Malaysia to England in 2 minutes

No, not some Richard Branson Hyper-galactic low-cost flight from Malaysia to England. Rather, a stroll in the park...



...starting in the 'Malaysia' corner of the park, and after a 2-minute stroll...

...ending up in the 'England' corner. Oh and we passed the Netherlands on the way:

This is how we like to spend time with Hannah. Either early in the morning, or in the late afternoon. This park is about 10 minutes drive from our apartment, and offers lots of space for Hannah to run around, look at birds and pick up leaves. Surely better than rattling around our apartment for hours on end!

Here are some more shots of Hannah having a good time.

A powerful sermon

No, not a new sermon by me. This one is by Professor D. A. Carson who was in Kuala Lumpur this week, speaking at the annual Klang Valley Bible Conference (http://www.kvbc.info/).

Don Carson is always good. Good to read, good to listen to. I recommend anything by him that you can get your hands on.

And at the KVBC, his talks were as good as anything he has preached. But I was especially touched by his second talk - an exposition of Matthew 27:27-50 entitled "The Ironies of the Cross."

He brought out in my a fresh appreciation of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. I thank God for his ministry, and the fact that he has come to Malaysia (it is actually his 3rd time here as the speaker at KVBC). I am so glad I recorded his sermon, and I encourage you to take time to listen to this message. It is long - over an hour - so if you have an MP3 player, I suggest you download the file (about 16 MB) and take your time listening to it. Sorry if the recording quality is not fantastic - the official CD will only come out in about a month's time, but I really wanted to share this now!

Click here to listen to / download the sermon. I have also put a link in the right-hand panel.

Sweet Dreams?

As I write this, Hannah has just fallen asleep.

That might not sound like blog-worthy news. But right now it feels like it to me! Let me explain...

In Hannah's first few weeks, I think we would have classified Hannah as a baby with a 'sleeping problem.' Not able to sleep without considerable carrying, waking up frequently, etc. Then after a couple of months (and up to a few days ago) we considered Hannah to be a 'good sleeper' - especially compared to some nightmare stories we heard of some people's babies. She could actually sleep a solid 10 hours every so often. And then things changed.

Hannah has always enjoyed being carried when she wants to sleep. But three days ago she insisted on being carried UNTIL she fell asleep, and that meant about half an hour of carrying/rocking 10kg's worth of baby. Two days ago she insisted on the SAME treatment. Thus, a new habit began to develop. Yesterday she insisted on the same treatment AGAIN. At the same time, her daytime naps had also got more difficult. But this time Daddy was getting tired, and getting worried about the new sleeping trend. And so ensued a "battle of wills" as Hannah did her best (screaming, throwing things, crying, choking) to win sympathy while Daddy did his best to ignore her. The result was, after a LONG time Daddy managed to pacify Hannah while sitting next to her cot and without laying a finger on her. After a few more minutes, an exhausted little girl fell sleep. Ah-ha. Hope for a better way.

So, tonight, Hannah tried to be carried again - but without as much conviction as the night before. And Daddy stuck to his new plan. It took more than 45 minutes sat next to her cot, but she did fall asleep - and with less fuss than the night before.

Given our concern about her sudden change in sleeping habits, I decided to do a bit of internet research, and found this rather neat Johnson's Baby-sponsored site that produces a "Customized sleeping profile" for your baby, complete with practical tailor-made recommendations for improving your baby's sleep.

You can try it out here:

Some tips I picked up

• Her sleep patterns are not entirely unusual for babies of her age - an encouragement!
• We should move Hannah from 2 naps per day to just 1, and plan it in the early afternoon.
• We shouldn't put Hannah's pacifier in her mouth for her (she always sleeps with a pacifier!) - rather, put it in the cot and let her pick it up so she doesn't depend on someone to do it for her (e.g. in the middle of the night when it falls out and she wakes up)

I hope you find something useful on the website, too.

Good night, and sleep well.

Solving the Unsolved Mystery

Thanks to everyone that took part in our poll.

Now before I reveal and analyze the stats, I want to clarify one of the comments made in the poll.

After THIS comment...:

":-)If based on baby photos, Hannah looks a lot like Chris when he was a baby but...sad as it may seem, Chris is no longer a "round" but more of an "oval" now and I will have to say that Hannah looks very much like her mummy...thumbs up for you Cindy ;-)"

...Cindy added THIS comment...:

"That's one vote for option 3!!"

...which I think is a misreading of the first comment. It should actually be a vote for option 2 BASED ON THE BABY PHOTOS. (P.S., as you might have guessed, Cindy is not the one typing this particular blog!)

So let's have a look at a visual representation of the voting:

Just to clarify, there were 3 voters in total, one of whom split their vote between options 2 and 3. And who are options 1, 2 and 3?


Option 1 = Samantha Wylie (Chris's big sis)

Option 2 = Chris



















Option 3 = Cindy