Andrew's Baptism on 29th September 2013

I know, I know. It was supposed to be much earlier but due to many reasons; Andrew in Tawau, Godmother not free, etc. we finally got him baptised just after his 7th month birthday!

So here we are in St Ignatius, PJ...

 Getting his anointing by Father... Andrew! Andrew, meet Father Andrew! :)

 Altogether with his Godmother, Helen.

 Thanks to Helen's eldest daughter, Doria for handling my camera and taking photos of this event for us from here on.

 Helen going up to light up Andrew's Baptism Candle...

 And the light has been passed on... with Andrew being very transfixed.

 Hmmmm... what's that?

 Never mind. Cloth tasting session to continue...

 What's the fuss folks?

 Group photo. Can you spot us?

 Andrew having some time with his Godmother...

 And his Godsister or one of them.

 With my parents and Andrew probably saying, "I wanna go home and do my business as it's the time!" And misses having her hands full controlling him...

And with that I leave you Andrew's customary greeting of happiness...

The End.

6 Months... Oh...My...Gawd!

It's been a while since I last updated; not least the reason being occupied by a very drooly baby!

Anyway, after checking the reasons and realising it's time for teethering, we went out and bought this blue gel teether for him.

Chucking it into the fridge has it keeping it's coolness longer and as you can see, he's loving it! I just hope he doesn't puncture it!

'What's up Daddy? Can't I CHEW???'

'Why are you looking down on meeeeeeeeee?'

His attempt to sit up. Actually, he cheated coz we placed him in the sit up position and he just stayed as is... albeit with his hands sprayed out to keep him up...before toppling over!

Along with 6 months comes solid food. And on his 6th birthday, we decided to introduce Nestle's Cerelac Rice+Breast Milk to him. As you can see, we were all prepared. Bib. Nappies covering possible food discharge landings...

But in the end, he surprised us by eating it all and not making that much of a fuss. Actually, he was more interested in the spoon than anything else!

And of course, since it's an item that is allowable to enter into his mouth...

Ah well. Happy Baby = Happy Mummy...

Oh no! He's UP on his fours... Heaven help us!!! He's gonna be crawling soon!!!

The End.

Did someone leave the Drool Tap ON??? Plus BumbleBee's Playpen

We were bracing for this, but not to this extent. As the website called Dr Sears mentions, Did someone leave the Drool Faucet On? It's amazing how much of drool and how fast he can wet a towel totally!

Maybe that's why he's feeding so frequently as in almost hourly from poor Mummy... leaving her quite dehydrated!

"What's up Daddy?"

 For a toy that he never really bothered...until now. And that too we chucked it into the fridge as per Google's advise. Wonder of wonders, he actually like it now!

 Soothing to his painful gums, no doubt!

 I guess that also explains why he had a sudden Low Grade Fewer a few days ago. Unlucky us!

 Yes, Mummy dearest was also trying to educate dear baby ...

I wonder what he's thinking? Loony Mummy???!

 And so, with loads of drooling and pain, it also meant frequent feeds from dear Mummy and loads of irritability coming from him. Not to mentioned neediness as well. It's going to be a very looooong and arduos process... hopefully not!

Now, this toy has been hanging from his car seat handle bar for ages, ever since we went to Sandakan on his first flight. And now, finally, after many moons, he has started to be entertained by it!

Will wonders never cease! :p

 This is something that we've been contemplating for some time. Should we, shouldn't we? But since he seems to be running out of space on his Ikea cot to turn, this Square AND Collapsible Playpen retailing at RM399 from Bumblebee seems to solve some answers for limited space owners!

Unlike most playpens which are rectangular, this one's square. Which makes it easier for him to turn. Which also means either it takes up more space (for him) or less space in our house. But it also does come with wheels on one side. So that means

It comes with a carrying bag once you have totally collapse it unto itself. So how big is it once completely folded? Think of a normal size stroller when fully folded, and that pretty much answers the question.
It does weigh in at almost 10kilos though...

For more info, visit BumbleBee's website here

The End.

5 months and counting!

Dearest baby recently crossed his 5th month and decided to show off by grabbing his toes...

Not only that, he also attempted to lick his toes. Which he succeeded. But he has stopped. I guess it wasn't too savoury for him! :p

*Sigh* ... Those little fingers are getting stronger and bigger!

 Guess who decided to play Arabian?

 "Say what Daddy???"

 And not so long ago, he decided to attempt to lift his buttocks. I must say that this is bittersweet as it means 2 things:
a) He's growing up and (which is good - development wise, that is); and
b) He's going crawling soon... (not so good because we'll be getting tons of exercise thereafter!)

But I guess who needs to exercise when you've got a moving toddler? :p

 Out for dinner in Esquire Kitchen and I think dear baby was more interested in the Tau Foo Fah than the camera.

 At this stage for him, grabbing isn't a problem...

 And neither is rolling onto his tummy and after 4 months of lying on his back, obviously one would want another angle of view!

 His Royal Cuteness...

The End.

A little modification on the Ikea Gulliver baby cot

What do you do when you realised that your cot requires some ... mobility?

You modify it!

So after 1 trial and error (due to the wheels not being supportive enough), we decided to go the heavy duty way.

It is extreme enough? Suffice to say, after 2 weeks, everything is still intact! :)

Basically, the wood was procured from Ace Hardware which is already in that width. I just had to saw them in lengths to fit my legs.

Long screws was used to screw from one block of wood, through the Ikea Gulliver cot leg and to the other side for better stability.
4 screws on 1 side and another 3 going in from the opposite side.

As each castor requires 4 mini screws, hence the 2 extra pieces of wood sandwiching the cot leg. These castors were bought from Ikea and as you can see, that black plastic thing is a wheel brake.

So now, we can put our dear boy into the cot and move him between rooms or from one end of our humongous dining/living hall to the other end.

The End.

Terrabot; Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

Now that yours truly has a baby and had moved in into his own house of his own, cleaning it of course, is a big chore. More so, when mother and baby are actively shedding hair at this particular point in time; circa 3 months +.

It's a hormonal thing. Nothing much one can do about it. Deal with it! :)

ANYway, so it was decided after some discussion, why not get something robotic to assist in clearing up all those shedded hairs PLUS pick up the tons of dust that seems to coat our floors and whatever horizontal surfaces like crazy! Really... no joke.

After looking through Lazada's website, it was decided on this robotic cleaner from TerraBot. It boasts quite a number of features but I'll break it down as I go through the photos.

So what does it look like? As per below, you will see the device itself and it's connected to the charging station.

The rear is where the dust container sits as is evident from the huge black button that you see.

Now, this cleaner says it does mopping. Sadly, mopping isn't what you and I would normally think; i.e. wet / water mop BUT dry mop. So, it's just a piece of cloth stuck onto a Velcro on the bottom of the cleaner which you can also detach of you don't want to use it.

If you have a 1300sqft unit like us, I think this small little cloth is SO not equipped... Flipped side is that when I finally decided to clean the cloth, I found that the dirt came off easily.

This little black device uses 2 D cell batteries and what it does is to create a barrier, aka no go zone. As there is a 5 cm drop height between the whole house and the kitchen floor. This was placed there in order to prevent the cleaner from going into the kitchen and never coming back out!

The dust container after it was removed and used for the very 1st time. You can see the amount of dust+hair which we did not clean after JUST 4 days... Ugh!

The bottom of the container. More finer dust making it past the 1st part of the container but getting trap behind a filter. Thank God!

Some thoughts:
a) It BANGS into things quite a bit. And so, even a leaning foldable chair can collapse due to the amount of force it knocks with!
b) If you have a foldable chair that is opened, not those with 4 legs, but with 2 metal bars as legs, it'll go over them and get caught in the middle.
c) Which means it'll also go over slippers!
d) Mats needed to be removed.
e) It's got a timer and so we have set ours to work while we are away, i.e. Monday, Wednesday and Fridays @ 0900H.
f) It's quite loud. Manual says around 50+DB's...
g) UV lamp - It says its got one, we did use it, but how does one tell it works? I.e. those bugs are killed?
h) It's cleaning method of a large space is done in concentric circles; i.e. it just keeps going round and round and round but in a wider diameter as it makes it's round after round.

Verdict
Is it worth it? I guess if you can look past the mop and UV lamp, then yes, looking at the amount of dust it has picked up and the time it would save me from cleaning the house.
And as yours truly likes to walk barefoot, I couldn't be happier... except on the $$$ part.

There are more lower cost versions on Lazada's website. But missing some functions... Will it clean as well? Hard to compare.