mylène daily

Shiqi is on a business trip for three days. So Mylène and I will have to manage the household alone, during her absense.

I have to say, that Mylène's contributions to the household are still extremely limited. So most of the work sticks with me.

It is quite strange to suddenly having to take care of Mylène all by myself. It is not that I don't like it, in fact, we are having a great time together. It is just so very different from the usual daily rhythm. And enoying our little girl together is so much more fun than doing that alone.

I will manage for sure, but I am already looking forward to tomorrow evening when Shiqi arrives home again.

Because Mylène's first two teeth are appearing now, we bought a tooth brush and baby tooth paste, today. The tooth brush is an interesting tool: the whole thing is made out of some sort of silicon, including the brush itself, and you put the whole thing over your finger. Then, after putting a little bit of tooth paste on the brush, you just put the thing in the baby's mouth and start brushing.

It was easier than I thought. Mylène was actually quite interesting in the thing, and as she puts anything into her mouth, this silicon tooth brush was no exception. After moving it around for a bit, hoping that my brushing was a bit effective, I took my finger out again, let her drink some water, and the first time tooth brusing was a fact!

This week, Mylène "sang a song" for the first time on the toilet :-) Inspired by success stories from China, we decided to start to teach Mylène how to go to the toilet.

Especially our readers in Europe will probably burst out in laughter after reading what I am about to write ... and our Chinese readers might also start laughing because we start so late in their eyes. Whatever!

Every so many hours, when we think Mylène might have to "sing a song" we bring her to the bathroom, take off her pants, and put her on the toilet, while holding her. When she is sitting there, we start making "pressing" noises(ehhhmmmmgghhh...ehhhmmmmghh, etc ... I think you get the picture), hoping that Mylène will understand what we mean and start doing her thing.

And indeed!! Already two times, she did what she had to do, on the toilet! Copying our tones and noises, and with a red head, she dropped her belongings into the toilet.

Ok, I have to be fair, and add that most of the times nothing comes out while she is sitting on the toilet. Usually, she shows us a red face, and a concentrated look, on other places, with her pants on. By then, we know: this is going to be a long process.

Another months has passed! Here are the "eight months" pictures.
Some text will follow later.

...as promised, here some text:

Talking: The tones Mylène produces did not change much, but her words and sentences definitely become longer and she talks more and more. Germans would say, she is becoming a real "quatschtante".
We do have the feeling that Mylène is trying to repeat tones we produce. Yesterday, I said "Aaaahhh" to her, she observed my carefully, and a few seconds later she reproduced "Aaaahhh" in exactly the same way!
Crying: Mylène cries less than before. Typical moments she does cry are: after waking up, when she is tired, when we are leaving the room, when we are putting clothes over her head and arms.
Laughing: Our little girl really likes to laugh. Especially when we are playing with her, she giggles and laughs loudly. Great fun!!!
Moving: It's time to make the appartment baby-proof! Mylène is actively crawling. Not on hands and knees yet, but on her belly. This does not reduce her action radius, though.
Mylène also sits without help, but because she cannot get up and sit herself, we don't let her sit too long.
Sleeping: There have been no big changes in her sleeping pattern: She goes to bed around 19:30, wakes up around 6:30 and sleeps two or three times during the day. We cannot complain :-)
Eating: 5 times a day. After waking up and a diaper change, she gets a 250 ml bottle with H.A.2 baby milk. Then, different from previous month, around 10:30, she gets a porridge with oat or rice meal, fruit, butter, and water (in total around 200 g). Around 13:00 she gets around 200g of veggies with meat. In the afternoon around 16:00 Mylène gets another milk bottle. At 19:00 she gets her last meal: a porridge of 20g rice meal, 200 ml H.A.2 milk, and 20 ml apple juice. During the feeding we also let her drink a bit of water, which she doesn't refuse now.
Observing: Mylène still observes the world with great interest. She seems to be a curious girl.
Hair: Really growing, and it seems to be getting lighter.
Weight: STILL around 9 kg ... we are getting a bit worried, even though we know that the reason probably lies in her recent burst of activity.
Size of clothes: 68 and 74. She does get a bit taller, though.
Other: She got her first two teeth! And we are starting to train her in "singing a song" on the toilet.

Finally! Without a doubt we can now say that Mylène is getting her first teeth. In her lower jaw, two small teeth are coming out, in the middle. Perhaps that's why she had a bit of fever recently, and was a bit pale on Monday.

Again, I have to promise to include some picture here later. I just did not want to wait before letting you all know about the news!

Update: It was not easy to take a picture! The was the best we could do on short notice. If you look very carefully, you should be able to see the small tooth that is coming, on her lower jaw.
Better pics will follow!

It has already been a while, but because I did not write anything about it yet, I have to catch up.

Playing with her feet is something Mylène does now, preferably while changing diapers. She is relatively late with that, and even now, it definitely does not count as her favourite occupation. If we are lucky, we can even see her chew on her feet.



Her is picture of it, made with my mobile phone.

This weekend Mylène managed to move herself forward on her belly (... no, this time no April jokes). It was not very fast, and she did not really like it, but nevertheless ... she moved forward.

Before moving forward, she learnt how to turn around in circles, and also moving backward was in her repertoire. But if you want to get something which is hanging or lying in front of you, moving backward is not very helpful. Mylène found this out, on several occasions ... which is really very funny to observe :-)

Last Sunday, our little girl got the picture, and tried very hard to move forward. If the object of desire was not too far away from her, she used her hands and knees and slowly but gradually moved towards the object. If the object was a bit too far, though, she tried a bit, but then ... started to cry, the poor girl ... very funny.

Shiqi made a short video about it, which I will add to this post, soon. So, do come back soon!

Don't worry! She is already feeling better again. It was during the weekend that she was a bit ill. I just did not find the time to write something about it, yet.

Especially on Saturday, she must have felt very weak. She was not able to inform us about this yet, of course. Neither was she able to tell us which parts of her body were not feeling well. This is difficult for young, worried parents, as you can imagine. One thing was clear, though: she had felt better before. About the only thing she could do, was hanging and lying. She almost did not smile, was complaining quite a bit, and felt very warm. After checking the temperature, we were sure of it: Mylène was ill. On Saturday night, her temperature had reached 39C. Of course, we were a bit worried, but she slept quite well, and after giving her a little bit of baby-aspirine, we put her to bed in the evening, hoping that on Sunday, she would feel better again.

To our relief, this was the case. The fever was still there during the whole day (38,5C max), but she was more active, smiled more, and was obviously in a better mood than the day before.

On Monday, Shiqi did go to the doctor with Mylène, even though the fever was practically gone .... there is always something you want the doctor to take a look at, right? Well, all was fine; we had nothing to worry about, he told Shiqi.

Right now, our little girl is very active, is smiling happily, and eats loads of porridge again :-)

Our small worries are temporarily over.

Here's a movie clip that I wanted to upload for a while already. You will see what Mylène usually does with an object she gets into her hands.

Click here




The funny thing is, that we never showed her how to do that; one day, she just started. It is very amusing to observe. Mylène is usually observing the object in her hands while moving it up and down ... cute, isn't it?!