My little baby is 8 months old. How is it that times just flies? He's not quite a little baby anymore!

The past week has been a week of change. All of a sudden, he's my lil koala, clinging to me all the time! Not that I mind because he's so cuddly but it's just hard when we've got so much to do. He used to just fall asleep on his own when I put him down but suddenly, when I turn off the lights, he instinctively knows that it's bedtime and starts crying! Aiyo, he'll complain but eventually still falls asleep. All kids are like that, at different points of their lives, they'll try to see if they can push the boundaries and if we as the parents keep to it, they'll fall back to the routine. I think he's also starting to have separation anxiety. He's looking out for familiar people.

He's sprouting two more teeth. He's also starting to crawl somewhat and trying to pull himself up the table. He's somehow able to pick up all the dirt from the carpet and he's always got stray hairs, bits of paper, tissues and stickers in his mouth. He is starting to say "mummmmm mummmm", ''mmmma mmmaaa", "da da da" and "che che che" indiscriminately.

A couple of weeks back, we got Pastor Chung to dedicate Levi to the Lord and he prayed for Levi. I believe he's gonna be a steady man of faith.

This is Levi and his friend, Jamie on the base. They are only a week apart and have practically grown up together on the base the past few months. They say Jamie is the smiley one and Levi is the serious one and his smiles are like gold and got daily quota one. Friends on the base are always trying their best to get Levi to smile. It's super funny to see what adults would do to get babies to smile or laugh.

But the nice thing is that he smiles for us and Sophie can make him laugh like nobody can. That's all that matters.

Happy 8 months old little precious!

Isn't he just the cutest?

This little one LOVES his food. As soon as he sees someone eating,
which happens through the day in our household, you'll hear him LOUD
and CLEAR. So we've been sharing with him everything we've been eating
- bread, rice, fruits, etc. He's been eating food that we wouldn't
have dreamt of giving to Sophie at the same age! Yep second kid
syndrome. But it actually works out pretty good coz Sophie and Levi
can share food. Sometimes he eats more than her!

This little one LOVES paper. He loves the printed word. Somehow he's
not into his brightly coloured toys made of cloth or plastic. He likes
books, paper, esp magazines pages that are brightly coloured. He's
always eyeing my magazines. Hmmmm....

This little one has just started babbling. I wonder if he will speak
as soon as Sophie. It does seem like he will coz he's got really clear
syllabus! He's going "pa pa pa pa" already. Very very cute!

Love him to bits!

From a month ago, I started following quite strictly to the Gina Ford
schedule in an attempt to try to get Levi to sleep through the night.
Hmmmm it hasn't really worked yet but he's been really good with the
day schedule and sleeping well for his naps.

Picture of James with Levi and our speaker on Parenting, Ian Hooker, with Jamie, our friend's son, also six months old.

My baby is six months old! He's got two bottom teeth, sitting up quite
steadily on his own, happily flipping front to back and back to front,
able to launch out of his bumbo seat (wasn't quite expecting that one
so soon!), flips fast enough to fall off our bed if we fall asleep and
are not watching, and he's happily eating his solids 2 meals a day.

Wow, that's a great deal for a six month old! Way to go lil Didi, we
love you so much!

Side note (this is for me when I've totally forgotten the difficult
parts when he's grown up): Breastfeeding has been a great challenge
with Levi. I've had mastitis twice in the past six months and
constantly battling with blocked ducts. I think it's the way he feeds.
I'm almost at the verge of completely weaning him. Got a tin of
formula on standby. I've been thru 3 rounds of antibiotics - twice for
mastitis and once for toothache and he's been through 1 round of
antibiotics himself when he had the skin infection. I feel really bad
that he has had to suffer the consequences of that e.g. runny poo.
We'll see how that goes.

Levi is still waking in the night, at least once. The past week, he's
been up twice a night - once at 2ish and then 4/5ish. We've eliminated
one feed and I'm only feeding him once at 4/5ish, James gets up to put
him back to bed when he wakes up at 2ish. Oooo so tiring. Sigh but
when the morning comes and I see how cute he is, I forget how tired I
am. :)

The little one has been really cute. So glad that we decided to have No. 2.

Since school has started, we've been super busy. Levi comes with us to
class. We do not have enough creche staff to look after both Jamie
(our friend's 5 month old baby) and Levi so both Emily and I have to
juggle being full time mummy and full time classroom staff. Woah! It's
been a challenge. Especially since both the babies are finding their
voices! Sometimes their voices are louder than the speaker's! Oops.

For naps Levi has been sleeping in his pram. That was part of the plan
when we bought the Mountain Buggy. It's so big that even Sophie can
sleep in it. Ha! We kinda knew that we would have to look after Levi
while being in class. If he goes into the pram in time, he sleeps
pretty easily and can sleep up to 2 hrs. Mostly just 1 hr.

Sometimes we're so busy through the day that I forget if he's had a
nap or whether he's had a feed! Ha! Ok not so funny but it's been
pretty crazy trying to juggle it all but thank God it's starting to
fall in place and we're getting more used to it. He's very easily
distracted when feeding so instead of feeding him in the classroom, I
now go into a side room to do that. That has been really good because
it's also our one-on-one time whereas previously I was just putting
him to sleep and feeding him without paying much attention to him.

His daytime sleeps are pretty regular but his nighttime sleeps have
been horrendous! He did like 2 days of 7pm-7am and that was it! Most
days he's still waking up 1-3 times in the night! Eeeks! I can hardly
wake up in the morning and we have meetings at 8am. I can't figure why
he still keeps waking in the night. We have attributed it to a few
reasons and are in the process of figuring it out.

He has started eating solid food! We decided to start him because he
was still crying even after being breastfed. This lil big boy wants
more! The first two days everything that we put into his mouth kept
coming back out again but by the 3rd day, he got it and is now really
enjoying his food. In fact he complains when the food's all gone!
Looks like we've got another eater in our hands. :) Sophie ate really
well as a baby too.

His fav thing to do is to pull my hair. He's got a really strong grip
and loves to hang onto me for dear life.

He's also sprouted two lower teeth. That might be one of the reason
why he keeps waking up.

It's been really precious to see Sophie and Levi playing together. His
face lights up when she comes into the room. And she's always making
him laugh. Very very adorable to watch.

Love this lil one to bits, feel like he's growing up a little too fast!

Levi is now sleep trained! Woo hoo!

We've been patting him to sleep but he's getting heavier and I can feel the effect on my neck and lower back. No good. It was also taking longer and longer to pat him to sleep for his naps. So James suggested to try sleep training him. I was planning to wait till after my parents leave to do it because things will change again when they come.

But a few nights ago, I accidentally sleep trained him. I was real tired, even after I fed him, he still didn't fall asleep. Normally at bedtime, he'll fall asleep after feeding and he'll continue sleeping when I put him down. But he didn't this time so I just left him awake and left the room. And he fell asleep on his own, no crying! So I thought I'll try again the next day.

Consecutively for a few naps, he cried for 30 mins (I almost gave up at this point, I'm terrible at this, James kept me to it), next nap 20 mins and next nap 10 mins and then since then, he hardly cries when I put him down and falls asleep on his own! Brilliant!

So the little one now goes down for his naps and bedtime with his sleeping bag, 2 rounds of Jesus Loves Me and I'll say "Nap nap time", big kiss and down he goes.

Yay! No need to pat him to sleep anymore! Now just need to figure why he keeps waking in the night. He's really strange. One night he sleeps for 6 hrs straight and next night he wakes every 2 hrs! Very strange. We'll see how it goes tonight.

UPDATE: Woo hoo! Last night, after putting him to bed at 7pm, he only woke up to fed at 11pm, 2am and then 7.30am! YAY!!!!! Hopefully this continues and soon he'll drop the 2am one and just wake up a bit earlier. That I can deal with. For the first time in 3 months I woke up in the morning feeling like I actually slept in the night. I figured out the problem - when he stirs and cries, I almost immediately go pick him up to feed. He woke up at 4am again crying and this time I left him and he went back to sleep after a few mins and the crying was not too loud. Then he stirred at 6.30am but I just left him and finally I cannot tahan, needed to feed him so at 7.30 when he stirred again, I fed him. Praying that it'll continue like this. It's a bit harder to sleep train when he sleeps in the same room.

The two faces of our little one.. actually the one on the right would have made a great passport pic!

Our baby boy is 3 months old!

I'm not sure how heavy he is now (he was 6.5kg before we left for V2) but he's definitely big! Everywhere we went in Vanuatu, they went "fat fat, fat fat". They didn't mean it in a mean way but it's their way of saying teasing a big cute baby in their culture. Even in NZ, the people say he's big so I guess even compared to a kiwi baby, he's big! One thing for sure, there's no hiding him discreetly when I'm breastfeeding him or carrying him in a sling (which we don't use anymore coz he's just too heavy).

He's a talker. Seriously. If you think Sophie can talk at 4 yrs old, you shd see Levi at 3 months! He'll keep talking non-stop if you keep talking to him. Super cute! He makes all these sounds that makes me go "awwww....". If he's crying, we just have to engage his eye contact and try to talk to him, he'll eventually stop! It's like he just needs to be listened to. He's usually quite easy to be calmed down, unless he's way past his bedtime. Ok I will never understand how 2 parents who don't talk a lot ended up with 2 children that are so talkative!

He's sleeping a bit better in the night now but it varies from night to night. Once in V2, he did a 7 hr sleep stretch... but only once. Most nights he still wakes every 3-4 hrs to feed. I'm hoping he'll do a 5 hr stretch soon coz it's really testing my ability to keep sane during the day with a super inquisitive and active 4 yr old and 3 month old that needs to be patted to sleep.

I still can't believe 3 months have just flown by. It's really such a blessing to have Levi. Having a boy is such a different experience. Very cool. I'm really thankful.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13247131@N04/5246322816/

Sorry for the slow down in posts. We came back on Wednesday and have been readjusting to being home.

But main reason why I've been a little more busy is because the little one caught an skin infection while in Vanuatu. He's alright and it's starting to heal. However, it's infectious so I've gotta take care to wash all his stuff separately and keep changing his sheets. The doc prescribed both local and oral antibiotics.

He's been a bit more grouchy but still coping pretty well. Thank God that he's good at taking his meds, not too fussy there.

Please keep us in prayer. Very heart pain to see him like that. Will update more soon!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13247131@N04/5246302346/

A special shout out to our good friends Es and Sue before I forget.

THANKS FOR THE T-SHIRTS!

Funny how it arrived just in time for the trip! I realised I didn't have much summer clothes for Levi and also they were just the right size (3-6 mths). It's so comfy and easy to wear and of course, uber trendy! Thanks heaps. Save me from washing everyday!

P/s: Levi is 11 months weeks old today and just before we left, the Plunket nurse weighed him. He was 6.48 kg! My arms are aching from having carry and pat him to sleep. When we return, it's time to sleep train! But he's been doing real well, super cute. I think he's in love with me because he bursts into big smiles whenever I look at him. So so so cuteeeeee

P/s: And yes, this will be my last post for tonight. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13247131@N04/5165649257/

I'm quite a scardy cat and tend to avoid the hard stuff. But God seems to delight in pushing me to the edge, like what a good Father does. The bible says in James 1: 2-4: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Yesterday I had to do one of the most challenging thing in my life thus far. I had to pack up, drive with two kids up to Auckland n meet James there. It is prob easy for most but it was harder for me for a couple of reasons. One, one of my two kids is a newborn. Two, I only started driving in June. Three, I have never driven long distance to an unknown location without James helping to direct me.

But but but with the grace of God, a praying husband, relatively obedient n independent 4 yr old, a newborn who slept n woke up at the right times, google maps, a kind Shell attendent who directed us when google maps failed to pick up info of a road closure that threw me completely off n finally the familiar M sign that assured us of a familiar menu, toilets, a playground n even changing table. What an adventure! We left at 330 n finally got to the motor lodge at 7. Took a bit longer than usual coz we took a break when we missed a turning and got lost but very glad when we got there.

Thank you Lord and thank you all for praying. I'm writing on the way to V2.