Belle’s 11th and 12th month

Hello dearies,

June 2020 has been a life changing month for me. 10 days till July 2020 officially ended. I have to adapt to a new job scope and new team. Yes, I know some of you might think this is nothing new to me because I have done it before but mentally wise, it is still different for me. Imagine having to get used to something new and when you finally gotten used to something, then it is time to move on again? I have to step out of my comfort zone and getting used to a new culture. I consider myself privilege because people like us are like cockroaches. You’ll never see us fall. To be frank, I am dead tired every day after work that I don’t have the energy to focus on my blog and content creating. Even my “Live” platform is dead because I cannot hit the “15 days and 30 hours” requirement. Come on, I am 30 already. My body is not as energetic as before. I guess life is back to normal for everyone now. Except that I still wear mask like a ninja. I am happy with wearing mask now because I have ordered a set of handmade Disney’s princesses. Plus it is a new trend. I don’t want to abandon my blog for too long because time flies without us noticing. I would ended up coming back a year later. I know this too well because I have been through this before.

Today is 20th July 2020 as I sat here typing all of these. I can’t believe it took me almost a month to draft this post. Belle is already ONE and we had an amazing celebration. I have decided to combine her 11th and 12th month’s progress because it is pretty much the same. Of course I will come up with two other posts (hopefully) by next month – Belle’s 1st birthday and The recap of Belle’s first year. Belle is a ball of energy. Her bubbly characters brighten up our day. She makes me smile just by thinking of her only. This is an honest remark as a Mama. Watching my own child gives me the greatest sense of contentment. I am very thankful for Belle.

Belle is excellent at expressing her wants and needs. Ever since she has learned how to pout a few months back, her emotions begin to show in a clearer version. She is an impatient (No doubt at all because she inherits after my character) little girl who waits not more than a second when she wanted something. This would happen during feedings. Her majestic stomach will wait for no men. Whenever she needed to latch, she would start whining to express her dissatisfaction. She is an independent baby who doesn’t like to be held (depending on her moods). She didn’t like to be cuddle either. Sometimes when I stroke her hair or caress her face during latching time, she would push my hand away. She didn’t like The Hubs to caress me either. When she saw The Hubs holding my hand, she would stop whatever she is doing at crawl towards us just to break our hands apart. It was a funny sight to watch. It is not like I feel very much loved by her. Ha Ha. These are the little things that would crack me up.

Many Mamas told me “The first daughter is always sociable and loves being in the spotlight”. If my second baby happens to be a girl again, she would be my unsung hero. Well, I don’t know how true is that until I am blessed with my second child. However, judging on Belle’s personalities, I can’t help but to agree that she is really sociable and that she loves having all our attention. She is a funny baby and will always initiates clapping when she does a thing. For instance, she would try to stand with support and then fell on her back (normally we only let her do it on the bed or mattress). She would then turn to look at us, smiling at her sweetest and starts clapping. And she would expect us to clap along to acknowledge her success. Such an attention seeker. Ha ha.

At 10th month, she already can stand with support. Entering the 11th and 12th month, she achieve a milestone by standing on her own without support. It would only last for a few seconds but that’s already good enough because every child progress differently. Some babies I know already started walking as soon as they turn one. Belle is a playful girl. She loves to play. This usually gets on my nerves during her nap time because it is getting longer and longer to put her to sleep. She tries to fight sleep even though she is already tired. Then she would be really grumpy during eating time, or when we are out.

Belle’s 11th and 12th month also falls in between the biggest transition in my life – Resuming back to work after “Movement Control Order” and also being transferred to another department. My mother-in-law helps to take care of Belle when I am at work and I took over when I get back home. We are just 10 hours apart from each others and I am already wishing that time would pass by faster so that I can see my daughter. I don’t always feel secure when she is out of my sight. It was tough for me at the beginning when Belle struggles and cries every single time when I am leaving for work. Those are the times when I feel like a monster. Belle and I learn to get use to this new norm. I have to say, we have done a great job at it. I do feel thankful that I didn’t missed out any of her major moments. Don’t ask me why because I will feel like a failure if I do. I know money plays an important part in raising my child but I still wish I can be there for her at all time.

From the first day I held Belle in my arms until today (20th July 2020), she definitely grows up a lot. She grew from a 2.85kg newborn to a 10kg toddler now. I have to admit that I don’t enjoy the first few months with Belle as much as I am excited to be upgraded to a Mama. I do love Belle and savoring every moments as I can with my new role as I knew I cannot rewind time back to the past. What I don’t enjoy is the lack of sleeps, fussing over a non-stop crying baby, being bullied by my baby, get scratches all the time, hair being pulled endlessly, imbalanced diets, and no more freedom. It also dawned to me that my life would forever be this way because I can no longer enjoy freedom like before. Thank God I am finding joy motherhood or else I would have gone berserk.

Initially, I were the type of mama who would research and read through every single comments over the internet. I would then get so worked up wondering why Belle doesn’t sleep through the night or why she she is not consistent at meal time. I am worried if my child is abnormal or slow in growth. As time goes by, I learnt to chill and just allow Belle to grow in her own ways. So long my child is healthy and she is growing normally. There are too many scenarios and information over the internet. It is good to read to equip yourself but make sure you read in a neutral position so that you won’t be biased over certain point of views. As I mentioned before, every babies are different. Some may take longer time to speak, to crawl, to stand up and to flip over. Some babies progress speedily. What’s most important is that we have a standard guidelines to refer to. Mothers are all sharing from their very own experiences so don’t get so work up if you child doesn’t snack properly or sleep any longer than she’s supposed to. I really appreciate mommies’ bloggers who shared from their experiences and this really helps me a lot.

Belle is a real playful girl who dawdles over meal time (with me specifically). At this stage, she is smart enough to define who she can bully and who she cannot fool around with. When it is either me or The Hubs who fed her, she couldn’t even finish half bowl of porridge. My mom only use 15 minutes to feed her a large bowl of porridge. Such a mischievous pie. I can’t bring myself to scold her though even though sometimes I feel myself boiling out of frustrations. I sometimes wonder how motherhood has changed me to another person. My daughter’s life is more important. Even sometimes when The Hubs asked me out for a date also I have to decline because I cannot bear the thoughts of my daughter having to spend additional hours without us. I am not saying I don’t love myself either because I will still spend money on myself even though momsy and The Hubs kept asking me to save more and don’t spend unnecessary. I still long to drink expensive drinks and eat out most of the time. So there you go, you can expect I don’t have much savings because I have been spending more than I should. Maybe I should really try to start savings just in case I needed cash one day. I can’t be taking things for granted. She is still my little milk monster for now. She relies on me heavily during night time. I am like her human pacifier. I would love to enjoy this moment for as long as I can until she no longer need this human pacifier.

Belle has a habit of putting every single items she could grab hold of in her mouth. I wonder why would she do that when we have already trained her with the method of “Baby Led Weaning”. For some reasons, she just like to bite everything. At this stage, she demanded her freedom to move about freely. Hence, I always leave her on the floor to play. I noticed a few times, she would find lizard’s extract and almost swallow it. What is this? Now, we have to make sure the floor is clean and clear. Sometimes she would find hairs and tries to eat it. This proves that she has sharp eyes. Hearing wise, this baby is a little bit too smart. She would ignore us on purpose. Not that she cannot hear us, but she choose to only pay attention to things she is interested in. Belle loves listening to musics. She is especially sensitive to rhythms as melodies. She doesn’t like hearing people talking, unless you are talking to her. Whenever we chatted among ourselves, she would try to grab our attention by whining and throwing tantrums just so we would shut up and focus on her.

A year gone by just like that, I am saving all my thoughts and feelings for “Belle’s 1st year”. This post shall be mainly about her progress. You know that at this stage, she could move faster and is always on the go. She is at this “Itchy Hands” stage where she wants to grab and touch basically everything. She has this habit of throwing everything to the floor and then looked to us and uttered “Oh uh” as in “Oh No”. I noticed most of the time, she did it on purpose. I would arrange everything back in order just in time to watch her throwing everything on the floor again. Such a weird kid. I could foreseen that she is going to be hot tempered and impatient like me so we really need to start her teaching her from young. She is already screaming all the time for no particular reasons. Sometimes she would just cry for nothing. When we don’t give in to her, you know what would happen. Non Stop screaming and crying. You better behave yourself, little missy. I am not looking forward to the terrible two. And yet, I feel contented watching her progress and slowly blossom into a little girl.

To sum it all up, I feel thankful that a large part of Belle’s 11th and 12th month happened during our unexpected break (MCO) and hence, I get to spend more time with her. It is not easy having to juggle between work and a baby but I wouldn’t trade this for anything else. Thank you for following our journey. I know I ended quite abruptly but I really don’t wish to drag this post any longer.

I will be more discipline in the next post I promised. Thank you for being so patient. STAY SAFE AND KEEP THE MASK ON!