Who Said I Needed Sleep?

Oh my goodness, I think I could scream from fatigue. Maybe cry, is more like it. I'm so tired today. My daughter, who I will refer to as S from now on, cried for 20 min before finally falling to sleep. My new baby, who I will call A started out pretty good. He was asleep by 645pm and then I fed him around midnight which seemed to delay his waking til about 430am but then of course, he didn't want to go back to sleep! He fussed, he chatted, he cried, wouldn't take his pacifier and wouldn't nurse! Ugh! Finally around 6am, he nursed a bit and then finally fell asleep. Hallelujah! Only thing is, the rest of the house wakes up around 630 and of course, A wants to join in on the action. Being as tired as he was, he was tired by 745am and screaming bloody murder to go to sleep. He slept for 2 hours and I forced him to wake up at 10. Of course, I wanted to nap, but it's just not meant to be. Maybe when he's ready for his next nap, I can go down with him and S will be tired too...

Weekend without Daddy

Luckily in Hong Kong, we are able to have a helper live with us. She's been amazing especially since number 2 arrived. Trying to juggle a newborn and 1 and 1/2 year old is quite difficult. So having a helper is great especially if hubby needs to go away for the weekend for work.

Hubby left us yesterday for Taiwan so we don't get our usual full English brekkie made by him :) So today, we made cottage cheese pancakes. Yummy! My daughter enjoys them, especially being able to dip them in a little river of maple syrup. I enjoy them just as much as she does. Also, today, after a painless bedtime last night, she slept in! Sleeping in for her is getting up after 630am! Yay!

Naptime was a bit weird though today--she cried for about 10min and then complete silence...for about 40min and then I hear a "mommy, mommy". I open the door and everything was thrown onto the floor--all her toys and an empty box of baby wipes...all of the wipes!!! Her bed was soaked from all the wipes! Ugh! Not even sure if she slept a wink. Which brings us to the, thank goodness for helpers! She's took my daughter out for a couple hours now to burn some of her energy so that hopefully tonight is just as painless as yesterday and now I can spend some quiet time with my little bub.

Cranberry and white chocolate cookies (Annabel Karmel)

YUMMMMMMYYY is all I can say about these delicious cookies I made yesterday with my daughter. I decided to try some baking yesterday with my little one. She wasn't as excited to help me out this time, but I made them anyway :) Super easy and surprisingly, all the ingredients could be found at our nearby grocery store. The recipe makes 20 or so cookies, depending on how big you roll your cookie dough balls.

150g (5 1/4 oz) plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
25g (1oz) ground almonds
150g (5 1/4 oz) soft brown sugar
50g (2oz) porridge oats (I used quick cooking oats)
50g (2oz) dried cranberries
40g (1 1/2 oz) white chocolate (I broke up a Lindt chocolate bar and used 60g)
150g (5 1/4 oz) butter
1 large egg yolk or 2 small egg yolks

Step 1 Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas5

Step 2 Sieve together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the ground almonds, brown sugar, porridge oats, cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

Step 3 Melt the butter butter in a small pan (I just put in microwave and stirred a couple times for about 20sec each time). Stir this into the dry ingredients together with the egg yolk. Mix well, then using your hands, form into walnut-sized balls and arrange on 2 large non-stick baking sheets (In HK, we only have a table top oven, so I used 2 pieces of baking paper and put on the tray, swapping the paper each time). Gently press them down to flatten slightly (whoops, I didn't do this), leaving space between them for the biscuits to spread. Bake in the oven for 12 min, then remove and allow to cool on a wire rack. Just watch them and as we could have taken ours out even sooner so they would stay chewier longer! Enjoy!

I found this book, My Kitchen table series, Annabel Karmel 100 Family Meals at Dymocks or also available on the Amazon website as the kindle edition.

This brings me to a couple of my favourite baby, kids of all ages recipe sites:
Weelicious
Wholesome Baby Food recipes

Day 2

Bedtime was relatively painless last night...yippee!!!  Today hasn't been too bad either except for the meltdown at lunchtime when I wouldn't allow her to play in the kitchen while my helper was preparing lunch.  Kitchens here in HK are just too small for safe exploration in the kitchen area while cooking.  Anyways, after we negotiated having lunch in the bumbo chair...she allowed me to feed her lunch and get her ready for bed.  However, upon entering her bedroom, she started to realize what was going on...and started to cry.  Luckily, she only cried for 5min and settled into sleep.  She also was ok with the clipped soother.  I think we won't clip it more for at least another week.  Hopefully her nap is a bit longer than yesterday (45min).  She has soccer tots this afternoon so I want her to be well rested before that. 

"New Dummy" day 1

So it's naptime and we've clipped the dummy.  She looked at it and gave it back to me with this puzzled look on her face.  I said, this is yours, and gave her the other one that is also clipped.  She's NOT happy at all.  It's 1230 and the crying begins...

1237 and there seems to be silence...phew!  Will see how things go tonight...

Meltdowns and timeout

So now we are entering the "terrible twos"....and we need to think about discipline and trying to dodge these horrible tantrums and meltdowns.  My husband and I think a lot of it comes down to frustration at not being able to communicate exactly what she needs or wants.  So, we've been using the Signing Times videos which are excellent--she's picked up a few signs and also even some words.




We also started reading a book recommended to me by a very good friend called, Positive Discipline. So far so good.  It really helps you understand where your toddler is coming from and what her developmental stage is and what we can expect.  We had been using time out when she hit her baby brother or one of us and it seemed like she understood, but maybe she didn't really understand the reasoning for her her time out.  In the book, they explain that time out shouldn't be used for punishment and how it is explained, it does make sense.  We've started to use time out as just that... some time out from whatever might be bothering her so sometimes I sit with her and sometimes she just sits in her chair in her room with some books.

It can be very tough though with meltdowns....still working on that and need to keep reading to find out how to deal with that....

Midnight Poos and Diaper rashes

So we're in day 6 and we have given in...well, sort of anyway.

We had screaming at midnight and when she wouldn't settle on her own, I went in to investigate what all the fuss was about...well, it was a midnight poo and a major diaper rash from her poo.  Poor thing!  I think this was due to the 4 incisors that have started to poke through her sore gums.  So after changing her diaper, I tried to put her down, but as usual, she is fighting it with everything she's got.  I lay down on a little mattress next to her and try to pretend to sleep, but every time I think she's fallen asleep, I move and she sits up and starts to cry again.  Eventually, after about an hour of this, I call on daddy to help out as I know my younger baby will be up for his feed at any moment.

After doing some research on the internet for weaning the dummy, we decided to give it back to her and then go about the weaning off of it a little differently.  At naptime, after screaming for 10-15 min, we gave her old dummy intact and then tonight we will try poking a hole in her dummy and see how she will react with her "new" and "damaged" dummy.

Tossing the Dummy

Soothers, pacifiers, dummies, binkies...many names for the prop we as parents choose to help soothe our little ones.  For newborns, it is used to help satisfy that need to suck and to help settle them.  Some babies get attached to their thumbs and some get attached to the pacifier.  For us, our little girl didn't really need a soother to go to sleep in the beginning.  It wasn't until she turned 1 and we went overseas that she or maybe it was us, became dependent on it for soothing her to go to sleep.

Now that she is turning 20 months, we decided to try and take it away from her.  We are on day 5 now and it seems she is still crying herself to sleep...the longest has been 30min and then waking in the night crying/whining for her soother.  I feel like the bad mom every night when I let her cry and scream until she falls asleep.  Yesterday I started to second guess myself and thought maybe I should have waited for her to get rid of it herself?  Then I tried to remind myself that it will get harder if we wait longer.  Argghhhh...today, she fought her nap, but only cried 10min before falling asleep.  Hopefully, tonight will be better, crossing fingers....

Introduction

I've decided to start a blog because I thought it would be a good way to journal my adventures of parenthood.  It might also help me regain some of the brain cells that I feel that I've lost after becoming a mom for the first and second time.  I'm now a proud mother of an adorable 20 month old little girl and a cherubic 4 month old little boy.  I'm a 35 year old Canadian Chinese woman living in Hong Kong and on an indefinite maternity leave.