Tips on toilet training

Hi, my name is Mama. I was given to Sara on her birthday by my Mummy's best friend. I would have preferred other name than Mama, but Sara thought it was my name, since I say "Ma...mama" when she squeeze my chest.

At first, Sara was scared of me, but as she grows bigger, we became friends. She would give me milk, put powder on my face, take out and put on my clothes, put me to sleep and lots more fun stuff we do together.

Right now, my current role is to motivate Sara to go to the toilet. For example, Nenek and Mummy often come to me and ask "Mama nak ci-ci?" and I'd nod my head. They'll then ask Sara whether she'd like to come along. If she agrees, Nenek or Mummy would ask her to take out her pants, in case they got wet and all. When we arrive to the toilet, we'd pee together. Okay, I stand and watch while Sara pees.

So, yeah, I am officially the toilet trainer for that little kid. Sometimes, she'd carry me to her Mummy and said that I wanted to pee, when in fact, she's the one who wanted to go to the toilet. Yeah, just blame it on me, the mute doll ;p

Sara : Random update

1. I was making cupcakes the other night and she insisted on helping. I told her that Mummy is making cake and she replied "Cupcake?" with perfect pronunciation.

2. Sara was wearing a pink t-shirt and I was wearing a red t-shirt. So, I asked her "What colour is your shirt?" "Bwu..." she says. I insisted "No, look first. Look at your shirt. What colour is it?" She looked down and said "Pink" with a very cheeky smile. I thought it was coincidence so I pointed to my shirt and asked her what colour is it. She said "Red". I pointed to something green, I forgot what it was and she said correctly "Gweeeen". Maybe its normal for a 20-months old kid to say that, but as a biased mummy, I think she's a genius! :)

3. Overheard in the kitchen "No sara, you cannot eat this. This is spicy food" and then I hear a verrryyy cute little voice saying "Nighty put". Spicy food = Nighty put. Geddit? Haha.

4. She cried in the middle of the night due to her runny nose, so I carried her and try to calm her down. She stopped crying and I called hubby to take her from me because I really needed to go to the toilet. I said "Baba, take her for a while please. I need to go to the toilet" Suddenly, she wailed on top of her lungs "Nanak ci-ci. Yaya nanak ci-ci. Cold" I had to gently explain to her that I am not bringing her to the toilet, I am going to the toilet. "No, not you. Mummy want to go ci-ci" It took a while to calm her down. Heh.


5. Hubby bought Sara a Barney CD and since then, she's addicted to it. There's this one scene involving an owl. So, when the scene is nearing, she will quickly find somebody for example "CikSu, come. Bird. Big eyes. Scared Yaya" complete with covering her eyes.

6. Everytime we go in the car, she'll definitely demand "Mummy, nak na-wo" and minutes after that "Mummy, nak nunu" Na-wo is her strawberry pillow and nunu is her pacifier.

7. She adds the syllable na to EVERY word. For example slipper become na-per, biscuits becomes na-ket, elephant doll becomes na-phant, Tok Bah becomes Na-bah, alamak becomes na-mak.

8. Oh, nowadays she's really lazy to go to the bathroom, she asked to wear diapers "Mummy, nanak ci-ci. Cold. Na-pers. Yaya wear. Nak na-pers" Na-pers = Diapers. She always uses the "cold" excuse to avoid going to the toilet.

9. HUbby's parents in Kuantan have three tank of aquarium full with very fierce and angry fish. They would jump and bang their head every time people come near them. I don't go near them because I am concerned for their well-being (okay, fine, I don't go near them because I'm scared they'll jump out and eat me). But, Sara loves to watch the fishes, so she'd always watch them with hubby or her Tok Bah. The moment I love most is when the fish starts to jump, she'll run over to me and said "Mummy, mummy...big fish. Jump. Scared Yaya. Mummy come. Big fish". Heee...

10. My mother has been teaching her good manners such as requesting for things nicely instead of whining and crying. So, the other day while she was eating her rice, after a couple of bites, she said "Nenek, nanak wice. Yaya nanak. Nak na-ket plis. Na-ket nak. Plis. Plis" It was sooo sweet. When she uses that voice with the term "plis, plis" she can get away with anything, I tell you!

Sara : 15 months

Sara is 15 months! And Mummy is super lazy to update her blog. Hehe. Anyways, Sara now weighs 13kg! And these last two weeks, her toilet training is getting worse. She purposely pee on the carpet because I think she secretly likes watching us fuss over her, our frantic reaction of pulling out her pants and running to the bathroom. But, we are NOT GIVING UP! Hehe, Sara dearie, you can pee anywhere you like BUT NO MORE diapers for you, young lady. Your bum just can't take it. Rashes will start to appear within minutes if you wear diaper.

The cheeky little girl *likes

Its getting really hard to get her to eat dinner nowadays. She will eat her meal obediently during lunch, in fact she always finishes her lunch BUT getting her to eat dinner is a different story altogether. She'll toss and turn, run and hide, anything just to get away with eating. And then, at 9ish pm, she'll do her sweetest smile and pull atuk's hand to the kitchen to find something to eat. Usually popok (keropok), biscuits or chocolates. I don't really mind though, as long as she eats. And the extra sugar during night time doesn't really affect her sleep, so as long as she's happy, that's good enough for me.

As for identification of body parts, she now knows armpit, cheek, neck and knee (in addition to this). And her newest skill is.....role-playing. She loves pretending to be nenek? mommy? a big sister? erkkk.... She has a green bear doll that she carries on her chest, she'll sing the lullaby we usually sing to her, pats the bear slowly like we do when we carry her and tries to put the bear to sleep (just like we usually do!) She even gave her pacifier and milk bottle to her bear!

Is this a sign that she's ready for a brother/sister? Sheessshhhhh, I know I'm NOT! Haha!

P/S : Oh, by the way, if anyone is interested in Sara's *fake* crocband as she wore in pics above, feel free to drop me an email or comment below. We're only selling it for RM20 and we have navy, black and white colour!

The toilet training journey

I'd say Sara is about 75 percent toilet trained now. The journey begins here, and it has been almost three months now. Since last month, we decided to forgo the nappy during day time, so now Sara is totally diaper-less and nappy-less (which in turn results to lots of butt-pinching. Hehe, who can resist pinching a baby's butt? Not me ;p)

I bought her a toilet seat for baby (only RM13.90 in Jusco) last month and since then, she never wants to poo unless we put her on the bath seat. However, since she can't talk yet, what she'll do is usually tugging her pants, points to her butt and do the cute poo-poo face (muka tengah meneran ;p) so we will immediately bring her to the toilet.

However, is she wants to pee, she'll cry for no reason and and we'd have to ask her "Sara wants to shi-shi??" If she doesn't say anything, then it means yes! bring me to the toilet NOW!

We are very lucky that we are able to toilet train Sara this early. Our primary motivation is because she seems allergic to EVERY brand of disposable diapers and also cloth diaper. Besides, she (almost) never pee when she sleeps. She WILL wake up when she wants to pee, crying while still closing her eyes, we (okay fine, my hubby) will bring her to the toilet, she'll pee and immediately goes back to sleep.

Accidents do happen. Sometimes she pees on the carpet, in the store room, on the bed...just everywhere. But, its getting less and less. In fact, in the last two weeks, if my memory serves me right, there has only been less then 10 accidents and all that happen while she was awake, due to our inability to understand her language. She somewhat told us she wants to pee, but we thought she wanted something else. Hee...

And lastly, since my entry feels incomplete without Sara's pic...

Sara with Cik Su and Cik Ngah

Sara : 11 months

Okay, this is an overdue post, Sara is almost 1 year old. Yikes. How time flies!!! Actually, she can walk on her own already. BUT, I still say that she can't because she can't seem to stand up on her own. We need to prop her into standing position and there she goes, walking like nobody's business. Heh, lazyBUM. After we came back from Melbourne, she has developed some kind of attitude change AND IT WAS NOT GOOD. It feels like the terrible two phase has arrived early. She wanted to be held ALL THE TIME, she cried for no reason, she refuses to eat, she doesn't finish her milk, her toilet training has gone haywire and OH MY GOD, she consumes soooo much energy from me and my mum.

When she recovered her health, she still have the mood swing attitude where everything is wrong to her. Until one day (last Saturday, I think), she had food poisoning. Again. Gahhh!!! Bad Mommy!!! But, the silver lining this time is she's back to her normal happy self. Yeay!!! She eats as usual, loves playing peek-a-boo and finishes her 200ml milk. Double yeay!!!

She's quite her daddy's daughter and her Nenek's grandchild. Reason : she can said Nenek and Babah perfectly. For some reason, she also can said Kakak perfectly.

She has four teeth now, two upper teeth and two bottom teeth. However, we constantly have to remind her to chew on her food because she'll just swallow everything without chewing.

She still hasn't reach 10kgs yet and she's getting thinner, no thanks to the flu. But, she got so tall, I have buy pants and skirts for size 3 years old. Ha!

Oh, and she is such a scaredy cat, she's afraid of almost everything. Haha! Okay, fine, she got that from me. ;p Our usual dialog will go something like this:

Mummy : Sara, see that cat? Bad cat. Mummy is scared. Are you scared?
Sara : (with big round eyes clasping her hand to her chest) SCAREDDDDDD.....

Oh, she can "salam" people now. And, if u ask real nice, she might give you a peck in the cheek as well ;)

Toilet training

All of my siblings are toilet trained quite early. We haven't even reach two years old when we are fully toilet trained. My dad always insisted for us to start toilet train Sara, so when she develops this, we figured we might as well toilet train her.

It is extremely hard to toilet train your child when she cannot speak yet. Lucky for me that Sara doesn't pee when she sleeps. We put her on the old-fashioned napkins when she's awake and nothing on when she sleeps. Her butt looked so cute by the way. Hihi.

She wakes up around 6am (with dry nappy), we took her to the toilet and she pees. Yeay!! We put nappy on, let her play, then she'll take a short morning nap. We open her nappy when she took her nap, brought her to the toilet when she wakes up and she pees. Double yeay!! During the evening nap, we took her nappy off, then when she wakes up around 5pm, again we took her to the toilet and she pees. Triple yeay!!!

All day on nappy cost us about 15 nappy changes. Whew!! I'm so lucky Sara is under Nenek's care. I don't know anybody aside from the parents that are willing to toilet train this early. So, here's to hoping this journey will come to an end quickly. *winks*

Rashes and yeast infection on my baby :(

My Sara have sensitive skin, so she has been using Sebamed since day 1. She has had rashes here and there, but nothing unusual. Until she began to develop this nasty little flaring red rashes on her neck.

To top that off, she also began to develop white thingy ulser like blotches in her mouth. I brought her to the clinic and the doctor prescribed OralAid (some kind of oral thrush medication). Apparently, if not curbed early, these white thingy can turn into red patches that will hurt her during feeding. So, we applied the creams that the doctor prescribed us religiously.

The doctor also told us that Sara's hair is too long at the back of the neck, so we'll need to cut it off as it accumulates sweat. Oh well, off we go to Sara's first hair cut.

notice the shortER hair?

But, it has been almost two weeks. The nasty red rashes begin to appear on her butt, and also on the labia. We went to two clinics on Putrajaya, but none of them offer any credible explanation. They just pass the thing off as something normal that will occur to the baby. Gahhh!! We were sooo frustrated. And guilty because Sara was such a good baby, she never scratch her neck, she never cries and she always finishes her milk (she drank 200ml 4-5 times a day)

Anyway, last weekend we went to a wedding in Kuantan and my dad suggested we go to this clinic where he used to take us when we were sick. It has been almost 30 years (the kind doctor has been treating me since I'm still inside my mum's tummy) and the clinic still haven't changed. The doctor has aged gracefully, still kind and offers a complete and thorough explanation about what Sara has. Now that is what I call a doctor. Someone who explain the sickness we have, how it started, how it can be treated and most importantly, how to avoid it in the future.

It appears that my little angel has a fungal/yeast infection called candida. Anybody interested can google it up. In my case, since Sara is hyperhidrosis (extreme sweating), she is easily exposed to this kind of infection. It is best for her not to wear any type of diaper, even cloth diaper as her sweat plus urine can be a perfect place for the fungus to grow. The doctor gave us an antiseptic cream for her rashes and "Tystatin" for her mouth.

AND THEY WORK WONDERS!!! The rashes didn't magically disappear but there has been radical changes. The doctor also advised us to avoid wearing diapers, if possible, so we are now on another journey, the toilet training journey. Yeay!! *rolls eyes*