Belle’s 9th month

Hello dearies,

I am back to update about Belle’s 9th month progress. 5 more days till Belle turns 10th month. Time flies. Movement Control Order really doesn’t mean anything to Mommies as everyday we are battling with time. I wish I have 48 hours a day instead of just 24. Here goes my babbling session! This is my blog so let me just pen down my thoughts. There are so many things to be done. I try to keep myself as discipline as possible because “Productivity” is what I am looking at right now. It is not easy trust me. The Hubs has to work almost whole day and usually it is full of endless and least productive meetings. Momsy has her things to do so I have the largest portion in caring for Belle. Well, I am the mother bear so no complaints about that. The thing is, Belle doesn’t take long naps. I should feel grateful to even get a full 30 minutes to myself. I write this in my diary almost every night. I am just asking for 2 full hours to myself, that’s all. 2 full undisturbed hours. At least let me settle my things on hand then I don’t mind watching her for the rest of the day. I have to clean her poops, shower her, prepping for her meals (usually just dinner), latch her and play with her.

I am really trying hard not to play with my phone whilst I am with Belle because I don’t want her to feel the divided attention but I guess things are not as easy as I think. Then we have this Toastmasters’ Platform where everything has to be done online. Online meeting, online contest, and online discussions. I am a noob in IT la. I know I need to learn but I just DON’T HAVE THE TIME. Sometimes, people might think I am rude to not turn on the camera during a meeting, but you have to understand this. I need to latch my daughter. How am I suppose to do it when the camera is on? If you don’t mind seeing a lady with nursing cover and a baby’s head in front, then I am okay too. I am not ashamed of breastfeeding anyway. Okay, enough of all these. Belle is waking up anytime soon so I better get down to business. Let’s take a look at how Belle progressed at 9th month.

At this stage, I like to bring her out with me as much as possible. First is because I know I’ll be back late and my in laws turn in early. I don’t want to disturb their sleeps when I am back. I know I could just leave her to sleep with my mother in law and I don’t have to bring Belle back to our own room. As mentioned in my previous posts, I prefer my daughter to sleep with us. Yes, I need to let go sometimes but the time is not now. It is the parent’s job to take care of your own baby. Yes, I know it is tiring but this is still my responsibility. Imagine us leaving to work at 8am then reaching home around 7.30pm because of the annoying traffics? What is this compared to the time we missed out in caring for our child? And we called this tired? Well, sorry, this is not me. Wait till I have the second baby and I’ll tell you what I think again later on. Back to this, Belle is not the most pleasant child when it comes to placing her in her car seat especially during night time. She would really wail and scream her lungs out. Now that we are stuck at home, I am wondering how am I suppose to make her get used to her car seat again. Apart from that, she is always fine with me. Like a curious cat, she likes to touch things and grab things. I am not expecting her to be like a wooden Pinocchio. She is not.

Somewhere in the midst of MCO, one fine afternoon, she was playing all by herself whilst Mommy aka yours truly is trying to place order for her Skip Hop toys online. I heard sniffing from her direction and thought she is having a nose block. When I looked closer, she is actually pouting to express her unhappiness. For the rest of the day, she only puts on this expression. I thought it is adorable. And it dawned to me that she is already at the stage of mimicking. We have to be very careful on how we react and talk now. She is a fast learner. She would cough when we cough. She would clap her hands when she is happy.

Belle is not a pleasant eater too. At this stage, she is interested in grabbing everything within her sight. She wants to grab your food even though she had her own food. We try to eat with her during meal times but it is so difficult because she would eyed on our food and chuck hers aside. Her main food is still breast milk. In a meantime, we still try to introduce more food to her. The main concern is, her nap is always clashing with our dinner time and we are having issues to get her back on track. She wouldn’t sleep when she is supposed to. I would write more on Baby Led Weaning next round when I have gather enough details for it. For now, it is still at the beginning stage. I am still deciding whether I should let her have her own set of utensils or just allow her to grab with her own hands. Mommies to be, my advise to you is, just close one eye and don’t care about the mess. There are times I want to go berserk because of the mess she created. Just trust that this will turn out well.

I am a bookworm and would love to train Belle to start reading from young. I am not expecting her to learn alphabets and knows how to read. Even though she is only flipping through the pages or rather bite the books, but I still think it is good to start her from young. From my own experience, it is best to give her books with hard covers or those made out of cloths. We went to BookXcess and this is the greatest time of my life. All the books are English Books and I can never get tired of looking at each of them. Can’t wait for Belle to grow up so that we can have our family time there. I made it a habit to play some Disney’s instrumental during her bedtime and read her a simple short story out of our many books. For now, our favorite books are from “The Little Prince” series.

Belle is an outgoing baby. She loves to go out and she loves the mall. Poor baby having to stuck at home during MCO. This is one of the rare moments when Momsy and The Hubs would bring Belle to visit me during my long hours at a road show. I am always looking forward to break time so that I can spend some time latching and playing with my baby girl. It is very hard to pass time without Belle visiting. But work is work. We still have to get used to it no matter how. Belle behaves well when she is outside. She likes to listen to the loud musics displayed and looking around curiously. At this stage, Belle could already crawl and sit without support. But baby will always be baby. They are like octopus. At one point of them, she would decided that she wants to be lazy and just lay flat from the back.

It has been a joy to be able to capture all these smiling moments. My phone capacity is almost running out but I just can’t bear myself to delete any of it. Nothing much going on at 9th month but there’ll be interesting stuffs to update on her 10th month which is coming very soon.

Okay, Belle is awake now so it is back to Mom’s duties again! Thank you for reading our journey with us. Hope you guys enjoy learning a little more about Belle. We shall be back again to update about her 10th Month.

Love you,

Viola Ng