Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sleep training

I am getting to my wits end with Loïc regression in sleeping through the night since our trip to Singapore. He went from waking up once a night to sometimes THREE times a night. I was certainly not happy about it and the lack of sleep made me a very grouchy mummy. So, last Tuesday night, I gave up and decided that it's time to help Loïc learn the skill of sleeping well. I started sleep training. The first night, he cried for two 20 minutes blocks before falling asleep (I went to soothe him after the first 20 minutes). The second night it was 20 minutes and then 10 minutes before he fell asleep. However, during these two nights, he continued to wake up twice a night and that was not working too well.

We decided that he should be weaned from the night feeds too to help him sleep through the night. Etienne also felt it will be good to have him in another room so on Friday night, we moved him out to the living room and while he did fall asleep while nursing and thus did not need to cry to fall asleep, he did wake up once every hour from 1am onwards. It was Etienne who carried him back to sleep throughout the night and I eventually took him for a feed at about 6am.

Since that night, we have been putting him to bed in the room before transferring him to the living room when we are ready to go to bed and letting him soothe himself when he wakes up in the middle of the night. For the last two nights, he continued to wake up once at about 1am before crying himself back to sleep in about 5-10 minutes. Last night he got up again at about 5am before eventually falling back to sleep in about 5-10 minutes again with a little less crying. He got up again at 7am and this time, we took him into the room to be nursed before he fell back to sleep and woke up at 9:30am for the day. So, he basically slept from 9:30pm to 9:30am with one waking at 7am for a breastfeed. We hope to keep this up.

And this weekend we're off to Normandy for a little weekend break.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Unconditional love

I believe as a parent we should provide our children with unconditional love. I cringe when I hear parents/grandparents say things like "I won't love you if you do XXX or not do YYY." I told myself not only will we NEVER say such a thing to our children, we should constantly tell them how much we love them. As a mother, there are definitely times when I lose my temper at my children. There are times when punishment are necessary as a method of discipline. However, I want my children to know that even during such times, I still love them.

With Laetitia, I usually tell her that I love her. We say that to her all the time. We also let her know that we, her parents, love each other. I think the best way to teach a child to love is to live it. Recently I got around to talking to Laetitia about how much and the extend to which I love her. We were playing together when I took her on my lap, put my arms around her and told her that I love her very much. I also told her that when she is naughty, it makes me angry and sad but I still love her. I said that even when I punish her, I still love her and when she does not listen to me, I still love her etc. And of course she normally replies by telling me that she loves me too.

Well, last night, while Etienne was with her, she told him, "Papa, I love you even when you are upset with me." :-) I guess she is getting the idea! I hope we'll never hear a "I hate you" from our children even when they do not get their way, especially when they become teenagers. It's now that we lay the foundation.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Starting solids

About couple of days ago, I started Loïc on solids. I tried applesauce first and it didn't go down too well. I suppose applesauce is a little too sour as a first food. Here is a video of the first experience.


I decided to start at about 5 months since I felt that he is ready for solids. In fact, Laetitia started around the same time too, maybe two weeks or so earlier. I think he is doing very well with the swallowing action and did not have much of a extrusion reflex.

Since he is not so keen on applesauce, I have started giving him cereal instead. He is on Nestlé iron enriched 5 cereals mix. He seems to enjoy this a lot more. Right now, he is having only a small amount, maybe 5 baby spoons of it every evening.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Loïc's first back to belly flip

Loïc made his first back to belly flip all on his own yesterday late evening. I left him on the bed to make dinner while Etienne was giving Laetitia a bath and when I went to check on him, he was on his tummy! YAY my boy!

On a side note, we took him to the doctor for his vaccinations last Saturday and boy has my little one grown. He is now 66cm long and weighs 7,6kg. He is slowly outgrowing his 6 months old clothes. Thank goodness it's the sale season right now so I quickly stock up a little more on some one year old clothes for him. I do not dare to buy too much in advance since his size change rather quickly plus the weather is rather unpredictable these days.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Photoshoot in Singapore

Just to share a couple of photos taken in Studioloft by Maryann when we were in Singapore. We go to Maryann everytime we go back to Singapore as a family to take some photos and this session, w took more than 260 photos!









Monday, July 6, 2009

Trip to Singapore - Loïc's first flight

Sorry for the long delay in posting but we were just in Singapore for three weeks and since everyday is a mad rush to meet friends and family, I hardly had time to update. And since coming back, I've been dead tired.

This was Loïc's first trip out of the country and first time on the plane. Lucky boy got to go on the brand new much talked about A380 for his virgin flight. Here is the little one on the plane.
Now, I am very disappointed that Singapore Airlines canceled all their night flights from Paris to Singapore. Flying in the day with two young children is not the best option. Both of them did not sleep much on the flight into Singapore and as a result of that, we were exhausted when we arrive in Singapore and yet, it was only 7am local time. This made it harder to adjust and led to a longer period of jetlag. The return trip was so much better. Loïc slept a good 8 hours or more on the 13 hour flight and Laetitia had a good 6 hours or so. I wish they would bring back the Paris-Singapore night flight before we make our next trip.

The three weeks itself in Singapore was packed to the brim. Etienne was saying we probably had close to 50 restaurants sessions (for lunch/tea/dinners/drinks) in three weeks. That is more than 2 per day. On some days we meet up to four different groups of people in a day! It has been wonderful though seeing all our (my) family and friends.

With my two good friends Jaimie and Michelle on Michelle's birthday.
With a huge group of Etienne and my ex-colleagues from BNP. We used to work with Chester, Stella (mum of two), Aileen (mum of two), Sara (mum of two) and Gwen (another mum of two). There were 20 of us at the gathering. 10 children and 10 adults! You see only 19 in the photo as one is sleeping away in her stroller.
Here with another group of friends, Joe and Karen with their two lovely girls, Jason, Stanley and Wenli with their little girl Nemo.
My church friends from Bethany. We used to attend Bethany together almost 20 years ago. Gosh, we're old.
Etienne and I also managed to have some time to ourselves though it is a lot harder to squeeze that time since Laetitia would refuse to go to bed without either one of us around. The easiest time was when she stayed over at my sister to play with her cousins.

This time round we also managed to do a photoshoot which I will upload in another post soon.