Me : Hurry up! Why are you taking so long to buckle your seat belt?!
宝贝 : (fumbling with her seat belt) Mama! Can you be more patient?? (In her most adult tone) (gives a loud sigh and shook her head reproachfully at me).
Huh?! Me?! Macham like I’m the impatient kid. Pfft!
She’s been complaining about her tummy ache for the past 2 days. But she’s able to eat normally (she finished an adult’s portion of unagi don). ?
We took her seriously when she gave up half of her yummi yoghurt. That’s her favourite.
Fed her a charcoal pill. She chewed through it (ewwww!) because she hasn’t learnt how to swallow pills yet.
Super proud of her black tongue. Even stuck it out to admire it for a few minutes, in front of the bathroom mirror before brushing it all away.
My target for breastfeeding 小小宝贝 was 12 months. He’s now 14 months old. Hmm… Seems like I’ve exceeded expectations (in corporate terms ?). Anyway the breastmilk has been dwindling and he’s deriving more nutrients from solids than BM anyway. So it’s more like a good to have but not a necessity.
And it’s more of an emotional connection for me. It’s great to feel needed. ☺️That’s why I’ve been delaying the weaning. For 宝贝 I wasn’t given a choice. She refused to latch on after I was away for one week. We will see how it goes for him.
I’ve reduced my pumping to just 12 noon lunch time and evening 6pm.
Due to experiences with 宝贝’s food allergies and eczema, I’ve been reading up a lot on nutrition, diet and whathaveyous. So instead of formula milk (cow’s milk) which has a lot of additives, I’ve decided to go with plant milk, almond milk.
Although it’s low in fats, but it’s extremely high in calcium and other forms of nutrients. In fact, even higher than animal milk. Fats can be easily replaceable through other food.
The only concern is – is he allergic to almond which falls under the high allergenic group, nuts.
I bought this from Iherb, original, unsweetened almond milk.
I tried it myself… Eh! Quite nice!!
So I gave both of them some, in the morning. In case allergy develops, I’ve time to bring him to the clinic for anti histamine.
And guess what, both of them were fighting to drink it. Good news!!! After 3 days, it’s been confirmed that he’s not allergic to almonds. Time to try other nuts which are full of wonderful stuff! ??
The bad news is, Iherb discontinued this right after I bought my first packet. Sheesh!
So it’s off to cold storage to buy the expensive Silk brand almond milk. $15 per packet.
I wrote about 宝贝 learning words so that she could message all her friends (her friends’ parents, to be precise) and her favourite adults.
Well she has progressed to being able to carry a very simple conversation.
Not the world’s top conversationalist, but adequate. It’s actually pretty repetitive. She can spell the high frequency words and she can guess the words from the question so if she can’t really spell the word, she copies the word from the question. Or if she can’t remember the entire spelling of the whole word, she will hunt down the story book which has the word, just like one of our open book exams. It’s really fun for her as she gets a response from the other party. She gets the kick out of it. So she’s Miss Eager Beaver for new words. It’s better that she bugs me to teach her words, than for me to hound her to learn new words.
So far, her jiu jiu has been the most responsive person on whatsapp. So he’s one of her favourite whatsapping friend right now!
As anti-gadget-for-children I am, it does make a very good learning tool when well utilised.
I’m visualising myself teaching her how to start a simple blog next year. That should be quite fun. :)
(Disclaimer: the adult conversationalist has lousy grammar!)
Struggling to put her swimming cap over her head. It slipped off for the 3rd consecutive time.
Me : (exasperated) why is your head so big today??
宝贝: I ate a lot of vegetables during lunch today. That’s why my head is so big.
Me : what does eating vegetables have to do with your head?!
宝贝 : all the vegetables went to my head. So it became bigger. I should eat less vegetables.
Is she trying to pull a fast one on me?!
A few months back… In sedentary September, 宝贝 had her 4th birthday.
Her classmate gave her a Barbie doll.
宝贝: Mama! Peter Paul gave me a Barbie!! I want to play with it now. (Now happened to be bedtime.)
Me : Nope, you play with it tomorrow. You must sleep now.
宝贝: But I love Barbie dolls!
Me : Why would you? You never had one. Besides, only BIMBOs play with Barbies. See!! Both start with B.
宝贝: What’s a BIMbo??
Me : A Bimbo is a silly Sally. Silly Sallys are giddy gaddies and they fall down all the time.
宝贝 : Ooh! I just fell down today! (Shows me a bruise on her knee) So I’m a silly Sally. And I’m a bimbo. Can I play with the Barbie doll now??
?
Today, we revisited the subject on Bimbos again.
宝贝: Mama, green is no longer my favourite colour.
Me : Oh really? So what’s your favourite colour now?
宝贝 : PINK!!
Me : Pink?! Yucks! Only bimbos like pink!!
宝贝 : But Sarah likes pink too! (Trying to convince me with herd mentality.)
Me : So?!
宝贝 : Mama, then why are you wearing pink?! You are a bimbo!!
Me : (looks down at my shirt. Darn! I’m wearing a dark pink Adidas polo shirt. I made a mental note to check my clothes before venturing into the bimbo topic in future.) Now look! This is a present from Uncle Ernest. It’ll be very rude to reject a present. So since I didn’t buy it, I’m not a Bimbo!!
宝贝 : (chanting) Bimbo Bimbo Bimbo!!
Damn!!! Pawned by a 4 year old. ?
After I bought one of these PlayMais sponge handicraft thingy for one of her friends’ birthday present, she’s been bugging us for one practically everyday.
My parents caved in and bought her one for Christmas. We finally “open sesame” the box last weekend to start work on it.
It’s a very good craft for preschoolers, except for the exorbitant price.
Here’s what it looks like. They have it in various themes. Hers is a safari one, complete with boards and props for the final assembly. (If we ever get there… )
It’s filled with colourful foams. You cut them up into shapes according to the instruction booklet. And stick them together with water. Easy peasy!!
Here’s 宝贝 trying to assemble her giraffe.
The giraffe’s head and neck. The instruction booklet is in the background.
The final product – a lopsided mutant giraffe. Fully produced by 宝贝, with minimal help from us. Not the handsomest giraffe but at least it’s standing on its 4 wobbly legs.
It took her the entire morning for this. No mean feat.
Wow! It’s been some time since I’ve posted. And it’s been quite a while since I last sat down to do some revision with 宝贝. I’m the English oic and it’s all been very adhoc. As a result, her Chinese has improved by leaps and bounds, thanks to my Mom’s religious drilling everyday. But her English standard has fallen behind.
Although she’s not allowed to play with the phone but every night she’s allowed to send 2 whatsapp messages to anyone, on the condition that she spells the message herself. She’s been doing this since she turned 3. So she’s been building up her vocabulary. From single words to short sentences consisting of 3-4 words.
She loves to message her Jiu Jiu (uncle). He’s by far the most responsive “messager”. Messaging her father is like watching the message disappear into a black hole. But she still messages him quite often, hoping for his once in a while reply.
Today we started on very adhoc spelling. (I’m not sure if I can keep up. ?)
I could hear the pitter pattering of little feet running around my room. I half opened my eyes (totally zonked out by the baby who woke up once every hour last night) and estimated it to be around 730am.
I was expecting the usual stuff, 宝贝 would jump into my bed and play with her brother. About 15 mins passed, nothing happened, except lots of rustling sounds from my toilet. This was extremely unusual.
I called out to her and she ran…in the opposite direction – to her room!
Ok. Fishy…!
Finally she appeared and whispered in a very remorseful voice,”Mommy please help…”
She did this to her face.
“What’s that on your face?!”
My hub came into the room and explained.
“She’s been playing with your makeup. She used up a lot of tissue, trying to remove it. Then she used water. But she couldn’t remove it. When you called out to her she ran away because she was afraid that she’s going to get scolded…”
That explained all the running around and rustling sounds. =.=”
“Waaa it’s permanent! It can’t be removed for one week!”
Then tears started to pool in her eyes. “I don’t want to go out like this!! Ugly!!” She wailed!
“If I remove them for you, do you promise not to play with my makeup again?”
She tearfully nodded her head.
“No promises ok! I will try to remove it. If I can’t then you have to stay at home for a week until it’s gone!”
So I used the makeup remover. And made a big fanfare out of it. “Waaa! So hard to remove! Waaa! You are so lucky!!!! See!! It can be removed! You may not be so lucky the next time!”
She happily left the room with a clean face. My makeup is safe…. For now….
The cheeky boy plonked his head on the tray of his high chair and peeked at me through the hole in my dining chair. Now you see me…!!
宝贝’s turn!
Hey! It’s me again!! *giggle* peek-a-boo!!