Amani is 9 Months Old

reaching the 9 month milestone means a wider variation of food. food is about the only thing i can write about with amani because she doesn't do much of anything but eat. babbles, she does. play with toys, she does. grabs things and pulls on them, that she definitely does. but most in stationary mode.

she doesn't move much, there goes my dream of seeing her crawl and shuffle. she does move. but mainly in 360 degree turns. like a lazy susan. that's what we call her - our not so little lazy susan.

ok so she's shown some improvements. sorry amani, you have, mummy's just being dramatic. she's pushed herself up, she's mastered straightening her arms and pushing her chest up. she's also sitting down, able to balance herself left to right, front and back. she can control her fall from her sitting position so that she goes down slowly and not with a thump. she's grabbing on to her feet. yes, she's putting her feet in her mouth, that bit. i'm happy. she's getting there, she's trying.

for her 9th month, i made her some special food. i'm still lazy to do much and i'm sticking to the same ol' same ol' recipes but adding a few new food here and there for variety. amani's drinking only 2 bottles a day now. yup, that little. both times when she's about to go off to dreamland. once before her afternoon nap and once before bedtime. her breakfast is heavy because she has breakfast a couple of hours after she wakes up, that's almost 12 hours of no meals, between her bedtime bottle and her breakfast. so i make really heavy oatmeal. sometimes with apples, sometimes with bananas, sometimes with carrots and potatoes and cucumbers or anything that's from her dinner that can't be stored in her dinner container - ie i made a bit too much and have a small amount that can't be a full dinner meal so it becomes breakfast.

for her dinner i've made quite a bit of types of food. i've started to add more chicken (she had chicken before but in smaller quantities), i've added beef and i've recently added salmon. she's also taken to peas in her meals. and spinach. and i've also added french beans when i make them for our family meal. i think i'll add some dates and extra virgin olive oil to her meals this month, and cheese too, to see how she takes them. i'm a softie and have been blending her food a bit too fine for a 9-month-old. i'll do some coarse blending so that she can exercise her munching and gnawing this month.

amani's due for her check up this month. maybe she'll be given the first dose of her mmr jab, i don't know. can't wait to see how much she weighs though. i think she's getting leaner and longer. hopefully she doesn't put on too much weight.

8 Month Old Amani

january passed by real fast because of the start of the school year and then february flew by and in a blink of an eye, my little amani safiyaa is a big 8 months. there's nothing much going on in a life of an 8-month-old except sleep and eat, so this is all about her sleeping and eating. well, of course, poo too but we'll not get into that.

after that rocky patch of 430am wake ups, amani's been an absolute angel when it comes to sleeping. a good 10-hour sleep at night, with a bit of kicking and shoving of her blanket, a good hour nap late in the morning and a solid two-hour nap in the afternoon. that's not including the short naps she takes while in the car ferrying abangs to school. all in all, she probably gets around 14 hours of sleep a day, which is just nice according to babycentre.

i'm absolutely all for babies and children and even teenagers who get a good amount of sleep. other than the selfish me getting my me-time, its also because the grow and regain their energy while sleeping. my boys would take afternoon naps when they were younger. now that they're grown, the afternoon naps are non-existent but they have an early bedtime and weekends are for them to have a good lie in, if they have no activities.

while amani's sleeping habits are just awesome, her eating was not on the same level. i mean, yes, she eats and she eats a lot and is on the chunky side but i'm not all that happy with it. because of the rocky patch she had when she turned 7 months, i was on a mission to feed her and feed her food. i gave her porridge and porridge and porridge. twice a day, full bowl. complemented by full bottles. its good, she was full, she slept, she slept a lot in fact. but no, i was wrong. it made her weak and inactive. the fault was all mine. i pumped too much heavy food into her to get her to sleep through the night that it took away her activeness and her learning and i feel, slowed down her development a bit.

when she started solids, it was carrots and sweet potatoes and potatoes and broccoli and apples and bananas and avocado and all the beautiful fruits and veggies and it turned to bowls of chicken porridge last month. so i flipped the page back to fruits and veggies. i stopped the rice and gave her sweet potatoes as a substitute. i made sweet potatoes, carrots, chicken and peas for her dinner and gave her oatmeal with either banana or apple for her breakfast. i was a bit scared initially, thinking she wont be full but the sweet potatoes was a good substitute for the rice and she's well fed. in fact, she loves her fruit and veggies more as they have more taste than the plain porridge.

although its only been 3 days but the change in her is magnificent.  she seemed more active, she looks more lean, she moves around more, she sleeps on her side (which is super because after her porridge she would usually just lie down on her back, unmoving and sleep). she's more active in her bath when previously she could just sleep through her bath time. she laughs and babbles a lot in the car. she calls out to people. she's happy with longer tummy time. yes, only 3 days but its been an active 3 days. i'm not against porridge or anything but my reason for changing her diet was wrong and i wanted to make amends for that. she was happy with fruits and veggies and there was no reason to change her diet in the first place.

let's hope there'll be more positive changes as the month progresses and then there'll be more for me to update in her monthly entries.

Happy Seven Months Amani

she's an older baby now. very, very different from 6-7 months ago, when she would just cry and cry and cry. and put my on edge with worry and tiredness and stress.

she's such a fluffy baby now. she smiles so so much, she babbles so so much, she eats so so much. amani loves eating, like totally loves everything i give her. i started with carrots and carried on with all sorts of veggies with carrots. she's taken apples with carrots, sweet potatoes with carrots, potatoes with carrots, butternut squash with carrots and her latest, broccoli with carrots. by the time she's had her solid for a good month and is ok with a few fruits and vegs, i took out the carrot and introduced her to a wider menu. i would make porridge as her basic but this time her porridge contains chicken (soon salmon) and spinach. and then the fruits and veggies as accompanies. the porridge can last about 5 days and the veggies for about 3. that way the basic would remain the same but i can experiment with the accompanies.

her food seem to fill up her tummy really well so i decreased her formula to just 2 bottles a day. both, before she sleeps...one before her afternoon nap and one before bedtime.

it worked initially. she'd be full and happy and slept well. then i don't know what happened. she started her 4.30am wake ups. i'm used to her changing her sleeping pattern slightly, every 2 weeks or so. she'd have night feeds once every 2 weeks when that happens. but this one went on. and on and on. it came up to 4 nights, then 5, then i was screaming in frustration. what happen???

so i upped her bottles again. but this time, i gave her half bottles at each feed. she's get 5oz after breakfast at 10ish, then 5oz at lunch at 2ish, and one more after her dinner at 7ish. then a full (sometimes she doesn't finish, though) at bedtime. its been 4 days and it seems to work. no more 4.30 morning feeds.

apart from her food intake, amani's been very relaxed. a bit too relaxed for me. i can't help but look at amira at the same age and going, why aren't you doing this amani? amira's already sitting and pulling her body forward at this age, while amani's content with just lying down. even during her tummy time she'd roll over so that she's on her back. she doesn't move much when she's sleeping and stays in place. she doesn't move much when she's lying down on my bed while asyraf made 2 rounds in his second month. she just stays put...except for her legs. those are constantly kicking and shoving but that's it.

having said that, amani is super alert. her eyes follow everyone everywhere, her mouth babbles non-stop, she calls out to everyone when she's awake...pick me up, pick me up. her hands and fingers are constantly moving, she grasping things, reaching for things, holding on to mummy's and kakak's fingers.

amani's settled her first batch of immunisation. she's up for her MMR and chicken pox at 9 and 12 months and her fourth pneumococcal around the same time. with all the virus around i'm very worried and keep doing a countdown until she's gotten most of her jabs. at her 6th month jab (triple antigen) she weighed a whopping 7.9kg. i read that by a baby's first year she should triple her birth weight. well, she's ticked that then and she's still got another half a year to go.