hand, means happy, joyous and delighted. It certainly carries our hope that she'll grow up becoming a learned person, and lead a joyous and fulfilling life.