Daycare

No, I am not helping any daycare centres to do promotion. I thought it was nice to see Emily’s picture being used in their advertisement (the owner got my permission before publishing ).

I believe every working parent have challenges when it comes to looking for a good daycare centre for their kids. There are so many centres out there to choose from and many critierias to look into.

It took us awhile before we finally decided to send Emily to this daycare based on some criterias of ours :

• - Food tops our list as we are always very cautious about the food that we serve to her, in terms of quality and hygiene.
• - Environment of the centre, eg. good air ventilation, class room size.
• - Qualifications of teachers, eg. Experience, caring and responsible.
• - School Fees.
• - Extra co-curriculum activities during school holidays.

I am not saying 100% of our critierias are met as nothing is perfect. Most importantly Emily is happy to go to the centre everyday and enjoying the food there.

To quote an example, last weekend I cooked porridge with fried fish and another dish. She kept whining that she didn’t like porridge though she did finished it up. Yesterday, she happily told me that her daycare prepared porridge with 7 types of ingredients in it and she “sapu” 2 bowls during lunch time J

Jared At 15 Months

Weight : 11.5kg

Teeth : 8 incissors (4 top and 4 bottom)

Developments

• Loves to go out of the house for a walk, whenever he saw hubby dressed and standing near the doorway, he will walk to hubby and hold hands asking to be brought out of the house. When we asked him to sit down to wear shoes, he would do. If he didn't get to tag along, he would screamed and sometimes threw tantrums.
• Already calling PaPa since 14 months old, however he has yet to call mommy :(
• He would say "pu yau" or "mai" whenever we gave him something that he didn't want or like.
• Can imitate some of the words that we taught him, such as apaya (papaya), anion (onion).
• Loves to watch Brainy Baby, especially the ones on Animals and Numbers. Will start to dance each time we switched on the RiverDance DVD. He could even tapped his foot when he saw the dancers tapping their feet. Really cute to see his body movements.
• Will now wave bye bye to anyone who says bye bye to him.
• We we surprised to see him taking our handphone the other day for the first time, pressed on one of the buttons, put the phone to his ear and babbled as if he was answering a call :)
• Loves playing with his toy dinosaurs figures and pretends to sound like them.
• Able to sit in his high chair throughout our mealtime at home, the trick is to give him a bowl and spoon with some food which he can learn to feed himself.
• Has started to develop some jealousy with Emily, refusing to let her come near to me or hubby, immediately he will try to push her away and wants to be close to us. Besides, Emily also cannot touch his toys, he will scream or want to snatch back his belongings. To manage the situation, I would bring both of them together and explained to him that he needs to love his jie jie, told him that mummy loves both of them and then all 3 of us will hug each other. Hopefully he will get over his jealousy real soon.
• Says simple words like apaya for papaya, anian for onion, baa baa when we sing the song baa baa black sheep and claps his hands when we finish singing.
• When holding a ball, he will say 'kick', but will throw the ball instead of kicking :)
• Loves climbing up the staircase on his own.
• Tried to slide down on is own when we placed him on the slide.
• Sleeps before 10.30pm after drinking his last bottle of milk. Next feeding will be around 630am.

Food

• 2 feedings of formula milk, Gain Plus and 2 feedings of breastmilk.
• Loves to eat spaghetti and cheese
• Now taking Heinz mixed grain with banana flavour for breakfast.
• At home, his appetite for porridge has dropped, on some days, eating only about half a correlle bowl for each meal. However at babysitter's place, he will be able to finish almost the whole bowl.
• Doesn't like durians.

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

Viral Attack

Jared is now 15 months old. It it a blessing for hubby and I that he has not fallen sick for more than a year already. However last Sunday he was down with mild fever, coughs and flu. Since Sunday morning, he started to have runny nose and mild coughs but no fever. I didn't want to give him any medicine, instead I gave him probiotics, NOCO and ACT. By afternoon, he continued to have runny nose and developed a mild fever, 37.x degC. Not wanting to take any risk, I gave him paracetamol and his temperature did drop after that. During dinner time, I continued to feed him porridge though according to old people, we should not feed porridge during fever, else the fever will reoccur. By night time I noticed that his temperature rose again (not sure if it is due to the porridge) but I can't really tell how high bcoz this boy was so cranky, I can't even insert the thermometer into his ear.

The next day we brought him to his PD, thankfully his PD diagnosed that it was just a viral infection, so no need to take antibiotics. He prescribed cough and runny nose medication, singulair (for his phlegm), some probiotics and folic acid. I continued to give him paracetamol when we came back from the clinic as his temperature is around 38 degC. Besides the probiotics, I kept away the rest of the medications. Continued to feed him with probiotics, NOCO and ACT. I have also given him propolis twice but has stopped as some people cautioned me about the risks of giving propolis to kids <>

Till today, he still has some coughs and very mild runny nose, but he is recovering well. Will continue giving him the 3 supplements. One tip to reduce coughs during sleeping time is to let him wear socks to keep his body warm. Hopefully he will recover soon.

By the way, he is still as active as before... :)