Lennox & Me

Have you ever watched a documentary called What The Health? I think it's still showing on Netflix now. The show popped up when i was in Singapore having dinner with a couple of friends... they mentioned that they are trying to eat healthier (who isn't??). But instead of the usual 'less carbs less sugar etc', they were trying to eat less animal products. My friend Nai joked that he was trying his best but he was basically a "non-practicing vegetarian"... hahaha. I must admit i was pretty sceptical of the whole documentary while watching it and even after. I believe that if you wanted to find 'studies' to support any claim, you will be able to! But what definitely stuck in my mind were the people in the show who had so much improvement in their health just by eating vegan for 2 weeks. They reduced the amount of medication they had to take by half or more, and they just had more energy and less ailment. Granted, they were mostly the older generati...

About 3 weeks ago Lennox started playschool. In Holland they can start with something called 'peuterspeelzaal' (toddler playgroup) from 2 years old. It is 2 times a week, about 3 hours each time. Since Lennox is bilingual and speaks Malay at home, he can also go 4 times a week when he becomes 2.5 years old. Although we have been going to playgroups in the past (since he was about 8 months old), i always had to stay with him for the duration. So for him and for me, it was a pretty big step to drop him off to the hands of the teachers (they call them ' jufs ' here). The only other times Lennox has been on his own is with family and one other time with a babysitter (when the birth of Sterling impending and we wanted to be prepared). His peuterspeelzaal has a pretty decent size, about 14 kids to 2 teachers. The kids range from 2-4 years old. From 4 years old the kids go to "Groep 1" which is like nursery (N1/N2) for us in Singapore. The first weeks have gone...

Just the thought of flying alone with baby Sterling (then 3.5 months) and Lennox (exactly 2 years) was scary and intimidating. I even considered NOT flying to Singapore because i was afraid that i wouldn't be able to handle the 13 hour flight alone with them. But that would mean that my whole family (sister, brothers, grandma, nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts etc etc) and my Singapore friends would not be able to see the new baby... and it had already been a year since they saw Lennox. So i told myself i had to do it! And i did! Here's a few things i did to prep for the flight and to make the flight that much less scary: I chose a  night flight  instead of day time ones: obviously, to follow their sleep rhythm. I was lucky enough to have a choice of 9pm flight instead of a 11am one; I made sure they had a  'regular/boring' day  with naps etc, so that they were not overly excited or over tired; confirm my baby bassinet . Flying with KLM with a baby for the fir...

"You burn off so many calories breastfeeding!"... "i'm hungry and eating all the time because i'm losing so much weight breastfeeding!"... "it's so great i don't have to work out and i totally went back to my pre pregnancy weight!"... etc  I heard phrases like these everywhere before i gave birth for the first time. It was one of the things i was looking forward to before i became a first-time-mom with Lennox almost 2 years ago. I knew i would try to breastfeed if i was able to. And another selfish reason i wanted to breastfeed was because i've heard tons of stories of women who lost their pregnancy weight (and more) just like *that*. Ok let's back track a little here. I am always in favour or being strong & fit rather than thin & weak. All my life i've never been the small/skinny one and that's been ok. I've always been active since my teenage years with canoeing/canoepolo, wakeboarding and now crossfit. I h...

I've previously written about breastfeeding Lennox while he was at age 14 months ( see blogpost here ). It's hard to believe that Nox would turn 23 months in a few days, and his 2nd birthday is just around the corner! And yes i'm STILL breastfeeding! :) Currently i am breastfeeding both my newborn Sterling (he is 10 weeks old -- is he still considered newborn??? hmmmm) and Lennox. This blogpost is not meant to be about the pros of tandem breastfeeding (there are many other more reliable sources i used like kellymom.com  and the amazing FAQ ), but this is just my how i experienced it the last 2 months. Breastfeeding while pregnant When i found out i was pregnant, one of the first things i wondered is if i would continue breastfeeding Lennox. Many moms would choose to stop, which is totally understandable. After speaking to my midwife and my lactation consultant, i decided to just continue. They advised that there was no reason to stop if i felt good. As long as I wasn...

I have been relatively active on social media after the birth of our 2nd son, Sterling, but i just realised we haven't made it official on the blog yet. Say hello to Sterling! And coincidentally he turns 8 weeks old today :) Sterling at a couple of hours old Sterling at 5 days old Sterling at 6 weeks old (and my left eye :P) Isn't he just the cutest?! :) I'm one proud mama here :) Birth story I was 39 weeks & 1 day pregnant, it was a Monday and i was feeling good. I went with Lennox to the library to return some library books and let him run around for abit. I was also hungry so i decided to drop by the McDonald's for a quarter pounder meal (Lennox had a healthier sandwich :P) since i figured i wouldn't have the chance to after the baby comes. We continued to do some groceries then we headed home for a nap. At 15:15 i had my routine check up with my midwife. That day Diana was there (there are 4 rotating midwives that are assigned to me)....

Goodbye 2016, Hello 2017 We were all down with a cold so the Christmas and new year festivities were really kept to a minimum. Also because the fact that Jürgen's grandma passed away earlier in November, everything was pretty subdued with the Kloof family in Holland and Suriname. We basically just stayed home and had my mother-in-law stay with us and have a small celebration with 4 of us. On 30th December we received news about the EEG test which were HEARTBREAKING. The news was told me to over the phone by the doctor. Basically the doctor told us that it showed that Lennox did have epilepsy. Our whole world basically came crashing down. I ugly-cried and hugged Jürgen then immediately started researching on epilepsy. We still could not get an earlier appointment than 7 february with the child neurologist which drove me nuts (what the hell right?!). Things seemed to get better with Lennox and we got rid of the annoying cold. However, early morning on 11th january 2017 Le...

It finally took awhile to write things down but here it finally is. Most of my friends and family know that a week before Christmas 2016 on 17 December, that day was probably one of the worst days of my life. It was a day where i felt so helpless and for a fleeting second i thought i lost my baby boy Lennox. Warning: this is a long post!!! The day started off as any regular Saturday. Jürgen went off for taekwondo training around 10am and i spent the morning with Lennox playing and he usually takes a nap after lunch. He had a little cough since the night before but other than that he was his usual bubbly self the whole morning. Drowsy after a bath and lunch, i brought Lennox to bed and started breastfeeding as usual. He took awhile to totally nod off which was normal, but i noticed then that his whole body started to slightly shiver. I'm actually looking at texts that i sent to Jürgen at 1258pm that day; i told him about the shivering and that his teeth were chattering althoug...

It started out good enough. I had a really awesome pregnancy all 9 months with Lennox and the delivery also went pretty smoothly. I was prepared for the exhausting first couple of months. We were lucky with Lennox with many ways coz he was such a mild mannered newborn, he breastfed like a pro and was such a happy and easy baby almost all of the time. I even flew on my own with him when he was 7 months to Singapore (a 13-hour flight) and it was a breeze! He was happy to be passed around from one person to another while in Singapore and i managed to get some much needed rest with family in Singapore those 5 weeks. Even the flight back to Holland went well. The lady beside me proclaimed Lennox to be the 'best baby on any flight ever'. Man i was beaming. This kid is awesome. AND THEN SEPARATION ANXIETY STRUCK. We got home to the Netherlands and he took awhile to warm back to his papa. Cried when he saw Oma (my mother in law). Screamed when people looked at him when he was in ...

So this kid never ceases to amaze me. Well, maybe he's my kid so i feel proud at every single thing he does (like pooping, in the potty of course). But just after 13 months old, he started to use sign language to speak back to us (like one day it just clicked i think, just like him deciding that he wanted to walk and was done with crawling). He did the sign for 'eat' when I was prepping dinner and i was amazed! Yes baby, we are going to eat!! We started signing with him around 8 months old. J and I did a small 'baby sign language' class when he was around that age just to get used to it ourselves. I also learnt that sign language is just like any other language; the American Sign Language (ASL) is different from the Dutch. And the Malay sign language is probably different as well. To standardize things we decided to follow the Dutch sign language. Meaning i would still be speaking Malay to him, but use the Dutch sign. We went to Baby Gebaren in Almere and the t...

This sentence really irks me! Lennox is almost 14 months old and yes I'm breastfeeding him. I didn't think i would breastfeed this long; i was breastfed till about 7 months and many of my nephews and nieces were also breastfed till around the same time (below 1 year). So I never imagined that i would go past 1 year. I am a proponent of breastfeeding, but also a proponent of feeding your baby, whatever way that might be (formula, or breastmilk). What i notice here in Europe is that people stop breastfeeding much, much earlier. I usually get these 'when are you going to stop' questions from people here. Back in Asia it's quite a norm to still be breastfeeding around age 1 and nobody really thinks of it as 'taboo' even if you go past 1. I guess this post came up because recently i went to a party here in Holland with some of my husband's family, and when it came up that i was breastfeeding, a certain 'Aunt' was like, "ooooooh, Lennox still ge...

Today's blog is about sleeping times. And how I'm still amazed at the fact that many of my Dutch friends have their kids in bed by 7pm!! Having moved to the Netherlands 8 years ago, you would think that i would already have adapted to the Dutch way of living/sleeping. Although we are surrounded by Dutchies, my husband is Dutch-Surinamese and not "Dutch-dutch". So while we enjoy certain Dutch treats like kibbeling, stroopwaffles, dutch pancakes and cheese, we are pretty much still asian/south american in many ways as well. The majority of dutch people have dinner early. And when i say early i mean EARLY like 530 or 6pm! This means that by 7 or 730pm, the kid/s are probably washed up and ready for bed. It's actually pretty awesome that parents can come home from work on time probably around 5 or 530pm to have dinner with the family. The Dutch enjoy family time and that's the main reason most shops are closed by 6pm every day, and in the weekends as well...

As some of you may know, we are currently in my home town Singapore on vacation! We are here to celebrate Eid (Suikerfeest in Dutch) and we have been having a blast so far! Vacation and celebrations always means family, food, food and more food ;) Being on vacation also means that our workout schedules get haywire!! So while we do enjoy our time here, i do try to squeeze in some sort of physical activity, even if it's just a swim, a walk or a jog. Just 5 mins from my family home where we are staying there is a small park/playground with some exercise equipment. My husband needed some pull up bars for his workout so we headed there. For me, before heading there i just googled 'crossfit workout without equipment' and got a whole list of suggestions on what to do. Here's a workout i came up with! 2 Rounds, each for time of 50 Air Squats 25 Bench dips 25 Burpees Rest 3 min in between Warm up  was a slow 5 min jog from home to the playground Do you even squ...

From my previous post about Introducing Solids , I mentioned that I would also document Lennox's journey with BLW. He started when he was 24 weeks old (5 and a half months). By the time he could sit up on his own and was already holding items and putting them into his mouth. Here are some tips i learnt when starting BLW, suggested first foods and basically photos of him looking terribly cute while eating! :P Food prep for BLW Babies do not need teeth to chew! Their gums are strong enough to bite stuff off (just check with moms who breastfeed babies without teeth - the gummy bite can still be painful! :P) Babies around 6 months would be able to pick up objects, but using their whole fists. So one tip i learnt was to cut food into strips that are a little longer that their fists, so that even when they grabbed the food, one part would be sticking out for them to eat. I have here a few examples of Nox holding pieces of carrot, beans and cooked plaintain with his whole fist. ...

It's 27 june and we are 3 weeks into Ramadan! It didn't feel like it went quickly (especially in the beginning) but Hari Raya (Eid / Suikerfeest) is just over a week away! After a few compulsory non-fasting days (hello period), i was full on fasting while breastfeeding. I must admit, although I did the research and science says that milk supply would not be affected, it was still something i thought about a lot during the first days of fasting! It was all just in my mind though. After 2 days i was sure my milk supply was lesser than usual... but on the 3rd day (as though also a sign from the guy up there) when breast feeding, i was spraying milk from one side and leaking on the other just like the first newborn months!! Ok, so no dip in supply then! :P Totally what i felt like on day 3 :P