The Eberhard Family

Lately we’ve been spending more money than we normally would. Why? Because the person in charge of the budget is too busy to go through all the receipts etc…

I’ve decided we will start a new sets of books from 1st Jan 2008. Because now a lot of our expenses have changed.

The latest addition to our already a little too high Visa bill are..
1) a new 32inch Sony LCD TV – for the bedroom… yes

After we’ve moved into my parents, we thought we’d be watching TV and use the living space downstairs. But the reality is… because Emma is upstairs most of the time, we spend more time upstairs.
So the TV gets a bit unused down here.

It’s only the matter of the time before that TV will be retired. It’s really nice to be able to watch TV in bed in the evenings after we put her to bed.

We’ve recently got an unexpected $750 (before tax) bonus from Uni…
Hence… we decided to treat ourselves with a new TV… well it’s $1799-20%off (ie. $1440-ish) so… still have to chip in a bit more $ for it but…

2) A king single bed…
Emma is still not sleeping through the night.
Last few nights she started to get a bit better with her sleeping as she started having 2 solid meals a day and started drinking more milk. Finally finishing 200ml bottles or close to it for more than half of the feeds…
So she started having 5-6 hour gaps in between the night feeds, after she’s put to bed.
But I think we bought the bed on Sat… before the longer gaps started

We thought we could take turns to sleep in her room so we can each get a better night sleep… taking turns anyway.

The king single bed comes with a single bed stored under it. There are two purposes for that;
1) for the grandparents when they visit
2) for training emma to sleep in her own bed when she’s older. So we can pull the single bed out underneath… and if she ever rolls off the bed, there’s another mattress there catching her before she rolls off to the floor…

That was a good deal we got… I think… $1199…

Oh well… I guess we gotta spoil ourselves once a while?

Sally

Last two weeks of Dec – 5 months, 3rd and 4th Week

Just a quick note on her progress.

She’s on the tummy most of the time when she’s playing on the floor.
Apart from sucking on the toys, she moves herself around in a circle, sort of to move towards the toys.

She now can lift her bum up quite high on the tummy time as well… but the legs are crossed, so a bit hard to push around yet…

Every now and then, I try to put the toys just a little bit too far out of reach to encourage her to move forward…. but she usually ended up moving further away from them… moving backwards instead. It’s quite funny

I guess it won’t be too long before she’d start to crawl.

Hmm.. we got a lot of work to do once she can start crawling!

Sally

*Late 4 month, early 5 month*

Just before Emma was 5 months, we’ve noticed that from time to time she will settle herself and sleep on the side at night.

Then it started happening more and more, she likes to sleep on her side. Usually turning to her left. Later also on her right at times.

*Last week of Dec – 5 month, week4*

Eventually she started rolling over to her tummy more. Sometimes wake up crying… and we found her on her tummy. I always thought she rolled over and didn’t know how to roll back, hence woke up crying.

Slowly we realised she likes to sleep on her tummy instead and the waking up…. well, put the dummy back in and tilt her head to the side, so she can breath better and she will go back to sleep.

She’d be put to bed on her back and then by the time she’s sleeping, she’d be on her tummy…

Then it was impossible to wrap her up and put her to sleep on her back. So she is put to bed unwrapped and let her try to put herself to sleep.

Last few nights, as she sleeps on her tummy from the time she goes to bed, she takes a while to settle herself to sleep. She’d start from having a bit of tummy time in bed and would be moving from one end of the cot to another.

(She can’t crawl yet but turning around is nor problem)

We need to just leave her to it, and eventually we will come back and she’s flat on the tummy and sleeping. That’s when you put her blanket over her.

It’s quite nice actually. She’s putting herself to bed and this way, there’s no kicking off the blankets nor scratching herself… well a bit harder

It also means the side of the cot needs to go up now… eventually we’d have to put the cot lower, too… maybe once she can sit up and crawl.

Saturday, 29th Dec – 25 wk+ 3/7

I can’t remember what we were doing but while daddy was busy distracting the little one.. I made her a bottle.

Then as I was approaching with the bottle, she turned around and saw the bottle…

There was this instant shock, with mouth wide open and a little “hoh” noise…. then immediately trying to grab the bottle…

Yes she was hungry!

Sally

26 Dec 2007 – 25 weeks

Today is quite interesting. She’s 25 weeks now. It’s her uncle Bill’s birthday, we will leave his age out It is also Boxing Day, mum and dad went to the Riccarton Mall to try and get some photos printed… but man there was A LOT of people! So she got to see the Boxing Day sale crowd.

And most importantly, today is the first time she fell into the sink.

What?

Here’s the story.

Grandma had set up a nice changing station in the laundry, next to the sink.

Emma has been rolling over a lot. Even when she’s supposed to be changed. (I don’t know, she used to be smarter and more cooperative when she was younger with nappy change. You think they grow smarter… but…)

Mum’s slack sometimes.

So normally mum watches her and make sure she doesn’t fall in. Occassionally she will turn around to do things but still keeping an eye on her.

That day, mum decided, there’s not enough nappies left on the stack, so time to get more out.

Turned around to get some more nappies from the cupboard behind… checked that she’s still happily holding her feet. Pulled 2 nappies out and there was this “dong” noise… then cry!!

Ooops. She’s rolled over and fell into the sink!

I must admit, I wasn’t feeling too guilty about it. I was like, doh!! I knew it! But also thought, hopefully this will teach her not to roll over when she’s getting changed!

Well I can hope. Sometimes learning from pain is a faster way to learn… I think?

Sally

25 Dec 2007 – 24weeks + 6/7

Well, Christmas is probably just like another day for Emma. Doesn’t quite know what’s happening. But there’s definitely enough people around to entertain her for sure.

By the time for our Christmas lunch, she’s ready for her nap, which was excellent timing. So we get to have our food quite they are still hot…

And guess who got most of the gifts? Well I think it was a close competition between grandma and Emma!

She likes her little soft toy cow a lot… before long, half of the cow’s head was wet…. from a little exploring by Emma… (well more like eating it).

And what else took her interest? The wrapping paper!!
When granddad was trying to open his gifts, she’s there trying to grab the wrapping paper!

*hehe*

So what did she get?
From mum and dad:
1)a toy with some handles to press, makes different noises and words…for different colours.

From grandparents:
1) Feeding bowl and spoon/fork set
2) A pretty doll
3) New clothes (pink top and pants)
4) block set – which is a little too advanced for her yet

From uncle Phil and aunty Ang:
1) a set of books (which is mum’s favourite one)
2) a horse toy that she can pull and play

From other family friends:
1) soft toy cow (which is probably her favourite)
2) some rattle that has different colour beads – but has been hidden as it’s too hard and she hits herself with it.

I’m sure there’s something else… can’t remember now.. will add it on when I see more gifts

There’s also a puppet rain dear from grandpa.

Of course, she’s going to double dip, because there will be another round for Chinese New Year later

Good to be a baby, eh!

Sally

19 Dec 2007 – 24 weeks

This is the first time Emma is going to Christchurch to see the grandparents for Christmas. Also the first time she’d be on the airplane.

We’ve got all the necessary stuff for her in the plane. We’ve been praying that she’d sit still and not scream.. well at least not too much. Also hoping that the feeding time will work out okay for the flight, so we get to feed her just before descending. GP has also given her some nose spray as she has a bit of blocked nose, which won’t help.

Surprisingly, she was quite calm and fell asleep soon after we got onto the plane. Had a little nap and woke up just before we start to descend. But not quite the time to feed her yet. The nose spray was in already… and she started to cry.

Dad had already finished his muffin and mum was half way through her apple. So I passed the apple over to Emma for her to suck on to distract her a bit. Boy, she was keen. Both of her little hands came forward and grabbedf the whole thing off me. Then she was busy sucking on the apple for a good 10 mins. Totally didn’t expect that. I thought I had to hold the apple for her!

So we gave her a feed… which with a slower flow teat, only lasted 10 mins. Then the dummy did the trick of helping her cope with the descending.

Phew. So that wasn’t too bad.

On the return trip, there was no apple, and the feed happened in the middle of the flight, thanks to Qantas’ 30 mins delay! So there was a bit more screaming when she decided she didn’t want the dummy. But soon she accepted the dummy back

So overall, not too bad. But she was a bit more wriggly on the way back ^^;; I’m not sure how we are going to cope when we bring her back to Taiwan in early 2009.

We will see

Sally

Friday, 7th Dec (22wks + 2/7 ; 5 months + 3 days)

The plunket nurse checked her out and checked the development. Very happy with it. Checking if she can roll over and back; if she knows how to pass toys from one hand to another. …etc etc.

We’ve also told the nurse that she started on solids from 5 months and is now fully bottle fed. The nurse was fine with that and suggested if we can, read the book on solids or go for the solids talk in the family centre.

Also suggested we read to her; take her to the library and join the library there to get some books out for her.

Then we got the nurse to recheck her weight etc measurements…. there was quite a difference

Weight: 7.31kg
Height: 66.5cm
Head circ. : 41cm

But the nurse said we should try to get her to feed 3-4 hourly rather than 2-3 hourly. Also try to eliminate the night feed if we can…. and we should think about when to get rid of the dummy! They recommend 6 months. We weren’t too sure about that

We’ve also got her a pair of baby sunglasses
Just have to get her used to wearing it

Sally

22wks + 4/7

This morning we woke up and found the little one sleeping on her tummy stuck on one side of the cot… with her feet almost gone out of the rails.

Just in the last few days or a week or so, she started rolling over very often. Even trying to dry her and dress her after shower, rolls over.. turn her back and she rolls over again.

She started doing this in her cot as well….

But she can’t roll back at will yet, so sometimes she gets tired to be on her tummy but can’t roll back and gets all upset about it…

Sally