My friend told me if I’m worried that Zara may fall from bed, I might as well teach her how to get down, so she won’t fall any more. I took the advice and for the last 1 week plus, have been teaching Zara how to get down from the bed and sofa.

I had always warned her to ‘stop’ when she reached the edge of the bed, so that part was easy. I then have to tell her to turn her body when she’s reached almost the edge, and guided her body at the same time. Then I told her to go down ‘bum bum first’, held her bottom, and guided it, until her feet reached the ground.

A training session will go something like this :
Put her on the bed
“Zara come down, come to mummy”
She’ll start crawling towards me.
When she’s about to reach the edge, “Stop! Be careful”
She’ll stop
“Now turn your body” guide her body to turn
“Good girl, now bum bum first” guide her buttocks and legs
“Now slowly slide down, be careful”
When her feet reached the floor, I clapped and cheered for her “Clever girl! Hip Hip Hooray!”

A lot of guidance and few close accidents later, she surprised us by perfecting this over the weekend.

Here is a video of her doing this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlOOuVMsHRc] 

As for climbing up the bed, I never taught her, but fueled by her own interest, she did it anyway.

I caught Zara turning around while seated this morning on video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfPdUi35X5Y]

Zara has turned 10mth old yesterday. Her month by month development summarised :

Her weight should be somewhere high 7kg (haven’t been to the PD this month).
She’s 72.5cm tall
Still with only 4 teeth

Mobility:
Sitting – new in this area is that she’s able to rotate herself while seated (doing a pirouette sitting)
Crawling – all her crawling starting from this last month was with tummy off the floor. She enjoys the speed she gains by crawling this way
Cruising – Expert cruiser now, she use one hand to support herself, and cruises around confidently, at times running around furniture. She’s able to pull herself up from sitting position (can do it with just 1 hand) and sits back down with confidence.
Walking – Started taking her fist step. The distant she travels from point to point unsupported is getting further
Climbing – Started climbing up stairs and furniture (if her feet can reach the height, she tries it).

Language :
Understanding – getting better in understanding. Able to tell her not to do something dangerous by saying “after pain pain”.
Can understand long phrases and cause and effect, “if you want milk milk, come to mummy”; “you sit down first, then mummy give you biscuit”; “be careful, after you fall down then pain pain”
Reading and listening to songs are still her favourite.
Speaking – started saying words which are comprehensible. See this for her vocabulary.
Singing – sometimes, like a soprano, she’ll be holding her hands, concentrates, and coos for a long minute or two. I think this is her way of singing.

Hands coordination :
Able to put small things into bigger things.
Started giving flying kiss, still trying to perfect the ‘blowing’ of the kiss.
Knows how to give things to others when asked to.
Started showing interest in self feeding, still needs a lot of guidance / practice with handling the spoon

Feeding :
She’s still on 2 solid meals (increased to 4, 5 spoons), and started having porridge as one of the meal. 5 feeds of breast milk, and snacks on a few piecess of biscuits a day.

Preferences :
Able to display her preferences better.
She loves mummy most (that’s what I think).
At reading time, she’s able to choose a book from a pile, normally picking out her favourite book (which changes frequently).

Emotions :
Shakes her head to say “NO” (when given too much food, or when asked to give a kiss but she doesn’t want to).
Very good in ‘scolding’ people if she’s unhappy, say “AIK” loud and then stare at the person (if her favourite toy is being pried from her hand).
Lately, started having this fake laugh, use it whenever she’s trying to give the impression that she’s enjoying someone’s company.
Gives kisses to her favourite people right on the lips.

She’s still a happy and healthy baby.

Daddy is on a business trip and away for almost the whole week.

This morning, while I was having breakfast, Zara reached for my mobile phone and started playing with it. I asked her “Why is Zara holding mummy’s phone? Daddy calling is it?”. She just smiled.

I tooked the phone back and pretended to speak to its mouth piece “Hello, yes, she’s here”. I passed the phone back to Zara, and told her it’s her call, daddy is on the line.

She took it and put it near her ears, and started babbling. Aah, Pa, Ta. When she put the phone back down, I reminded her it’s daddy, she should say hello to him. She took it back up, placed it near her ear, and started babbling again. This went on for a while.

Well, if it’s a real phone call, and she can actually hear the speaker on the phone, she’ll normally push the phone back to me, and smiled sheepishly. I wonder why.

After speaking her first comprehensible word on our way to Penang 2 weeks back, Zara added a few more words to her vocabulary.

Aao is for Cat
Bo Bo is for Ball
Boo is for Book
Ka is for Kakak Tuyam
Ta is for Aunty Litha (my bro’s maid)
Up is for Up

She says Papa, Ata, Tati quite often but I can’t figure out what they mean. Tried to get her to call me Mama, but she just won’t say Mama. Maybe she’s confused why I am asking her to call me Mama when that’s what we ask her to call my mum-in-law (intonation is different, and it stands for paternal grandma in Cantonese) as well.

Sometimes, she looks intently at our face when we speak to her, and she moves her mouth, as though trying to mimic us, however, no words came out.

She doesn’t like us to correct her pronunciation. When she says Aao, and daddy replies, “no not Aao, CAT”, she will look away and not say a word any more.

I told Daddy we shouldn’t correct her pronunciation now, but just encourage her by showing we understand what she says. Our reply should be “yes, Cat, Rusty the Cat” (Rusty is the name of our cat) when she says “Aao”. This makes her happier, and more willing to try to speak (even if it’s not comprehensible yet).

Zara gets real happy when she wakes up and finds one of us in bed with her.

If it was me, she would try to climb up to my body, lay her head on my chest. It’s a bit like giving me a morning hug. When she’s feeling more affectionate, she will give me a kiss, on my lips (I don’t get that ‘lucky’ all the time).

It’s Sunday morning, where we have more time to laze in bed. We played this game : she turned her head towards me, and I said “hello”, she turned her head away, and I said “bye bye”. Here she was trying to turn her head very quick to see if I could catch up with her with my Hellos and Bye Byes.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCnf4rTmhE]

Zara took her first step today, at 9months 3 weeks old!

She was cruising using our bed frame as support, and I was just sitting on the floor talking to her. She then turned and stood with her back supported by the bed frame looking at me. I extended my arms ready to catch her if she fell. I told her to be careful. The next thing I know, she took 3, 4 quick steps forward, and landed in my arms.

I was shocked, and after a second, I realised what she’d done and shouted HOORAY! She had this big smile on her face, and then she started clapping her hands. I guess she knew too that she’d achieved some thing big.

I couldn’t believe it, so I placed her back on the same spot, with her back rested on the bed frame; I extended my arms, and I said, “Zara, come to mummy”. Again, another 3, 4 quick steps forward, and she’s back in my arms.

I was so happy, and carried her high up, shouting “Hip Hip Hooray!”. Zara giggling, and clapping her hands.

Daddy heard all the commotion and stuck his head into the room and asked what happened. I got Zara to show us her moves again. And then Tuyam wanted to see it as well. Zara walked again. She was eager to show off her new skill (and so is mummy).

We were all very happy to see this achievement, but think it’ll be some time more before she could walk about confidently but I may be wrong.

Last week I bought her Tiny Love’s Musical Stack & Play™.

Initially, I played with her by puting the rings on our head and doing a jig (I did, she just watched), telling her, “look at mummy’s funny hat”, and then tell her she has one too. She would reach for it, and then take the ring down.

Today, I try to teach her to drop the ball into the Elephant Head (a funnel attached to the top opening of the cone). After a few try, with me demonstrating to her, and guiding her hand with the ball, she managed to drop it. She smiled when she heard the cheearing and music the cone made when the ball touched its base. She did that a few more times successfully.

I thought I would remove the Elephant Head, and try to get her to drop it directly to the top opening of the cone. I just told her “Take the ball and put it in (pointing to the opening)”, and she did it without having to demonstrate to her.

She was very happy, and continued to do a few more times. A few times, she actually looked very serious trying to get it right. When she managed to drop it, besides hearing the cheering and the music from the cone, I too cheered and clapped for her. Making her more eager to repeat.

This is a new skill she’d learnt, dropping things through a small opening. While doing this, she also started being able to ‘give’ me things. I used to have to pry open her hand to take some thing from her or have a tug of war with her. When I demonstrated to her how to drop the ball, I asked her to ‘give mummy the ball’, pointing to the ball she’s holding. After a few rounds, she actually placed the ball in my hands.

I must say this toy is worth the investment, and we haven’t even started on the stacking rings yet.

Went for lunch at the Tais with Jenny (my sis in law).

The last time we were here, Zara just recovered from her fever, and she was clinging to me all the time like a koala. This time, she was eager to explore.

While we were chatting in the big hall, Zara climbed up the winding marble stair case. One step at a time, she went. I have to follow her closely, just in case she slipped. She’s very good at going up, but didn’t know how to come down. She leaned herself over the edge of the step, peeping down, trying to figure out how to get down. I have to help her but she started going up again once I placed her back down on the floor.

This is the first time she’s climbing stairs, and I guess if given the opportunity, she will want to practice this skill over and over again.

After stuffing the whole car with Zara’s things (1 bag of toys and books for the journey, another bag for the stay; 1 bag of baby food; half a suit case full of diapers, clothes, bibs, wash cloth etc.; the gigantic pram; her survival bag; her infant carrier), and the little space left with our bags of clothes, we were finally leaving KL for Penang.

Zara sat in the infant carrier and was with me at the back seat. The drive was a long one, with me playing some of her toys with her, singing to her, reading to her and she napped a bit here and there. We took her to Kuantan when she was 1 month +, and back then she slept more, so the journey was not so bad.

In the beginning, she was quite happy to be in her seat, but after more than 2 hours, she started getting a bit restless. When we reached Ipoh, she was raising her arms, and shouting “UP!”, “UP!”. Her very first word, spoken out of frustration!! She repeated this until she was picked up from her seat.

We broke for late lunch in Ipoh and then spent some time walking about there. When we were about to leave Ipoh, Zara protested and refused to be strapped back to her seat. I have to almost force her down, while explaining to her the car is going to move soon, so she must be in her seat. She was very upset, and after strapping her up, she sucked her thumb, and closed her face with the other hand, and went to sleep.

Bukit Mertajam was our next destination. We didn’t have problem getting to St Anne’s Church as we got very good directions given to us by a patrol station attendant.

Zara was glad it was another stop. She was so happy when we got down the car. In St Anne’s Church, I gave my thanks. Zara was standing next to me, looking around, attracted by the flickering light of the candles, calmed by the serenity of the church surrounding.

Daddy too gave his thanks, and then we left the old church building, and walked about in the big compound. There was the chiming of the church bell (indicating a sunset mass was about to begin), followed by singing of the choir from the church. It was such a nice setting but it was time for us to leave for Penang.

It was another 1hr drive, to get us to Penang and to our hotel. I booked the Lone Pine Hotel in Batu Feringi from the internet. It’s a charming small hotel.

I booked the cheapest room and was surprised that we got such a beautiful room. We actually have a little private garden all to ourselves (see pic). The room was spacious with dark wood furniture. I also got the hotel to send in a little cot for Zara, but it will just be used as a play pan, as the bed is large enough to fit all 3 of us. My only complain is that there was a lot of sand on the floor, I have to sweep the place myself, before I was willing to let Zara walk or crawl on it.

The rest of the evening, we spent having a stroll at the beach, have a very nice nonya dinner, and then because Zara slept so much in the car and was still very energetic when we got back after dinner (and also because of the lure for cheap DVDs), we went DVD shopping just outside of the hotel. RM10 for 4 DVDs, where else can you get such a great deal?