Sean @ 35 months

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

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

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