Playdates

I've been busy this month because it's exam month. However, we've managed to squeeze in a few play dates here and there. Not in order of dates:

We visited Auntie Paik Ling, Bryan and Brandon at home.



We went over to Auntie Sam, Kay and Kean's place.



We had a play-date at Bangsar Village II Kidsports, where Mummy managed to sneak a quick coffee break. =P



We played at Auntie Hun Kee, Jack, and Finn's place. It's such a beautiful home. My current favourite dream home.



Some of us mummies and kids are getting to be regulars at Raju after playgroup. Today, we seated the kids together. They behaved rather well most of the time, except for one instance when Sean started to scream and the rest followed one by one! Towards the end Kristen continued screaming until her mummy, Auntie Amelia asked her to stop. By then, Sean has stopped screaming.

The kids look like they're having a very important meeting.... delightedly screaming at each other!!! It was rather noisy for a while.. Oopps... =P

More on "Terrible Two" Sean

In continuation to the previous post.

"Terrible Two" Sean is still on the loose!

It's been difficult to get him nap in the afternoon, so he's been extra hyper and cranky.

Bath time is still a struggle. I've taken out the small tub for his bath so he can splash around, as well as let him play with an old bottle to squirt water with. He really enjoys the actual bathing, but..... getting him to go into the bathroom is still difficult. "Sean, bath time!" " Noooo!!" And now that he enjoys Mummy giving his bath regularly again, he doesn't want anyone else to bathe him.

He still spits food and often does not want the maid to feed him anymore. Mummy or daddy has to sit next to him on his kiddy chair and feed him.

He's awfully accident prone. Last week, within a 24hr period, he knocked himself 4 times.

First, just before bedtime, he knocked the edge of a table and had a big split on his lip, which gushes blood everywhere. The next morning, at playgroup, he run into the side of a book shelf while running away from me, and bump his head quite hard. Half an hour later, he tripped and fell face flat on the cement floor. An hour later, at Hun Kee's house, we knocked into the side of a plate I was carrying. It gave him a bruise on his cheek, which is still recovering. When we came home, his daddy asked whether Sean has been in a fight. Sean's face had a blue black and he was dirty and sweaty. Ooops! =P

However.. not everything is bad. Now the good parts! =D

Story of the day
We're going to have a Hallowen party at playgroup next week. So for my craft this time, I made the base for a giant spider pinata and a pumpkin for today, and next week we'll make pumpkin hallowen baskets for the children to hold their sweets.

So today, I was busy directing the mothers to make the spider pinata. As usual, Sean wanted me to do something with him, but because I was busy, I told him to wait and to go play first. When I was ready to spend some time with him, I couldn't find him. He wasn't playing anywhere. Eventually, I found my little boy sitting on a small stool in the library looking at a book! That was such a sweet moment =D

Discipline
The threat of being punished is actually working out quite well. Now all I do is threatened him when he misbehave. I'll say quietly, "Do you want to be punished? Sit on the chair?" Most of the time, it works. So he hasn't been put on the chair since the last blog post... yet.

Cleaning up
Sean has been putting his toys back into their places!

I was so surprised the first time I saw him doing it because I didn't even tell him to do it. I make it a habit to put all his toys always in the same place. His "Cars" cars in an IKEA clear box, his Duplo farm in a basket, his puzzles on the shelf, he also has a plastic drawers for all his other toys and I try to make is a habit to put back all his toys always in the same place.

It doesn't mean that I don't have to clean up after him. Maybe because he sees me always putting the toys back in the same place, he now knows where they are. So if he doesn't want to play something, he puts it back.

But of course, there are times where he just drops a toy and leaves it there. So to discipline him, I stop him and tell him to put it back or pick it up. He's not allowed to go until he does it. It's slowly working for the toys in the room. Now I've got to have a system for the toys in the living room!

Terrible Two stories

The term "Terrible Two" really applies to Sean. After he turns two, he seems to transform into this mischievous kid who doesn't listen to orders. Just a few instances:

Bath time
He'll scream and struggle when the maid bathe him. When I bathed him, he behaves better, so whenever I'm home, I'll bathe him. But just the last few evenings when I'm not back from work yet, he would refuse the maid at all for his evening bath, and would pull whoever is around, his daddy or Ama, to bathe him instead. In fact, he hasn't been taking his bath until I get home and bath him late at night.

But since yesterday, bath time is a struggle, even for me.
I say, " Sean, bath time."
He goes, "Noooooooo!" and runs away. Then I'll have to go chase him, carry him while he struggles into the bathroom. Once his clothes are off, he's ok and plays with the water while I bathe him. And then when it's time to get out of the bathroom, it's another struggle. This time, because he wants to continue playing water... or more like.. messing up the bathroom. So there I go, carrying a struggling bundle who's screaming "Noooooooo!" all the while, until he gets distracted by something else. Seriously, when he behaves, bath time only last a few minutes. This way, it takes at least half an hour!

Oh Man... writing this down, reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes! Oh no... I hopes he's not going to be as naughty as Calvin!

Punching people, throwing things and pouring water
Last week, Sean saw a boy and wanted to play with him, so he went and punch him! I am terribly worried that he thinks punching is a way of playing. He bunches his fist and swings it around.. and thoroughly enjoys himself. But even though he's only two, it still hurts!

When he's in a temper he throw things.. when he's in a mood to play he throws things...When we give him a cup or a bottle of liquid, he pours it. Last weekend, he poured water at Paik Ling's TV!
We were at quite a dilemma on how to discipline him. When we hit his hand for throwing, punching or pouring, he just laughs. He doesn't feel the pain and doesn't feel disciplined.

So I remembered the sit in the corner punishment and tried it again. It worked! Of course, I have to make sure my face is serious and show him that I was really angry. I got him to sit on a stool in the corner of the room for 5 minutes. Every time he tried to stand up, I said, "Sit! No playing, no standing, you're being punished". He'll ask for a drink, for food, for a toy... I said "No drinking, eating or playing until 5 minutes is up!". I emphasized the fact that he was being punished.

Of course he cried pitifully. The hardest part about disciplining is looking fierce and not get distracted by the pitiful display of remorse. But it worked! He behaved very well for the next few hours. =D

Spitting food and water
Sean has a bad habit of spitting his food when he doesn't like it or when he wants to eat something else. Sometimes he pushed so much food inside that he can't chew properly, so he'll spit all of it out. So I give him a bit at a time. When he ask for more, I say " Finish what you have first.", which somehow makes him spit immediately.

I hit his mouth for spitting..... but I don't hit hard enough for it to hurt, which makes it redundant. He's not scared of it. Then I tried changing my word to " Swallow first".... maybe he thinks "Finish" means "Spit out"... it still doesn't work. So I'm still thinking of ways to make him stop spitting food.

A new bad habit is keeping water in his mouth and spitting it onto inappropriate places. Last night, I gave him a sip of water, which he played with in his mouth, laughing and gurgling away. And then, he spit on to the bed! Now, I think I'm a rather patient person, but that really irritated me. That was my side of the bed.. and I hate sleeping on a wet bed!

"Punishment!... go sit on your stool!"... which immediately caused him to cry frantically. He refused to sit on the stool and hugged me tightly. I made him sit on it.. and he cried so hard... with snots dripping off his nose, his hand stretched out to me, begging me to hold him... a veritable display of pitiful remorse.

I only lasted 1-2 minute....sigh.. I picked him up and got him to bed. It was already late and I didn't want him to be too agitated for bedtime.It only took him a few minutes to get back into a good mood, so I don't think he was emotionally scarred by it.

The method actually works!
So today, I use the words 'Do you want to be punished?" quite often. He's a handful.. running here and there all the time. It took me an hour to get him to take a nap because he kept getting out of the bed. Asking for a drink, a snack, to brush teeth, I turned my back, he's out of bed and playing on the floor. So I said " If you're not on the bed, you'll have to sit on the stool!".. That got him going... he he he

Oh man.. disciplining is hard. I think disciplining is harder on the parents. It's hard not to be moved by all those tears and remorse. Keeping your face looking fierce is hard too. He gets away with so many things because he looks so cute, especially when he actually sits down for 5 minutes, while being punished.

Sneaking away for coffee

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it before, but Sean is very sticky to me. He wants me to be with him all the time. So it's been very hard to do things on my own unless I leave Sean with Sam at Toys"R"us, and even then, I only get half an hour to do my shopping.

Yesterday, several of us from the playgroup brought our children to Kidsport at Bangsar Village II because there was no playgroup this week. After we settled the children there, we wanted to have coffee at Starbucks which is just one floor below.

The other mums had their maids to take care of their children, so they had no problem. With Sean being so clingy, it was difficult for me to leave him. I was afraid he would be howling away the moment I left. So Samantha, took Keane, her 9 month son, with us and left her maid to take care of Sean.

I have to learn to let go of Sean, the same way that he has to learn to be more independent. It went well, he didn't cry and I didn't rush back every 5 minutes to make sure he was alright. So we had a great time. He didn't object to being left at Kidsport and I had a good coffee break chat with the mummies. =D

First poop in the potty!

Today Sean had his first poop in the potty!

We have had the potty for more than a year and had a half-hearted attempt to introduce him to it many months ago. He wasn't interested in it, so we didn't push him. I have been wondering how was I suppose to get him potty trained. My MIL said that it's a bit too late now and we may have to wait much later because he is used to wearing disposable diapers all the time. The maid said the kid behind the house is still wearing diapers at 5 years old!!!!

Anyway.... I was feeding him his dinner, when he refused to eat anymore. Then he said "Poo" and made his "pooping" face. So I asked, "You poo poo?". He said "Poo".. Okay then, lets go clean up. But the diaper was clean, so I thought, why not let's try to get him sit on the potty. The last time we tried was several months ago, and he kept standing up, and wanted to play with the potty.

But this time, he actually, pooped! He sat in the potty and played with water in a scoop. After a while, I got him to stand up and was amazed to actually see a big poop in there!

ha ha ha... I guess you have to be a parent to find pooping in a potty such an exciting event! =P
So everyone congratulated him for pooping in a potty. That was fun...=D

Of course, this is probably a coincidence. I'm not sure when is it going to be repeated the next time. =P

Other snippets:
Sean says 'knock knock" when he knocks on the door.
And he has replaced "chou" for "Oooo" which is short for Open.

He also regularly plays in Akong and Ama's room at night to jump on their bed and run around the room. They have a big room and their mattress on a big landing, which makes it a lot more fun and safe to jump around.