Sean @ 34 months

As Sean reaches his 34th month, I'm seeing Sean growing more independent and cuter each day. He's now playing more on his own, doing more imaginative play. He's speaking more clearly now and becoming more expressive. It's really cute to hear him play by himself...When he's looking for something and finds it, he goes "Oh here it is".

He's also been displaying more and more of his humorous side. He finds many things hilarious. Tonight I told him to get his " Yo! Yes?" book. He ran to the basket and came back with a book behind his back, eyes lit up and almost bursting with laughter. He showed me the book and said "Brown Bear!" and laughed, then he ran back to the shelf and took another book and repeated this and found so much fun in teasing his mummy.

Another incident I can remember. I asked him, " Do you want to stay in the room or do you want to go downstairs?" I had my 2 fingers up to make my point. He grabbed on of the finger and said "outside!" and laughed and laughed. He knew he was teasing his mummy.


Just recently, the librarian, Anne, at Play Center asked me,"Where's your little boy?" You see, Sean used to shadow me all the time. She was surprised to hear that he was playing by himself outside (with the other kids and adults). She commented, "Wow, he has really grown independent now."

Just on Monday, Sean bullied another boy who's still at the clingy stage. He wanted to play the car that the boy was on. Sean said " My Car" (It wasn't his car but he thinks that everything that he has played with is his) The mother was obviously upset and I scolded Sean and told him to say sorry of course. Bullying is just not acceptable behavior. The mother was surprised to see Sean obediently saying sorry contritely and then moving away without a fuss. She was more surprised to hear that Sean still gets bullied by another (older) boy too.

When he used to get bullied, I told him that he doesn't need to cry but just say "No!". Now he is able to stand up for himself. But he still gets upset when someone takes his toys away too. But then boys will just be boys, they all seem to fight for one particular toy even though they are surrounded by many other toys.

This is a lot of difference from when he started at Children's corner in February. Sean was very clingy and would cry whenever the bell rang. Now, he doesn't cling anymore.In fact, he's one of the few who would answer during lesson time.

Teacher: Who are these?
Sean: People
Teacher: How many of them are there?
Sean: Three
(His voice isn't loud so I don't think he was heard but I just found it cute that he is participating more and more)

He still can't sits still during Circle time though, but I think it's because he is not interested in singing nursery rhymes. He finds jumping around a lot more fun. But I don't have to chase him around the room anymore to get him to sit down. Seriously, my skin is very thick now. I used to chase Sean around the room to catch him while most other kids sit with their mothers.


Sean caught the Transformer bug when he was in Jakarta. The whole time he was there, he was playing with Frederick's transformer toy. On our flight back on Air Asia, we got him a kids meal that came with a few Transformer cards. It became his treasured cards. He plays with them constantly.

On Thursday night, I remembered that I saw some of John's old broken Transformer toys from way back when Transformer first came out in the 80s. I searched for the box and found an old Optimus Prime, and a few other transformer robots with missing parts. Sean was so happy to have "Optipus Time". =D

We washed the dust away and since then we cannot part him from his "Optipus Time" and Bumblebee. He took photos of them, and went to sleep with them. When he wakes up in the morning, he brings them down for breakfast. The only time he's not with them is when he goes to playgroup. I tell him that he cannot bring his toys because he'll lose them. Hence, he hasn't wanted to go out anywhere because he wants to stay home and play with his Transformers.


Sean is still overcoming his fear of water. After swimming lesson, he spends more time outside the pool than inside it. It doesn't help that Kai keeps taking his swimming board away, but in this situation, it's more about learning to defend himself. When he is in water, he still keeps to the shallow steps of the pool. I guess we need to have more swim time to get him more confident in water.


This was Sean's first painting. I was doing a song sheet for Children's corner when Sean woke up and wanted to paint too. I gave him some papers and a brush and some paint. He was painting this upside down when

I said, " Hey, that looks like a car. Is that a car?"
Sean: Yes
I said : Where are the wheels?
So he painted circles for wheels and a window.

He hasn't done anything like this since then. So I can call this his first masterpiece. After all masterpieces are things that is done once only. . ha ha ..ha...

This is Sean's recent painting of letter A. He has a funny way of writing A. He starts with the letter H and then joins the top to make an A. He likes his letters with eyes too.

He painted A with an aeroplane on Thursday but I forgot to bring the paper back from playgroup. Anyway, his aeroplane still doesn't look anything like an aeroplane. It's just squiggles of lines for the body and wings.

Last week he learned how to spell "ANT" all on his own. He was playing with some flash cards and said " A is for Ant!", and since then has been spelling "ant" on the fridge with his alphabet magnets and on the computer when we let him play typing.

He refuses to learn any other words that I try to teach him though. He only learns when he wants to learn. I guess I should learn to be patient and let him learn at his own pace.

Toilet training : We've moved on to sleeping and going out without diapers , but I got lazy yesterday and put him in a diaper if we need to go shopping. We have 2 half packets of diapers left and my intention is to let these be the last of the diapers. Maybe I should just hide them so that Sean will not keep asking to wear diapers all the time and I don't get tempted to put a diaper on him.

This was in March when the kids would run down the slope after playgroup. That was the highlight of the day. What I notice is that while there are toys around, they ignore each other. They prefer to play on their own. The moment we keep the toys away, the notice each other and start playing together. But ever since Kai, the oldest boy (4 years old) left the playgroup in April, they haven't played this much. I guess they need to re-establish the peckng order once again.

This was taken in February. One of the rare photos of me and Sean. I really should take more photos with Sean and Sam. We have so few pictures together.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

The last few days I've spent my time watching UTubes of Michael Jackson. I went through all his music videos and truly enjoyed myself. Michael is truly an amazingly gifted person. He's had a horrific time the last decade with all the charges put to him. However after seeing his home movies, I'm glad to see that he had many moments of happiness with his families and friends. I truly believed that he had the purest and sweetest of heart.

We shall always miss you Michael Jackson.
The world will never be the same without you.

What is considered as toilet trained?

Is it when they can go to pee by themselves or when they don't need to wear diapers anymore but we are still helping them with the cleaning up?

I've finally decided to make Sean sleep without diaper. He was good for 2 days, but last night he wet his bed, so I changed him, put on a diaper on him and let him into our bed. It's a good thing he was on his own bed. I don't look forward to sleeping on soggy bed =P

But today I decided that it's time to send him to school sans diapers. And he was quite alright. So does it mean that he's toilet trained? I don't know.

I think we've been to dependent on the convenience of the diapers that actually it's just who's finding it difficult to have him out without his diapers. What if he wets himself in the car? outside? what about when he needs to poo when we are out? Other people don't seem to worry too much about these.

I guess, I just have to let go of the diapers and tell myself that there will be wet accidents and it's just part and parcel of growing up. and maybe bring extra clothing from now on.

No diaper last night

Last night I forgot to put diaper on Sean before bed. He slept the whole night through without wetting his bed! Wow!

I'm not sure if that's going to repeat tonight. He has been napping in the afternoon without diaper but until yesterday, he's always had a diaper at night and going out. He still wants to wear his diaper most of the time. I have to say "No!" to him all the time.

I'm going to put him to bed without diaper again tonight. Cross fingers, hopefully he doesn't wet the bed, but even if he does, I think it's just part of the process of growing up.

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 3

I've just finished "Reading" 2nd edition by Frank Smith. The book is about the process of reading. In his book, he claims that whatever reading methods you use, children will learn to read all the same because children are learning beings. They are thirsty for knowledge and are learning all the time.

Franks Smith does not think the reading methods, either phonic nor sight reading, are the best way to teach reading. He feels that it's important that reading is made interesting for children, which means the best way to learn to read is by reading. The more you read, the more you learn. Therefore, it is important to give them reading materials that interest them.

The book itself is a rather dry reading because he talks a lot about scientific data about how the eyes and brains are involved in reading. However, his insights helps me confirm my intuition about reading, i.e. Phonic rules can be dry and boring. I tried teaching Sean some basic ones such as "c-at" "m-at" "b-at" "h-at". It just switches him off and he refuse to even listen. I think he's not ready for it yet. And that, interesting books are very important. Otherwise, you won't be interested to even start reading.

So all I've been doing is to borrow many books from the library, all sorts of types and read them to him. Sometimes he's interested, sometimes he's not. But most of the time he's interested. It's a trial and error thing because I don't know what will he like until we read it.

His current favorite books are "Shiver Me Letters, a Pirate ABC", " ALPHABEEP". This is because they are books about the alphabets which he already recognizes by heart. He has begun to parrot me when I read them to him. Not every page since some of the sentences are rather long.

Recently, I borrowed a book called " Good Night Gorilla" which caught his fancy. The illustration tells the story about how a small gorilla steals the keys and open all the cages of the animals, and then all of them followed the night watchman back to his house, which woke his wife up and she then brought the animals back to the zoo. Unknown to her, the gorilla stole the key again and followed her back to her bedroom.

The few words in the book are just " Good night gorilla", "Good night elephant", "Good night Lion", " Good night Hyena", " Good night Giraffe", " Good night Armadillo", " Good night dear"

This is a great book, not only it's a cute story, the words are so easy that even Sean can read them by himself (except for armadillo and dear). I wish there are more books like this. It tells so much with so few words.

Today, he read (with a bit of help from mummy) a small booklet by himself. It's a scholastic reader from his playgroup, a very short story about little and big. It reads like this:

Little and Big
This truck is little.
This truck is big.
This house is little.
This house is big.
This flower is little.
This flower is big.
This balloon is little.
This balloon is BIG!

I need to prompt him on "this" and " is" and I think he looks at the picture to give him a clue about the objects, but he can read the book! I'm so proud of him =D

And then, excitedly, I got him to read another short book which I scanned and made into a booklet for him.

Costume Party
I am a pirate
I am a doctor
I am a fire fighter (written as fire man)
I am a butterfly
I am a cowboy
I am a space girl (written as space boy)
I am a crocodile.
Snap! Snap! Snap!

He needs prompting on "I" "am" "a", which is basically most of the sentence, and he reads the rest from memory, because "fire fighter" and "space girl" are actually written in the original book that the school let him bring home.

From all these and from what I've read, I just think that early reading is all about memory. It's difficult for children to remember " I", "This" and grammatical rules because they are interested in the meaning of the story, not the actual sentence. To them the words "the", "is", "am" are not important and are omitted in their reading.

In fact, Frank Smith feels that by insisting on word perfect reading, you are actually interfering with the process of reading because it's the comprehension that's important, not the actual perfect reading of a sentence.

Actually, Sean still omits all these grammatical words even when he speaks, so I guess, it's natural for him to omit them when he reads. However, it is already exciting enough that he's started to want to read by himself and not always insisting that I read for him.

I still think Phonics has a lot of benefits despite Frank Smith's disregard. If you are interested in learning more about Phonics, read " Why Johny Can't Read" which deals with phonics and it even teaches you how to teach phonics. However, I don't think I'm going to teach Sean phonics yet. I'll let him enjoy reading from memory first and later helps him with his phonics when the time comes, maybe when he's 4 years old.

Sean, congratulations on reading your first books, "Good Night Gorilla" and " Big and Little". Mummy is very proud of you. =D

ear infection and bad cold

I have been neglecting my blog shamelessly. And now I can do a bit of blogging because everyone is out and Sean is with PIL out to the supermarket.

Firstly since we were Jakarta, we've all been feeling listless. The weather there was too hot and Sean was coughing and I was just tired from the trip.Then we went to the farm trip, which was really hot. After that, I just felt terrible every day. I think we all got a bit of sun-stroke. I was tired all the time. Sean wasn't feeling well too and so he was behaving quite badly and I just didn't have the energy to deal with it most of the time. The haze gave me terrible allergies which made me sneezzy and tired all the time.

Then on Sunday night, Sean had high fever, which turned out to be ear infection, and then I got a terrible cold. Totally blocked my nose and parched my throat. So it has been a sick house over here.

But some good things happen at least before the haze started.

PIL started bringing Sean to the park in the evening (before the haze started) and with the extra exercise, Sean behaved better. Once he expends all that energy, he's quite calm in the evening. He also starts playing more with the maid, and therefore mummy can do her work. Anyway, mummy just hasn't had the energy to play much with Sean.

But since the haze started, Sean hasn't been able to go for his daily run with Akong and Ama. And then when he has ear infection, he hasn't been going to school in the morning. So I've got this bundle of energy, with his chesty coughs, runny nose, and fever to entertain. Hubby is equally sick but not as bad, so he has been taking over nap and night duties. And when MIL comes home in the evening , she helps me with Sean.

I wish this terrible cold of mine and Sean's ear infection go away. We'll be so much happier.

Darn.... I hate to be sick.

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 2

Suffice to say, all efforts in teaching Sean to read stopped just before we went to Jakarta. Since we came back, I haven't had the energy to do anything about it. So I'm just back-blogging about what I did before the trip.

Each book I read spurred me on to do different things. After all, these are just experimenting with different ways.

From the "Teaching you child to read in 60 days" I followed a game they did which uses cars and stuck on words. It went well for a few days, after that we were fighting over the fact that he didn't say it correctly and yet he still wanted to eat the Twisties. So I said, forget it for a while. He was more interested in the Twisties (the rewards) than in the game itself.

Then he was into "Brown bear brown bear what do you see" book.
Soo, I made a simple game which I stick on the wall from the book. It says:

Sean, Sean
Sean, Sean
What do you see?

I see a _____ ______
looking at me.

The blank spaces are replaced with the different colors and the animals from the book. He can recite it but I'm not sure if he's reading or reciting from memory. We played this for a few days and then I stopped it so he doesn't get bored with it.

Then I read another book that suggest a simpler idea on teaching a young toddler. The book 'Teach your baby to read" suggests using very big red colored fonts (6 inches high) to begin with when teaching the first few words. So I printed huge "Sean Wee", "mummy", "daddy", "loves" and pasted them on the wall. "mummy daddy loves Sean Wee" and just casually tell him what each word sounds like. I've left it on the wall and he can read it on his own now. Currently it says "Jesus loves Sean mummy daddy"

Following the book's suggestion, I've also put up words on body parts such as head, eyes, ears, etc, but haven't been telling him as often. Maybe it's because these words aren't interesting on their own. I think I should sing more "Heads shoulders knees and toes" to get us going on body parts. He already knows his body parts but don't know how to read them yet. =D

I've also started to borrow beginning reading books which have very few and easy words. From our nightly reading, I think he can read some words now, such as "cat", "hat", "bee","flower", "butterfly", "car", good night", "tree". I think he knows more than these, I just haven't been noting down what they are.

So I was doing these reading lessons at a very leisurely pace and try not to push too hard and try to remember to be very enthusiastic every time he gets something correct.

I haven't been doing anything much to teach Sean recently because I just haven't had the energy nor the inclination to do so. But I've had some time to read one or two books which help me to understand what the "war on reading" is all about.

It's about the different views of educators in terms of teaching how to read. Some views that sight reading is the way to go. A lot of beginning to read books are actually about sight reading. They repeat the words in many different ways so the child will recognize the words. The new reading schemes have more interesting stories that the old ones like Peter and Jane, and they use many stories to show how each word can be used. However, this method doesn't really teach reading. It's more like memorizing how a word looks like (the chinese words method) and therefore cannot help a child to read any words they have never seen before.

Another method is Phonics which teaches a child how the letters sounds like. There are about 44 (I think, I can't remember exactly) sounds of words which include the 26 alphabets. They also include ck, sh, th, etc. It's harder to teach because the child needs to learn how break a word into different section.

We think it's easy because as adults we automatically do it. But a young child has to start from scratch so it might be easy to learn the alphabet because each letter sounds different, but when you put them into a word, they need to learn that combination such as ck, sh, th, need to be sounded separately.

So it is harder to teach but once the child can do it, supposedly he/she can read new words, which mean reading will become interesting because they can read more types of books and can build up their vocabulary easier.

Now that I understand all these, it doesn't mean that it's easier to teach Sean how to read because whether or not you can do it in "60 days" like the way the single dad in the book claims, it really depends on the readiness of each child.

In "Teach you child to read in 60 days" He was a single father (impressive) who uses the time he had (in the morning and evening) with this 2 daughters to play these reading games. Firstly, he has 2 daughters. One 4 years old and the other 2 1/2 years old. I just think daughters are easier to teach because many starts speaking earlier and therefore have a bigger vocabulary already. They were already pretending to read, which means they were interested in learning how to read. And there were 2 of them, competition between siblings helped to egg them on to learn since it was done in a form of a game.

In Sean's case, he has too many distractions. I think I need to hide the toys before I start the games again. He's also very stubborn and just wouldn't listen when corrected. So it may be that he's not ready to learn yet. At the moment, the few words that he knows is more from sight reading because re recognize the words, or he may just guess it from the pictures. I haven't really taught him phonics yet because I think I should do it when we are in better mood.

But whatever the case, I think I'll get better first before starting again. Being sick shortens my temper and I wouldn' t want him to associate these games with mummy being grumpy. =P ha ha ha. After all, I'm suppose to be super enthusiastic! Shudder..... I'm just not in the mood to be enthusiastic.