penguin parents

The parents of young penguins work as a team to feed their young. One parent go to the ocean to eat and find food for their young while the other tend to the young. Then they take turn.

So its the same for us with baby. It is difficult to put him on the dining table, sitting in a docile manner or joining us with our meal. He will have to take the forks, the knifes (yes all things sharp), scream, having ants in the pants and cant sit still. So we take turns to eat and one of us bring baby out for a walk.

Not a perfect way to teach baby to eat properly during meal times, but we are patiently hoping we evolve from penguin to humans.

training to be soldiers(daddy), fight for our land(nap)

During basic military training, it is compulsory for the recruits to go through a 24km road march towards the end of the program. We will be carrying our fbo(full battle order) which include a damn bloody heavy havesack. After 10km, you will find many of us naturally in a hunchback posture.

Today, many years later, i have a different form of road march as a daddy. Baby still cant take his day nap without carrying and it has been a routine for me to put him into a baby carrier and walk around my estate. On average, i walked close to 1.5km/day to put him to sleep! On bad days, it can be more than 30mins walk, with a weight infront and body arching backwards(more conducive for baby to sleep). Backbreaking!

So it has come full circle. In my younger days i march hunchback and today i march with an arched back. Maybe thats the way my back will eventually become straight :)

special talent

Everyone of us have an innate talent that shines through, sometimes from very early on.

Ethan, you have an immense ability to male the young and the old smile through your friendliness and wide grins. sometimes, you like to approach the older folks, sitting at one corner, and give them whatever you were holding on to (including dirty leaves and tissue papers) or give them a high five. They look geninuely happy and it warms my heart.

Sometimes, out of nowhere you have some girls a couple years older than you, come out to touch you and play with you. Most time, you get irritated by those touches and run to daddy/mummy. Today, there was a little girl that was grumpy with stomachache and sitting down while her friends played on. You approached her, stand and looked at her. A smile appeared on her face. She got on to play, whispered her friends about u, and 3 girls started following you!

Hope this 'people talent' follows you for the years ahead.

One year of Diapers

Diapers, by per piece, bought during the month. Some variation due to bulk purchase during promo period.

I spend $624.66 in diapers for baby's first year. This translate into roughly $0.38 per piece when pampers is on promo (the best price so far for Large size is $18 per pack. I am paying $25.9 at this point in time with no promo. Having said that, not much promo from Pampers this year.) and close to $0.50 per piece when not on promo. That's a difference of 20%, or for my case, slightly more than $100 of savings a year!

Baby have diaper change on average 5 times a day and generally after 9 months or so, night changing is less frequent as his stool comes once or twice in the day and pampers can hold liquid over night (some leakages still when its bursting full).

Looking at the number of diapers we got (1823 pcs), I cant imagine we have changed baby more than a thousand times already and its still a struggle to get him changed sometimes when he refused to be lying down! In that regard, the walker diapers are really convenient when we are outside. Good to get some in case of emergency.

Full details below:

Previous comment on diaper review.

A year's worth of milk

Milk Tins purchased per month. Started formula milk from 8 mths old. First 2 months were a mix of formula + breastmilk. Pretty consistent consumption over the months.

When baby was still in mummy's womb, we went to quite a number of seminars on prenatal and infant care. Many sponsors setup booth to give away free samples and of course the milk powders were quite popular. In fact, they quite one whole tin. And I think, this is a marketing genius. In our case, we went about starting off baby on his first milk tin by using the largest sample we had - NAN Pro. Baby did not had an adverse reaction, and we continued till today.

Guess what, we have already gotten 18 tins by his first birthday, or equivalent to $728.50. From the looks of it, this will not stop. So that one tin of freebie has turned into a recurring income for them, from us.

There are promotional offers for milk powder, especially if you buy more than 1. For NAN, they had a buy 2 for a discount of 7.5% per bottle. However, I couldn’t find the discount in Feb this year and paid the full price. Now he is on NAN Pro 3, which is alot cheaper ($34.50) than Pro 2.

Full details below: