Gabe Says in "Dear Uncle En"

Uncle En gave me a present, flown all the way from aussieland. Mummy says I'd better wear it now or I'll outgrow it soon. So we took a picture to send it to you, Uncle En. Thank you for the present!! Is blue my color?

Gabe's 1st Christmas

This first christmas seems to hold more special meaning for us as parents than for this wide-eyed babe who has absolutely no idea what is going on. Except he knows what are christmas trees.

We thought we'd be good and took him for a walk down Orchard Road.

"Sheep? I prefer fingers."

Sizing up the wise men. Fyi, they are real men.

Christmas day was a busy day. For starters, we took gabe to pay his respects to his maternal great-grandparents, who passed on in 2006. Tai gong and tai po's grave sports a garden, which waigong maintains meticulously.

Celebrations were held at waigong and waipo's house. Here's gabe and uncle boy: real men lounge on the couch this way.

With Nikki jie jie, or is it auntie Nikki. We are one confused family.

Doesn't seem too interested in girls eh. Let's wait a few years.

Loving the christmas scene

Gabe with his second cousins

His very own loot back home

All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth

Haha! I never thought I'd be able to really say this but yes, it happened to gabe! In the span of about a month and a half, three teeth sprouted: first his lower tooth, and then the two front teeth. The second of the two front teeth cut through his gums and grew out around christmas, so well, there you have it!

Bye Bye

Although we have been waving his arm since the beginning, the little boy never showed any single sign of being able to do it on his own, not even at ten months.

Then suddenly, on Christmas Day, he decided to.

So now he can wave bye bye to you when you go off. : )

He Understands and Responds to...

Bus (top of the list)
Taxi/ car
Christmas tree
Lie down and sleep
Sit down
No!
Milk (violent reaction on this)
Where are your socks?
No no and wait wait
Wait
Please let go
Gai gai (go out)
Mummy help (to pull the shirt over his head, etc)
Who's in the mirror?
Cold (he'll reach for the cup)
Hot (he will not reach for the cup)
Change pampers
Counting (he'll start getting excited and expect you to start)
Alphabets (he'll start getting excited and expect you to start singing)
No no sek sao ji i.e. no eating of your fingers (which he now refuses to obey)

He also recognises the names of some of his toys i.e. when I say the name of a certain toy, he will turn his attention toward it.

He's also starting to experiment with speech! How time flies...

The Mobile Child

Gabe has transited to the next level of mobility: crawling. Add this to the ability of pulling himself up to/ along most surfaces, it's one undesirable situation we have at hand. Being alone with him at home, I can't really watch him round the clock, so I have to rely on dashes into the kitchen or the rooms, or instructions to stay where he is, or increasingly, just me getting used to a steady pace of life and leaving him to fiddle with his toys.

But whatever the case, this boy has been busy. Busy touching everything, tugging at everything, crawling everywhere, trying out stunts like weird turns from crawling to sitting position, bending over to look at things below. So it is not surprising that he's now the king of injuries. He got his first bokok last week, trying out a crawling-forward stunt. What exactly the stunt is, I really don't know. I only remember stepping out of the threshold of my kitchen and watching his head kok the floor.


Thereafter, it seems that he must have some encounter everyday. The object of the encounter varies. His other major bruises came from the dining table chair, the coffee table, the day bed and of course, the master bed. The common and less serious ones can be from the interior door of a car, his cot and the floor. Yesterday he really looked like he got beaten up by some gangsters, with three bruises on his face, one near the eye.

The most queer phenomenon is that he doesn't seem to develop a phobia towards the objects that give him his blue blacks. He'll just gamely repeat the stunts as if those crying episodes never happened.

So if you next see him with battle scars, you won't have to ask me what happened ;p

Horror note: He can reach the top of the dining table!! Just the edge, of course.

The Milk History

1st month: Bm + supplementary Fm when necessary

2nd to 4th month: Exclusively on Bm

4th & 5th month: Bm and cereal

6th month: Bm and porridge

7.5th month: Half Bm, half Fm, porridge (due to tonsillitis)

9.5th month: Exclusively on Fm, porridge, and whatever other solids he's moved on to. Baby-initiated weaning.

Interestingly, the chubbiest point of gabe's life was when he was exclusively breastfed.