Wen Jia has started taking solid food

Wen Jia has taken solid food since Sunday 24-Feb.
In chinese calendar, 24-Feb was Wen Jia's 6th month. So we decided to get her to try her first bite of solid food - some kind of cereal porridge that we bought from the supermarket.
We have taken photo of her first few bites on this new food of hers. I will get them posted in my next posting.
She is now taking 2 meals a day, 2 tablespoon each.
Well, this marked another development milestone for Wen Jia.

Happy Chinese New Year

Today is the 12th day of Chinese New Year. We celebrate CNY this year with different spirit as this is our first year celebrating with Wen Jia around.
Our daughter is turning 6 months very soon. With year and this year alone, we have celebrated a few occations with her - Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year, and Valantine.
Though she is not able to appreciate so much the of celebrations, but i must say that we certainly enjoy having her by our side on all the celebrations.

Happy Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

Mum is taking care of Wen Jia

We have since 6th Jan got my mum here to help taking care of Wen Jia.
I was so worried that Wen Jia may not like mum as she has been recognizing people since 3 month old. She disliked the maid especially during night time.
Fortunately, she clicked with mum so much so that we believed that the initial days of mum taking care of her (during Siew Wei's confinement) counts as she seems to smile a lot with mum. Wen Jia became a happier child ever since mum was here.

We have started our first big challenge when Siew Wei went abroard for business two days ago. I have to take two days off just to ensure that mum can cope with the load alone. This is also to adjust myself for a lesser sleep time as I need to take care of her at night.

Home Improvement

We have engaged in activities aiming at creating a better home for Wen Jia. First of all, study room was set up at the room adjacent to dining area. A book shelf was bought and placed at the study room to ensure books and files are organised. Our study table, however will need some tidy-up as there are lots of loose items that need to be filed and placed in placed in proper order.
Next, we have on last week changed the lighting at our living area and all the rooms. New lights with warm white bulb have been installed to improve the ambiance and comfortablity of the house. At least the baby is now seeing the bright day light all the time, hopefully it is better for her eye and brain development.
Well, in one week or so, we will be organising our store room to have racks in place so that things are more organised and easily acceesible. Next, there are more to come in the pipeline.
The ultimate goal - a better environment for the three of us.

Mutiple faces of Wen Jia

Here is a showcase of how Wen Jia has shown her talent of putting up multiple facial expression within minutes. :)

Hiring a maid

We have filed an application for Indonesian maid recently, finally.
The decision was due to a few reasons:
- Siew Wei is allowed to work from home for her next project.
- We need to spend our quality time with Wen Jia after work.

The first reason will mean Siew Wei can still monitor the maid and how she is taking care of the baby.
The second reason is a bonus that we will be getting by having a maid clear most of the house work for us. This is something that we won't enjoy if Wen Jia would to be taken care by nanny.
Hiring a maid has really got something to do with luck. There are quite some bad experiencer, with a few exceptions. We are hoping that trust can be built over time between us and the maid that she can really be part of the family. Of course, it is easier said than done but we have just need to give it a try.
The keyword: respect. Respect and realise that she is human being and human being are by nature bound to a lot of complicated sentiment. More so if she is away from home for a two years "assignment". So, just need to put ourselves into her shoes and try to treat her base on that understanding, and hope that she can repay us with kindness as well.

Looking for babysitter

After taking care of the baby on her own for about 40 days, it is time for Siew Wei to look for a babysitter for Wen Jia. Time flies and we really need to be quick so that we can still "shop" and change nanny should we fail to find a good suit for Wen Jia.
We went to visit one on last Sunday and have seriously considered to whether give it a try. The woman at her age of 50+ seems to be kind and gentle with a lot of experience taking care of baby. She is indeed not a calculative person with a lot of flexibility given to us in terms of timing and schedule. I know she will treat Wen Jia well as well. But, we still have concern over the environment and house condition of the nanny. While still actively looking for some other options, we have put this lady into our list should we not able to find a better one.
By the way, we have ruled out possiblity of getting an Indon maid for our jewel. We are still not comfortable and not confident with the service that an Indon maid can possibly provide when come to child caring. Quite a sad thing thanks to the wide coverage of negative news so far on this group of people.
Lets see what is coming out from this. We know we have to act fast, but we will certainly be careful in making every single decision, as we want to give Wen Jia the second best that we can (with the best of course to take care of her personally) :)