Happy Birthday Caleb!!!

Caleb celebrated his 1st birthday on 21st May (actual birthday on 22nd May) and was truly blessed by all the hugs, kisses and presents from all the granduncles and grandaunties, uncles and aunties, also cousin and friends! Thank you!!!

12 months of Caleb!!!

Day 1 : Caleb enjoyed his stay in the warmth and security of his mum so much that he stayed in there for an extra week and came out crying and kicking without the doc giving him any spanks on his bum :)


Month 1 : Caleb starting to put on a bit of weight. Typically sleeps through most of the day... what a serene time that was :)


Month 2 : Started responding very well to coaxing and was able to turn his head, focus on objects and turning towards sounds.


Month 3 : Able to flip himself and lift his head up.


Month 4 : Able to sit up, and had very little hair... maybe that made his sitting up easier :)


Month 5 : Height of his fatness, this photo explains everything :)


Month 6 : Pumping position down soldier! (hehe, despite his fats, he could push himself up)


Month 7 : Started to eat semi-solids, stools started to get a bit harder... explains the face :)


Month 8 : Can stand with support, celebrated his 1st Chinese New Year!


Month 9 : Caleb standing on his own with support and doing his daily morning exercise round his cot


Month 10 : Caleb and his first swimming experience!


Month 11 : Caleb's first experience playing basketball with the family. Apparently he prefers to kick the ball around with his kungfu kicks rather than bounce the ball


Month 12 : His most current look... short crop hair and smiley as always.

The Rapid Walker

Some of you already know that Caleb has been walking for a few weeks now, initially ver tentatively and now more confidently. It's quite funny watching him walk actually. He has this determined look on his face and if he's carrying something in his hands, than he'll almost always raise them as he walks, for better balance I guess.

Here's a video of him walking today, much more confident now :)


Here's one of his first few attempts at getting up into the standing position on his own without support :)


Here's another attempt, check out the diaper man!

The Celebration of a Daddy

Last Saturday, Liverpool, arguably the best football club in the world, won the FA Cup. (Now, I must qualify that even though I'm convinced that Liverpool IS the best football club in the world, I've added in the word "arguably" just so that I won't get a barage of hate-mails or counter claims, which of course would be false). What a game that was, and as the saying goes, Liverpool finals are never dull, how true that was. It was a real roller coaster match with Liverpool being trailing most of the time to West Ham's efficient & beautiful (but fluke) goals. You can imagine how I celebrated when Liverpool equalized and won in the end. All I can say how you imagined it is mostly likely different from how I celebrated it. Let me explain.

Here's the setting. I was watching the game in one part of our room, with Caleb asleep on the bed in the other part of the room, barely 3 metres away and my wife was on the internet just behind me.

All was calm and steady until our most consistent defender scored an own goal under pressure. "No problems!", I thought, "Liverpool can surely come back against one goal". Then West Ham's second goal went in, due to some slack defending (which is very very rare for Liverpool) and in no small part due to some sloppy goal keeping from our gaolie. Now, that's a slight problem. Now we have to score 3 goals to win it... hmmm. Wife didn't help by commenting that "eh... everytime you watch Liverpool, they end up losing, better for you not to watch". I persisted on and was rewarded with a Cisse goal. Beautiful float in ball from Gerrard, caught sweetly by Cisse and the ball flew past the West Ham goalie into the goal. "That's the way a goal should be scored, definitely better than the 2 West Ham goals", I thought. Not much celebration yet, just a fist punch into air. Wife wasn't amused.

Liverpool then went on to equalise after half time through a superb goal (show them how to do it!) and this time, the celebration was more energetic. Standing up and jumping up and down, muttering "yes! yes!" under my breath, and then quickly sitting down, anticipating the winning goal to come soon. To my horror, West Ham scored again! Through another fluke goal! Heart sank. Room was silent except for the commentators' muttering about how it was meant to be cross, surely the scorer didn't mean it, yadde yadde yadde. Wife knew better than to make fun of me or Liverpool then.

As the clock started to run down, the situation became more and more desperate. Wife was asking me about something about some cakes that she saw on the internet and which one we should buy, and I told her I can't think about that, and left it to her. It's a good thing that she's a prudent and wise wife, cos I remember agreeing to almost everything she was saying and suggesting.

90mins was up, wife had just decided she didn't want to face a gloomy husband and went to bed, and with a defeat due to 3 sloppy goals looming, the inspirational Liverpool captain struck a superb rocket shot from almost 35 metres out and boy was I up and running. Jumped up and fist punched the air a few times. Wanted to shout, but can't cos Caleb was sleeping (the sacrifices of a daddy), so I grabbed the nearest pillow and swung it above my head like a rodeo with a lasso quite a few times and ran all over the room. Caught a glimpse of my wife looking at me with bewildered look and I decided that I should share the joy and ran over to smooch her all over her face. And since Caleb was just next to her, I gave him few pecks on the cheek too. Then back to the TV to watch the extra time.

Extra time was boring as the players were all tired out. So down to penalties it went. Every West Ham miss was greeted with joy and every Liverpool goal was punctuated with "yes!". Confidence slowly grew and when Liverpool won it, I celebrated like one of the players, ran all over my pitch (the room), swung the pillow round and round, shared the joy with my wife yet again, and told Caleb in his sleep that Liverpool is the best! Hopefully he had a sweet dream of Liverpool too. Round and round I went, and wife had more than her fair share of transmitted joy. All this while, I was as silent as a cat, unbelievable but true, cos if Caleb had been woken by me, my joy would have been shortlived, my wife would've made sure of that. :)

Latest Milestones

Caleb has been surprising us with many new things that he has been learning and doing. We have been thankful to God that though many times we feel inadequate as parents, Caleb has continued to show good learning and growth capacities. Here are his latest milestones:
1. He is now able to take about 15-20 steps at a time unaided, except when he is too excited and reverts back to his fastest mode of transport... crawling and charging!
2. Able to recognise Cow, Duck, Ball, Bag, Handle, Keys, Door etc... basically the things he comes into contact with daily.
3. Able to correlate that saying bye-bye is usually followed by a "frank-kiss" (is that how it is spelt?!?!?) without prompting.
4. Knows how to goes down the steps on his own safely (tested 3 consecutive steps). Again, this is assuming that he is not in his excited mood :)
5. Knows how to nod his head when he wants or agrees and shakes his head and hands when he doesn't want or disagrees. (You can imagine which happens more often).
6. Knows how to tell others not to do certain things that he is not supposed to do. For example, when his grandparents were at our house, he pointed to the fan and then looked at his grandma and shook his head and hands to tell her "no-no, cannot touch". Needless to say, grandma was very amused.
7. He can now sit in his stroller for 1.5hrs (yes, this is considered a milestone to us, haha. We've had major difficulties trying to get him seated nicely and not trying to grab or go for everything he sees).
8. He knows the concept of keeping toys after playing and before going out.
9. He knows how to motion his hands using his index fingers to say "good!"
10. He knows how to do trial and error. He will try to put in the different shaped blocks by trying the different holes available one by one. But he still doesn't know how to rotate the shapes so that they can go in easily yet. So the easiest for him is the circle shaped block.
11. Most importantly... he now rarely wakes up in the middle of the night and sleeps right through from about 9pm to 7.30am! Yippee!!!

Another cute picture...

Here's another bathing photo of Caleb. When I compared this with his first few bathing photos, it reminds me of how much he has grown. I used to be able to hold him with one hand when I bathed him, now... I can't even cope with 2 hands sometimes :)

Floppy hairstyle, coupled with messy eating habits

For better comparison of how drastic Caleb's haircut actually was, I've posted a few photos below which were taken just a few days before his first hair cut.

Caleb's been wanting to eat on his own and almost always now insists on having his own spoon, with which he'll scoop up his food, slurp it all over his mouth and face. Accuracy factor in putting the spoon direct into his mouth is not very high for now, but getting better with each dirty meal. For now, we'll just have to clean him up and change him in the name of education. :)




This photo below is a few months old. We were celebrating Caleb's grandma's birthday. Grandma is 10 yrs old this year, as the candle on the cake suggests :)

Expectations of Frequency of posts going up :)

I realised that after posting regularly over the last 2 weeks, I've raised the expectations of Caleb-fans :) As such, here's some more photos to bring that smile back to your faces.

Caleb's new hair cut! Grandma cut his hair and gave him a slight Japanese looking with slopping fringe :)


Another view of the new hairstyle...closer up this time.


Looking glum cos he's been told to go to sleep ;)


As happy as ever the next morning when he wakes up. Declares triumphantly that he has got Daddy's laptop mouse.