Growing through Mummyhood

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2011-09-25T19:35:00.001+08:00

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Sep 2011 - Dealing with 2 kids

2011-09-14T16:55:00.003+08:00

Baby Hannah was born last month. She is the most adorable and wonderful addition to our small family.

However, our major concern right now is with Sean. From being a wonderful boy, he's going through a very difficult period. He's been showing his temper, answering back, and generally not listening to us. The last straw was yesterday when his teacher in school finally had to complain to us. It seems that all his teachers have been having a problem with his behaviour recently.

It is probably related to the arrival of Hannah. I have been busy with Hannah and because of his bad behaviour, DH has been hard on Sean. So all his resentment and anger must be manifesting into the current behaviour pattern.

Sean has no problems at all with Hannah. He has issues with figures of authority, i.e. us parents and teachers. We have been pushing him too hard and yet been spending too little time with him.

We are going to have to try out a different approach to tackle this problem before it gets out of hand. Currently, Sean is a different boy from the one a few months ago. I hope we can rectify whatever it is that we did wrong.

June 2011- Number 2 is coming soon!

2011-06-23T14:44:00.006+08:00

Okay..... My blogging has been on a hiatus for much too long. But just for updates,

I'm on week 32 pregnancy and it's a girl! =D
2nd trimester has been really good. I had a lot of energy and no morning sickness at all.
Entering 3d trimester, I get bouts of exhaustion, but it's quite expected. So nothing to worry about. I just rest whenever I'm tired. Or eat a bar of chocolate to pick me up. =P

This pregnancy is all about chocolate. I'm glad we have so much chocolate at home, otherwise I would be spending a lot of money on chocolates. Ha ha ha =P

Sean has been accepting about getting a baby sister. At first he wanted a baby brother, but this year he's been playing with more girls at school, so he's quite happy to have a sister. Girls are as fun to play with.

We've discussed with him that he's got to learn to be a koko and that when the baby is just born, mummy would be busy with the baby because it's still so tiny and can't do anything much.

Once he asked, "Why can't the baby come now?"
I told him, "Enjoy whatever time you have now, because once the baby is here, there won't be much peace and time!"

When Sean was still a young baby, I read about Attachment Parenting, and tried as much as possible to adhere by it's principles, i.e.

1. Birth Bonding
2. Breast feeding
3. Baby Wearing
4. Bedding close to baby
5. Belief in the language value of your baby's cry
6. Beware of baby trainers
7. Balance

I believe the results are starting to show now. He's a wonderful boy, who is caring, confident and compassionate. Of course, there are days when he does get on our nerves because he's jumping about and talking non-stop when all we wanted was some peace and quiet! He's really quite active and is one of those boys who can't sit still for long. But overall, he's a son any mother would be proud of. =D

Once I was busy cooking in the kitchen, he came over and said, " Call me if you need any help, ok." And then he watched TV. A few minutes later, he came again with arms akimbo, " Why haven't you called me to help you?"

He always says, " I want to help, I want to help!", but there are just some things that get done faster when I do it myself. So sometimes I need to remind myself to let him help out. It does him a lot of good when he feels he has been helpful. He feels really happy about it.

He's quite a joker. Most of his jokes are really NOT funny, but he derives so much fun telling jokes, that it makes me laugh anyway.

He's quite willing to share his things, to the point that I have to tell him to be a little selfish. After Sunday school, the boys would play Bay Blades. Whenever we look for him, someone else is always playing his Bay Blade, and then they would go on playing without returning it to him. I've got to tell him to go and ask for it back. I feel a little bad to teach him to be selfish, but he's got to learn to take care of his own things!

He's still very close to me. Still needs to sleep with me, but I told him that when the baby comes, the baby will need Mummy more because it'll be so small. So I hope he'll be able to adjust to the fact that he won't have as much of my time anymore. But I'm confident that he'll be able to adjust. Some days I'm so tired and need a rest. When I tell him I need to rest, he lets me have my time and try to do his own things.

Many times when I drop him off at school. He would always tell me, " Zai Jian, mummy. I hope you have fun.", then he'll give me a kiss and a hug, and sometimes he add, " I love you, Mummy", and then a flying kiss.

I feel happy and blessed to have such a wonderful son. He's loving and kind, willing to share and to help out and almost always starts his day with a smile and a laugh. It really lifts my spirit up =D.

And I'm looking forward to meet my daughter when she's ready to be born. I hope to be able to build another wonderful relationship with her.

It's only another 8 weeks to go! =D

January 2011

2011-01-19T15:05:00.005+08:00

It's been several long months since I've taken any interest in the Internet. It's mostly because my laptop has been usurped away from me by the 2 boys, the big one and the little one. And anyway I haven't really been inspired to say anything.

So since the last post,

Sean had his 4th birthday. Christmas and New year has come and gone, and now Chinese New Year is coming. There are several notable things starting from the beginning of this year.

Baby no 2 is in Production! Yay!

Firstly, number 2 babe is being grown in the oven. It's now the 11th week. So it's still early stages, and it has been an awful stage so far. Throughout the 2nd half of December until now, I feel that I've been incapacitated.

I am nauseous most of the time, and I practically spend all my free time in bed. I can't stand the smell of any chemical or perfume, so I kind of dreaded bathing in December. The smell of soap or shampoo made me sick. So now we all use (yes, both Sam and Sean also) Simple bath soap which has no perfume at all.

Two weeks ago, I was walking near some mamak stall, I had to look for drain holes every few steps to vomit into. In his desperation, Sam went to the pharmacy to look for a face mask for me, and came out with Veloxin (an anti nausea medication). It worked great! First I took one tablet every 2 days, and then it wasn't working enough, I had to take one tablet every day, and now, even when I take a tablet, I still vomit. So I am of the opinion that my body just needs to vomit. I haven't taken any today. I vomit when I need too. But at least I can eat now. It's not as bad as earlier when I had no appetite at all.

I think what's worse is the fact I have really low levels of energy. My energy reserve is probably 3 hours. After 3 hours of doing being up, I am exhausted and need a long rest. This is quite tricky because.....

Maid-less

of the second notable thing, i.e. we have no maid as of 1st january. It's not really that much of a problem not having a maid actually. It's just that, I've been so tired all the time, I don't really have much energy for housework. Our maid has gone to a couple of elderly relatives who need her more, and who is willing to pay her a lot more.

Sean and Sam have been angels. =D They're both really supportive. Sam in doing the cooking. MIL in the housework during times I am too exhausted to do anything. Sean is behaving so much better now. Not as sticky because he knows his mummy is 'sick because there's a baby in her tummy'.

Homework time

There are friends who feel that Sean's current school doesn't really prepare the kids well for chinese primary school. But I don't want to take him out and put him in a traditional chinese kindergarten because it took him a whole year just to get used to his current school. I don't really want him to have to adjust to a new environment all over again.

So during the holidays, I started a homework habit with Sean. Nothing much, just doing a few pages from workbooks. On days he didn't want to, I didn't push. I don't ask him to do anything on weekends. But when he does it, I give him a nice sticker to stick on his homework calendar. He loves counting the number of stickers he has on the calendar.

We usually do his 'homework' at 8pm. But yesterday, I just couldn't be bothered. I wanted to watch TV.... he he he.... I mean, So what if he doesn't do his 'homework' for a day? But he went upstairs, and I thought he was going to play computer games. When I came up at 9pm, he was doing his homework (with a little help from Daddy) all by himself! Wasn't that a pleasant little surprise? =D

The homework idea wasn't really to push him to study harder, it was more of creating a discipline habit. To set a little time to do some school work. I'm glad he's showing independence in this area. I don't know if this wonderful behavior will be the norm or the rare occasion. But it was a pleasant moment. =D

Visit to the KL Zoo

2010-09-06T21:25:00.007+08:00

Akong and Ama brought us to the zoo. It was a week day, it wasn't crowded, so it was quite nice to walk about.

I like the Safari area, at least the animals look as if they have enough space to roam about. We got to see a little zebra fight.

Sean's favorite animal is the giraffe, and there was plenty of those in the safari.

Surprisingly another area that he really liked was the butterfly enclosure.

While I thought the horned toads were quite cool. =D

There was these rather steroided looking bulls with huge muscles. I wonder if that's natural.

I think we'll go back again. It's really quite nice and not too far away. =D

Bullied

2010-08-25T09:54:00.005+08:00

On Monday, Sean did not want to go to school. He was being quite difficult so I was rather testy with him. I told him to stop talking for a while while I concentrate on driving him to school and keeping a cool head. So he did. He went really quiet. With my son, being quiet means something is wrong. I asked him if he was ok, he said, " Yes, I'm ok." ( but rather subdued)

This was after a battle of getting him to eat before school. I gave him more than an hour to eat and he still didn't finish his food. The moment I parked the car, he said he was hungry. So we quickly nipped to the supermarket nearby to get him some pastries to eat.

So as we were walking to school, he said again
" I don't want to go to school. My friends are stupid."
I was surprised because that's not how he usually behaves. So I asked
" Why do you call you friends that? That's not nice."
"My friends are stupid"
I asked, " Did someone call you stupid?"

I was guessing, but I know that he hasn't been picking up mandarin at school. After 8 months at school, he still speaks mostly English at school. So maybe some of his friends who are more fluent may call him names, and then he said,
" Yes. My friend call me stupid."

He didn't want to enter his classroom. I talked to his teachers about it. They said they don't allow name callings in class, but they'll be more alert and talk to the kids about it. When he came home, we found out further who this 'friend' was.

It was a girl. She seems quite nice enough, and even passed me Sean's water bottle once when he forgot it. Sean says, " Yen Ling calls me silly and stupid."

I can quite imagine the situation because Sean is a joker and likes being silly. But he is very sensitive and must be feeling very hurt. My cheerful son who is always a joker has been rather subdued these last few days, and does not want to go to school. He hasn't been himself

I feel very sad for him. :(

I think it's hard for a boy to be bullied by girls. I always tell him to treat girls nice. But little girls can be hurtful in their words, and he has no defense against this. I do hope mummies with little girls would remind them that they should be nice to little boys too.

P.S.
This lasted only a few days though. After that things went back to normal.

Sean @ 47 months - Almost 4

2010-08-09T01:03:00.009+08:00

He's not looking forward to being 4. I told him that once he's 4 years old, he has to leave the playgroup at the library. It's the rule and there is nothing that I can do about it. So he's been saying that he wants to always be 3 years old!

He's becoming more independent, but yet still a baby, for example

When he bathes, he closes the shower door and tells me that he wants to bathe by himself. But other times, especially when he's sleepy, he wails and asks me why does he need to bathe at all?

He can switch on the laptop, and play computer games all by himself, but still needs to be fed during meal times, otherwise he just won't eat.

He's still not interested in eating. The only food he'll eat without complain is Unagi. But on the bright side, he's starting to eat more and putting a bit more meat to his bones. But sometimes I feel as if I'm always telling him, " Sean, eat your food!" But in the evening, my MIL, would feed him, which makes things easier for me.

He tells me not to hug him when he goes to sleep, but he'll hug and kiss me instead. He still digs my belly button to sleep, otherwise he can't sleep. And I'm expected to close my eyes too. I'm not allowed to read or talk. * roll eyes* I have to sleep too ( or pretend to sleep at least =P )

He can mentally add numbers up to 10 when he wants to (it's a rare occasion though), but likes making up nonsense words which sometimes get really irritating because nobody understands what he's talking about, not even himself. *shake head*

He's got plenty of confidence, even though it's sometimes misplaced LOL.

His school had an idol contest to either sing, dance, do martial art moves or recite poetry. It's really just to get the kids experience performing on stage. So Sean went up, sang really loudly (and a bit out of tune =P) the first 2 lines, and then he promptly forgot his next line. The teacher on stage siddled next to him to whisper the next lines. He continued singing (loudly) with no apparent distress. Both Sam and I were shaking so much from laughing that the video that Sam was taking with his handphone was shaky. He was really loud and out of tune. It was just really funny. =D

Updates for the last 2months

2010-07-27T14:06:00.025+08:00

A lot has happened over the past 2 months so this is a long and condensed blog entry. I've been busy, but it's also because I've been too lazy to blog. =P

At the beginning of June, Sean's uncles John, David, and aunt Mary came back to celebrate Akong's birthday, and the whole Wee family and my sis-in-law's in laws ( Uncle Paul and Aunty Dorcas) went for a driving trip to Terrengannu, Kelantan and Ipoh. It was really fun. The first time we went together as a family on a long driving trip. Sean really liked playing with uncle David and uncle John. It was really good for him to have them around to play with. No photos because I forgot my camera and have forgotten to ask for photos from John. (Will upload the photos once I get them)

At first, I wasn't quite sure how he'll behave on the long car journey, but he behaved really well. We both sat at the back of the van and played together. He filled in his maze books, did some drawings and colorings during the drive.

This was also the first time we brought Sean to the beach. We were there only overnight, so there wasn't that much time, but we tried to make full use of it. We played in the waves and built a sand castle surrounded by a moat.

In Kelantan, we stayed at Ah Co house which has a fruit orchard behind. I tried to follow my FIL when he showed everyone around, but I wasn't wearing the correct footwear. Slippers are just no good for walking through tall grasses crawling with big red ants and bugs! But we got to see durian, rambutan, pomelo, lime, jambu trees. There was a lady finger plant next to the house. Actually there were plenty of plants and trees, I just didn't know what they all were! =P

On our way home, we stayed overnight at Ipoh. I like Ipoh. It's really quaint. Many of the older shophouses are still in good condition. It feels like a throwback in time.

When we came back to KL, as usual all of us fell sick for almost 2 weeks. I don't know why, but holidays give us the flu!

In late June, we flew over to Jakarta to spend time with my family.

I spent the whole week trying to get my IC done. It's a decentralized system and I had to get a letter of recommendation from the RT (Rukun Tetangga) first. It just so happen the RT changed in my neighbourhood and I got the wrong address. So I went to the wrong house and knocking on the door 4 times, before I got the right address, but then he sent me to the RW. And then it was to the RW (Rukun Warga), who told me to get a police report first. After the police report was done, I had to go home and get my birth certificate and Kartu Keluarga.

After which, I went to the Lurah, whose official said that my IC was expired, which meant the letter had to be sent to the Walikota! I had to asked the person really nicely to go to the Walikota office really soon, because it was already Wednesday. On Friday, when I went to the Lurah's office, the system was down. The guy said if I didn't believe him, I could go in and try to get into the system myself, which I did! I spent 20 minutes trying to get into the system on his computer. The system was really down, and so I had no choice but to come back in the afternoon again. Luckily the system was up by then and I could take my IC photo. But I had to go again later in the evening for pick up the IC.

During the week, I went on 15 visits to various officials before I could the darn thing done! It was a good thing I didn't plan to do anything else that trip. I knew it was going to be tedious, I just didn't realize how difficult it was going to be. But I was surprised that I didn't get angry at all. I thought the police and the government officials were really friendly.

My dad, who wasn't around, managed to get a flight back in time to meet us so we could celebrate his birthday with him. So besides the ordeal in getting my IC, the whole week was really relaxed. It was really for spending time with family. We also met up with friends, Eny and her cute daughters, Yulius and Paula. It's always great to spend time with family and meet up with old friends. =D

And what's best, we didn't get sick after we got back!

Sean loved his koko Fen fen and koko Frederick. I didn't have to entertain him this trip at all. He was quite happy to hang out with them. He followed them around all the time, they were quite happy to let him join them in whatever they were doing until inevitably the big boys complained that he disturbed them too much with his antics =P.

Fendi, Sean and Frederick.

Papa's birthday dinner

Sean and Lau Ma

Sean and Rena

The week after we came back, it was Kristen's 4th birthday. So we all trooped to Kristen's house to celebrate with her. But since the playgroup does not allow children above 4 years old anymore, the kids are not able to meet up anymore since they all go to different schools now or at different sessions. So this is becoming a rare occassion for the kids to play together.

Sean and Kristen

Nikita, Kristen and Sean

Aria, Kai, Sean and Isaac

The maid is back

2010-06-01T23:55:00.003+08:00

The maid is back!

When the maid left, I was kind of glad to get the house to ourselves. By the end of the 2 months, I think we were getting the hand of it. I wasn't so hung up about getting everything done within the day.

But it's nice to have her back. I no longer have to iron clothes for the 5 of us anymore. Laundry can be really mountainous in this household and all that ironing was really drying up my hands and giving me sore hands.

I also get more time with Sean now, which is what we both missed the most when I was so busy doing this and that. There was one week, when I was so busy working as well as doing the housework, that he told me that he didn't need any help anymore. That kind of broke my heart a bit because I know it was because I was always so busy.

By the time he woke up, I was not next to him because I was busy doing something about the house. Then I would rush him through breakfast, lunch and send him to school. By the time he comes home, I wasn't not home and was only back at 9 or 9.30 pm ( during that really busy week), and then I had to have a quick dinner and shower. By the time I'm done, I had to get him to bed.

I felt him change that week. He was more grown up, and maybe a bit sad that mummy was too busy to play with him.

So I'm really glad to have the maid back. Sean and I can spend more time together doing things we like now.

More water please

2010-05-29T15:39:00.004+08:00

Today, Sean was eating dried sotong. He enjoyed it so much that he kept eating more and more. Since I was doing my work, I didn't really keep track on how much he ate.

He kept asking more more water. Now, Sean doesn't like drinking water. So I was very surprised when he asked for water. Only after the third cup of water and when he said, "Water, water, quick, my tongue is hurting!", that I realised that the dried sotong must be quite spicy!

He he he he.... This little boy of mine is developing a taste of spicy food. We are not much of a spicy fan, but we let him try anyway.

Now I know how to get him to drink more water! =P

Oooops!!

Now he has a sore throat! Okay.... no more spicy dried sotong for a while for him. =P

Sean @ 44 months

2010-05-03T14:22:00.014+08:00

I've been busy with the housework, so I haven't been taking photos of Sean this month. This was from last month. He drew "Red" the fire engine from the book, all by himself. He was very proud of his work. =D

Until I started interfering and then he lost interest. So ok, mummy shouldn't interfere so much.

Here is his corner. He likes to stick his 'work' on the wall. I can already imagine how his room will be like next time. It's going to be really messy!

He cut the Chugginton section from the Toys'R'Us pamphlet and pasted it on his wall. He told us that he wants all the Chugginton trains!

He was sick for a whole week and lost some weight to the point that his school pants would drop to his butt when he jumps. So I'm trying to fatten him up now.

He stopped drinking milk a long time ago and is a fussy eater, unless it's Unagi or mushroom and Fung Chau. Since he doesn't want milk or yogurt on it's own, I've been making fresh Mango lassi or banana lassi for him, which luckily he enjoys. So at least, he gets something milky into him. But that craze only lasted a few days, so now I'm back to persuading him to drink a small cup of milk every morning again.

If you remember, in the last blog, he has been wanting to help me doing the housework. So I've been letting him help me when ever he wants to help. Cooking is still a no-no because of the knives and fire involved. So I'll ask him if he would like to help me clip the clothes when I hang them. So during the week he was sick, he helped me a bit and then went back watching TV.

I asked " Don't you want to help?"
He said " Helping you to hang clothes is boooring."
Boring!!???

I thought I wouldn't get this kind of answer until he's much older? He's not even 4 and he already thinks that certain things are boring???

He's been getting bouncier, in the sense that he literally bounces here and there, making us feel tired just looking at him, and getting himself sent to the corner, just so that we get some peace. Every time he goes hyper-bouncy, we ask each other, "What sweet drinks have you given him today?" We don't really want to deprive him of his apple juice, but it really shows when he drinks sweet drinks too much. But despite his hyper-bouncy behavior, he can be really sweet.

I get lots of hugs and kisses all the time, and he tells me he loves me several times a day. No complains there :D It's God's way to reward mummies after a long day. It's a wonderful gift.

The day before Mother's Day, while I was baking an apple pie, he came to the kitchen and asked
" What are you making?" I said, " Apple Pie"
He said, " Hhmmm... sounds yummy. Thank you for making it, mummy."

Isn't that sweet?

Of course, when it comes to actually eating it, he only ate a small piece, and only after I pouted and said, " Don't you want to eat mummy's apple pie?"
He said, "ok. Hhmmm that was yummy."
I asked, " Do you want some more?"
He said, "No."

Darn it....

It's like when I slaved over making these colorful cookies with him because he's been asking me to make cookies together. And how many did he eat? 3 cookies! and after that he wasn't interested in eating them anymore. What am I going to do with the others?

Oh well, we did spend quite a fun afternoon together shaping all these cookies. It's the time spent together that counts, isn't it?

Sean @ 43 months

2010-04-16T20:30:00.007+08:00

There are positive and negative things with a 3 year old boy going on 4. He is at this exasperating but lovable stage.

On the positive side:

Since I've been doing the housework, he's been wanting to help out, I guess to spend more time with me, and it's something new to him. I'm sure when he's a teenager, it'll be something he'll be trying to avoid all the time!

Mummy, I want to help you cook,wash the dishes, wash clothes, sweep, etc, etc.... Of course, I'd have been happy to let him help if Sean was 6 years old already, but at 3 going on 4,there are many things he still can't do. So I have been giving excuses why he can't help me.

I don't want to deter him from offering his help in the future when he can actually help. So I do allow him to help out, such as helping me put on the clips while I hang the clothes, which of course takes us twice as long to do it than if I do it by myself. Once in a while, he'll help me water the plants and feed the rabbit, unless he's watching TV and can't be bothered.

He wants to help me wash the clothes, so he kept opening the washing machine to look inside. *roll eyes* He keeps offering to help me cook, which of course, I'm always saying "No!" to. But I did let him wash the potatoes which didn't make too much of a mess.

He's getting better at sweeping the floor to clear up his own mess after cutting papers with a small broom and dustpan. Of course, it's not perfect and I have to finish the job, but it's a start.

He's been trying to wash the dishes whenever I send him to wash his hands at the sink. I'm always telling him not to touch the dirty dishes, but tonight, I let him wash his own plastic cup after he drank.

At school,

I'm quite positive that he's a class clown (not sure if this is a positive or negative =P). He is a bit of a joker at home, and it looks like it continues at school. He seems to be rather well known. His classmates often point him out to their parents. " That's Sean!" And when I asked him if he knows his classmates names, he says, "I don't know." Ok lah, he's getting better now, he remembers maybe 3-4 names now.

His classmates keep a look out for him when we pick him up from school. "Sean! your mummy/ daddy is here." Yesterday, one even passed me his water bottle which he forgot to put in his bag. They're really sweet.

On the negative side:

He still can't sit still unless he's watching TV. When watching TV, he'll be so glued to the TV that he's deaf and blind to everything. At other time, he'll be jumping here and there. So much so that his teachers lament that he can't sit still during lessons. He'll be monkeying around the class while he's supposed to sit and listen.

He's quite lucky his teachers dote on him and don't punish him often, and if they do, he probably gives his sad puppy face that they let him go free. But it's still a problem because his next teacher may not dote on him so much, and then he'll be punished very often.

The aftermath of being robbed

2010-03-31T09:25:00.005+08:00

The act of crime was done within seconds.

I was sitting in my locked car waiting for the gate of my student's house to be open. As it was opening, there was an explosion of glass on the passenger glass. I screamed. Turned my head to the left and saw a hand lifting my handbag out of the car. The person went out of my vision and immediately ran off with his accomplice on their motorbike (which I didn't see but the maid did). I drove into the house. The gate was closed, and I went in to borrow a phone to call Sam.

The ordeal started after that.

First, I had to cancel my handphone, bank card and credit card.

The police report took 3 hours and we had to go to 3 police stations. We went to the one nearest our house first and had to sit through the excruciating slowness of the police officer typing the report into the computer with 2 fingers. We actually did our own report and printed it for the Police, but they needed to type it into their system. When he pressed enter, the whole report disappeared. He retyped it 3 times, and it disappeared 3 times!

So we went to another police station. The 4th entry also disappeared! Luckily the 5th time was successful. Then we had to wait for them to get a reply from whoever it was. We were then told to go to another police station to see an inspector. Luckily, that was the end of the reporting line.

I wasn't sure what I could tell them that wasn't already in the report. Basically, I didn't see the perpetrator. So I knew that it was futile since I couldn't give any descriptions. But it took 3 hours anyway.

Next, I had to replace my hand phone, new bank card and get new SIM card, which didn't activate, and therefore I had to go to Maxis again. It's a good thing, the people at Maxis are efficient. But Sam wanted to register with Maxis for land line and internet. So this week we’ve been to Maxis 4 times!

I still haven't had the time to report to the Embassy about the loss of my I/C and driving license. The car can't be used too because we need to order a new window. Unfortunately, our car being an old Opel, spare parts are hard to find.

Of course, with no license, I am practically legless. I'm going to have to get a Malaysian driving license since I won't be able to replace my Indonesian one any time soon. And that's going to be another ordeal. *Sigh*

Sam told me I have to sit through a 5 hour instructional video. Something about the danger of driving. I'm not looking forward to that. And then of course, go through driving lessons, which I don't think I really need, but have to do anyway.

I'm also going to have to replace a library book that was in my bag. I'm not looking forward to report it to Maria, the librarian. She can be quite sharp. *Shrudder* Especially since the book is an old edition. I wonder if it's still being sold in the bookshop. It's the first book of a series. So it's quite important to get it replaced. And I'm rather upset that I didn't get to finish reading it too!

If sitting in a locked car while entering a house compound is no longer safe, I wonder if any single woman driver is safe from these criminals. This definitely hasn't been a good week.

Maid-less in KL

2010-03-28T08:41:00.004+08:00

The maid had to leave suddenly because her mum was very ill. We got her a plane ticket on Wed evening but she was too late. Her mum died on Wed morning.

I haven't been happy with the maid. She talks back to me, and since she's not my maid, she doesn't listen to what I say. I feel bad that this had to happen to her though.

Anyway, we're maid-less for the next 2 months. And it so happened that the first day we had no maid was my busiest day of the week and it was one of those days when you just didn't get enough sleep. I think I barely had 4 hours of sleep.

So the first day went like this:

Morning: Woke up, washed clothes, cleaned rabbit's cage, fed him, watered the plants, put the dry dishes back, washed dishes in the sink, hung clothes, made sure that Sam got Sean to bathe and brush his teeth, fed Sean breakfast, rushed to playgroup at 9:30am.

We were a bit late but that's ok. Returned and borrowed books, did a craft with Sean, cleaned up playgroup with the other mums at the end. We skipped story telling and rushed home. Heated up food for lunch. Got Sean to eat lunch (Feeding Sean is one of the most tasking tasks!), got him to bathe again because it was such a hot day.

Afternoon: Sam sent him to school that day while I took down the laundry and ironed. Then at 1.30pm, rushed out to teach 3 students. Came back at 6pm, had dinner that Sam cooked, washed dishes, ironed more clothes. After that, I was too tuckered out and had enough for the day. There's always tomorrow, right?

I was feeling rather kindly towards the maid. I thought: Oh, she must be so grumpy because she was worried about her mum, blah, blah, blah. Until......

I actually did the housework while still having to work (part time) and send Sean to school and playgroup, do grocery shopping, etc.

She really doesn't do her work very well.

After I mopped the floor, the floor felt so much cleaner than it has ever before. We resorted to walking with slippers at home because we couldn't stand the dust. We thought that the new place is extra dusty because of the proximity of the road to the living room, but I realized that it's just because she doesn't mop the floor.

She doesn't vacuum that well either because when Sam vacuumed the carpet, they were very dusty.

I wash, dry and ironed the clothes within the day, while clothes would take days to come back when she does it.

We wash the dishes right after we use and regularly put the dry ones into the cupboard, while with a maid around, the dirty dishes seem to pile on the table or the sink.

I do realize though that all these housework that the maid used to do is taking time away from Sean. Sean has had to entertain himself more and more. And sometimes the result is disastrous, like him spilling a bottle of sand-like basil seeds all over the carpet and making a huge mess of his toy area, smearing playdough all over the table or playing with bottles of paint when I'm not looking.

But he's been behaving well otherwise. And I think this experience with no maid is a great time for him to learn to do things for himself.

As for myself, I'm hoping the housework will give me a good work out. After not exercising for 4 years has made my body rather soft, and my belly big. People keep thinking I'm pregnant when I'm not! So hopefully I get to lose some belly fat during the next 2 months. =D

Bed sheets are important

2010-03-15T20:49:00.006+08:00

I never realized how important bed sheets are until Sean slept in his own bed. The maid washed his bed sheet are replaced it with a plain one. He went back to sleeping with us.

I thought, Oh, maybe it was only the novelty of moving into a new place that caused him to move toward independence on his own. He hardly slept on his bed for the whole of last week. Sometimes Hubby or I would sleep there because it gets crowded with the 3 of us on a Queen size bed.

Then I had a thought. I changed back his bed sheet into the Mickey Mouse bed sheet. Just an experiment to see if he would behave differently. And YES! He went back to sleep on his own. =P

He still creeps into our bed in the morning, but that's ok. We kinda miss him sleeping with us. So this is a good arrangement. More space for me at night (and I don't get kicked when I sleep too!) and we get to be cozy in the morning. =D

On a side note, this morning I said to him, "Wan An" I mean " Zhou An" (good morning). He asked what was "Wan An" because he usually calls out to his teacher "U An" (good afternoon) when he goes to school. When I told him that " Wan An" "Zhou An" means "Good Morning" in Mandarin.

He said with this incredulous face, "You know how to speak mandarin too!!!!???"

LOL..... That really cracked me up, because I only know a few phrases, and my son was so surprised. Ha ha ha....

Sean @ 42 months

2010-03-08T23:43:00.007+08:00

Sleeping in his own bed.
A few days before we moved house, Sean said, " I don't want to sleep on a baby bed.", referring to his bed. And yeah, he'd never liked his bed. He's always crawling into our bed and proceed to kick us around the whole night, going round and round while sleeping.

So in the new house, we gave him John's old single mattress, covered with brand new Mickey Mouse's bedspread,on the floor next to our bed and he had no problem sleeping in his own bed. Getting him to sleep early is still a problem, but once it's late enough and he's tired, he'll go to his bed and I'll cover him with his blanket, and he goes ZZZZZZZ.......

Another change is bathing.
It used to be really difficult to get him to bathe. But somehow over here, it's much easier. He picked his own bath soap in the Supermarket," I want to buy this soap ", a Mickey Mouse Strawberry soap. And bathes himself in the shower. I help him to wash his hair and back, but when hubby bathes him, he let's Sean bathe on his own.

This is Sean's Corner. It's usually rather messy because he's into cutting papers now. He's also been doing a lot of drawings. His latest craze is drawing masks. He tries cutting them himself, but they end up in the bin. So I have the task of cutting his masks neatly for him.

And you can see in his photos, he's becoming more and more a cheeky monkey, quite like Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes", who makes faces in photos!

Biting his classmate

2010-03-06T00:09:00.002+08:00

Sean bit his classmate yesterday and today. He also bit another classmate once last month. When asked why, he answered that he was hungry or just plain, "I don't know", which is his typical answer.

We're a bit surprised actually because he doesn't bite at home. But his teacher said it could be because he was frustrated and couldn't say what he wanted to say that caused him to bite his classmate.

We're a bit at a loss in this area. We've told him not to bite, and hubby even scolded him for it. I've also made him say that he won't bite another person again. But I don't know if all these are even effective.

Moving House

2010-03-02T12:43:00.002+08:00

We finally made the move.

Gosh, even though I packed part of the items and moved them in advanced, on the few days we moved the big furniture, there were still a lot to move, throw out or give away. We aren't done yet because the old house still has leftover items that have been stored in the store rooms for years.

I know the in-laws have tons of things because they haven't done spring cleaning for years, but I didn't realized how much Sean and I have accumulated through the last few years. I think you'll only realize this when you actually have to pack your things and move them from one house to the next.

I carried so many boxes up and down stairs, I think I finally managed to reduce some of the belly fat that has been bothering me. Or it could just be the trick mirror in this new house. The mirror makes everything look slimmer and taller!

I think everyone should have at least one of these mirrors. They make you feel good about yourself. =P

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

2010-02-14T18:15:00.002+08:00

Dear everyone,

Gong Xi Fa Cai, Xin Nien Kuai Le.

First visit to the dentist

2010-02-13T19:46:00.013+08:00

What did we do on Chinese New Year eve?
Brought Sean for his first visit to the dentist!

He was in pain yesterday and couldn't eat much. I knew that his teeth weren't in good condition but I wasn't sure when is a good age to bring him to the dentist. I didn't want him to be scared of the dentist if we bring him too early.

When I shined the torchlight at his teeth yesterday evening, I was shocked at how huge his cavities are!

First thing I thought, "Oh no.... where are we going to get a dental appointment on CNY eve?" Luckily, Sam's friend, Jo Ee, is a dentist, and we called to ask for an emergency appointment today.

And the diagnosis is bad, of course. But the dentist cleared away all the decay and patched it up. Sean behaved really well throughout the visit, except for making a lot of noise while playing in the waiting room. I'm very proud of him because he was very brave today. No crying, just a lot of curiosity. And Uncle Jo Ee, the dentist was very good and gentle with him.

Unfortunately, he has so many cavities, that we are going to see the dentist very often from now on.

I pee like Daddy!

2010-02-10T17:58:00.004+08:00

Sean's school teacher brought them to the toilet yesterday to get them to practice peeing on their own. As usual Sean would drop his pants down, exposing his rear, pee without holding onto his penis and dribble on to his pants. Then loudly he said to his teacher, " I pee like Daddy!"

Today when hubby sent him to school. They stopped by the toilet before going into the classroom. He went to the urinal, pulled down his pants and exposing his rear, and proceeded to pee, while telling his classmates who happened to be peeing at the same time, " I pee like Daddy!"

The classmates turned to look at hubby. Hubby was embarrassed, obviously.

What happens is that Sean used to take off all his pants before entering the toilet to pee. So hubby taught him to go to the toilet bowl and lower his pants before peeing. Unfortunately Sean still needs to lower all of his pants before peeing. Now, everybody thinks hubby moons everyone when he pees. Bwa ha ha ha ha =P

Sean @ 41 months

2010-02-08T19:51:00.015+08:00

Favorite accessories : straw hat and sunglasses
Favorite color : red ( he uses red for everything)
Favorite drink : Yoko Strawberry, Coca Cola, Apple juice
Favorite food : banana, pao

Current Behavior : He swings from " I want Mummy to do it for me" to " I want to do it myself" this past month.

One minute he says, " I don't know how, help me." The next moment, he's like "I want to do it myself" and won't listen to instruction. For example, in the supermarket, he wants to push the trolley himself and refuse to let us even touch the trolley. It's a real headache trying to make sure he doesn't crash into things or people.

Or if he really doesn't know something and I tell him what they are, then he'll say, " Oh yeah, I know that." Aarrrgghhh...

The other night, he went to the toilet to poo and told us,
Sean : Don't follow me. I want to poo and wash myself."
Our eyebrows went up. Normally when he goes to the toilet he says, "Mummy, follow me"
Me : Eerrr.. No, you still don't know how to wash yourself."

Later I asked him, " What do you mean by wash yourself?"
Sean : I spray water and wash the toilet.
I asked, " What about your backside?"
Sean : Mummy and Daddy wash my backside

Oops... as I'm typing this blog, the little rascal calmly went to the toilet ( I assumed to pee), came back out, sat on the bed and put on his pants, and then went back to do what he was doing before. Reeeaaallly quietly..... not his usual self.

My hubby had the inkling to ask him, "Did you pee or poo?
Sean said, " I pee pee and poo poo"

*Eyebrows went up*

I jumped to the toilet to check the toilet bowl. He pooped and didn't wash! He also left a poo streak on the edge bed where he sat while putting on his pants. Of course it was back to the toilet to wash up and change pants. LOL....

As I was cleaning the bed, the floor felt crunchy.
I said : What's this?
Sean : I sharpened my pencil.

He had sharpened his pencil and left all the debris on the floor.

*Shake head*

This " I want to do is myself" stage is full of surprises. Hopefully there'll be more pleasant ones. I don't want to be finding poo streaks on my bed!!!!!!

Activity : Baking

2010-02-06T13:56:00.013+08:00

I made the easiest mini sausage puff pastries ever. All you need is a pack of ready puff pastries from the supermarket. Thaw it. Cut into half and roll mini sausages into it. Cuts slits with butter knife, put a dash of milk and sprinkle sesame seeds. Then pop them into the oven for 15-20 min, and Voila! They're done and totally delicious! and finished faster than it took to make. =P

Next I tried the other half packet of puff pastries with chocolate. Same method, but unfortunately I put too much milk on top, which made the layers of the puff pastries stick together. So they didn't raise as well as the sausage. Taste is still good though. But people at home prefer savoury food, so this took longer to finish. =(

And last night Sean and I made apple pie together. He helped me to cut the apples into small pieces and sift flour and rub the butter with the flour. It was a messy affair, but he really loved it. He didn't always listen to my directions but maybe we'll do more of this from now on. =D

Activity: : Letter writing

2010-01-31T00:52:00.013+08:00

Last week Sean showed an interest in writing. It came up out of the blue.

Sean : I want to write to Opa Oma (my parents).
Me : Ok.

So I gave him a blank piece of paper and spelled out the letters. He couldn't manage the size really well. It's a good thing the letters are really short, otherwise the letters would be everywhere on the page.

The letter simply says:

To: Opa Oma. I love you. (I helped him with the spelling, of course)

He also drew a red truck for them.

I told him that we'll send the letter by mail. He was really excited about it. I managed to convince him to write 2 more letters. This time to Fendi and Frederick, his cousins and to Akong and Ama. I made boxes for each letter in the next letter. He needed help with letter 'k' and 'r' initially, but managed to get it quite well on his own later on. It came out a lot neater, but not as original as the first one though.

Maybe once he gets the idea that he needs to size each letter so that he can fit a word on a line, I'll get him to write without the boxes.

I decorated an envelope and then we went to the Post Office to buy a stamp and to post his letter on Monday.

Today, out of the blue, he wanted to write again. So this time he wrote to Uncle John and I helped to post it on his Facebook page for Uncle John. Of course, he got a reply really soon from Uncle John. But I only saw it after he fell asleep. So I've got to remember to show Uncle John's reply to him tomorrow.

Playcenter Library

2010-01-28T17:58:00.005+08:00

I'm attaching information about the Playcenter Library.

It's a library for children books. They have fantastic children books. Membership is only Rm15 for 2 books, and you can have as many membership as you want. So you can borrow more books if you want.

I currently have 6 memberships, so I can borrow 12 books each time. Sean doesn't always like the books that I borrow but since I borrow so many, there are always a few that will grab his attention. When I know which books are his favorites, I keep a lookout for them during sales or in Scholastic quarterly newsletter and get them for our personal library.

A dilemma

2010-01-24T16:59:00.008+08:00

Ever since Sean started school, I don't really know what he does in school anymore. Obviously I can't hang around and peek through windows to see what he does at school. The teachers would probably shoo me away! =P

But I do miss the time when we go to playgroup together when I can be with him and meet up other mums.

We could still go for the morning playgroups because our names are still on the list. Playgroup in the morning has started for 2 weeks now but we haven't attended a single one. One reason is because Sean has been trying out the extra activities, which started at 11.45am, at school last week.

He tried

Modern dance - Nope. He can't follow the instruction, he was doing his own things. All the little girls were following the dance movements really well though.

Mental Maths - Not that we really want him to send him to Maths. It was supposed to be Singing, but they made a typo error. So we were at school almost 2 hours early with nothing to do. So I just sent him into the Mental Maths trial so he had something to do. He couldn't sit still. Anyway it's for the 5 and 6 years old. =P

Art and Craft - The teacher said he could follow instruction but he just drew his aliens anyway, which he can do at home for free!

We decided not to enroll him for the extra activities for now.

So now some of our mornings are free. But I'm just wondering whether or not I should rush him from the playgroups in the morning and then to school in afternoon. It's not necessary that he goes to them. But I do want to meet other adults too. Seriously, the playgroup is more for me to meet other mums. =P.... ha ha ha

I'm still undecided. We'll try it out next week and see whether or not it'll be too tiring for Sean.

The quirky things he does and says

2010-01-18T14:03:00.005+08:00

After having a good first day of school, he came back and said he liked school but only wants to go to school for ONE day only. He thought that was it. LOL.

One morning morning he asks why he needed to go to school. He says, "I have many toys at home and 2 computers to play." Hhmmm.. I didn't really have an answer to that. In his shoes, I would prefer to stay at home too. =P

He loves his indoor Optimus Prime slippers so much that he will not leave at schools like all the other children do. Sometimes he won't even wear them but keeps them in his bag, just in case he forgets to bring them home.

Sean @ 40 months

2010-01-11T14:28:00.006+08:00

The latest development is of course starting school full time.

In the morning, he'll say that he wants to stay and play at home. But in the afternoon, by the time he sets foot in the school compound , he's on a different mode. He'll grab his bag and start walking to his class. He doesn't even want to hold my hand. =P

When he reaches his class, we'll take off his shoes and change into indoor slippers. He's so keen on going into class that he often forgets about his bag. he he he...

He's in his full school uniform complete with the white Bata shoes and socks. Isn't he cute? =D

Sean's 1st day at Diyana

2010-01-04T17:14:00.013+08:00

Yesterday, we went for Sean's orientation and I found out that school starts today!

I was mistaken because I thought he starts on 18th like the English Nursery students. We went to his class and met his new teacher. We liked her. She is smiley and friendly. She speaks English well too. So that allays my fear about not being able to communicate with his Mandarin teacher. It was a short meeting and he didn't want to leave so soon. =D

Today, he was excited to start school. From the moment he stepped into school, he was in a hurry to go to his class. His class was right at the end of the large school compound. It was a long walk but he was rushing to go to school. No uniform yet because we haven't confirmed and pay the school fees. Will do it in the next few days.

I love that he is excited to go to school. =D It's a great start of the new year.

We had to think up a chinese name for Sean. So like anyone of our generation, we Google for ideas. Finally we decided on a name: Wei Sheng. FIL passed on a book they had on chinese names. I just found out that the chinese character I chose wasn't the right one. The Sheng we picked out meant holy, wise rather than the one we wanted which means victory. So tomorrow I'm going to have to inform his teachers about the change of chinese character.

Ha ha ha... It's a good thing this is not official.

Happy 2010!

2009-12-31T19:31:00.008+08:00

Happy 2010!

We'll be moving house in Jan 2010. So 2010 seems to signal a lot of beginnings for us.

A new place to live. I'm a bit apprehensive about how Sean will adapt to moving. Although we've told him about it, he still thinks that we'll be moving into a new house but the current one will still be around.

A new school for Sean. He has orientation on 3rd Jan, but school only starts for Nursery children on 18th of Jan. I hope his transition into new school goes smoothly. But there's really nothing I can do until it really starts. So we're just going to wing it.

There'll be many new beginnings in 2010. Here's a toast to the coming year. May it be blessed and bring new and wonderful experiences. =D

We celebrated our last Christmas party in this house in a big way. We cooked a lot of food! We had: Turkey, roast lamb, Spaghetti Carbonara, Bolognaise, Prawn salad, Tomato Bruschetta, garlic bread, Mango with yogurt and of course punch. Some of our relatives brought a huge tray of yam cakes, noodles, and a big Caramel white chocolate macademia cake.

What's also great was we had many relatives coming back from Singapore and Australia. So it was mostly a big family gathering. On Sam's side anyway.

Sean @ 39 month

2009-12-12T15:41:00.010+08:00

This is very late. It's because Sean has been hogging my laptop so much recently. By the time he's not playing, and I'm no longer busy, I'm too tired to use the computer.

Mr. Why
Probably the most significant thing this month is Sean's incessant 'Why's. I can't remember how many months ago he started asking 'Why' but this month, he has at least 5-10 'Why's in every conversation. Now we know why other parents say, "don't worry about him speaking late, once they start, it's hard to keep them quiet." ha ha ha....

Christmas party at last day of Playgroup
The only thing I remembered to take photos of this month is the last day of Playgroup when we had our Christmas party. Sam was the Santa Claus of the day. When Sam came out from hiding ho-ho-ho-ing, Sean wasn't fooled for a second. He immediately asked, " Why is Daddy Christmas?" (He meant Santa Claus) Since we never really talked much about Santa Claus, he just associated him with Christmas. Even when taking photos together, he wasn't taking pictures with Santa Claus but with Daddy Christmas.

I invited the mummies and kids over to the house for an extended playgroup. The kids had a great time. We gave 2 of the rabbits away, Akamaru to Faye and Alvin, and Zorro to Jacqueline, Ethan, Jonathan, and Grace.

I invited a few mums and kids over the week after but most are already traveling to hometown. So only Sam and Yen came with their youngest who were much younger than Sean. So Sean went up to play computer with his Daddy while I had such a great time chatting that I went late to teach tuition. =P

I've also been busy packing the things in the storage room since we'll be moving house next month. So I haven't played much with Sean. He has been playing lots of computer games with Daddy. Daddy made a blog list of all Sean's games. This is Sean's game blog http://seansflashgames.blogspot.com/

But I found his old inflatable ball pit, which the maid almost thrown away, and blew it up and filled it up with balls. Sean insisted that I joined him inside the ball pit. So we had a wonderful time rolling around inside the ball pit. We even crashed the standing fan because of our enthusiasm. =P The next morning, I found parts of the pit deflated. Ha ha ha... I had punctured it. =P

Anyone for a rainbow cookie?

2009-11-30T11:29:00.009+08:00

Don't they look colorful? Hmmm... and they taste pretty good too. It's called the Playdough cookie because of it's colors. There are so many ways you can play around with this cookie dough: valentine, easter, birthdays, etc. The limit is your imagination. =D

I'm making these for the Christmas party at playgroup this Thursday. I got the recipe from this website The Sits Girls.

Play Dough Cookies
3/4 C butter
3 ounces cream cheese
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
2 and 3/4 C flour
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
assorted food coloring (gel or paste works best)

I didn't have cream cheese so I put in more butter. The cookies have a buttery and sugary taste.

1. In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

2. In a bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir until soft dough forms. Divide dough into Fourths. Tint each with a different food coloring. Wrap in plastic and chill for two hours. (I stuck it in the freezer for 15 minutes because I hate to wait!)

3. Preheat oven to 350. Shape cookies to your liking. Place cookies 2 to 3 inches apart on greased cookie sheet to allow for spreading.

4. Bake for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.Enjoy!

Sean likes helping me out when we bake cakes. I get him to stir or sift flour. This time round, I made the cookies without his help, but I think next time he can make a few of his own cookies too. =D

Since Sean is into cooking games. I let him play with a big bowl of uncooked rice. I'm not sure what other boys do, but my son has marbles, cars, and vegetables in his bowl and he likes to pour the rice into a hat.

No more swimming

2009-11-25T01:44:00.008+08:00

He's been crying during swimming lessons and refusing to swim, and finally I said, " Fine, we'll stop swimming."

I think falling sick twice after swimming is the cause of this. Sam keeps telling him not to swallow the swimming pool water because he'll get sick. Obviously, at this stage, he still swallows some water, which causes him to cough because he's scared of getting sick again, and cry, which makes his nose stuffy, and hence difficult to swim.

I was upset with him today for refusing to swim. But eventually I said to myself that if Sean really dislikes something, I shouldn't push it.

So we left halfway the lesson because he didn't want to enter the water anyway and there'll be no more swimming lessons. I want him to know how to swim so he can save himself if he ever falls into water. But it looks like he really dislikes swimming since the flu.

I'm going to cajole him the next few days to see if he'll continue for at least another month but knowing my son, I think we'll have to wait until he wants to learn it at his own time. I just feel that it's a big pity because he was just only beginning to get it.

Holiday Homeschooling

2009-11-23T00:57:00.014+08:00

I've been reading up on homeschooling and I like the idea a lot. At the moment, we aren't planning to homeschool Sean but since we are planning to send Sean to a mandarin based kinddy, I thought I should at least teach him English at home.

Sean's corner

First, I created a corner where we can play and learn together. It's meant to be a place where he is comfortable and know where all his things are. However we keep moving the things here and there so we haven't got to the point where he knows where all his things are.

Then on Friday, I covered his tables with white paper and plastics. It's meant to be a writing table that you can write and wipe off, like a whiteboard, so that Sean can scribble on it anytime he wants. But I found out that Sean doesn't want to wipe off the things he writes on the table. So it doesn't really work the way I imagined it to be.

Writing

Today I got him to write a few words just for a few minutes. At first I just got him to write on a white piece of paper. It turned out terrible because he couldn't manage the size of his letters. So I drew out a box for each letter and that helped a lot.

You can see in the picture. The above words 'red bird' was done at the beginning. He wrote: yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog and lastly brown bear. By the time he got to 'brown bear, his handwriting has improved a lot.

Sean tried using markers, pencils and crayons. Although he doesn't like crayons because he finds them icky, crayon is still the best medium for learning to write. It's easier to control compared to markers or pencils.

I'm not sure how often I can sneak in writing lessons but hopefully more and more often.

I made some sandpaper letters. It's a bit mismatched because I used whatever I had at home. When I ran out of the sandpaper,I couldn't find the same color. I'll try them out on Sean and see if they help with writing.

He still loves playing the computer most. I have to say there are just so many interesting things online that normal games can't really compete with the variety of games available online. But I try to get him do other things so that at least he gets a balanced day, such as playing playdough and cooking games.

We've also been playing with empty boxes, stacking them up, in a row, or puttings things into them. There are lots of things you can do with empty boxes. Just require a lot of energy on my part to do whatever Sean wants to do. LOL.... mummy isn't as energetic as Sean though. =P

Yesterday, we played shaved ice.
Btw, using food coloring stains even if just a little bit. It's probably better to use syrup for coloring. It may be a bit sticky but it shouldn't stain as much as food coloring.

Daddy has wanted to make Sean a Wall.e costume. So today he cut out a box for the body. Unfortunately Sean wanted to paint it red, so it didn't become wall.e after all.

Oh yeah, I made this wrist band as a craft for the playgroup. But the idea was to get Sean remember his name and to learn how to open and close button. It's very easy to make.

Funny or alarming?

2009-11-16T17:59:00.009+08:00

I'm not sure whether I should find it funny or alarming, but recently Sean has been making comments like this:

"Sean cannot listen to Mummy!"

i.e. He doesn't want to listen to me because he's frustrated that
a) I don't understand him
b) I tease him too much. LOL =P

Oops! He does not want to listen to me at 3 years old? What will happen when he 12?

Ok, I admit sometimes I ask him again and again what he said because his pronunciation is still unclear. He gets frustrated when I still don't get it.

And sometimes I do tease him, for example he used to say "Otay" for Ok. So to get him to say it correctly, we tease him, is it 'Otay?", then he will say it correctly, "O-k-k-k-ay!". He specifically pronounced the 'k' properly to make sure we understand that he can say it correctly now.

Sometimes I tease him, "Are you my baby?" He will say, "No! I'm a boy! Not a baby!"

Okay, maybe I shouldn't tease him too often, but it's so fun sometimes. This mummy can be rather mischievous LOL =P

But, Sean also teases me back. The other day when I was toweling him off after his swim lesson, he peed almost on my foot. I told him off, but maybe not seriously enough. The whole trip home he kept saying "PeePee!" and breaking into peals of laughter. When I say "Sean...." warning him not to continues, he goes "PeePee!" ha ha ha ha...

*Shake head*

My 3 year old son is already telling me he does not want to listen to me and teases me back. LOL. Maybe I should be a little stricter with him. I've got a cheeky monkey for a son. =P

Sean @ 38 month old

2009-11-09T20:13:00.029+08:00

Half of Sean's 38th month seemed to be spent at home wiping noses.
But looking back at the pictures I took, he has grown by leaps and bound.

It's quite amazing at the speed children at this age learns. Everything seems to click this month.

Writing 'Optimus Prime'
Today, Sean gave us a surprise. While I was trying to encourage him to scribble on paper, just to get him used to holding a pen, he suddenly said that he wanted to write Optimus Prime. The last time I tried to get him to any writing was a month ago, and he hasn't wanted to do any writing since then. So I thought he wasn't interested and I didn't want to push.

Anyway, I spelled out Optimus Prime and he wrote it by himself. He didn't now how to write 'S' so I wrote 's' as an example, and he followed the example. We were pleasantly surprised that his handwriting is not too bad, it's at least legible he he he....

Reading aloud

I noticed that he seems to be ready to read beginning books. So I borrowed some really simple books for him to read. I've read them to him a few times. There are, of course, words that he doesn't know, but I thought if he was not adverse to it, why not get him read, even pretend reading is good. =D

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
This is one of his favorite books. Although I know he can read a few words here and there, I think in this video he was mostly saying aloud from memory.

Silly Races
This is a beginning Kipper's book. It has very short sentences. He really likes it.

The Balloon
He didn't read it properly, but he's a cheeky boy.

Play Cooking

Here's a video of Sean cooking for his soft toys. What's funny is that his soft toys has to follow a certain sequence. First Caterpillar, Tigger, Hippo, Dog, Manate, and last Cow. We tried fooling him and mix up the sequence of his soft toys while he plays with them. But he insists that they have to follow that particular sequence. When his mind is fixed on something, it can't be changed.

Last Day at Children's Corner

Last Saturday was the last day at Children's Corner for the year 2009. So each child has to be a letter from Letterland. Sean is Annie Apple. Here he is with a few friends whom I managed to take photographs of.

Sean and Alvie, Robber Red.

Sean and Grace, Uppity Umbrella.

Sean and Emily, Bouncy Ben.

Lesson on W

This was one of the last lessons for the year, the letter W. Sharon, one of the volunteer teachers, was telling the children about water. Look at them all enraptured by the lesson. I love to see these children so interested.

Visit to Science Center

Here are pictures of Sean and Daddy when we went to the Science Center before he got sick. Sam wanted to bring Sean to see the Dinosaur exhibit even before he was hospitalized. But we tarried too long and by the time we went there, the Dinosaur exhibition was over.

There was still one T-Rex and a few other dinosaurs. But Sean was too scared to appreciate them. Nonetheless, the Science Center is very interesting and we hope to go there again when they have something new.

Finally swimming

A week before he got sick, he finally managed to conquer his fear of water and actually swam. On that day, he cried for the first half and hour, refusing to enter the swimming pool. I tried to cajoule him but to no avail. Finally, I said'Ok, we'll call Daddy to pick us up. Meanwhile, why don't you play jumping into the water with Coach Wayne?' Which finally made him enter the swimming pool.

By the time Sam came, he was already doing his swimming lesson, and after the lesson he swam with his swimming board all by himself!

I'm back

2009-11-02T18:50:00.005+08:00

Being sick is sure a waste of time and energy. You can't do a lot of things, you feel listless, tired and cranky all the time. Sean was definitely whiny this time round.

Every other 2 minutes he goes, "Nose!", i.e. he wants me to wipe his nose because it's wet. Eventually I get so tired of wiping his nose, I finally taught him how to blow his nose. He makes a mess of it, his face gets smeared all over, but at least I'm no longer his nose wiper.

But this time round, the flu was terrible. His fever went up and down. In the morning we think he's ok, at night, the fever runs high. All 3 of us didn't get much sleep and eventually all of us got sick.

Sean is ok now, Sam and I are still recovering.

But while we didn't go for playgroups, I've been doing some cleaning up. I've rearranged Sean's toy's in the hope that I'm creating a more Montessori environment (will take pictures and post them up). The first day he says, "It's not corright (correct).", i.e. I've moved his things around and he doesn't like it. I'm trying to introduce him to his new play corner and hoping that he'll get comfortable soon.

My plans for next year is to still go to the current playgroups in the mornings so he is still exposed to an speaking English environment. And in the afternoon, when I work, he goes to Kindergarten which will be in Mandarin. I'm not sure how well that will work.

Firstly, Tadika Diyana is quite far at Taman Tun. So travel arrangement may wear us down. Next, it'll be in Mandarin. I'm not sure how Sean will adapt to it. I hope he will then I won't worry too much about him.

We shall see. It's only next year which is still a while away. Plans always changes. I'm just going to be flexible and see how Sean reacts to all these plans made for him.

We're still sick

2009-10-25T19:37:00.004+08:00

I am now also sick together with Sean. I am not sure whether that is a blessing or is worse that it is over the weekend. The doctors are closed but at least I have my MIL to help me with Sean in the afternoon. My hubby has been taking care of both of us in the morning and at night.

Thank you dear, I really appreciate that you have taken over the doctor duty, because I am feeling just too weak to do anything much.

Sean had added cough to his fever and runny nose. The poor boy cannot sleep because of his cough throughout the whole night. Hence, all of us cannot sleep too. I really hope he gets better soon. This is getting too long. Tomorrow we have to make another visit to the doctor.

Sean is sick

2009-10-23T18:10:00.004+08:00

Sean has been having a high fever since Wednesday, so it's been 3 days. Luckily, he doesn't have the croup which caused him to be hospitalized last month. But this time the fever is not going away. We brought him to the doctor yesterday to get the doc's opinion, but again, whenever we go to the doc, he seems ok. He gets really hot at night, like right now.

Poor boy. I hope he gets better soon so he can enjoy playing again. Otherwise this worried mummy may bring him to the hospital again, but that's something I really don't want to do unless it's necessary.

Tadika Diyana

2009-10-20T13:06:00.008+08:00

After much thought and headache over whether or not we should prepare Sean for chinese primary school, we have decided to register Sean in a Kindergarten which has both streams, i.e. Tadika Diyana.

I went again this time with Sam to see the place. Today, we had a better impression. The children were lively and were having a good time at school. I checked the play area and it was bigger than Peter and Jane's. They also have a big hall where they do PE and we saw children having a good time during PE, which I feel is important at this age.

We were both quite happy with the school and Sean seems happy there. So we registered there and then.

http://www.tadikadiyana.com.my/

Why are we even talking about chinese school?

Obviously, we are rather concerned about the standard of the Kebangsaan school. If we decide to send Sean to a chinese primary school in 3 years time, we have to make sure that we prepare him for it, which is why I've been having a tough time deciding which school to send Sean to. I didn't even consider chinese school when we started the kindergarten search. We've only thought about it last week. All the ratings I did was based on my observation of the teacher's ability to speak english and the general feel of the place.

I've talked to many other mothers about their opinions on chinese schools and what their thoughts on how to proceed for us since we can't speak mandarin or even any dialects. Most of them suggest that we send Sean to a chinese kindergarten even from now so he gets a good exposure to the language first.

Since we are still undecided, we decided that we'll let Sean try to do his kindergarten in mandarin. I'm hoping that he's not going to object too much being put into the chinese stream next year. If we see that he really dislikes it, then we'll take him out and put him into the english stream, and later on to a Kebangsaan primary school.

I can't believe that we have to think of primary school even from now. But if we don't prepare Sean for the possibility of going to a chinese primary school from now, the possibility that he'll adapt later on is very slim.

We were set to put Sean in Fairfield because we felt it has the best english teachers out of all the schools. But I brought Sam to see Diyana because it was the only school he hadn't seen. He liked it and Sean seemed quite happy with the place, happily running around and playing at the playground. We had discussed the night before, ok, no chinese school because the cultural difference between an english speaking home and a chinese school is very different. But when we went to Diyana, we saw the possibility that it may work.

Diyana seems to attract many parents who don't speak chinese to put their children in the chinese stream. So I'm hoping that Sean won't feel out of place when he starts school next year. I'm also hoping that the teachers know how to handle children who come from non-chinese speaking family gently and introduce mandarin in a non-threatening way.

So here is to us hoping that we made the right choice.

Sean @ 37 months

2009-10-13T20:27:00.024+08:00

Another month has passed. He had his birthday and then he was hospitalized for a night and a day. Soon after, we were busy thinking of where to send Sean next year for nursery.

Sean has been spending a lot of time playing computer games because mummy is either out teaching tuition or doing some transcribing work at home. But he tries to get my attention as much as possible when I'm working at home. Whenever his game is loading (it's an online game, so it takes time to load), he comes over and "Hug mummy!" So I've been getting loads of hugs and cuddles, and a lot of "I love you Mummy!"

Ok, the picture here is when he's making his Grrr face, not exactly loving and cuddly, but most of the time, he's full of hugs and kisses. =D

I feel blessed my son is so loving and so free with his hugs and kisses. I hope mummy will always get as many hugs as I am now getting from you. I'll miss you next year when you start nursery full time.

So what's up with Sean:

His current favorite game is Busytown Mysteries based on Richard Scarry's character. He loves listening to the songs and dancing to them, and he loves going around the town in the game. It's really an interesting game. Perfect for kids Sean's age.
http://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc/play/busytownmysteries/

We haven't been doing much art recently. So on Saturday, I thought we could just have a messy afternoon on the porch. Sean spent a short time drawing chalk figures and painting of Animal Mechanicals. They are not like the original characters at all but I'm proud of his drawings and painting nonetheless. After painting, he preferred to fight a bush with a stick instead!

Unicorn and rex

Mighty Sasquatch

Komodo

This is what the Mighty Sasquatch painting finally looked like.

Ok, this drawing looks like squiggles, but it's supposed to be a spaceship with 4 aliens looking out of windows.

Need info on Chinese Primary School

2009-10-13T20:00:00.006+08:00

Seriously, this kindergarten search thing is giving me a headache. Maybe it's just me, I feel the need to know enough to be able to make a decision, but the more I know, the more choices there are. So we've decided to let things take it's own course. We've done our research and we've finally ranked them in order. So we are now just waiting to hear from the schools whether there'll be space for Sean next year.

I don't want to think too much again. LOL.

Now, there's something else bothering me. I wish I'm not the type to think so much about all these. It would be nice to just decide, Hey that's fine and that's it. But that's not me.

It's the whole Chinese versus Kebangsaan issue. At first, we were quite sure that we are not even going to think about sending to a Chinese school because both of us can't speak any Chinese at all. We didn't want him to have to take too many tuition or to feel too much pressure on school work.

But recently we heard that Chinese school isn't that bad. The facilities are good, the teachers are dedicated, and they are no longer that harsh, and if you learn chinese early enough, you shouldn't have that much trouble with the work at school. Now I'm not sure if any of these are true, but it has made us be open to the idea of sending Sean to a Chinese primary school. Maybe only, it's still a new thought.

I know it's still early, but I heard that you have to register by next year! I'm not sure if that's correct, but I need more information about this.

So if anyone can enlighten me about what Chinese primary school is like, I would be more than grateful.

In search for a kindergarten - part 2

2009-10-08T19:10:00.027+08:00

New info:

I've just heard from a friend whose son is in Peter and Jane that they have changed the school hours from 3 to 4 hours, which means the school fees have increased substantially!

She was complaining that she calculated that the snack costs her RM10 each day, and her son is only getting biscuits and milo. She also doesn't like the teacher and her son's class is next to the toilet. Despite asking for class change, she was told that there was no space. I do feel that it's unfair because I feel that the Mutiara Damansara P&J has excess space!

So I'm really glad that we decided not to send Sean to P&J.

We really like Tadika Diyana. Sean liked it immediately and there was no fuss at all when h started school. His teachers speaks both English and Mandarin well. She is also very nice. Despite his class being next to the toilet also, it's not a problem because it's a closed class and air-conditioned. He is very comfortable in his school and looks forward to going to school.

So if anyone read this entry about kindergarten. My choices will be:

1. Tadika Diyana
2. Fairfield (for English session)
3. Peter and Jane (but the school fees is even higher than before!)

The kindergarten that I thought I was not even going to take a look at (because of the expense) turn out to be the one that I really like, i.e. Peter and Jane. Unfortunately, their morning session is already full. So next week, we'll go take a look at the Peter and Jane in Mutiara Damansara.

Our current possible choices are:

1. Peter and Jane. They are full for morning classes in Taman Sea, only afternoon classes are available.

2. Fairfield. My only concern is that there'll be only 1 class of 4 years old next year. That may be too few possible friends for Sean.

3. Juara Cerdik. Because it's nearby and the fees are affordable. But Sean may not like it because of the drastic change from being able to play a lot to having to sit and study so much. So I forsee a lot of "I don't want to go to school, Mummy" in the first few months.

My review of the kindergartens, if anyone is interested :P
These are in a sort of order of rank.

1. Tadika Diyana - classroom concept

I went for a 2nd look with Sam. This time our impression is much better. The children were quite lively today, which gives us the same impression as the other schools above.
Guided by Montessori approach for Nursery but little of it is practiced. More emphasis on academics for K1 and K2. Teacher student ratio = 2:20 for nursery

Pros: A beautiful school structure. Classrooms are quite spacious. Has many facilities. Fees average. It has English and Mandarin stream, which makes it flexible for people like us who have not decided where we will be sending Sean for Primary school.

Cons: Some of the teachers and students looked rather bored. Classroom arrangement more suited to be a Primary school. It would be great if several classes of children can play together during playtime, but despite the big school compound, it's play area is small. I checked out the play area again. It's much bigger than Peter and Jane's play area. And they have a big hall where they do their PE.

1. Peter and Jane - Open concept
Nursery (4 yrs old) - Montessori approach. Lots of learning through hands and play. Emphasis on motor skills, creativity, music and learning through activities. Teacher student ratio = 1:14 for nursery.
K1 and K2 (5 & 6 yrs old) - Gradual introduction of more academics, maths, reading, writing and communication. K2 is divided into English and Mandarin sections.

Pros: Montessori approach. Friendly and warm teachers who speak well. Clean, bright and cheerful. Teaching system is well thought out. Gradual learning of new languages. Children seem to enjoy themselves a lot and yet it's orderly.
Cons: Maybe a little noisy because of the open concept, but I think Sean may thrive in such an environment. Expensive.

2. Fairfield - Classroom concept
British system. Emphasis on reading, creative writing and communication. Teacher student ratio = 1:15

Pros: Older, more experienced teachers. A big grassy field where all the children play together during play period. I like the fact that they get to play together. The children are friendly and polite. Principal and main teacher are ex-Garden International.
Cons: Classrooms rather small. Quite expensive.

3. Nakorn Sari - Classroom concept
British system. Emphasis more on play. Great for children below 4 years old. Teacher student ratio = 2:15 (I think)

Pros: Very fun and has lots of activities. Teachers are cheerful and friendly.
Cons: Lack of order and discipline. Quite expensive.

5. Beaconhouse Gasing - classroom concept
Guided by Montessori approach for Nursery. More emphasis on academics for K1 and K2. Teacher student ratio = 1:15 for nursery

It's really average because it neither impresses us nor was there anything wrong with it.

Fungates open concept
It's marketed to be learning through play but I saw more studying than play. The high emphasis on academics can be a pro or con depending on parents' viewpoint. A lot of emphasis on workbook and practice. Exams and homework start from 4 years old. Seems to emphasis a lot on Mandarin lessons than any of the other lessons.

1. Juara Cerdik - Fungates
Pros: Teachers seem ok. Teacher student ratio = 1:18 for nursery. Fees are affordable. Good value for money. Nearby our house.
Cons: May not have enough play time. Lots of studying. I saw a 4 year old girl practicing chinese characters!

2. Madeline - Fungates
Pros: Cheap. Quite organized. They have 2 options at K2, English and Mandarin.
Cons: Teachers do not speak English well. Teacher student ratio = 1:25. Classrooms seem overcrowded.

3. Sri Nobel - Fungates
Pros: None I saw.
Cons: Strict lots of rules. The environment is cold and factory like. Lots of cons!!!! It's terrible!

In search for a kindergarten

2009-10-05T06:46:00.006+08:00

We are thinking of putting Sean into a full kindergarten next year. One thing is because I'm getting busier and don't have as much time as I used to with him. He also looks to be growing out of the current playgroups he is in. So therefore we've been checking out kindergarten this week.

Our criteria for a kindergarten:
1. Experienced teachers who are well-spoken and have warm personalities.
2. A good system which teaches well but nothing too academic because we feel that it's still important to have time for play and reflection.
3. A good level of discipline but not too harsh. Discipline is still important but it shouldn't be meted out in a harsh manner that it suppresses the personality of the child.

All these will result in
4. Children who are warm and friendly. So we also want to see the children who are studying in the school because they will be the community of students that we want Sean to be friends with.

And last but not least

5. A place that Sean likes. So his personal judgment is still taken into account.

We went to see 3 kindergartens this week and including the kindergarten that Sean attended before, they rank in this order:

1. Fairfield (British system)
2. Nakorn Sari (I think British system)
3. Beaconhouse (own system)
4. Madeline (Fungates)

Unfortunately, we went to Beaconhouse and Madeline on their open days and could not see the children. But they did not meet our first criteria.

We like the feel and teachers of Nakorn Sari but criteria no.3 is not met, which is I think the reason Sean does not like it despite the friendly and cheerful teachers over there. Actually Nakorn Sari seems like a really fun place but every time we even pass the school, or the other day when we went for the Lantern Festival, Sean always comments quite emphatically " Don't like this school."

So at the moment, our current choice is Fairfield, which seem to meet criteria 1-4.

Sean did not say whether he likes it or not, which is why we're still going to look at a few other kinddies:

5. Sri Nobel (Fungates)
6. Juara Cerdik (Fungates)
7. Tadika Diyana (not sure yet)
8. Peter and Jane (maybe)

With the Fungates system, I'm just wondering whether it's just too academical? It feels a bit like a factory system where the children (crammed in a class of 25) are fed academics subjects throughout the whole morning. I can see that by the time they leave at 6 years old, they will have learned quite a lot.

However, does this system take away creativity because everyone has to do the same thing at the same time? I know that will be what they'll have to do once they get to Standard 1, but they are only little kids now, and isn't this the time when they can relax and play?

I can't make up my mind about it yet because we have yet to see children in the school setting. So hopefully when we see the next few kinddies later, we'll be able to make a better judgment.

When I'm not home

2009-10-01T19:39:00.003+08:00

Sam takes care of Sean for the few hours that I am out teaching tuition.

Today, Sean played computer games while his daddy fell asleep on the bed. And when Sam woke up, Sean was taking photos of him sleeping with a headphone on his head. =P

No photos though because Sam does not want his unflattering photo posted up on the blog. *chuckle*

The days after hospitalization

2009-09-28T19:23:00.010+08:00

I mentioned that Sean was already bouncing around, pushing his boundaries and testing our patience. He was rather naughty from the moment we came back home. He was just literally bouncing here and there and was rather deviant when we tell him not to.

We went back to see the Pediatrician from the hospital the next morning just for routine check up. The doctor said he seemed ok since he was already gaining his voice back and had no more fever. He said that we did not have to finish the whole bottle of Prednisone syrup, which is a corticosteroid, and only had to give him for another day.

We were wondering what caused his sudden extra naughtiness. Maybe while he was sick he was obedient, now that he is feeling fine, he wants to do everything at once, and therefor the comparison makes it look like he was naughtier than ever? He really could not sit still, jumping on the bed and running here and there, just like an energizer bunny. He was very reckless and deviant.

However, once we stopped the prednisone yesterday, I noticed that his behavior improved. Today, his voice is already back and he is back to normal behavior. I strongly suspect that the prednisone was the cause of this particular behavior.

It is a good thing that we did not have to finish the whole bottle. The list of side effects of taking Prednisone is long and scary!

From About.com

Prednisone Side Effects

The most common side effects of taking prednisone include muscle weakness, osteoporosis, fractures, Cushing's syndrome, pituitary-adrenal axis suppression, growth suppression, glucose intolerance, acne, edema, hypertension, hypokalemia, alkalosis, cataracts, glaucoma, peptic ulcer, nausea, vomiting, headache, vertigo, seizures, psychoses, pseudotumor cerebri, and skin atrophy. Some kids also develop mood swings, become irritable, and have trouble sleeping when they take prednisone.

Most side effects, especially growth suppression, edema, and immune system problems are going to be worse with long term use of Prednisone and less likely with the short term course that most children take for typical asthma attacks or for relief from poison ivy, etc.

What You Need To Know

Although one of the more useful medicines in Pediatrics, especially when you see the dramatic effects prednisone has on a child with a severe asthma attack, it can have serious side effects when overused or misused and it should only be prescribed when it is really necessary.

Other important information:

your child should not take prednisone if he has a systemic fungal infection or has a known hypersensitivity to prednisone
call your Pediatrician if your child is taking prednisone and has been exposed to measles or chickenpox
if your child has asthma and is frequently taking prednisone, then he really should be on a daily preventative medicine, such as Advair, instead

Sean was hospitalized for Laryngitis

2009-09-26T18:08:00.022+08:00

Sean started having a mild fever on Tuesday night after swimming. It was mild so we weren't worried. On Wednesday night, his fever became very high. We gave him his medication and wiped him down. We immediately brought him to see his pediatrician on Thursday morning.

Mummy and Daddy took care of Sean on Thursday and sponged him throughout the day because his fever was still high despite the medication.

This video was taken on Thursday afternoon when he started losing his voice.

He started to wheeze heavily in the evening. I called the pediatrician who suggested that we bring him to the hospital to get the nebulizer. But before we brought him there, we went to nearby GP first hoping that he could get the nebulizer there because he didn't seem to be that sick. (Ok, I didn't know what a nebulizer was) The GP also told us to bring him to the hospital. So then we registered and saw another GP who was on duty who confirmed that he needed to stay the night.

Sean was actually still quite active, and I wouldn't know that his heavy breathing was something considered serious if we didn't see these doctors. His wheezing is called Stridor and he had Laryngitis - Croup, which is a respiratory disease.

So Sean had 2 nebulizer treatment at the Emergency Room, one for Adrenaline and another for Steroids before they took his blood for blood test and checked him in. We told him that he shouldn't talk because he needed to save his voice. He was very obedient and behaved beautifully.

This is picture of Sean in the emergency room. He had to cover his eyes because the steroid nebulizer can irritate the eyes.

They gave him 2 suppositories during the night and 2 more nebulizer treatment. By morning his fever was down, but they gave him 2 more nebulizer treatment, one each, adrenaline and steroids.

Sean was sad and a bit depressed. He wanted to go home. Poor boy, he had no voice, so his cry was silent.

Sam and I went home for a quick shower when Mum and Dad came over. We brought him a few toys. He was so happy to at least have a few toys.

We had the laptop so we could watch movies while he was there. But there was no internet so he couldn't play any games.

We asked the doctor to let us check out that day but he told us to wait until evening when he comes and check Sean's condition. He was stable so he said we could leave.

While waiting for the documentations, which took several hours, Sean fell asleep. When he woke up, he complained that his throat hurt. So we asked for another nebulizer treatment before we leave.

By this time, Sean is already so scared of being in the hospital. He didn't want the nebulizer anymore, but we told him this was so that his throat would not hurt anymore. He was crying the whole time he had the mask on. He whispered in his hoarsed voice, " Enough, no more." Poor boy. I was glad that he no longer had fever and we could leave that day.

He was so happy to come home. He wanted to do everything that he missed. He was so impatient to be able to play his games online, and then played a bit of Lego, and needed to touch everything in the room just to feel reassured that he's finally home.

This experience really taught me that we cannot treat symptoms such as coughing or wheezing too lightly. I would have probably wait until Friday to bring him to the doctor again if Mum did not say that the wheezing is not normal. I never thought that Laryngitis was dangerous. I thought it was something that would go away after a few days. I guess this teach me a lesson to be more alert next time.

Today, Sam and I had to rest from the whole episode. I had a mild fever and both of us were just exhausted. On the other hand, Sean is already bouncing around and pushing his boundaries and trying our patience!

From Wikipedia:

Croup
It is characterized by a barking cough; a whistling, obstructive sound (stridor) as the child breathes in; and hoarseness due to obstruction in the region of the larynx. It may be mild, moderate or severe, and severe cases, with breathing difficulty, can be fatal if not treated in a hospital

Being 3 years old

2009-09-20T00:58:00.014+08:00

I think turning 3 years old is a big milestone for many toddlers. Somehow they seem to grow up so quickly.

Sean's speech is more and more fluent everyday. Sam has been encouraging Sean to tell stories to get him to think and talk. So Sean would go, " One day... watch Mighty Sasquatch..." and proceed to tell us a story from one of the episode of Animal Mechanicals.

Yes, his current favorite character is Mighty Sasquatch. His favorite color is blue, his favorite letter is the letter D, which he associate with being blue in color. Letter B was yellow. We went through letter C very quickly, so it didn't get a color of it's own. And his favorite number is number 3 this week.

We've been playing 'I spy something blue' when we're in the car, and he'll go, "More.... more blue!"

He's been playing more and more imaginatively. I got some 2nd hand toys from the library, bits and pieces of McDonald's toys or free toys that people donated to the library. They then sell them for fund raising. I paid a few ringgit for a few packs of toys. We got small Mickey, Minney, Donald and 2 Mickey faces, a rocket, an airplane, baby Shrek and Pinocchio . Sean was immediately attached to Mickey and Minney, and we've been playing Mickey and Minney everyday.

He brought them even to bathe the other day. Mickey and Minnie fly in rockets, drive cars, and go through lots of accidents as he crash and bang them. He really enjoys it, but we have to play with him. Sean is Mickey, Mummy is Minnie, Daddy is Donald.

Writing and playing Lego

I finally bought a box of colored chalk, and we played on the porch yesterday. To make it interesting, I said we could write on the porch floor. Of course, Sean was only interested in words that start with the letter D. So I wrote dog, duck and dinosaur. I told him to try writing too. He didn't want to write dog, duck or dino, but he was ok with writing 'dim' and 'dig' The activity took only about 10 minutes.

Then, out of the blue he decided that he wanted to play Lego. Perhaps it was because we went to Bryan's house and he played blocks there. We bought the copy Lego for him last Christmas, but it wasn't played very much. It was more of him telling me to make something for him.

But this time round, he wants to make a car himself, a blue car of course. =D And mummy had to make a red car, while Daddy's was yellow. He was rather proud of his blue car, and I'm glad to see that his fingers are able to manipulate the small lego pieces. I had to help him a little bit, but he made it mostly by himself.

Reading and Typing

Tonight, he read out the whole book 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?' almost all by himself. He had trouble reading the word 'looking' and 'black', but once I read it out to him, he had no trouble reading out the whole book. Maybe it's because 'Brown Bear' is an easy book, it's repetitive and has a nice rhyme to read.

I haven't spent much time teaching him how to read. After reading so many books about reading,I've decided that I'm not going to push him about reading now since he's only 3 years old. The simplest way is to read lots of books to him and I felt that is the best way to go for now. But if he wants to know what a word says, then I'll tell him what it says. I've also started to do book reviews. This is just to document the books that we've borrowed from the library. So if we like a book, I don't have to crack my head to remember the title. You can check it on my other blog.

He likes the 'I can sing a rainbow' song. So I put the song sheet on the wall and he'll read out the colors. Sometimes Sean likes to type on the computer. So Sam will tell him to read the colors from the song and copy the colors. So he'll go back and forth between the laptop and the wall to type them out. Sam will help him change the color of the font and he'll type

RED
YELLOW
BLUE
ORANGE
PURPLE

He can type by himself
APPLE
BEE
CAT
DOG

Then recently, he's started typing
RED APPLE
YELLOW BANANA
BLUE WHALE
ORANGE ORANGE
We had to tell him how to type 'banana' and 'whale' ,of course.

YouTube videos

2009-09-16T21:00:00.001+08:00

Just to say that I've changed the settings of Sean's birthday videos. It should be able to be viewed now.

The birthday parties at Playgroup

2009-09-10T21:17:00.021+08:00

On Thursday,
we had a simple birthday party at Playcentre playgroup. This time Sean shared a birthday with Hanzjay who also turned 3 years old this week. Hanzjay's mum, Sherinder, got the cake and drinks, so I got the rest of the food, egg sandwiches, chicken nuggets, sweet corn and watermelon. Things kids would eat, nothing fancy.

When I told Samantha and Amelia that Sean was sad that his friends weren't around on his birthday, they immediately offered to come over after Kai's kindy finished. So they came around 1.30pm to surprise Sean.

Thursday afternoon
Sean, Kristen and Kai, had a great time fighting and playing with each other. I think at this age, kids are just funny. Sean would miss them so much when they aren't around, but when they meet, they fight and then Sean usually would cry. But when later Kai and Kristen leave, Sean would miss them again. Sometimes I don't understand them. =P But Sean was really happy to have them here at home. That was a great afternoon, for us mums as well as the children.

I baked the cake for Friday's party in the afternoon and spent the evening decorating it. I made the cake for both Sean and Eason who's sharing the birthday party at Children's Corner.

Sean wanted Animal Mechanical Mouse this time round and I made a dinosaur for Eason. I also named the cupcakes Sean, Eason and Charmaine who was also having her birthday this week.

That was a lot of work. I think next year, we'll just have one big party and make a big cake. The baking doesn't take that long, but the decorating takes a lot of time. And next time, I want to have proper equipment! Doing it the old fashion way is a lot of work. But, I'm just happy that Sean is excited about both his cakes. =D

At Children's Corner on Friday

After all that preparation, the friday party was a good one. All we had to do was just enjoy the day. Joey, Eason's mummy, brought a pinata for the kids to hit at the end of the playgroup. Everything was fine until Eason was injured when Clarence swung the stick too vigorously. He was hit on his eyelid. Poor Eason, he was shocked and very scared. After crying for a long time, he managed to open his eyes. I hope his eyes are alright.

I brought the camera and was able to record short clips of Sean dancing. Daddy came along for both Thursday and Friday birthday party, and recorded the birthday for us. I think Sean enjoyed himself very much this birthday with so many parties going on.

The next day, he asked for Animal Mechanical Mighty Sasquatch cake! I think he thinks now he can ask for any cakes he wants. LOL =P

Sean is 3 years old.

2009-09-10T00:15:00.015+08:00

Dear Sean,

Mummy is so happy to see grow so much within this past year. You've become a happy person who likes to joke and tease mummy and daddy. You are also a strong willed person who has definite views about certain things, for example, you insist that the Rainbow song should go

Red and yellow and green and pink....
When it should go Red and yellow and pink and green.

It takes quite a lot to get you to change your mind, but being a good boy, you decide to give in and accept our version, except that you'll give a long sigh and say, ok mummy or ok, daddy...

The last week or so, you seem to have grown up a lot. There has been a lot of sighing whenever we tell you NOT to do something. I hear a lot of '(sigh) ok, mummy', which I find very funny because you sound so old, he he he.... =D

But you are mostly a happy child who loves to joke. You find it funny when you make the figurines walk on their heads. You love to get on my knees and fly about. You love going to McDonald or KFC. Today, you were playing with Mickey and Minney, pretending that they are buying fries and hamburger at McDonald.

You like playing with Transformer, and you are currently crazy about Animal Mechanicals. You can watch the same 4 episodes that we found on YouTube over and over again for hours. (shake head)

This past month, your computer skill has improved tremendously. From not being able to handle the mouse, you are getting to be rather dexterous with the mouse, and are now able to navigate and play on the pbskids website or YouTube quite well.

Mummy is not always there to see you play computer because you usually play computer with daddy when mummy is working, but I am impressed to see you play the games so well.

Somehow ever since you are aware that you are 3 years old, no longer 2 years old, you've suddenly become more grown up. Don't grow up too fast, Sean. Live life to the fullest my son, and always ask God to protect and bless you in Jesus name, Amen.

We love you very much,
Mummy and Daddy.
xxx

The making of the birthday cake

The last few days we've been hyping Sean about his birthday and get him to sing birthday song. I asked him what cake he wanted to have. I was planning to make him a spiderman cake which is a simple design. But since his craze with Animal Mechanicals started, he was not interested in any other characters.

At first he was crazy about The Mighty Sasquatch. Ok, Sasquatch is not too difficult to draw. But last night, he was quite definite that he wanted a T-Rex cake. There are not many Animal Mechanicals pictures online. So I just Googled and found 2 possible drawings. My drawing wasn't very good, but that's all I had. =P

This is my first birthday cake and I don't really have equipment, except for an egg whisk and some baking paper. Yesterday, I had a really good workout on my right arm, first, creaming the butter and sugar for the cake, then creaming the cream cheese and icing sugar for the icing.

There were a few problems. First, the pyrex container I used for the cake was slightly too big for the oven, and thus had to be put in diagonally, which made the cake uneven. A lot of cake was wasted to get an even rectangular cake.

Sean helped with the sifting icing sugar and whisking the butter, but I didn't really let him help much this time round. While icing the cake, I kept licking my fingers when the cream cheese icing leaked and dribbled from the paper cone. By the time, I decorated the cake, I was rather sugared out.

The birthday

Sean was so excited about his 'Rex cake' and wanted to eat it early in the morning, but I kept telling him to wait for evening when Ama comes home. He loved the marshmallows on the cake but didn't eat the cake. Seriously, no one at home like to eat cake, not even Sean. Except me and the maid. So it's a good thing, the cake is small.

Daddy cooked meatballs, spaghetti and tomato sauce, and french fries. He ate french fries, meatball without the sauce and marshmallows. *You need to eat more, Sean!*

By the time evening came, he was more subdued, and when I asked him much later, he said he was sad that his friends, Kai and Eason, were not there. I guess he thought he was going to have a big birthday party. Actually, I don't know what he thought, but maybe that's what he thought. I hope he enjoys the birthday at playgroup tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Sean!

The letter B, the color yellow and the number 2

2009-09-01T17:38:00.007+08:00

Sean was stuck with the letter A, the color Red and the number one for the longest time. All he wanted to do was paint the letter A in red paint and he only wanted 1 of everything.

I think about 1 or 2 weeks ago, he decided his favorite color is now yellow, and his favorite letter is the letter B and he wants everything in twos.

Someone passed me a link to this great website a long time ago, it list down a lesson plan that you want to do with your child from1 years old. I didn't do anything then but I've recently dug it up and taken a look at it. I'm grateful for the people who puts up free lessons online, they are a great source of ideas. This is the link : http://www.letteroftheweek.com/preschool_age_3.html

I'm not following everything that is recommended yet, but I thought I'll start with borrowing books following a theme, i.e. letter of the week is....

Since Sean is very decided on letter B, I thought this was a good time to start this. I borrowed books from the B section, which made it simpler for me to look for books. I could only find one of the recommended book for letter B, but I think the idea is about introducing as many things that start with the letter B. So I just borrowed books that talk about things that start with the letter B.

Since he started playing games online, he hasn't been interested in reading as much, but this week, all I had to do was ask, " Do you want to read a B book?" So far, it's been working this week, we shall see how long this works and whether or not I can actually follow the recommended lesson with Sean.

I've started a new blog. At the moment it's just a list of books we are currently reading and links of YouTube videos we are watching. The blog is called Today, I learn about

UP

2009-08-28T15:19:00.005+08:00

We went to see 'UP' the movie on Wednesday afternoon. This was my first movie with Sean but it was Sean's 2nd movie because Sean went to see 'Star Wars' with Daddy before.

Sean behaved well but he kept saying 'Let's go home' in the beginning while the previews were being shown. But once the movie started, he enjoyed it. He found it a bit scary during the chasing scenes (and cried a little) because the music was dramatic and he gets rather affected by dramatic or scary music.

I think we can start going to see movies more regularly now since he behaved so well this time.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

2009-08-22T15:35:00.012+08:00

Happy Birthday dear.
Sean and I love you. Thank you for being such a loving husband. =D

Mummy has been busy doing transcribing work at home, so Daddy and Sean have been spending more time together. Hence they are even closer than before. Mummy used to be number 1 but now, both Daddy and Mummy are equal, which is wonderful.

Daddy and Sean spend a lot of time playing computer games together, which I think has it's pros and cons. The pros is that they do an activity which they enjoy together and Sean is watching less TV. The cons is that Sean is getting addicted to computer games and is refusing to do anything else. All those Montessori activities we did before are suddenly too boring compared to computer games.

I have to say that the free computer games available at www.pbskids.org are cute and educational, and I didn't really mind him letting him play, just to practice hands and eye coordination as well as listening skills. But I have to limit his time on the computer.

Leaf the Caterpillar

Akong found a caterpillar and showed it to Sean a few days ago. We've been watching the caterpillar eat and move from branch to branch everyday. It's really fun, I enjoy it as much as Sean does. I took some pictures of the caterpillar yesterday and put it back on a bush with a lot of leaves.

Unfortunately, the maid, fearing the caterpillar might eat all the leaves and kill the tree, threw it down the drain this morning. =(

Sean was really sad to lose his caterpillar.

I guess it ate up all the leaves from the original bush we found it on, and may kill a new bush with it's voracious eating. However we would have liked to be able to watch it become a pupa and then a butterfly.

I found out something interesting when I had it in a box yesterday. I saw the caterpillar poop and it's poop is huge! Can you see how big the caterpillar is? It's longer than my index finger when it stretches.

I wanted to upload a short video of the caterpillar but I couldn't upload it. Is there a way to shrink it's size so it can be uploadable?

Sean @ 35 months

2009-08-04T20:54:00.025+08:00

I can't quite remember when it started, but this past month, I've been hearing a lot of " I love you mummy" from Sean. He feels the need to express himself that he tells me he loves me more than 10 times a day. It's wonderful for me of course, but he's so honest that he'll tell his Daddy and Akong that he doesn't like them.

He's becoming more chatty but his vocabulary is very limited, so you'll hear these phrases very often from him:
"This one" "That one",
I'm trying to get him use more descriptive words but it's our own fault because I notice we use these phrases often too. So we have to be more conscious about our own speech.

"Don't know" - he uses this all the time because he wants me to do things for him.

"Don't like this" - most of the time it's food. He's been very picky about food.

" Mummy help Sean" - i.e. he wants me to help him

" Mummy follow me" - I am his personal playmate so I have to follow him everywhere but when I get lazy and refuse to play with him, he goes:

" Mummy no sit down", " Mummy no sleeping", " Mummy stand up", " Mummy sit here", mummy this, mummy that all the time....... This is what happens when you only have one child and you are his constant companion. You get bossed around!

But there are times when he's really cute, like when he likes something, he'll go "I love it!" or he tells me he loves me over and over again.

He's also been saying a lot of "Thank you"s and sometimes he reminds me to say thank you too if he does something for me. Except that he tells me " Mummy thank you" and I'll go " What for?" Then I realized he was reminding me to say thank you because he passed me an item.

His pronunciation still needs work. He mixes his Rs and Ls, his Ds and Gs..... "I love you" sounds more like "I dove you." But he sounds so cute that I'm just going to enjoy it and not going to worry too much about it.

His ( Tue and Wed) kindergarten is on holiday. So he's been watching more TV and has started playing simple computer games with Daddy. It's more to let him get a feel of the mouse. His favourite games are " Red Remover", " Curious George", "Calliou" and "Clifford" from www.pbskids.org, and "Neverwinter Nights". He's also been playing "Transformer cards" with Daddy.

To counteract the TV watching that he's been doing, I've tried a few more Montessori-like activities at home. The sand (or seed) writing. Pouring water, Spooning seeds, Beading, Sorting colors/ maths, puzzles. I didn't want to buy anything new so most of the games are done with whatever I found at home. We usually do it on the verandah because I know how messy Sean can get.

Pouring activity. We used an old plastic container, a Vietnamese coffee strainer and a Nescafe milk jug, and a few sponges. It was a hit. He loved it and promptly wet everything around him. I've seen other children doing water activity, they are never as messy as Sean.

The sponges were supposed to mop up spillage but Sean stuffed them in the strainer, in the container, and after that mopped the floor with them, but never as they were intended to be. I found a lot of amusement in watching him play with the water.

Spooning. We reuse the biji selasih that we played with for sand writing. I mistakenly thought it was Mustard seeds because they are so tiny but they are actually Basil seeds. It's a simple activity that's just spooning the seeds into the glass candle holder. It was messy because Sean found amusement in the fact it gets really messy. *shake head*

I took clearer photos of him doing some beading. It's so cute to watch him concentrate for once and put in the pink beads into the wire.

I bought some buttons to do color sorting on an old paint pallete. It turned to be a maths activity instead once I wrote numbers on each of the indentation. First, we put buttons of the same colors in the middle and count them. There are 10 buttons of each color. And then I'll tell him, I'll put one in number 1. Then we count the rest and put in number 9. Therefore, 1 and 9 becomes 10. Next color, we'll put 2 and 8, and so on.

We replayed old puzzles. Previously he found it hard to put together the wooden puzzles because the color on the pictures given are different from the actual color. So I drew up the shapes on pieces of cardboard to help him do the puzzles. It was much easier this way.

I'm not sure what this game is called. I found it somewhere in the house. I thought this could be an activity that encourage taking turns. There are yellow and red discs. Unfortunately, taking turns for him means that he does all the red discs first before I can put in any yellow discs. ha ha ha.... That's something that needs to be worked on.

Montessori Day

2009-07-27T01:55:00.020+08:00

On Saturday, after being cooped up in the room half the afternoon while I surfed the Net and he played with his Transformer cards, Sean was jumping around like a monkey, impatient to do something fun. I was checking out other people's blogs, as well as reading attempts by blogger mummies who are doing Montessori materials with their children. So I thought... Let's do it! Let's do some Montessori activities.

We got a packet of mustard seeds out from the fridge and with a toy sand sifter, some beans that we use to play cooking, a tray and a plastic sushi container and a small broom and pan, we were set to do some 'sand' shifting and doodling. I set the table at the veranda, knowing that it was going to be a messy affair.

But I had a lot of fun. I doodled pictures, such as apple, orange, watermelon, bee, car, person, simple drawings, and asked him what they were, and he got them correct most of the time. He drew his letter 'A' as usual, and then out of the blue, he doodled a pear. We haven't even been eating pears nor talked about pears for a long time, which was why it surprised me. And he did a mini banana.

He had a lot of fun sifting the kidney beans, green beans and mustard seeds with the toy shifter. We put some green beans in the bottom of a plastic bottle on cotton wool the day before. It had already grown some roots and the little leaves were peeking through from the leaves. Today the seeds are already tall seedlings. I haven't planted seeds like this for a long time, it's so fun! =D

Later that evening, I got out some beads that I had and made it into a stringing toy with a thin wire. At school, he's never been interested in stringing things, but maybe the pink beads are especially attractive.

That was quite a fun-filled half day, the only thing I'll add is that he's a terrible sweeper. His sweeping skill is still non-existent. Most of the mustard seeds fell to the floor, so I spent quite a bit of time sweeping them up.

In touch with his emotion

2009-07-20T20:25:00.004+08:00

Just since about last week, Sean has mentioned several times about how he felt.

The first time was last week, when I took his mini tomato and throw it to the rabbit. His demeanor immediately changed and he looked truly upset. So I asked:

me: What's wrong? Are you angry?
Sean : (nods) Yes, Sean Sean angry.
me: Was it because of the tomato?
Sean: Yes
me: Oh, I'm very sorry.

I knew he didn't like the tomato because the night before he spit it out, and I didn't want him to squeeze tomato juice on my white pants. I was taken aback because I didn't realized he would be so upset. Oops... my fault.

Then several times, he would tell me that he was happy. (can't remember when)
Sean: Sean Sean happy, Mummy happy, daddy happy, Akong Ama happy.
or if he did something wrong, I would tell him, "Sean, I don't like that." Then he would smile his most winning smile, squinting up at me, and say, " Mummy happy?" coaxing me to smile, and it works. =D

Then last Saturday, when Akong Ama went out, with his head down, he said
Sean: Sean Sean Sad.
me: Why? Is it because Akong Ama went out?
Sean: Yes, Akong Ama go out, Sean Sad.

Later that afternoon, we went to the library. I told him to get a book and "read" it while I look for books to borrow. He took some books, flipped through them, laughed loudly, and came to me
Sean: Sean Sean funny!

He can't really say exactly what he means, but I was just surprised by his telling me how he feels. Where did this come from?

He can spell his name!

2009-07-16T23:46:00.013+08:00

Yes.. he can spell his name. This is what happened:

Sean was playing around with a crayon and pretending to write on a box. It was a red crayon on a red box. So when he showed it to me, I couldn't see anything.

me: What did you write?
Sean : Sean Wee
me: hhmm..... I can't see it. How do you spell your name? (I wasn't expecting anything, just teasing him.)
Sean: S.....e.....a....n.....W.....e.....e... Sean Wee!
me: Wow! That's very good!

He already knows how to recognize his name but I was still quite excited to hear him spelling his name. =D

He hasn't written it down yet because his writing skill is still very poor. When I do let him play with paints, he loves to write the letter A. Unfortunately he's stuck with the letter A most of the time and usually refusing to write any other letter.

Last week, though, after writing many letter As, he painted a few other letters.

He always starts his letter A with a house like A, and as big as the paper. If the paper is A4, the letter A is A4 sized.

If the paper is A3, then the letter is A3 sized. Then as he paints more ( one letter per page! It's a good thing I still have many scrap papers), his letter A improves. But every time he paints, the A always look like a block first before it smoothened.

I'm just adding these letter "A"s just because I thought they look particularly colorful. This was done on his own at play center last Thursday. Each of these are A3 size.

His letter B also started very craggy but after several tries, looked more and more like a B. His letter C, D, and H are okay but they all are as big as an A4 paper.

At the moment, it's not possible to get him to write a whole word. I found John's white board. It's A0 size. But when Sean writes the letter A, it's as big as the whole board!

His other letters are still terrible. The squiggly blue and yellow is his "I". His "G" and "L" and "5" are backwards.

His letter "K" is unrecognizable. The only reason I know it's a "K" is because I was there, I asked him immediately what it was and I painted the letters straightaway so I won't forget.

Bird park and The Super Hero plays masak- masak

2009-07-11T17:31:00.008+08:00

Last week when I came back from teaching, my hubby told me that he and Sean had a great time playing Transformers. The funny thing was that the game involved "Optipus Time" and " Bubblebee" going to the chicken farm. That was the only place that Sean kept mentioning.

I think our trip to the chicken farm last month really had an impact on Sean. I would say that the trip was a rather let down for us adults but to Sean the trip to the chicken farm an exciting experience, especially sitting in the back of the truck. Chicken farm has become the destination of his imaginative play and the truck enters very often in his conversation .

So anyway, I was like...." Oh gosh, don't tell me my son only knows about chicken farms! There are so many things out there!". So we decided to get off our asses and rather than lazing about at home last Sunday, we went to the bird park.

We weren't too impressed with the bird park, we thought that it could be better. Sean wasn't that interested in all the birds, but he did enjoy chasing after the peacocks that walked about the ground, and the quails in bul-bul land. I like the quails too. They are so cute.

But after the trip to the bird park, every time he sees a picture of a bird, especially the hornbill, which is the logo of the bird park, he goes " Bird Park!"

I am currently reading a book " Endangered Minds" by Jane M. Healy. I quote " Without experiences, there are no concepts; without concepts, there's no attention span because they don't know what people are talking about."

I'm reading this after the trip. But it does stress that experiences enriches the experience stock of a child. That without these they will find it difficult to relate to concepts.

I can clearly see how each time we go somewhere interesting, it adds to Sean's ability to think imaginatively. This is only very recent though because we had brought him to the Aquarium before but it didn't seem to impact him as much as the chicken farm trip. I guess, it's only now that experiences are starting to make an impact.

Sean has started to have an interest in playing masak-masak. We don't have any cooking toys. The only things we have is velcro plastic vegetables that can be cut by a plastic knife. So yesterday, we played masak-masak. We turned a small stool to be the stove, a plastic basket as the wok, beans and plastic vegetables to be cooked, and wooden spoons for cooking.

Sean enjoyed the cooking, messing around with the beans (but I kept telling him to clean up). What he enjoyed most was serving me with inappropriate food.

Sean : Mummy Eat! (then runs away laughing and hide behind the sofa)
Me: Mmmmm... Eh! What's this? a fire engine? I can't eat this!
Sean: Laughs and laughs

And then he wanted to be a super hero. So I made him a simple mask cut out of red paper attached with 2 rubber bands, and tied an old sarong for his cape.

Sean : Mummy cook!
So I cooked.
Then he came running around pretending to shoot me with 2 marker pens as guns.

And then the super hero, spread some beans on the floor and pretended to water them. I asked him what was he doing. He said (I think) growing them. And he went back to cooking and kept serving me fire engine, plastic knife and cups for food.

He knows you cannot eat these and he was so tickled by that fact that he couldn't stop laughing. He just loves teasing his mummy. =P

Sean @ 34 months

2009-07-02T15:30:00.014+08:00

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

2009-07-01T00:41:00.005+08:00

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?

2009-06-24T15:51:00.003+08:00

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

2009-06-21T19:07:00.004+08:00

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

2009-06-21T17:40:00.010+08:00

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

2009-06-16T20:25:00.008+08:00

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

2009-06-10T19:14:00.008+08:00

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.

Sean @ 33 month

2009-06-05T18:07:00.011+08:00

Personality
He is being a rascal!
He's pushing his boundary further and further and is getting more and more mischievous. Actually I find it cute that he's a rascal. He has this twinkle in his eyes when he is trying to evade us or purposely do the opposite of what we tell him.

But being his mummy, it means that I can't show my smile every time he's being naughty. He'll think that mummy likes him being naughty! Which is why we've been rather strict with him because I feel this is the time to set discipline.

Speech
He has gotten more chatty and is trying to string words into sentences. His pronunciation is still terrible and needs lots of work, but I guess it's a matter of us correcting him.

He's always been crazy about the alphabets, hence he could say almost the whole alphabets before he could speak properly. Now he knows all the words to the Alphabet song. Sometimes when he's playing, I can hear him singing the Alphabet to himself. It's probably the one thing that he gets right at the moment.

Teaching Sean to read
I decided to cool it down a little since I found that I became quite pushy while trying to play the reading game with Sean. We played it for a few days and then I stopped it first because I think it's easier to start with teaching "sight words" at the beginning. I've decided to teach him phonics later when he knows how to read some simple words first. More about this on another blog entry.

Toilet Training
We are still at the stage where he still sleeps in his diaper and still wears his diaper when he goes out. I tried getting him to nap without diaper, sometimes he's ok, sometimes like today, he wets his whole bed. Luckily I put a rubber mat, so the mattress itself is not wet. Maybe next week I'll send him to school without his diaper.. LOL....

Farm Trip
We went on a one day farm trip last saturday. It was a very hot day. I have to say, us adults did not enjoy it very much because it was hot, rather boring and smelly. But Sean loved it. He loved sitting in the back of the truck going from one farm to another.

We visited vegetable farms, chicken farms and a goat farm. I stayed less than a minute in the goat enclosure. It was just too smelly for me.

Swimming lesson
Sean started his swimming lesson yesterday. He hasn't done much swimming, so the lesson was good for him. It was to get the children get over the fear of water over their head.

Trip to Jakarta - May 09

2009-06-03T18:03:00.008+08:00

We just came back from Jakarta on Monday. Boy... I was totally exhausted. When we arrived home I told the maid to wash Sean up because he pooped and just crashed on to my bed. I was so glad to drop Sean off at school on Tuesday and this morning. At least I could catch up on my rest. It's already Wednesday and my body is still aching.

We were there for my cousin's wedding, so we got to meet many relatives at the wedding, which was great because otherwise I wouldn't know when I would get to meet up with them. Although the trip was great for me because I get to catch up with family, it was an exhausting trip for all of us.

First, while we were there, his toilet routine was totally gone. He refused to pee or poo on the potty and wanted to wear his diaper all the time. And rather than pooping at home before we leave the house, he pooped outside so I was always looking for the toilet to wash him up. On the first day we were out, he pooped twice within an hour, so we had to cut short our outing since I only brought one with me. I know I should have brought more but he rarely poops outside. I guess all bets off when it's a holiday, everything that don't usually happen, happened!

Second, I totally forgot to be careful with Sean's food and drink. On the 3rd day, he got diarrhea and a very bad rash which was painful to the touch. Since Sean has not had diaper rash since he was a small baby, I didn't bring any cream. So we tried all sorts of cream to ease the pain. The next morning we bought some diaper cream but it was expensive, about 1.5 times the price for half the size!

Next, I don't know why but Sean was double hyper when in Jakarta. He just couldn't keep still and was like an Energizer bunny the whole trip. I guess he was excited to have older boy cousins to play with. He ran around like crazy. I guess a small active boy couldn't be counted to sit still for the entire church ceremony so after bribing him with gummy bears, I decided to just sit right at the back of the church so we don't disturb the ceremony.

The wedding dinner was packed as Jakarta's weddings usually do. It's a good thing we got to eat before the dinner start in the family area, because we couldn't eat during the cocktail style dinner. We spent most of our time watching him so he doesn't get lost.

I still enjoyed the trip. I got to catch up with my family and friends, Eny, Yulius, Paula. I got to meet relatives who live elsewhere whom I probably will not get to meet unless there's a wedding or a special occasion. And my mum and I managed to do some shopping too =D.

Lesson learnt: Bring steroid cream when on a trip. It's probably better to have a complete first aid kid. Our bags were packed so I didn't bring a first aid kit but next time I really should bring it along, even when just going to Jakarta.

Also bring extra extra diapers even if Sean is already toilet trained. And bring extra clothes. Gosh you really cannot travel light when you are travelling with a child.

I thought I already brought extra diapers and clothes but we were still short. I had to tell the maid to wash our clothes more than once a day so we have enough clothes. And I got Sean to sleep without diapers towards the end. He wet the bed once, but luckily we had an extra mattress.

Coming home is so good. Sean stopped being such an Energizer bunny. He missed his toys and was really glad to come home to them. So he's been behaving very well since coming home.

Sean playing hide and seek wih Daddy

2009-05-17T22:13:00.004+08:00

He's terrible at hiding of course, he'll hide behind cupboard doors with his bottom and feet sticking out, or hide his face behind a ball while laying on the floor, or hiding behind armchair in view of everyone. As long as he can't see his Daddy, he thinks that he's hiding. But what's really funny is the hide and seek procedure. It went like this:

Daddy: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9... hmmm...what's after 9?
Sean: 10!
Daddy: 10. Hmmm... where is Sean?
Sean: Here! (jumps out of hiding place)

Daddy: 1....,2.....,3......,4.....,5.....,6.....
Sean: 7,8,9,10!
Daddy: 7....,8.....,
Sean: 9, 10!
Daddy: 9....,10! Hmmm where is Sean? Is he in the drawer?
Sean: No
Daddy: Hmmmm is he behind the chair?
Sean : No (giggling)
Daddy: Is he in the telephone?
Sean: Taaa Daaa (jumps out of hiding place)

The rest are funny too, but these two are the ones I remember. He really cannot hide well. He just can't stand the suspense but he loves the game. I guess, we don't play it often enough.

I'm glad that Sean and Daddy have found a game they like playing together. =D

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 1

2009-05-15T01:21:00.008+08:00

I borrowed a book called "Teach your child to read in 60 days". It's a very old book so I'm not sure whether the method that the author used is out of date or even correct, but it got me started on the idea of teaching Sean to read. Then I borrowed another book called "Reading and writing with Letterland", which promptly confused me because the 2 books contradict each other on how to begin. The first book says that we should start with capital letters, the later book says we should start with small letters.

The second book also says that we shouldn't start with the alphabet because it is useless when teaching a child how to read. I think it's true. I tried teaching Sean something simple, the word 'cab' because it's made up of the letter 'a', 'b', and 'c' with wooden alphabet blocks. Sean is so ingrained in his alphabet that he kept moving the blocks back to 'abc' sequence. He kept insisting that it should be 'abc' and not 'cab'...Uh Oh..... Maybe we shouldn't have taught him his alphabet so thoroughly. =P

And then you're suppose to sound each word phonetically and it's not that easy because if you don't sound it correctly, then it doesn't work. I need to learn how to say each letter phonetically correct first before I can teach Sean anything. But another website says that we don't really need to emphasise too much on phonetic because half the english words do not follow phonetic rules anyway.

So after trying a few methods the last few days and not getting Sean's interest in reading, I decided that I'm just going to have to read up more about this before actually embarking on the project 'Teach Sean to Read', just in case I'm teaching him incorrectly. I haven't finished reading both books yet. I've only glanced through them quickly. This is going to take some time.

However, I got impatient. =P

As I was reading to him one of his favourite book " The Little Red Car". I decided to teach him to read just one word "car" which was repeated on every page of the book. I got him to spell it and say the word, and then to find the word on every page of the book. It works! He knows how to read "car" now.

Then I got him to read the word "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" from another story book. I think he got them too, but I'm not so sure since it wasn't repetitive like "car" and there were pictures on each page. And that was it, he was too sleepy to do more. This technique is called "Sight word reading" which is useful but may not help in teaching to read unknown words. Phonetics is still a better technique to go, but to do that I've got to learn it properly first. =P

Oh yeah, my father-in-law gave Sean 2 "Peter and Jane" books to get me to teach Sean to read a while back. Supposedly that was how they taught Sam to read. The books are so boring that I just cannot muster the interest to read it more than a few times to Sean. It's such a turn-off that each time I read it, I lost my interest in reading! I've hidden the books so I will not have to read it, ha ha ha....=P

So I'm still learning now and any advice would be welcome. =D

First time in Cinema

2009-05-12T17:40:00.005+08:00

Almost forgot to blog about this.

Last Friday we had no electricity again. We went to Playgroup as usual in the morning but I had to teach in the afternoon. So Sam and Sean had to go and look for something to do by themselves, somewhere with air conditioning.

So Sam took Sean to see a movie, "Star Trek". They both had a great time. Shuck I wasn't there with them but now at least Sean can sit still in a cinema and we all can go to the movies!

I'm looking forward to the new Pixar movie "UP". It looks like a really fun movie to watch. =D

Finally I let go

2009-05-12T17:05:00.004+08:00

Today is the 5th day Sean went to Nakorn Sari. He was particularly clingy this morning and kept going out to look for me, who was sitting on a bench outside a glass door, every 5 minutes. He could see me from inside but No.... this little boy of mine wants to be with his mummy all the time.

I think the fact that I'm so accessible makes it harder for Sean to get on with school. Of course it's more fun to be with mummy, but I wanted him to join the class and participate. Finally I told the teacher to lock the door from inside. The next time he wanted to go out, I just smiled at him and wave at him as he cried while trying to open the door. The teacher came and took him into the room where the students are and got him calmed down.

I made my coffee and got ready to wait the morning. After a while, I realized my little boy wasn't appearing at the glass door anymore looking for me and he was with the rest of the class. He wasn't always listening to the teacher but at least he was with them. So I decided, this is it. It was time to leave. I have to let go and trust that he'll be ok.

When he looked for me later on, the teacher just told him I went to the toilet ..... ha ha

When we came to pick him up, the teacher said he was ok but was rather naughty ha ha ha.... I told them that they can be a bit more strict with Sean. Well, they are not very strict at all, but I told them they can be more firm with Sean. =P

I guess like everything else I do with Sean, breastfeeding and toilet training, I took a longer time to let go. I'm sure most mummies don't sit at school the whole morning waiting for their sons to get comfortable in school for several days. What's the point of sending them to school right?

But I'm glad I did it my way because Sean joined the school activities with minimum fuss, I think he cried for less than a minute. And at the end of the day, we peeked on him and he looked truly settled down. No more looking for mummy. =D

Sean @ 32 months

2009-05-10T15:14:00.012+08:00

Toilet trained!

The most exciting thing that happened today is that Sean has refused to wear his diaper!
He's on his way to being toilet trained!

As I blogged last month about trying to toilet train him. I got him to be diaper-less to get him used to the feeling of not wearing a diaper. I wasn't very disciplined at it, and only managed to do it for 1-2 hours a day, and not even everyday. Over many months I tried on and off but never seriously. Actually I really wasn't sure how to get about doing it properly and therefore I've been procrastinating.

I talked to several mothers who have toilet trained their children or who are also trying to potty train and got some tips from them, but what really got me started this week was reading a toilet training book while waiting for Sean in his kindergarten on Tuesday. So I borrowed and it took me several days to finish reading it since I could only read it when I was free. Meanwhile, I started on the techniques they suggested.

Since Sean refused to even sit down on the potties we have at home, we decided to get another one that looks like a chair the next day. I also bought him some big boy's underwear which he found quite exciting.I got his Spiderman doll to pretend to pee in the potty, and gave him an M&M as a treat. Then I invited Sean to sit on the potty and gave him an M&M too. All the while, saying big boys pee and poo in the potty.

Since we put a diaper on him when we go out or sleep, he didn't really get much diaperless time. But I keep repeating to him,
Me: "Where do you go to pee?"
Sean: "Toilet"
Me: "Where do you go to poo?"
Sean : "Toilet"
Me: " Yes, you are a clever boy. You poo poo in the potty ok?"

He poo-ed in the potty even on the first day we bought the new potty. Once, I wasn't quick enough once and he pooped standing up while he had no diaper on so the poop dropped onto the floor and the carpet, and then he made a big puddle just 10 minutes after that. It was a messy evening, I gave up and put him back in his diaper after 1 hour.

Anyway, I thought today (Sunday) is a good day to do more potty training since we aren't going out. This morning he had tummy ache and I quickly grabbed him and raced him to the toilet, and sat him down onto the old potty since we were downstairs. He did his number 2. I praised him a great deal for pooping in the potty. And then later he got another tummy ache (he had been a slight diarrhea the last few days), so I quickly rushed him off to the potty again.Whew.... you really need to be quick!

After that he had a peeing accident. I didn't scold him but reminded him that he has to pee in the toilet. And then later managed to catch him befor he peed and run with him to the toilet. It was all done in a fun way. So when nap time comes. I told hubby to put on a diaper on Sean while I make his milk (Yes! He's been accepting chocolate milk recently). When I got back to the room, I was told that he refused to put on the diaper. This is the conversation that went on.

Daddy: Sean, diaper on.
Sean: No
Daddy: What if you pee-pee?
Sean: Toilet!
Daddy: What about poo-poo?
Sean: Potty!

I got him to pee in the potty and put him to nap diaper-less! That is a great Mother's Day present for me: Sean wanting to pee and poo in the potty and not wearing diaper all on his own. It's a big leap for a boy who cried when I didn't put his diaper on. And all done in less than a week! =D

I've got to say that I didn't follow all the instructions from the book and I didn't follow the instructions correctly either. But Sean did poop in the potty within the first few hours of simple training. I think it was also helpful that he saw other children going to the toilet without diapers at school.

So if you're thinking of toilet training, get this book first "Toilet Training in Less than a day" by Nathan H. Azrin and Richard M. Foxx and read it. It'll save you the worry and hassle of training the old way.

In fact, If you follow the book correctly, your child would be able to pee or poo in the toilet and then carry the bowl and throw into the toilet and flush all by him or herself. It was just me who wasn't disciplined enough to follow all the instructions. I just took what was easy to do and probably did the training in a half-ass way. =P

"Drink Milk Good for Teeth!"

I tried all sorts of milk to get Sean interested in drinking milk. He gets interested for a while and then refused anymore. We even thought that he might be allergic to milk. So I didn't always push it.

The kindergarten has been getting the kids geared up for the "Visit to the Dentist" outing. So they've been singing about brushing teeth, which unfortunately Sean didn't listen to. But what got him interested was an activity they did.

The teachers got them to mix flour with water and put into an empty cartoon of milk, and pasted a piece of paper. "Drink Milk Good for Teeth!". So I took up the chant at home "Drink Milk Good for Teeth!" and that really help him to see milk in a different way. He's finally got a liking for chocolate milk. =D

Visit to the Dentist

As I said the kindergarten brought the kids out for a visit to the dentist. They psyched them up for several weeks with singing and crafts about brushing teeth, and the dentist had a cool tool to attract the children. He had a small mouth camera so the kids can see inside their mouth. It was just to introduce them to the dentist so they won't be scared of dentist.

I knew Sean has bad teeth because 2 of his front teeth are eroded and I suspected he has some cavities. I've been trying to clean his teeth but it's been difficult. Firstly, he wants to brush his own teeth, which means that it's not cleaned well. Next, when I get the chance to brush it for him, the yellow and black areas just won't go away.

I think I dreaded the dentist visit more than Sean since he didn't know any better. I've been reducing his sweets and sugary drinks, but I think it's too late. True enough! The dentist said that Sean has TOTAL DECAY. He keeps telling me that it's ok and that Sean's situation is not that bad but we have to maintain it. But well.... you hear "Total Decay", you're definitely worried!

But then, there's nothing much we can do except maintaining the teeth until the permanent teeth comes out. And then we can start anew. Oh yeah, I've got to remind any mummies who are breastfeeding or planning to breastfeed to clean the mouth and teeth thoroughly if you breastfeed to sleep. Clean after every feed!

In Sean's case, it's most likely because he breastfeeds to sleep and then continues to breastfeed throughout the night. So eventhough we brushed his teeth before we go to sleep, it wasn't much help because he had milk throughout the night and I was too sleepy to clean his teeth in the middle of the night. So it's probably better not to let them breastfeed in the midle of the night.

Anyway, all I can do right now is be more vigilant in cleaning Sean's teeth and get him to clean his teeth properly. So by the time he gets his permanent teeth, he already knows how to care for them well. I'm dreading the time we have to visit the dentist to get his current teeth filled. Oh no... it'll probably be traumatic for him and me!

3rd day at Nakorn Sari

2009-05-05T15:39:00.007+08:00

Last Wednesday, I had to stay within sight and in the same classroom with Sean, otherwise he would cry and refused to stay.

Today, things were better. I stayed the whole 31/2 hours at the school while Sean had his lessons. In the morning I walked him into his classroom and stayed for a few minutes, and kept telling him ' Mummy cannot stay inside, I'll be outside' It went pretty well. He still came out and looked for me every 20 minutes, and I would walk him into the classroom again. In the meantime, I had my coffee, chatted with a grandmother who was accompanying her grandson who is also a new student, and read a book.

The separation anxiety has lessened. He no longer tears up if he doesn't see me at every moment. In fact, I think it's easier if I don't hover around too close. It seems the moment he sees my face outside the classroom he tears up and wants to get out. So I made myself scarce. He pooped and the teacher cleaned him up. I didn't interfere. After all, when I'm not there in the future, the teachers will have to handle all these things.

I also told the teachers that they can be a bit more tough on him and spell out the rules to him. To tell him that at school he has to listen to the teachers. Although I don't want to put Sean in a school that is too regimented, I feel that a certain level of discipline is good for Sean.

At the end of playgroup, the teacher told me that Sean had made a friend already, and should be ready to be left at school after several more days. And once he can be dropped off by himself, maybe I can go for an exercise class. Woo Hooo!!!....=P

New school: Nakorn Sari

2009-04-29T00:20:00.004+08:00

Today we tried out another new school. It's a Kindergarden called Nakorn Sari.

Now that we've got the hang of going to playgroup regularly 3 days a week, I wanted him to do something on Tuesdays and Wednesdays too. Nakorn Sari is perfect because unlike most kinddies, they allow children to come on a daily basis. Other kindy usually prefer that you go to their school 5 days a week, which means we won't be able to go to Play Centre and Children Corner's again.

I like going to these 2 places. Not only do I get to socialize and make new friends with other mothers, I also get to go to a library which has always been my favorite activity, and to learn from other more experienced mothers who put a lot of effort into their lesson plans.

Anyway, back to the story. We love Nakorn Sari!

It's the kindergarden I would love to go to. There are toys everywhere. The pre-kindergarden kids are allowed to roam within limits during lesson time. They are not very strict with the young ones because they want to foster a love for school first, which is what Sam and I believe playgroup should be like. It's very cozy and really fun, and seriously a lot of toys!

It is Sean's heaven. He was so distracted with the toys that he really couldn't be bothered by the lesson. We stayed there the whole morning because Sean still had separation issues but the school is ok about parents hanging about until the children are happy and settled in schools. And it just so happened that there was a birthday party today. So Sean got to eat cakes and sweets on his first day.

Just to check whether he liked the school we asked him, " Do you like the school?"
Sean: No (while playing toys)
Us: You don't want to come here?
Sean: No (while playing some more)
When it was time to go home, as usual, he refused to go. The teacher told him that he could stay overnight by himself. That got him going. =P

That's just Sean. So hard to get him to do anything and once he does it, so hard to get him off it. Oh yeah, the 'Yes' stage is gone now.

But anyway, we're enrolling him anyway. Once Sean gets into the routine, I'm sure he'll look forward to going to school in the morning. Did I mention the TOYS???? he he he.... I wish I was a child again, then I can go to this school =D

I think he's weaned off!

2009-04-28T23:41:00.006+08:00

Since I wrote about weaning Sean off slowly by getting him to drink a bottle of milk, he's refused to drink any milk. On a rare occasion I managed to get him to drink a small bottle of flavored milk but it's with much difficulty. So I changed tactic and told him he has to drink a small bottle of water before having his nen-nen at night.

In the morning when he normally wakes up and nen-nen, I asked him if he was hungry, and if he wanted to eat something. He doesn't really eat much but I try to get him to eat something to replace the usual morning breastmilk. Once we went to playgroup without his morning nen-nen, he was so hungry, and yet refused to eat any of the food I had with me. Sometimes he can be so stubborn!

The afternoon nap was the easiest to let go because I taught almost everyday last week. My student had her exams and we rearranged tuition dates. So since I wasn't at home, it was quite easy. But during the weekend, I gave in. I missed our nen-nen time too, so I wasn't very strict about it.

After I firmed my decision about weaning him off seriously, I consciously say No to him at almost every opportunity. The conversation usually goes like this:

Sean: Nen-nen?
Me: No. Do you want some milk?
Sean: No
Me: Water?
Sean: Water

At first, after his water, I would breastfed him until he slept. Later on, I told him, no more nen-nen, Let's hug instead. I'll read books to him while he nurses a bottle of water, which he doesn't really drink. He just needs it in his mouth. And then we hug and go to sleep.

Sean hasn't breastfed for 2 whole days now. I could have done it sooner but I felt rather sad too of having to end this part of our relationship. So I gave in once or twice. As much as I enjoy breastfeedng Sean and as much as he enjoys it, I believe it's time to move on. I keep telling him that he's now a big boy now, no more a baby. Then the little jokster will do a pretend baby cry 'Wa wa wa wa'.... =D

Last night I slept earlier, and Sean woke Sam up several time with his acrobatic sleeping position. He he he.. Now Sam nows what I go through every night when Sean crawls all over me. In the morning, Sean was sleeping with Sam and they made a very cute picture together.

Tonight, Sean didn't even ask for nen-nen. After bedtime reading with his bottle of water, he asked for a hug, i.e. he wants to be hugged to sleep, and then slept.

The sense of self

2009-04-28T23:26:00.004+08:00

I almost forgot to blog about this. It came so naturally that I forgot to note the first day he said his name. I think it was around the beginning of April. So it's been almost a month that Sean has begun to call himself Sean.

I remember a funny incident just a while back when he couldn't say his name still. He knocked on Akong-Ama's room door. "knock knock" "Who's there?" And the he pointed to himself while waiting in front of the locked door. Now that he knows how to say his own name, that scene will never happen again. That was a really cute memory.

Sean is quite a joker sometimes.
I ask " What's your name?"
Sean: Sean
Me: Sean Wee
Sean : Sean Wee ue ue ue ue

and he does it with a devilish twinkle in his eyes. His sense of humour is coming out more often now.

I sometimes teach him to say his full name: Sean Gabriel Wee. He can go "Sean riel Wee" It's probably a bit of a mouthful for a boy who has just started to speak in 2-3 syllables. I'll wait. I'm happy enough for him to identify himself as 'Sean Wee' at the moment.

The "Yes" boy

2009-04-23T21:36:00.006+08:00

For the longest time, all Sean said was "No!"

with a smattering of words here and there. So we told him, if he couldn't say 'Yes', he can say 'Ya'. So at least we could get him to agree to something. =P

Since about 2-3 weeks ago, a switch must have suddenly clicked in his brain, because out of a sudden, he became the 'Yes' boy. He replies everything with a 'Yes!', with an emphasis for the 'ssssss.....'. He even replies 'yes' when he means 'No'. *Roll eyes*... he he he...

During these last few weeks, he's been making progress in his speech by leaps and bounds. After waiting for the longest time for him to get onto 2-words phrase or just even 2-syllable words, it's all coming out now. He's even trying to sing along the theme songs on TV, but he can only get the last word in every sentence. His current favorite song to sing along is "Old McDonald", with the "iyayo", and all the animals sounds.

But what I'm probably happiest about is that he's finally calling me 'Mummy"! For the longest time, all the called me was "Mum", which is fine too. But his calling me "Mummy" is particularly sweet to the ears, especially when it accompanies lots of hugs and kisses. =D

What a day!

2009-04-17T21:00:00.006+08:00

Yesterday Sean had a heck of a good time, playing almost non-stop from morning to night.

It started with Playgroup at Play Center in the morning, followed by lunch at Raju with the mummies and friends. Next, we went to Ikea to hang out since our house was having a black-out the whole day.

We had never dropped Sean off by himself for very long. We thought yesterday was a good day to do it since we were not in any hurry to do anything. We dropped him off at Ikea Smalland, but stayed outside within his sight in front over the glass windows of the ball pits. Once we thought he was occupied, we left.

We didn't go very far, just to make sure that if the call to come and pick him up because he was screaming his guts out, we could be back in a jiffy. We came back to check on him and he was happily watching Spongebob with the rest of the kids. And when we came back later, he came running to us, ready to get out. All in all it only lasted around 30 minutes. But that was a first for Sean being left with total strangers.

After that we went to the Ikea Cafe where Sean ran around and played for a very long time, never sitting still. After shopping for a train set, we went home. When he woke up half an hour, asking to go out. I called Samantha and she invited us to join them at their apartment's swimming pool instead. Now the last time I tried getting Sean into a swimming pool, he screamed and refused to enter the water. So we haven't been to the swimming pool since then.

I thought today was a good day to get him get comfortable near swimming pools and to show him that other kids enjoy being in the water. If he swims, that would be a bonus. It took 10 minutes just to get him to go near the swiming pool. Kai splashed water on Sean and Sean was complaining about his wet swim suit. I thought Oh No! If he complains about wet suit, how was he ever going to enter the pool?

Half an hour later, he went near the edge of the kiddy pool and fell head first! Of course, he was terribly frightened, but I just covered him with a towel and hugged him while we watched Kai and his friend playing in the water. Telling him over and over again it's okay to be wet.

Another half an hour passed, and he got interested to go near the pool again because Kai and his friend were really having a field of a day playing in the water. I went with him, and stood on the shallowest end of the pool and invited him in. So he went in and got a bit bolder, and then slipped and went splashing into the deeper end of the pool! I dived to get him out of water. So since my clothes were wet already, it was time to ditch it and just go into the water.

All the time showing that playing in the water was fun. He didn't swim, but hung onto me while in the water, but he had a great time and eventually let go to be in the water by himself. And after that refused to get out of the water! LOL.....

The process took almost 2 hours. But at least now, he is no longer fearful of the swimming pool, and we can plan to go for swimming lessons. Another first for Sean. On hindsight, it would probably be faster if I just went into the pool right at the beginning. =P

Later we went for dinner. Sean and Kai ran and ran around the restaurant, laughing, crawling under tables, etc. I was chasing them trying to get them sit down over and over again. The restaurant was small and it just wasn't save for them to run around. By the time we came home it was already 10pm, and I was totally bushed! But it looks to me, this is the type of day that satisfy Sean's need of activities.

Toilet Training

2009-04-12T20:39:00.005+08:00

Since the time we introduced Sean to the potty quite a while ago, he has refused to get on the potty. He'll run away and hides in a corner to do his business. So potty training has been at a stand still. I've talked to other mummies who have successfully potty trained their children, their advice is to just get Sean out of his diapers. They say it takes a week to a month. So I decided to try the not wearing diaper at home method.

It's not that easy. Sean found it weird not to wear a diaper, so he kept crying and trying to wear his diaper at the beginning. So I didn't really push it.

But I thought I'll try it again tonight. So far this is what happened within the last hour. When I came out from the bathroom, he came to me with a marker in his hand. I thought he wanted to tell me that he colored something. I asked, "Did you draw something? Can you show me? " So he dutifully brought me to a corner of the room and pointed 'Mum, wet!" The next one was when he was playing on the cushion, and suddenly says "Wet!"

He's so used to peeing in the diaper that he still doesn't know how to tell me that he wants to pee. This looks like it's going to be a wet and smelly period. =P

Sean @ 31 months

2009-04-12T17:45:00.008+08:00

Speech
I've been very worried about Sean's speech since he turned 2. It's obvious that he is not progressing in his speech the same as many other toddlers his age. Since then, I've consciously tried to get him to talk more. At first, he was resistant. He has this stubborn streak. If he doesn't want to do something, it's really difficult to get him to do it.

I've read that to teach a toddler who is slow in speech, you need to talk face to face with him and get him see the way your mouth moves as you enunciate each word. He didn't even want to see my mouth. So I thought sending him to a speech therapist at that stage would not be that useful. We had to do this at home first.

So we began to consciously trying to get him to talk, pronouncing words slowly and getting him to say it. Somewhere along, he got the Alphabet bug and really enjoyed reciting the alphabet. When we entered Children Corner, it so happened that they have a weekly lesson on letters. Perfect! Sean loves lesson time. He still didn't speak much though. Just recite the alphabet over and over again. He knows them all by heart but still doesn't quite get his 'F', 'W', and 'X'.

Since he started Playschool, he's starting to incorporate more words. Sometimes he's just so excited when he wants to say something, he ends up pointing and making urgent noises. Maybe he just have too much to say and doesn't know the words. I've got to constantly remind myself to say out the words rather than saying, "What is it? What are you trying to say?" He probably doesn't know what words he's trying to say. Playschool also reminded me about teaching Sean to pray. So we started having to pray for Sean to be able to speak clearly.

But I was still worried that when Sean turned 30 months, he still could not string 2 words together. The article I read said that it could be Autism, another article described about Childhood Apraxia. I mean people have told me many stories that someone they knew didn't speak until 3 or 4 years old, and they are perfectly fine. I know that but I think it's hard for a mother not to worry about her child.

Sean actually understands quite a lot. You can talk to him normally and he'll understand you. The problem is that he's finding it difficult to say words with 2 syllables. So when we went to get his 2 1/2 year jab at the pediatrician, we asked the doctor. He said we should start writing a list of words Sean uses in his speech before he can diagnose whether there's a problem or not. And to see if there are new words in his vocabulary. Which we are doing now.

The thing is Sean is a perfectly well-balanced child. He's happy when he's not in a whinny mood and trying to get his way. He's good a great sense of humour. He has lots of energy and is healthy (most of the time). He is very lively, which sometimes is difficult when he has to sit down at school and sing. He just wants to run around and dance, which he loves to do very much. Recently, when he hears a good dance tune, he breaks out into his own dance.

But the speech thing really bug me. But just last night and today, I heard him string 2 words together! Alleluya! Other kids his age can speak in sentences or even sing a song, but for this mummy, knowing my son is now beginning to put 2 words together is a break through! I'm definitely feeling relieved. I hope he'll progress more each day. =D

Breastfeeding Weaning program
So I'm still breastfeeding Sean. Some will say, it's good but many others are aghast. Even my own parents are telling me to quit immediately, actually they've been telling me for a long time. " He's sucking you out! You're too skinny! It's not good for you!"

Well.... it's not that I'm not trying to wean Sean but I haven't been able to do the "Just don't give him"method, because Sean cries loudly and turns to his daddy and point an accusing finger at me "Ne ne ne ne!" As if I had hurt him emotinally so badly. And my dear hubby jokingly tells him " Tell mummy, it's better than mango."and was not supportive of weaning abruptly. So it took quite a while before I get more support from hubby to wean Sean. Now at least when I say no to Sean he'll take my side "Mummy says no."

So we are on a gradual weaning program. First I had to get Sean interested in other milk first. We tried several new milk in the market and he's likes the Yes! Grape flavoured milk fo snack and the plain Dutchmilk for before sleeping. So I'm giving him a small bottle of milk before he can breastfeed. I tell him, he has to finish the small bottle of milk first before he can nen-nen. At first, he rejected the milk but now he's grudgingly accepting the fact that he has to drink the milk first. But you can see from his face that he'd rather not drink it. It's like drinking medicine to him. In fact, it's easier to get him to drink medicine than to drink milk!

So my hope is to get him to drink more milk and let my breastmilk supply slowly dry up. Let's hope it happens as planned.

Playschool at Children's Corner

2009-03-30T02:11:00.008+08:00

The one thing about not blogging regularly is that after a while you get lazy and forget about the little things that happened. The last 2 months have been a whirlwind of activities.

First, Sean started playschool twice a week at Children's Corner at the beginning of Feb. Then I had to prepare for Mary's wedding, getting my dress done, making the wedding chocolate wrappers, the flower basket and running around to do the countless little things that needed to be done for the wedding.

At the same time, Sean and I had flu which didn't seem to go away. I think it took 3 weeks for the flu to go away completely. All these made Sean a really whiny and grumpy little boy.

So he was one of the whiniest little boy at playschool. He really hated the ring of the bells. It meant that he had to stop whatever he was doing and do the next activities.

However, over the last two months, I'm seeing improvements. He is not as whiny now and is actually interested in learning new things. His speech has always been a source of concern with me since he does not speak much for a boy his age. However, he is at least interested to learn when we teach him new words now, whether or not he can say it properly. Previously, he would refuse point blank at even trying to say new words. He really enjoys lesson time at playschool. Sam took him to school once and was amazed that he took his toys and put them back on to the shelves on his own.

Today, while Akong and Ama were buying fish at the supermarket , he was signing the letter 'f' with his fingers and was telling them 'fish'. His words are not clear but I'm just glad he is interested in learning to speak now.

Mary's wedding

2009-03-30T01:39:00.006+08:00

As I said, the week before a wedding is full of hectic last minute preparations. I left the last 150 of making the chocolate wrappers for Mary’s wedding favors and flower basket last minute because …well… you only get excited about doing things like this nearer to the date, don’t you? =P.

I also decided to get a seamstress to make my dresses. To cut the story short, I went to the material shop so many times because I had a fickle moment about my dresses and decided to change the design totally. I was going "Why did I buy flowery materials?!!!! I don’t even wear flowery dresses most of the time. What made me even think about making flowery dresses?”

I think it would have been easier just to get someone to take care of Sean for me so I could go for a proper shopping spree. But I’ve already bought the materials, so I might as well get them made. Oh well... Lesson learned: If you decide to make a dress, plan the design first before buying the material.

Anyway.....The wedding was wonderful. David serenaded Mary as she walked down the aisle. It was done in the garden just outside the Holiday Villa Victorian Ballroom. The flowers were perfect. Everything went as beautifully as it could be. Unfortunately, we had to take Sean out 6 times during the wedding ceremony though. He was whining because he was hungry and yet refused to eat what I had in the bag. Finally, I got him some peanuts from the cocktail snack table and he was quite happy then.

The next day, we went to Ipoh for the 2nd wedding dinner with David’s parent’s guests. The day was hot and there was no air-conditioning in the car, so the bridal bouquet wilted in the hot sun. Fortunately, the bride and groom went ahead earlier in another car, so they weren't wilted like us. So we replaced the flowers with whatever flowers they manage to bring from the previous day’s dinner. Weddings are just full of surprises, lots of last minute scrambling, but always lots of fun. =D

On the wedding day, I shamelessly got the photographer to take our family picture, just the 3 of us. We don’t’ really have a good family picture, because we’re usually not dressed for it and we have no one to take pictures for us. So this is the family photo.

I also raided Mary and David’s wedding pictures for Sean’s photos. After all, most of his photos are taken by my hand-phone camera or my old camera which doesn’t give clear pictures. So it’s nice to have some good quality pictures.

We play and play and play.....

2009-02-11T19:24:00.011+08:00

So what have we been playing at?

We play water gun, except the gun is still to big for his small hands to hold properly. So sometimes he holds it upside down! Most of the time I let him play water in the bathroom. If I ask him, Sean do you want to bath, he'll definitely say no. So I ask, "Sean do you want to play water?" That usually gets an affirmative answer! Ha ha ha.....

So I let him play for a while and then bathe him while he plays. Sometimes he runs to the corner of the bathroom when I try to bath him. LOL... for a boy who likes playing water, he really doesn't like to bathe. I wish he bathes himself more often like the other day.

Driving around in the car is a definite favourite. He loves to zoom around the living room and garden.

Recently, I got him a dump truck. At first I got him a kiddy boxing glove (cheapo type) because his daddy has just started to learn to box. I thought it'll be cute when both of them can play boxing with each other. But he doesn't like it and the gloves weren't really nice. So I returned and swapped for a dump truck that comes with a scope, rake, and a small water container. I also got a packet of kidney beans so we have something to scoop and dump with. We've been playing this " Scoop and dump" game almost everyday!

About the scrapbook above. I've been inspired by Jazzmint, a blogger mummy, who is very creative and talented. Unfortunately, most of the time I take pictures with my handphone, thus the pictures aren't as clear as I want them to be. Anyway, thanks Jazzmint for sharing your scrap-pages to inspire us!

Sean bathed himself!

2009-02-01T12:10:00.007+08:00

Today Sean decided to bathe himself! I guess the first time your child do something is exciting for the parents =D It doesn't matter that it's something so mundane like having a bath....ha ha ha

After his number 2, we washed him up. He refused to come out of the bathroom and wanted to play water. So we let him as long as one of us watched over him. Sam asked Sean if he wanted to bathe and Sean some soap and rubbed all over himself. Took the ladle and rinsed himself. Of course, he only washed his chest ad cheeks. His daddy helped him to finish up, just to make that all those soap are rinsed away. I had the pleasure to be the audience without having to do the work! =P

Over the CNY

2009-02-01T12:02:00.012+08:00

We went to the Aquaria at KL Conference centre on Chinese New Year Day. Sean was really excited to see some of the exhibits and was totally entranced by the walkalator inside the aquarium tunnel. He went on and off the walkalator and ran excitedly through the throng of people. He was playing "Come and catch me" game with me. So of course, I had to chase after him, moving against the crowd inside the tunnel. He was really naughty at that point!

For me, the highlight of the place was a ceiling to floor glass wall which covered one side of the huge aquarium. When you stand right at the front and the fish swim pass you, you feel that you're under water. We had sharks, turtles and many types of fish swimming right in front of our eyes. When I went scuba diving, I always had a tiny fear of big fish coming too near me. It's exciting but I never know if they were going to bite or not! So it was a real treat to be able to see these fish up close without being wet. =D

On 2nd day of CNY, Akong and Ama came back and we had our family reunion dinner. The days following that we had relatives over for dinner and went over to visit friends.

Sean had his first lip to lip kiss with a girl, Kristen. I don't think they understood it..ha ha ha..I said " Kiss Kristen , Sean" , and both of them puckered up and kissed. They were really cute!

I didn't catch it on camera though. The 2 kids went apart looking for toys after that and refused to kiss for the camera.

It was all rather fun to go to parties almost every day =D

Happy Moo Moo Year

2009-01-28T17:35:00.005+08:00

I'm sure all mothers whose children watches Playhouse Disney has this catchy jingle playing in their heads.

I wish everyone a very prosperous, healthy and productive Niu Year. As the economic outlook has been looking rather grim, I hope the wishes come true and all of us emerge winners this year. =D

Rojak blog

2009-01-24T01:45:00.010+08:00

I thought that I would be updating my blogs more often now that I have a new laptop. Unfortunately, that's not happening. Sean is using my laptop more often than I'm using it. He watches movies and UTube videos. There was a period when he was really into old Mickey and Donald's short films. I'm kind of glad to find a clip of Mickey, Donald and Goofy on a camping trip. That was my all time favourite.

When he doesn't use it, I'll be with him and away from the laptop. Of course, I can't put all the blame on him. I've been reading and catching up on Facebook too, so I haven't blog very much. I'm finding that I'm forgetting things faster now and if I don't jot these thoughts down, I think I'll quickly forget them altogether.

The letter A

Sean is obsessed about the letter A. He still does not speak a lot, but he loves his letter 'A'! Everywhere he goes he looks for the letter A. He loves his Alphabet puzzles. Unfortunately, he poured water over them and after I dried them, he messed them about. Hence, there are letters missing from the puzzle. In fact, we're missing lots of things with 'A's on them because he played with them so often. I've been looking but still can't find them.

He loves to listen to the Alphabet song and makes me writes the Alphabet, especially the letter 'A' over and over again. You would think after so much exposure to the Alphabet, he would know more letters. Nope...... when I tried to get him to say other letters, all letters are "A" to him. =P

Bedtime

I've complained before that it takes a long time to get Sean to sleep. That, unfortunately, has not changed at all. In fact, it's getting worse now. Every time I say it's time to sleep, he makes excuses. He can't speak much but he gets his message clear.

First, he's hungry. Then, he's thirsty. Then he wants to pee. Then he wants a book. Then he wants to play. Then it repeats. By the time my patience runs thin and I say "Enough! Lights out." He starts crying loudly and looks really miserable. Sigh....By the time I get him to sleep, I need to sleep too.

Playing house

Sean has always played in his cardboard house. The house is no longer as pretty as it used to be. He's torn some of the seaweeds and fish, and drawn on the walls of the house. Fortunately, I made it really well, so it's still sturdy despite Sean's very rough playing.

He bash about inside and hides inside when he pooped or when he doesn't want to bathe or just to dump his toys inside. But recently, I changed the arrangement of the house so that the door will face towards his bed. The idea was that so he wouldn't hide inside easily when I try to bath him so it would be easier to catch him when it's bath time.

To get into the house, he'll need to climb onto the bed and climb down int the hole between his bed and the cardboard house. Because of that, he's found the house more fun to play in. He loves the act of climbing inside and hiding in the house. He throws all his soft toys, some of our pillows, and the blanket down on the floor and into the house. He brings his toys and plays inside. He pulls me inside to squeeze and play with him. It's mighty uncomfortable and I'm really reluctant to play inside. But I'm glad that the cardboard house is well-loved. =D

Unfortunately, it's harder now to get him to bath because it's almost impossible to get him out when he's hiding in the house!

Skin to skin

Baby books encourages mothers to have skin to skin contact with their babies to foster mother and child bond. When Sean was still a baby I tried to have as much skin to skin contact and I loved to cuddle him. Recently, Sean would lift up his t-shirt and press himself to my tummy when he breastfeeds just before sleeping. I just find the act of him lifting up his t-shirt to expose his tummy so funny.

The first time I noticed it, I was wondering what is this boy doing? It's just funny when he adjust himself so he's tummy to tummy with me. I guess breastfeeding and bathing together makes your child very comfortable with your naked self.

I guess sometime in the future I'm going to have to tell him that mummy cannot bath with him anymore. Or maybe he'll tell me that he's a big boy already and needs his privacy! ha ha ha .... But seriously

Potty training

Recently, Sean has been indicating to me that he wants to pee. I haven't really been trying to potty train him but I thought I should respond and try anyway when he tells me he wants to pee/poo. So I would quickly takes his pants and diaper off and put him on the potty.

I don't know if he finds it fun to sit on the potty or if he really needs to go. Most of the time, he sits and moves about in his potty without peeing. After 10 minutes, I'll ask him exasperatedly, " Are you done yet? If you're not peeing, let's put your diaper back." Then he'll say no and points to indicate that he wants to pee. Sometimes the pee doesn't happen at all. Sometimes after saying "Ssshhhh ssshhhh" for 20 minutes, I need to pee and he didn't pee after all!

I'm glad that he's starting to show interest in the potty, but it gets really exasperating waiting for a little boy in the toilet. I definitely need to get another potty so I don't have to run upstairs or downstairs to get the potty when Sean wants to use it.

Painting

I tried to do painting with Sean last week. I didn't have any finger paint so I quickly made some paint with flour, water and food colorings. It wasn't a success. Let's just say the preparation took longer than the actual playing!

First, the paint wasn't really nice. (Got to find a better recipe). Next, Sean wanted his hands to be wiped everytime it got dirty. Lastly, Sean was more interested in painting the table than the paper. After a few minutes, he poured all the the paint on the paper.

I thought....Okaayyy..... I think it's time to stop. Luckily I covered most of the table with papers, so all I needed to do was scooped the wet papers and dumped them into the bin and quickly wiped the table with a cloth. I gave him some playdough and flour to play with. It was equally messy but at least it didn't pose the possibility of staining everything that Sean touches.

No more painting until muuuuccchh later. Maybe he should only do painting when he's in kindergarden! =P

Grand birthday party

We recently went to a 7 year old girl's birthday party. She's the only child of well to-do parents. Her party was held in a clubhouse ballroom, with buffet table, an MC, abrass band, a group of highschool musical cheerleaders, and a magician. This was only what we saw because we came late and supposedly missed half the show.

It's great to be the birthday kid to have parents who love her so much. But I'm just wondering if giving so much to such a young child will cause problems in the future. Do the parents have to have bigger and bigger birthday bash every year? What if they can't afford it in the future? Is it going to be the norm? Some mothers have told me that birthday parties can cost thousands and it's routinely done. One mother even told me that she had to bring her children to 3 birthday parties on a saturday once and she keeps a stock of birthday presents. Gosh... birthdays are expensive!

I don't know if Sean will ever get such a birthday party. We can't afford it anyway. But even if we can afford it in the future, I would think that he would prefer to have the money spent on him, i.e. on his birthday presents, rather than paying for such expensive entertainments.

Playing games online

Yesterday, as I was surfing for pictures of the letter 'A' I stumbled upon PBS kids website. It has many online games. Margaret told me that her son Eugene plays Playhouse Disney online games regularly. I thought what a great idea!

So Sean and I played "Wordworld" games. Or at least I played and he watches. He really enjoyed it. I tried teaching him to use the mouse but he's not quite ready yet. The website has many games from all the PBS kids TV shows. Many are not even shown here. Sean loved the Curious George games too.

Here's the link if you want to check it out.
http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/index.html

Hello and Goodbye Vivi

2009-01-17T15:51:00.006+08:00

The day before yesterday my friend, Soo, game me a young rabbit. One of her rabbit was giving birth and she had no space for this pretty rabbit. Since we already four rabbits in the garden, I thought it wasn't a problem to have another one. We have had up to 10 rabbits in the garden before I gave some of them away.

However when Soo came along with the rabbit, the maid who takes care of the rabbits said that the other four will bully the young one. I named the new rabbit Vivi and decided to keep her in a box in the house for the time being while I washed and dried a cage for her. She stayed indoor for a night. Sean was really excited to have Vivi indoor. He didn't want to hold her though but he was happy to have her nearby.

Unfortunately, I couldn't keep her indoor too long because I found that I'm allergic to rabbits! Gosh... I was sneezing non-stop whenever I'm near her. I guess the other rabbits have been outdoor for years and I rarely play with them now so I didn't realize that I've gotten an allergy to rabbits' fur.

Anyway, I decided to put her with them yesterday afternoon to let them get acquainted. I put a box in the rabbit area for her so she could hide if they were bullying her too much. I knew there would some bullying involved. It's just a territorial thing.

Tragically, when I came home in the evening, the maid told me that the rabbit was killed and taken away by a neighbor's cat! Poor rabbit. She didn't even last a whole day outdoor. It's so sad. I didn't even get a chance to take a picture of her.

Sean @ 28 months

2009-01-13T19:49:00.007+08:00

In continuation to the previous blog, I have to say that I'm not sure if this change to a sweeter Sean comes about from him growing up and getting over his Terrible Two period or it may be due to the effects of new toys and sweets, as well as an exciting trip to a new place. He may behave better because he is brought to a new and unfamiliar place. I can't say which is the real reason until we travel more often and see if my theory is correct or not. ha ha ha...

The month between him being 27 months old to now has seen him changing. Of course, his personality hasn't changed that much. He can still be really stubborn. For example, he doesn't want the maid to feed and bathe him anymore.

Just last week, it took me an hour to get him to bathe. He'll hide in his house and then he'll pop his head out. When I ask " Do you want to mandi?" He hides again. This repeats until he finally agrees to bathe. *Shake head* Sometimes it takes a lot of patience not to grab him and douse him with water just to get bath time over with. But it's just unwise to have a struggling boy on a wet bathroom floor, so I wait until he agrees to bathe.

It's still difficult to get him to eat, which is why he is so skinny now. He looks rather big in his baggy clothes but he's rather skinny underneath. I think he's the type who has to eat slowly, for example, the wedding dinner took several hours. Unfortunately, under normal circumstances, I don't have the patience to feed him for hours!

He also knows when he's naughty. A few weeks ago, I was really angry with him over some incident that I can't remember anymore. I told him, "Go sit in the corner!" He walked to the armchair in the corner of the living room and climbed on to sit. Then he began to cry. Aiyo....so pitiful!......I talked to him sternly about whatever it was I was angry about and let him go. I'm still not sure if I was manipulated or he was truly repentant about it. Ha ha ha.. =P

He still talks very little but he's started to call me "Mum" rather than "De", but it's usually when he wants my attention. I think the reason he called us "De" is because Sam and I call each other "Dear", so I guess he thought that's who we are, i.e. "De". I can't remember when he started calling me "Mum", but I think it's sometimes in December.

When he watches "Cars", he likes to re-enacts the scenes with his cars. Most of the time, it involves the cars flying and having accidents just like the race scenes in the movie. Sometimes, he gets Mater, the towtruck, to tow the cars away. It's really cute! =D

Sean @ 28 months:
Height : approximately 93 cm
Weight : I think he lost some weight when he was sick 2 weeks ago. I'll have to weigh him one of these days, but he's probably around 14.5kg.

Quick trip to Singapore

2009-01-13T14:22:00.013+08:00

We've just came back from an overnight trip to Singapore yesterday to attend Aileen's wedding. The trip was also a little experiment to see how Sean behaves on a long bus trip. Sean behaved exceptionally well on this quick trip. We brought along sweets and 3 of the cars we got him as bribes to be given at different stages of the journey.

Surprisingly, his appetite was good during the dinner. I guess hotel food agrees with him.. ha ha ha....I think I gave him too many sweets during the dinner though. I gave him the Pretz sweet container. I turned my back to him for a minute and he popped in 3 sweets at one go! He drank F&N orange and ate chocolate too. At the end of the night, he was laughing uproariously... high on glucose! Gotta remind myself not to give Sean too much sweet next time.

I enjoyed meeting up with friends at the wedding whom I haven't seen for many many years. Here is Huijing and LiYe, both of whom I haven't met for at least 7 years! I realized that I haven't been keeping in touch with almost all my friends. I really should do something about that. I also realized that I have to do something about my hair. It looks really boring =P

In Sean's case, I think this trip shows how much sweeter he's becoming. He is starting to listen and follow instructions, and behaving better.

Toy Crazy

2009-01-06T12:04:00.009+08:00

We found out about a toy sale by ToyWizard at Amcorp Mall. We went toy-shopping crazy and bought almost all the Disney die-cast cars they had on sale. Sam went early on Sunday morning to buy them and then quickly hid them from Sean.

We thought since we were thinking of collecting them for Sean, we might as well get them now while it was on sale. It's normally Rm25 each. They were selling 3 for Rm50. Still expensive when you're buying a collection, but we're going to give them to Sean a few at a time when we think is most appropriate. Maybe I'll give him 2 of them this Sunday when we will be in Singapore to attend Aileen's wedding. I hope with the new cars he'll behave himself during the wedding dinner. Right now, we're just letting him see photos of the cars.. ha ha ha =P

So Mary and John, if you're planning to buy Sean a present when you're coming back in March, help us with the rest of the collection.. he he he....=P

A floury day

2009-01-05T18:57:00.012+08:00

Yesterday I decided to let Sean play with his playdough again. It's a messy sort of play so we set up a small table just outside the living room. I found out that home-made playdough should not be kept in a container for too long. It turns gooey and very sticky.

So if you made some following my recipe, try to use it up quickly or let it harden in air for a while. You can also knead more flour into it so that it will turn back to a better consistency. It's probably easier to just throw it away and make a new batch.

Anyway, I got out some flour so that we could try to use whatever old playdough we had. He was more interested in playing with his car and the flour rather than with the playdough. He kinda of smashed the playdough to bits with his car. It was fun but really messy! We had flour all over ourselves and Sean got flour all over the whole living room floor while running away from me.

But I thought, he's been cooped up watching TV quite often the last several months. I hadn't had the time nor the inclination to play with him in the garden for quite a while, so it's nice to just play and not worry about the mess.

Over the New Year

2009-01-05T18:24:00.008+08:00

We met Karen, Kit and Kylae on New Year's day. They were up from Singapore to visit their family. We didn't dare to see baby Christian who was sleeping at home though, fearing that we may still be contagious even though we were already recovered. Luckily we didn't see him because the next day, my flu came back with a vengeance.

Kylae is just 3 months older than Sean but she's already speaking so fluently while Sean is still on his "No no no" phase. He can say the word "No" with a variety of nuances! But I'll blog about another time. Once she got over her sleepiness, they managed to somehow play together. Lol.. Sean just jumped around and Kylae followed. No fighting, unlike when he plays with other boys.

It was nice to catch up with Karen ad Kit. Now that it's a new year, I should really try to catch up with other people too! =P

Nick Vujicic - A giant of a man

2009-01-03T21:19:00.005+08:00

This man is truly inspiring! When I first saw the Utube video, I had tears in my eyes. He makes us normal people who are blessed with all our limbs pale in comparison to his courage and strength. I hope you'll enjoy watching these as much as I did.

Happy New Year 2009

2008-12-31T20:42:00.005+08:00

Happy New Year 2009!
May the coming year bring good fortune, good health and happiness to everyone.

Sean had no voice for several days. I think he had a throat infection. We wanted to bring Sean to Dr kwan, his doctor, but it's been Christmas, the weekends, and the another public holiday. By the time, the doctor's clinic was open, Sean was alright.

But on the day Sean was alright, Sam fell sick, and then the next day, it was me. I think I got an ear infection as well. I was terribly tired the whole day. But thank goodness, we're all better in the evening, after lots of doses of Pei Pa Koa, 100Plus and water.

One thing that amazed me though. Sean was terribly good when he was sick. He still had lots of energy and was driving around in his car round and round the living room as if he wasn't sick. You wouldn't know that he wasn't sick if he didn't have such an awful voice!

And of course it was harder to feed him. He runs away when we come with food. He lived on snacks the last few days. He was willing to eat anything that wasn't healthy for him, but when it comes to proper food, he just runs away!

Sam, of course, took it worst, moaning and groaning about how sick he was. As boys grow up to become men, their resilience to sickness totally drops! =P

Back to toys. ..... Yes, John. Sean plays just like you did. Totally destructive! I'm re-thinking my wisdom to buy those small legos. Maybe I should get Duplo size blocks for him. at least, it won't take me such a long time to put it back when he destroys them and ask me to put back together!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-27T20:37:00.006+08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

We had a pig out on Christmas eve. As usual, we've invited the relatives to come for a christmas eve party with turkey, lamb roast, spaghetti bolognaise, mashed potato, fruit salad, garlic bread, noodles, cream puffs, and 2 cakes brought by the guests, chocolate and white macademia.

We were going to get Sean a box of Lego for his Christmas present, but I've found a china made lego that works as well as real Lego and asked the in-laws to join their Sean's Christmas budget with ours to get him the pseudo-Legos together so that he gets a whole set to play with.

We got him a hospital , ambulance, 2 race cars, an excavator and a Jet fighter plane. So he's been having a great time crashing his jet fighter to the hospital and crashing the cars and taking them apart. And of course, we've been fixing it every time he breaks them apart since he doesn't know how to do it yet. It can be troublesome fixing things over and over again, but he's having such a great time that he hasn't watch as much TV the last few days.

The one thing that has marred these few days is that Sean got laryngitis yesterday. He's been pointing to his neck the last few days, but I thought it was because he knocked his chin on the table. He woke up with no voice but still tries to talk and scream with it. He sounds really terrible, especially today.

I've given him cough mixture and honey water. Does anyone have a better idea of what to give him? Should I bring him to see a doctor for laryngitis?

Craft: How to make a Haloween Basket

2008-12-22T18:59:00.007+08:00

Halloween Basket

This post should have been done before Halloween, but I didn't have the time then. Anyway, the idea can be used for any other types of baskets, for example, Easter baskets or flower baskets. I'm planning to make a flower basket for Mary's wedding this way. I'll post up the picture when I make it next year.

Materials:
Crepe papers, plastic container, scotch tape, double sided tapes, anything soft for padding, scissors, color papers, ribbon.

Instructions:
1. Cut crepe paper according to the size of the plastic container you are using. Cut enough so that it can be folded in. Stick padding around the side of the container to make it look chubbier.
2. Gather the crepe paper on a strip of scotch tape to make it crinkled. Make sure you leave sone tape un-covered by the crepe paper.
3. Stick the crinkled crepe paper all around the inside of the plastic container.
4. Cut a round piece of crepe paper and stick to the inner bottom of the container with double sided tape.
5. Fold over the crinkled crepe paper and stick the rest on the outer base of the container.
6. Stick the ribbon handle with double sided tape.
7. Cut leaves from green crepe paper. Line the inside of the container with double sided tape and paste the leaves neatly.

Other decorations:
Face:
Cut little triangles for eyes and nose, and a smile from black paper. Stick with glue or double sided tape.

Bat:
Draw a bat on hard black paper. Stick on green circles for eyes and draw 2 dots for eyes. Cut it out and stick on the ribbon.

Witch:
Cut the witch face from green paper, witch hat fro black paper. Cut a small piece of red crepe paper and cut tiny strips, leaving the top uncut. Crinkle the red paper to make hair and stick on the head. Stick the hat on top. Draw the face and mouth.

The instructions are not that detailed but I hope the pictures help. Click on the picture to get a clearer image. =D
Happy Crafting!

Sean 27 month - Stubborn

2008-12-17T20:33:00.006+08:00

Despite still refusing to speak much, Sean's growth has been bringing much joy and despair to us. =D Why do I say that?

Joy... because he can be really charming when he wants to. He never used to respond when I said smile. Now he's full of goofy smiles and silly grins. Which is why he doesn't get punished very often.

Despair.. because he is so stubborn! His stubbornness seems to grow as he grows older.

Since he found the small plastic balls, he's been messing the whole house everyday. Sometimes I clean up, sometimes I leave it to the maid. But this can't go on forever.

This afternoon, we went down and he immediately went to the ball baskets and turned it upside down. He was so proud that he messed the living room. This was it! I told him to pick the balls up and he looked at me "innocently". As I kept repeating myself, his look became more and more stubborn. We came to a stand still. I punished him (sitting on chair), swatted his foot (which kicked the ball instead of picking up), and told him " No food, No TV, no toys, until he picked up all the balls". When he was still not responding. I asked " Are you comfortable on that chair?" He nodded, so I said " No chair!" and got him to sit on the floor, which of course made him cry harder.

Seriously, there weren't that many balls since I've already helped to put back some, but he just refused to pick them up. He preferred to cry his crocodile tears and still tried to sucker up his mummy. This went on for 1/2 hour, when he finally picked up a few balls and put them into the basket.

I could have saved myself a lot of energy repeating myself "Pick up the balls and put the into the basket" 50 times and did the clean up myself in less than 5 minutes. But I just felt that he has to learn to do it himself. It took a lot more energy to get him to do it though. =P