Surprise

As a mummy, you would have always heard people telling you; having a child can be so very fun and being with them everyday can be a surprise. Well to some extent it is quite true and it is simply lovely for a pleasant surprise to spring up unexpectedly!

 

A very classic example which happened yesterday....

 

Lately Zelyn had been very much into looking at the photos and videos in our mobilephone or Ipad. That is the only activity that could keep her occupied and still for a good 20 minutes or more. The expressions she had while watching is really adorable, either she will smile happily at the video or she will imitate after herself in the video. Seriously speaking I enjoyed watching her a lot, pure simple bliss.

 

So back to the incident yesterday, the daddy was trying to show her some photos of herself during infancy on the Ipad. Being the lazy daddy (he always feel that I am not doing enough for the children), the task was handed over to me. This young lady here can be really persistent, she will insist on being showed the photos or videos accordingly to her liking e.g. mobilephone or Ipad. So we were scrolling through the photos taken when she was much younger like say 2-3 months old. Oh did I mention that she know how to scroll photos by swiping across the screen merely by watching how we do it!

 

Anyhow she saw her stinky pillow in one of the photo. To my surprise she turned and locate her stinky pillow and showed it to me after pointing to the pillow in the photo! It was almost like telling me "see mummy, it's the same pillow!" I was really caught off guard at her action and needless to say again the heart swell humoungously and turned me into a proud mummy, awww.......

 

The simple action, pure happiness, joy & bliss....

Walk

The little girl have been showing signs of walking the last few days.

 

She had been furniture cruising for a real long time but yet do not have the confidence to go hands off, to squat down or even standing up from squatting position. For what she is not confident of, she would rather crawl which make sense since she is a fast crawler.

 

Probably the excitement to walk was brought about because of the Playskool walker we assembled for her recently. She was giggling with real excitement holding on to the walker and trying to dash around! Baby walker to train your walking and not running when you have yet to master the skill of walking!

 

When she lay hands on the walker, she walks around the whole house and she proudly 'walk' to show off to her grandma & helper (as they are the only ones who have yet to see her with the walker), yelling to get their attention as though announcing "look at my new toy"! Most of the time she could only walk straight ahead and once caught in a corner or dead end, she will hold the walker up to 'turn' around. Do not underestimate the strength of this petite lady even though the walker is pretty light weight.

 

So last 2 days she have been taking small baby steps like 4-5 steps and we have to remind her to steady herself first before attempting to take her steps otherwise she will dash! She appear to be getting the hang of it and was pretty stable in the 4-5 baby steps she is attempting. Not that I am complaining but seriously I would rather she do not walk so fast as that would spell a new set of headache!

Sports Day

Marymount Kindergarten held their sports day on 03 Aug 2013, a Saturday split into 2 sessions. Zethan whom is in the afternoon session attended the 1pm - 3pm. I was rather concerned initially as it is scorching hot at 1pm especially the recent weather was pretty bad. However my concern was unfounded when we reached Marymount Convent where the sports day is held. It was really nice to know that the children will be having their events under shade, away from the hot hot sun.

 

Soon after we arrived, I lead Zethan to join his teacher and classmates at the other end from the parents area. We soon felt like bad parents as while majority of the parents are armed with DSLR, P&S plus video cam, these two 1st time attending parents came with our Iphone 5 and Note 2!

 

The whole event was organized really well, nice and neat. The children were made to march out of the waiting area passing by all the proud parents while cameras click furiously. My little guy was marching so proudly and meticulously, simply made my heart swell. At this moment I regretted not bringing my DSLR instead of relying on the mere Iphone 5. All the children were then lined in front of the parents' area to kick off the event. It was not tough to pick out the little guy among the crowd since he is slightly bigger in size and taller among the peers. It was really heart-warming to see him participating actively in all the songs and bowing his head down, eyes half closed peeping, hands clasped for prayers. Super adorable and I could not help laughing to myself.

We had to wait for quite a while for the little guy class to 'çompete'. In fact he is the first in line! Going past a few gymnastic hurdles and participating with much seriousness, weaving thru the little cones in figures of 8, he came to the hoopla hoop to kick the sepak tekraw ball a few times, very much adorable. I recalled him coming home and telling me very sadly that after the rehearsal, he did not have any prize and only 2 of the classmates were given prizes and I had to console him that he had fun and that matter more and he could try harder during sports day. Only during the sports day I realised it was because 2 appointed were made to receive the 'prize' by default! 

After the events are over & done with, all the children donned a cap and sling bag given to the children specially for sports day, came marching past again. To end it off, they sang and danced for everyone, uber cool! Great efforts put in by Marymount for such an interesting and successful event!

On our own

Now that the helper is more or less settled at home, I told the hubby that we would have to spend time as a family, going out on our own without the helper. I do not fancy the idea of having the helper everywhere we go, seriously like no privacy in the house as well as out.

 

The hubby was pretty resistant initially which seriously could not be blamed since the luxury of the helper tagging along translate to the hubby not having to carry the diaper bag or anything else we bought for that matter. This is easily resolved by bringing along the stroller and with the hooks, shopping bags can be hung on the stroller freeing our hands. He asked the first few times if we are bringing the helper along but guess he got the idea after the repeated NO was what he received.

 

The only huge difference I must admit which is pretty significant would be dining out. With the helper around, we can afford to have our meals in peace while the gal is being watched over thus I would only need to prepare the boy's meal. Again I feel that it's no major issue unless when there are isolated occasions when the gal is fussy and rejecting her stroller /  high chair. Otherwise she is pretty self entertaining with people watching, cuddling her smelly pillow or a few toys here and there. Snacks could be quite a life saver at critical moments like such especially if she were to reject all those mentioned.

 

So far we attended a few birthday parties (Jun / July babies) almost every weekend and could still steal some time for short trips to Changi Airport and walk around Downtown east etc.

Park

A rare walk in the park....

 

Why did I say that which did sound really weird. Simply because the daddy is always whining, complaining, delaying, postponing whenever I suggest going to the park for a walk or to bring the boy for cycling. We are definitely not very morning people so a trip to the park to catch some morning sun is close to impossible. On the days when we do make it a point to wake up earlier, it's either raining or gloomy day.

 

Not that I am an outdoor person just like the daddy, perspiring out under the sun is just not my cup of tea. Lazy like the daddy, I am however willing to 'sacrifice' just for the kids to make it happen. I would love for the kids to be expose to all different kind of activities, bring some greenery and nature into their life and breathing in some fresh air not that the air would definitely be fresh but still...get the drift?

 

So with the numerous excuses and whole loads of hiccups over the YEARS, I insisted that we do it one of the day in the late afternoon. I started to prepare the daddy the day before by requesting to bring Zethan's bicycle out from the storeroom, dusting off the dust & cobwebs and adjusting the height of the seat since it was the boy's 1st birthday pressie. Yes there is no typo error here, the bicycle had been hidden in cold palace for a good 3.5 years! On that particular sunday few weeks back, I began monitoring the weather from morning onwards and was so pleased that it was a cloudy later afternoon though there are signs of threatening rainfall. I made the decision to 'just do it' regardless if it might pour or not. So I started packing some snacks, water bottles, what's is and what's not without alerting the boy that we are indeed going cycling!

 

So off we go to Bishan park which is just 5mins drive away. Quite a fair bit of logistic, the daddy had to carry the stroller from carpark to the HDB void deck before returning for the bicycle again. It was pretty surprising that the park is packed with people of all ages, couples blading, people jogging, families with children skate scooting or cycling.

Zethan took to his bicycle rather well though it's on 4 wheels but still he did fairly well. Zelyn was on the stroller and no whining or complaining totally the whole an hour or so. The daddy and myself took turns to spend a little time with each kid. Zelyn was fascinated with the numerous dogs strolling in the park, yelling excited at them when she passed by one.

 I was equally excited spotting some mimosa plants in the park and took the opportunity to shed some 'science' knowledge to Zethan. Demonstrated to him how the mimosa behave at the touch and he had good fun trying to spot the plant and touching them with his shoes gently.

The weather threaten to pour after a good 2 rounds in the park and we decided to call it a day, washing up and having some snacks and water before making our way back. Hope to do it again real soon though at the point of this post, it's been about a month. Well, we will make it happen again!!!

55 months

The little man turned 55 months today! okay sound real weird, he is 4 years 7 months old. Either way it sound really a mouthful.

 

Pardon me but my mind is seriously blank and totally uninspired on what to blog which is very pathetic.

 

On the whole, he is growing very well, a little too well I must say but I am definitely not complaining here. Nothing beats the happiness and satisfaction of watching our own children grew strong and healthy. It appear that he is the tallest and one of the biggest build in his class but of course bearing in mind he is a January baby thus started early than most of his peers. It is with no difficulty for him to stand out among his peers or trying to spot him in a crowd.

 

This bad mummy here could not even recall his last height measured when we did his assessment at the PD. Weight recorded few weeks back was 22kg though. He is still a pretty much milk monster and a norm will have him guzzling 330ml of milk thrice a day. We have tried to cut his milk feeds but in vain. The best achieved was cutting back on the tea break feed replacing with either sandwich or porridge when he returned from school in the mid afternoon.

 

As for his speech development which was one of my main concern back then, he is progressing really well at this moment. I have yet to identify any words that need correction in pronunciation. Academic wise, I would rather don't go there as we have not been very much focusing on this aspect of his development. That's the results of 2 super duper relax parents and guess it's time to look into enrichment classes for him soon, 'honeymoon' drawing to an end. His pencil dripping skill (fine motor skill) had to be worked on further while there are lots of mirror images reflected when it comes to writing of lower case letters.

 

In terms of character, there seem to be some regression though. Rather it should be considered as behaviour. Lots of shouting, rude actions which he had never ever displayed before. Rebellious might be the word for it and I certainly hope it is a passing phase otherwise it seem that he was being punished multiple times a day and it's only in my presence of that short stretch of 3-4 hours in the evening before bedtime. I have tried the soft and hard approach concurrently but regardless of which, the message did not appear to set in his mind. Not that I would like to punish but it would do him more harm than good if I had not enforce the appropriate discipline to the boundary testing antics he is up to. I certainly hope that it is not due to sibling rivalry and jealousy that he is displaying these attention seeking behaviour. We have tried to our best to balance out equal attention spent on each child and tried to spend some quality with him alone in the absence of the sister.

 

His confidence level and self esteem looked pretty low which required lots of encouragement. Though that had to do with fear of getting himself into trouble thus not standing up for himself. An example the other day, the auntie on the school bus complained that he is naughty; not behaving and refused to heed her advice on where he is supposed to be seated. We spoke to him with the intention to identify the root cause only to realise that an older boy had snatched his toy, refusing to return it back to him on the bus journey home. Now not that it is right for him to be bringing a toy to school which he had hidden in his school bag without our notice. However we still encourage that he would have to speak up for himself and in such instance to notify the adult present supposedly in this case the bus auntie. There are also a few instances where he was hit by a friend and kept mum about it, only telling us during casual talks with him.

 

It came as such a surprise that though he might be all active and outspoken, he is actually a very shy boy. He dislike to be in the limelight and centre of attention. Even in our presence he is very shy as seen when he blush and turn away our attention when we try to bring our full attention to him in things he is doing or even a simple action of trying to take a photo for him in the comfort of our home. When we try to take a photo of him in public, his eyes will drifted around to see if anyone is watching him. Guess I would need to kick my lazy butt to do a little research on activities that could build his confidence and self esteem. If you do know of any effective methods, please do me a favour and kindly share with me.

Pearlies

It appear so that the little girl is cutting 3 teeth concurrently thus cranky, loss of appetite, fussy, name it, she displayed almost all possible symptoms.

 

Only exception is she does not drool that much (touchwood) but tend to bite her fingers, fist, arms and all. 

 

As compared to Zethan, she is pretty slow in her teething process. A mummy friend mentioned that fully breastfed baby tend to teeth at a slower pace than formula fed baby but don't look in the case either. Having said that she had been having only 2 pearlies for the longest time possible like say since 6 months old and now at 12 months cutting the top pearlies. There is a saying that goes the later they cut their tooth or complete the full set, the better it is since teeth are much longer. Again based o hearsay, not sure if there's any truth to it.

 

Perhaps it is due to the longer interval to cut her 3rd tooth thus the discomfort level can be pretty bad. Poor baby. Nonetheless it is a growing process that need to be gone through. Just hope that the discomfort and pain can go away real soon.