mylène daily

As a multicultural family, we find ourselves confronted with different views on particular matters sometimes. Even though globalisation is starting to rule the world, some cultural differences still exist ..... luckily.

Shiqi told me about a Chinese website she discovered recently. She was quite enthousiastic about it, because it provided links to lots of useful information. As it turned out, the site also paid attention to the question of how to develop your baby's intellectual skills.
This triggered me. I had noticed already before, that in Asia (particularly in China, Korea and Japan) parents are very much occupied with this question, which sometimes leads to bizar situations (at least in the eyes of most Europeans). I think many of you have heard about Japanese who try to teach their unborn geniuses mathematics by playing Bach during pregnancy. I thought it would make a nice subject for a post on this blog.

Just to see whether my thoughts were correct, I checked out some German and Dutch parent/baby sites. My preliminary conclusion regarding the differences between China and Europe regarding raising your baby:
In Europe we tend to focus more on understanding how baby's develop and on finding ways to cater for their needs in different stages of their development, rather than focussing on explicit techniques to stimulate particular intellectual skills, like in China.

As I know that we have both Chinese and European readers, I'd like to invite you to post your comments on this issue here. We might get an interesting discussion.

Given the fact that Mylène really does not like to take a bath, the pictures I took last week, look surprisingly cute. She must have felt that they would probably be published online, and put up with the water and the fuss.

I admit that I usually find some very urgent things to do when it's Mylène's bathing time. Usually, these urgent matters that require my immediate attention are NEVER in the bathroom; I don't know why! So, Shiqi has to take care of it allone, most of the times.

I do feel guilty about that, a bit. Perhaps these nice pictures, make up a bit for that?

Another month has past! And Mylène is again bigger, heavier, smarter and more beautiful than one month ago. This time, I was not there to celebrate the occasion, as I was on a business trip to Stuttgart. I have written this before, but I really regret not being able to experience all these exciting moments. All in all, though, I think I should not complain. Being away for the night is an exception, and on normal working days I can usually make it home at reasonable times. I hope, Shiqi and Mylène are not complaining either ;-)

So, what is the resume, after two months? The frequent visitors of this web page will probably have read more detailed decriptions of the following points, but for those of you who only browse the headlines and watch the pictures, I will wrap it up:

• Mylène can smile very well, and rewards us with that every day
• She can see quite sharp now, and follows small moving objects with her eyes and head
• Sometimes, she turns her head in the direction of sounds she hears
• She does not like lying on her belly, and refuses to join in any belly position gymnastics. In general, regarding physical and motor capabilities she seems to be behind a bit (inherited from whom? .... :-)).
• She plays with her tongue, and even imitates this, when we do it in front of her
• She discovered her hands, and sucks on them often, preferably while lying on the commode
• The noises she makes are becoming more and more varied. Especially her crying & complaining repertoire is showing great developments.
• Clothwise, she is at size 62 now.
• Hairwise, she used to be better prepared for winter ... no pony tale for a while, I think.
• She slept through the night two times already last week (from 23:00 - 6:00).

What's in store for the next month? Read all about in the upcoming posts of Mylène Daily!

Today, the family went out; to Paderborn. In the way I write this, you might ask yourself, whether it is such a special thing to go out. In our case, it was: after getting ready (which takes about one hour) we stepped into the car, drove off, and after driving for a few minutes realised that it had been months since we went out to go shopping together. And for Shiqi it was extra nice this time, because finally the belly was gone. So, we were really looking forward to this trip.

And nice it has been. Very effective as well! We bought lots of stuff: clothes, stuff from the asian market, music, bio meat and other groceries ... in short, lots of things you can't get in Warburg. After we got home, it was almost eight already.

Mylène has been sleeping in her maxicosi most of the time. Every now and then, she woke up, opened her eyes and looked around for a while. Even though she was sleeping so much today, I wonder if she also got a lot of rest. After returning home, feeding her and changing her diapers, Shiqi put her in her cradle again, and she was smiling so happily, as if she wanted to tell us "My God, am I happy to lie in my own bed again, finally!". It seems that despite the fact she was sleeping, the strange noises, fragrances, and images she picked up on the way did take up quite a bit of energy.

Right now, she is sleeping happily. Will she be dreaming about her day out to Paderborn?

It's Sunday night again. The weekend is almost over and it's back to work tomorrow morning :-( But luckily the weekend was very nice. We had a guest over from the Netherlands, Patricia. It had been a long time since we met the last time, so there was a lot to catch up with.

We also watched the DVD of our wedding, which Patricia hadn't seen yet. The wedding was already more than three years ago, and looking at that DVD, with Mylène on my knees, gave me a special feeling. Somehow, it matched to watch that DVD today, together with our little daughter.

Step by step Mylène is discovering new parts of her body. After discovering her tongue, she now knows that she has hands and that she can suck on them, when there is nothing better around. It is really funny to observe how she puts the hand in her mouth, because it always takes a while before she finds it. The hand usually starts somewhere in or around her eyes, moves down along the nose, and in the end reaches her mouth. She always tries to put the whole hand in her mouth, and then starts sucking. The sounds that makes is so funny ... perhaps you can imagine what I mean. She did not figure out that she can also suck on her thumb allone yet, so she will probably still try to put the whole hand in her mouth during the next few days. I am already looking forward to it.

Because I know many of you are longing to see more pictures of our lovely Mylène, I selected a few relatively new ones. Hope you like them.

We had visitors again, last weekend. Aunt Karin and uncle Erik came to visit Mylène (and her parents, I hope). When they were there, we realised they had seen Mylène in the hospital, right after her birth, for the last time. So it was about time they showed up again ... what kept them so long anyway ... ;-)



It was a nice weekend. We didn't do much; basically relaxed a bit, watched a movie, took a walk outside, cought up with the latest news and experiences, and played with Mylène. On the pictures, you can see Karin's interpretation of playing with Mylène .... wait until she is old enough to see what you did to her, auntie!

Yesterday Shiqi said to me that she had taken a decision: no more passifier! Reason was, that Mylène has been complaining a lot recently while being breast fed, and sometimes even did not want to drink at all. Shiqi noticed that she would stop complaining when given the passifier. So, she managed to feed her anyway by fooling her: she would give her the breast and as soon as she started complaining, Shiqi would swap the breast for the passifier, and then, after a minute or so, swap them back again. This worked, but was a bit of a burden, of course. Mylène seemed to have developed a preference for the passifier, instead of the real thing (haha ... can you believe it, gentlemen?) .

I was curious to see how long Shiqi would stick to her decision. In principle, I thought the argumentation made sense, and the idea was not so bad. But usually it's not so easy to turn theory into practice.

That same evening Shiqi wanted to change the rule a bit already; life is not so easy for parents, without using a passifier, so much was clear.

But, after returning from work today, Shiqi told me that she only used the passifier once today, and that Mylène already complained much less during drinking .... 1-0 for the parents! Well done, mama!!

I guess, the idea was very good. We will see how consistent Mylène allows us to be. To my opinion, it should be no problem to use a passifier AFTER feeding if Mylène is complaining a lot. But refraining from it some time before feeding time, should be a target for sure.

Any suggestions from experienced parents out there?