We celebrated Christmas Eve in a Chinese Restaurant, then went back to King’s Wife’s place to cut King’s birthday cake; and for the kids, the happiest moment, opening the presents! Too bad my eldest sis is still in the hospital because she’s just given birth, or there’ll be a bigger crowd.

Cool kids in the family

Zara enjoying some of the adults’ food

Zara in good spirit

Zara with the men in the family

Zara helping to distribute presents

Kids opening their presents (Zara with my help, of course)

Zara with her 2 favourite presents, a pair of shoes (from my youngest sis), and a play phone (from King’s Wife).

The trees, ours (top left), King’s wife’s which was chocking with presents, and the empty tree.

Merry Christmas every one!

Since Zara could walk very well now, and prefers to walk about on her own without her hand being held; and because I’m getting old I have no energy to run after her, and I don’t normally bring my maid along to look after her while I do my shopping, I have to find a solution to make sure she’s always within a perimeter I want her to be.

This is my solution :

She takes it very well. Happy to reach her hand out for me to strap the wrist strap on her, and doesn’t mind the confined area she could roam. However, people around her wasn’t as optimistic.

Samantha, “She’s like a dog”
My reply, “No, she’s not, it’s just like holding on to her hand”
Alicia, “My mummy (King’s Wife) never used that on me”
My reply, “Because last time you have Aunty Nora (their previous maid) chasing after you every time we go out”
(And they happily helped me to hold on to the harness with Zara leading the way after this)

And you get passerby throwing glances at the evil mother me, and they try to discreetly point to our directions and get their companion to look our way as well.

The worst of the lot comes from, who else, but Daddy.
Daddy: *anger tone* Why are you doing this to her?
Me : Why not?
Daddy : She’s like a dog on leash
Me : Who said so. This is to keep her within a safe distant even if she wanted to run about
Daddy : *still in anger tone* You are using it only because you bought it
Me : *roll eyes and speak slowly* I BOUGHT IT BECAUSE I WANTED TO USE IT.
Daddy : She looks so stupid
Me : *really, what is his problem?* She doesn’t! I don’t have the energy to run after her. If you have, I remove the strap, you go chase after her than.
Daddy : Sure! I’ll do that.

Yeah right.. After few minutes playing catching with Zara, he started carrying her. I guess, that’s easier than chasing after her right?

I don’t see what is really wrong with using a harness on Zara. It allows her to roam freely, but within a safe distant from me. It makes sure that even if I was engrossed with browsing at something in the shop, she won’t run away and get lost.

Is it really that cruel? I hope I won’t just succumb to pressure and toss the harness away.

Zara is 13 month old today. Just like the updates in previous months, this is just to sum up her development:

– New weight and height unknown (but we’ll be seeing the Paed next week, by then we should know how much taller and heavier she is).
– This month, she sprouted another tooth, so she has 3 upper teeth, and 4 lower teeth now.

Dexterity :
– She walks independently and confidently; and her mode of transporting herself from one point to another is fully through walking now
– She can stoop down and stand back up again
– She dances according to tempo, by shaking her head, waving her arm, stamping her feet, and turning her body
– She likes to use a pen to make dots and lines on her magna doodle, a white board or a piece of paper; when she is ‘writing’, she always exclaims Za-Ah, asthough she’s writing her own name.
– She’s able to unscrew bottle tops (those which are not tightly screwed)

Language :
This month, she seems to have pick up quite a lot of words, besides knowing how to call or address the people she meets regularly, additional words she’d learnt this month :
– an (ants)
– mo-to-pike (motorbike)
– no moh (no more)
– poo bah (Pooh Bear)
– beh beh (Bell, thanks to Christmas)
– bird (extremely accurate pronunciation for this)
– mow (Mole, since I have one just below my wind pipe)
– poo-meh-eng (Boomerang, she can say this but not mummy, can you beat it??)
– kang-eh-oo (Kangaroo)
– sky
– stah (Star)
– bed (Bread)
– ah buk (mabuk/drunk)

Her understanding of English is very good I have to say. She can follow simple instruction now like “Bring the phone here, Daddy will call Mama (paternal grandma)”.

This month, I’d also started speaking to her in Mandarin just like someone has taught me. I say some thing in Mandarin first, follow by English. Not sure when she’ll actually start to understand Mandarin though.

Feeding / Food :
She prefers lumpier food, able to chew on chicken, cucumber slices, and prefer rice with soup more than porridge. She no longer fancy baby cereals or bottled food.

She’s still on breastmilk, but I’m introducing 1 to 2oz of formula to her on days that I go to work.
She has very discerning taste, not an easy toddler to please, food wise.

Emotions :
Although she still refuses to call me, but I think I’m still her favourite slave person based on the below :
– Only I can tuck her in at night
– Only I can calm her when she cries
– She gives me the most hugs and kisses
– She likes to sleep close to me in the night

She’s also a drama queen, very good in pretending to cry and pouting her lips. Knows who she can manja (Malay: get pampering from) (Daddy) and who she can bully (Kakak Tuyam). She knows mummy loves her but won’t give in to her if she’s being naughty, so she doesn’t play her tricks on mummy.

After Zara took her first step 3 months ago, she has been trying to perfect the skill of walking. I was even very worried the first few weeks about her falling and hurting herself (especially face down), but seeing how fast she mastered the skill, my worry was quite unnecessary.

From a slithering crawler, she merely crawled with her tummy lifted for a while, and then moved on to her two feet. At first, she got lots of help from furniture, and human bodies, and then she slowly ventured into longer distant without holding on to anything for support.

In the living room, we see her charted distance increasing. From coffee table to sofa; then from the coffee table to the kitchen entrance (she supported herself holding on to the wall), and then she started walking all around without support, all these in the span of two and the half months.

I used to count how long she could support herself in her wobbly two feet before falling; and I forgot when she started standing, without falling any more.

Things we took for granted I can see her trying to master it with lots of effort and determination, like an adult learning how to ski. She fell, picked herself up, continued to walk on; fell again, pulled herself up, walked on. Our heart skipping a beat every time she fell, ever ready to rush to her and pull herself up, almost too tempted to support her all the time. It was a balance of helping ONLY when required; near her (to catch her if she fell) but never too close to hold her that has helped her moved on.

She now walks with confidence, going every where on her two feet freely, able to maneuver shallow steps, and with her hand holding on for support, able to go up stairs too. She can squat down, kneel, pull herself back up with much dexterity.

She used to hold our hands when we went out for walks, but during the weekend, she seemed to want to roam freely without our help. When we held her hand, she actually pried it off with her other hand and let herself loose.

Now she’s master the skill, she wants no one to help and support her, she wants to do it all by herself, walking like adults do.

After having a good time with us the night before; G called us on Sunday during lunch time from Lake Gardens and asked if we would like to meet up. He was especially interested in going to the Malay village Daddy was raving about.

We very quickly changed Zara, and drove to town, thinking of grabbing lunch on our way. It was actually Zara’s nap time, so she fell asleep soon after we left. As I would like her to be fully charged up for the rest of the day, I told Daddy we should get something which we can eat in the car, either a sandwich or McD, so that we didn’t have to interrupt Zara’s sleep (having to carry her down to the restaurant and all).

My plan was spoilt though by Daddy. When I went down to grab our take away from McD, Daddy started making calls in the car, and woke Zara up. He of course got a lecture from me, before I passed him his lunch. *roll eyes*

After our quick lunch, we went to the Bird Park in Lake Garden since G said he was just in the Orchid Garden closed by. Zara had a glimpse of some of the birds (within the park) which were perched high up on branches from the car park. She got very excited and made the ‘AK AK AK’ sound (just like the crow) very loudly, even after we met G, and got into our car.

The ‘famous’ Malay village we were bringing G was Ulu Langat. We like to bring our foreign friends there because it is only 30mins drive from the city, and you get to see streams, waterfall (if you are willing to hike a bit), fruit orchards and best of all village houses on stilt, and also live stock roaming the streets.

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We drove along the stream, and stopped when G spotted a unique looking house. It was a private property across the stream, linked to the main road by a bridge. It is a simple brick house, standing on a very huge piece of land. There is a big grass field, with fruit trees at the far end, and a very tidy and pretty garden. We asked for permission to see the place.

Zara was like a free soul, happy to be on her feet, and running in the field. Even when the local kids wanted to play with her, she didn’t show much interest, and preferred to be on her own running. We just stood afar and watched her, and only picked her up when it was time to go. She was actually kicking a fuss, not wanting to follow us.

Our next stop was at a durian stall. G being first time in South East Asia, mentioned about durian, and Daddy was eager to have him taste one. G was brave, he actually took 2 seeds. He said the taste was very unique, but he didn’t really like it. I gave Zara a little of the flash too (her first time as well), just for her to taste; when she was offered a 2nd helping, she shook her head. I ended up having the rest of the durian, luckily it wasn’t a big fruit, since I’m really quite indifferent to durians.

Near by, there was a herd of goats grazing in the field, I took Zara near them, and told her they were Billy Goats just like the ones in her book. She got very excited, looked at them intently and started making the Maaa Maaa Maaa sound like the goats’.

(Zara was making so much animal sounds that day, that at one point, G’s wife called him on the mobile and I could hear him say, “No that’s not a cat, that was a child”)

As for dinner, since G said he didn’t mind having local dinner even if it’s operated from a shed, we brought him to this famous steam fish shedrestaurant in Taman Segar. We ordered 2 steam fishes, steam egg, steam beancurd and a vege. Dinner was quick, since this was Zara’s first taste of fully flavoured adult food (all her home cooked porridge has no added salt or seasoning), she ate very fast, and was very happy.

Price of dinner, RM40. Cheap and good! (But later that night, we did feel that there was a wee bit too much MSG the restaurant has used.)

After dinner, we sent G back to Mandarin Oriental, and then we visited the Kinokuniya book shop in KLCC since it was only 7:30pm.

When we got home, it was about 9pm +, and Zara was getting very tired and fretful (only a short 30mins nap for the whole day). I wanted to just wipe and change her, but I found that she was pretty dirty from being out whole day. She got very angry when I showered her, and started screaming and shouting for a full 30mins, until she got so tired she drifted to sleep.

Daddy’s English boss, G, was in town, and we decided to meet him up for dinner on Saturday.

Zara who has been exposed to more English TV program (Wheels In The Bus, Bob The Builder) than American program, found G’s accent interesting. While G and Daddy were conversing in the car, she too started chatting in her own sing song liked baby language.

We did a quick dash into Low Yat Plaza before dinner to buy some iPod peripherals. G bought a trendy speaker set, car adapter for his wife’s iPod; and we got some blank CDs. I’m quite amazed at the number of peripherals that are available for an iPod, and boy, I do feel lucky not to own one!

G wanted to have Malay food for dinner, to play safe, we thought we’d better to go some proper restaurant for that rather than those road side tomyam warongs. We headed to Enak in Star Hill Gallery.

Starter was one dozen of satay; and then we ordered 4 dishes : Prawn Sambal, Chicken cooked in a light sourish sweetish sauce, otak-otak (but this is using cod with some fern leaves as stuffing), and vegetable fritters to eat with plain rice.

The food was very good, all in small portion, very refine tasting, not the type of food you get from the nasi campur (Malay: mix rice) shop.

Zara was asleep when we arrived, half way through dinner, I woke her up to have her porridge. She was however more interested in the Christmas trees as well as the other restaurants outside of Enak (compared to the deco in the other restaurants, Enak is very plain). Daddy and I have to take turns running after her, luckily, G too has a young daughter, and he understood what we are going through.

After playing for a while, Zara started sucking her thumb and leaned on me muttering, “Hgh Hgh” repeatedly (Hgh-Hgh is her way of saying milk milk). Now, where can I nurse her *slap head*? I asked the waitresses in the restaurant for direction to the nursing room, and they all looked stunt at me. There’s actually none in the entire building! I took a mental note, I have to write to YTL and let them know about this, do they think that there’s no posh nursing mothers (like me *ahem*) who will dine and shop here with their babies?

So here I am stuck with a hungry baby, what shall I do? I went up to the more secluded floors, found one floor with all the shops closed, took one of the sofa (they have bloody sitting lounge with sofas on each floor but no NURSING ROOMS!) and nursed her. It was a very public spot , but no one stopped on that floor or passed us for the whole 30mins we were there.

Zara got her fix, and she became better behaved. She was also willing to sit down and eat when fruits was served.

The bill, a whopping RM300 (including 3 beer, 1 juice and 2 coffee)!

I think it takes a mum to understand her child. Daddy doesn’t understand Zara most of the time; even when she’s hugging his legs and saying “Hug Hug” he doesn’t know that Zara was offering him a hug, and when I told him about it, he would go wide eye and exclaim, “oh, was she saying that?” Men.. They are soooo DUH!

I could see Zara brightening up when we could understand what she was trying to ‘communicate’, and gets frustrated when she tried to tell us something, and we just couldn’t figure out what she was saying (I get frustrated too, not just her).

Here is a typical situation that happened during her bed time :
Me : *laid Zara down next to me* Zara, come, drink milk milk
Zara : *suckled for 5 seconds, let go of the breast, shook her head vigorously* Urrrgh!
Me : You don’t want already? So fast?
Zara : *shook her head vigorously, swayed her arms around* Urrrrgh!
Me : *scratched head* What do you want?
Zara : *did the ‘more’ sign by pointing her index finger to her palm , shook her head vigorously, swayed her arms around* Urrrggh!
Me : Oh! You want mummy to sing is it?
Zara : *smiled and do the ‘more’ sign*
Me : *started singing*
Zara : *latched on and started suckling*
(Shake the head vigorously and sway her arms around is her way of dancing; boy, she’s creating some really hard ‘sign’ to understand)

These are other ‘conversations’ that took place:

Morning
Before I went to work, I wanted to nurse her.
Me : *carried her* Zara, come and have milk milk
Zara : *suckled for 5 seconds, let go of the breast, pat her belly* Pao Pao! (Chinese: full)
Me : How can you be pao pao so fast? Drink more! *pressed her head back to breast*
Zara : *suckled for another 5 seconds, let go of the breast, pat her belly* Pao Pao!
Me : *looked at her* Sure you are pao pao? Don’t want any more?
Zara : *shook head*
Me : *put her back down on the floor* Ok then, what do you want to do now?
Zara : *walked towards her biscuit container* Bis-KGH, Bis-KGH! (Biscuit)
Me : *rolled eye*

Evening
I was feeding Zara papaya, she took a bite, then walked away to touch some other things; and then walked back to me when she’d swallowed the papaya in her mouth.
Zara : *did her ‘more’ sign*
Me : *fed her* Must chew chew huh? (Such a naggy mum I am)
Zara : *walked away, almost tripped on something* Ah Buk! *smiled, steady herself, walked on*
Me : *smiled* Yeah you mabuk (Malay: Drunk) already, walked like that.

Zara’s toys collection is increasing. She has a variety of toys either inherited from King’s Wife’s kids or my kind friend (anybody who gives me things is kind). We seldom buy her toys, but when we do, we try to get her something which have educational value, and which also give her lots of play time (l.b. iPod Nano is definitely not one of them, not now anyway).

Her recent interest is in masak-masak (Malay: cooking set); she likes to hold a spoon, dips it into a cup, and pretends to feed herself or whoever is near her. I just got her a basic set, as I’m eyeing for my niece, Samantha’s collection. She’s going to be 9, she should be done with masak-masak soon, or so I hope.

My youngest sis went to Hong Kong Disneyland during the time Zara celebrated her birthday, so she didn’t attend Zara’s party. She brought something back for Zara though, however, we didn’t collect it until 2 days ago.

Besides a Disney hat, she got Zara a cuddly Love To Walk Winnie The Pooh but sadly nothing for me. The toy’s purpose I believe was to encourage toddlers to walk.

You turn the switch on, and Winnie The Pooh will start walking, while muttering, “Pooh Bear can walk.”
And then it’ll go faster, and it’ll say, “Faster Faster”.
If you dropped, it would say, “Oh O, Pooh Bear falls down”.
If you picked it up and held it, it would say, “Thank you. Pooh Bear loves you”

It says other things too, under different conditions. I still haven’t found out what other conditions make it talk or walk, and it didn’t come with a manual, so I guess we’ll just discover it along the way.

Zara loves it, that’s the most important thing. She giggled when the bear walked towards her. When the bear quickened its pace, she too started to stamp her feet excitedly. When it stopped talking, she picked it up and gave it a hug.

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So, here is the latest addition to her toy collection. Not sure how long she’ll be interested in Mr Pooh though.

(Fannie, I believe this is something that Ethyl will definitely love, Zara is not a fan of Pooh, in fact this is her first encounter with this ‘species’)

(btw, the shots above are my attempt on the DSLR; I still have lots to learn, but I realise the shots are very much sharper)

We spent the night at King’s Wife’s place, yet again, since Daddy was away.

Zara and I took the guest’s maid’s room as usual, and both Tuyam and King’s Wife’s maid took the girls’ room next to ours. After tucking Zara in at 9:30pm, and making sure she has pillows all around her to prevent her from accidentally falling, I went downstairs to the study to do some blog surfing.

I told Tuyam that I needed to ‘work’, and asked her to ‘listen out’ for Zara’s cry in the adjoining room when she went to bed.

There I was happily blog surfing, without Daddy or King’s Wife waiting for their turn. At about 11pm, I could hear some noises, a bit like wailing, penetrating the quiet night. The first thing I thought was ‘ghost’ (I’m always very scared to be downstairs alone when everybody is asleep, even in my own home). I could feel a chill down my spine. I stopped what I was doing, and tried to listen again. Shit! It was coming from upstairs, not ghost, but Zara crying! I quickly ran upstairs. The sound of her cry grew louder and louder as I ascended the stairs.

When I entered the room, I found Zara standing on the floor in the dark room. She probably had already been crying for a while, because her voice was coarse. I quickly scooped her up, turned on the lights, almost in a panic, wondered if she’d fallen from the bed and hurt herself.

“Zara, did you fall down?” Of course she didn’t know how to reply. She continued crying! I checked her head, no bumps no red patches, don’t think she knocked her head.
“Zara, where pain pain?” I asked her. She pointed to her chest. Her way of signing to indicate some where is hurting. I went on to check her arms, her legs, but there’s no sign that she’s hurt.
“Zara, scared scared or pain pain?” I asked further. She started patting her chest, an indication to say she’s scared.
“Mummy so sorry, mummy shouldn’t have left you alone in the room.”

All these while of ‘communicating’ to me, she was still crying, and shouting on top of her lungs. I carried her out of the room, so that I have more space to walk about and calm her.

Tuyam then stuck her head out from the girls’ room, “Nangis ya?” (Malay: Crying, is it?)
There was this very strong desire to lash at her, but because I have a wailing baby to calm, I just responded angrily, “You tak dengar ke?” (Malay: You didn’t hear it?).
“Tak, mari saya dukong” (Malay: No, come, let me carry her), she replied.
I just stared at her and said, “You balik tidur la, dia mana mahu you sekarang?” (Malay: You go back to sleep, she won’t want you now).
She stuck her head back into the room, and closed the door.

When Zara cried like this, it is very difficult to calm her. I patted her, rocked her, pacing up and down the corridor. She had her head leaning on my shoulder all the time, but she was still crying. I went back to the room and thought of lying her on the bed to nurse her, but the minute I lifted her away from my body, she wailed loudly. I kept calming her, “Mummy is here, don’t worry, mummy won’t leave you.” However, she just won’t let me separate her body from mine.

I started singing her lullaby, “Hush Little Baby don’t say a word, mummies going to buy you…..” She started calming down, still crying, but more of a sob, head still on my shoulder.

When I finished the song, I stopped and tried to lay her back on the bed again. She looked at me with teary eyes, and pointed her finger to her palm (her MORE sign). So I sang, again and again and again, every time I tried to stop, she would do the MORE sign.

After singing like 10times, I slowly placed her back on the bed, she didn’t protest now, but her hands clung to one of my arm, as though afraid I would leave her. So I laid next to her, arms around her, and patted her, kept telling her it’s alright, her sobs slowly turned to sniffles, and then she fell asleep, still with hands firmly around my arm.

I felt so very bad for the rest of the night, not knowing if she’d fallen or climbed down the bed on her own; not sure her cry was due to pain or fear, or probably both. What a bad mummy I’d been, placing her alone in the dark room and went blog surfing. I need to make sure my Baby Monitor is with me if I ever needed to leave her like that again.

Daddy likes to pace around the house when he’s on the phone, and guess who picked up his habit?

We found daddy’s non-functioning old mobile phone and gave it to Zara as a toy; here she was, behaving like she’s having some very important conversation on the phone, walking around like a busy executive (although she can’t quite work out where the mouth piece of the phone is yet).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0e_rfEojYs]