Building & Stacking Up

She never likes things to be stacked up.

She never likes us to form anything sensible and decent.

She loves to destroy them when we build something for her.

She loves to knock all the blocks down and having a lot of thrill from it.

About 1.5 months before she turned 2, she changed. I started to see her love to build and stack and never destroy or knock them down anymore.

She will patiently waiting for us to build and form. She will engage herself in this activity with us.

We gotten this Mega Block from Aunty Stella as a present. And Yvette loves it very much.  (Thanks Aunty Stella.) She will play with them almost everyday and love building things now. Sometimes she will just sit alone at one corner and happily stacking up the mega blocks.

This evening, I fixed a House on the Wheels and a plane. When I told her, a plane can fly, she said: Mama, my house can fly too.

Our kids sure have plenty of imagination!

Two Before and After

In the past 12 months, Yvette had achieved several major milestones and they are:

• At 13 mths, she started to express her need in words; saying 爸爸抱抱
• At 14 mths, she is a toddler with 16 teeth. At the end of the month, she finally started to walk unaided.
• At 15 mths, she entered “Terrible Two” Inc.
• At 16 mths, she learnt how to coquet.
• At 17 mths, she started to socialise.
• At 18 mths, she started to express herself more in Mandarin in some incomplete sentences. (I only started to talk to her in Mandarin when she was 14 mths. English is our preferred language.)
• At 19 mths, she finally sat on the bowl for potty training. (She skipped potty totally). I started structure learning with her and she started to leant.
• At 20 mths, her speech improved tremendously. She is talking in sentences now.
• At 21 mths, she is having a mind of her own, choosing her own clothing, making some decision. She is teething again.
• At 22 mths, one molar has fully sprouted out of her gum. We are experiencing some potty pause.

For the past one month, which is the 23th month, somehow I didn’t find there was much development. Perhaps this month passes too fast!

Anyway, there are some of my observations on Yvette for the past one month:

• She started to sing in simple tunes. (I think it’s due to iPod.)
• She finally likes to stack things up and hardly pushes them down anymore.
• Telling me more on the things she likes and dislikes.
• Most of her speech is understandable.
• Learn how to put on clothing.
• Like to be under blanket. (She never likes to cover herself with blanket.)
• She is an expert in gadget now. iPod and camera are her best toys now.
• Show signs she likes to read more.
• She can play with other children very well now.

Physically she is 10kg and 84cm. Comparatively, she doesn’t seem to grow much in term of size. (At 12 mths, she was 9 kg.) She only grows taller (73.5 cm a year ago) and her feet are now bigger. Her feet measured at 14 cm.(2 cm bigger)

For character wise, she is cheerful, kind, willing to share, very systematic and always passionate over the stuff she is doing. She can be stubborn, short temper, and impatient.

And now she is older, I meant she is two, I guess I will not see more physical development except she still don’t really know how to jump. Although we practice attachment parenting style, keeping her by our side that doesn’t mean we do not encourage Yvette to be more independent. She could do the following everyday tasks:

• Remove own shoes and put them back to the shoes rack. Now learning how to wear them
• Choose her own clothing. She already knows how to remove her own clothes, now I think it time to teach her how to wear them.
• She is stilling working on taking out bread from the plastic bag and toast the bread herself. And then spread the olive spread by herself too.
• She is very keen on applying bath lotion onto her body and rub them thoroughly before I wash them away with water.
• Put her toys away. She has this habit to go thru most of her toys when she got no lesson. I am so bless with her initiative of doing clean up and putting toys away. She loves to put them back to original position too.
• Keep her clothing back to the drawer. Although she still doesn’t know how to fold them but she is more willing to help me to put them back to the drawer.
• She will do some general housework for me and help me out in the kitchen within her limit.

About learning, I am happy she knows all the letters (upper and lower case) and their sound. There are some signs that she can recognise some words in English but we are not too sure what exactly they are. (Will try to blog about our finding). Although we are not too sure what are the words she know, as we didn’t test her, but she could tell me a lot of words associated to their letters. And they are:

A for Apple; B for Ball, Boy, Bear, Bunny; C for Cat; D for Dog; E for Elephant, Egg; F for Flower, Fish; G for Green, Girl Giraffe; H for House, Horse, Hotdog, Honey; I for Ice; J for Juice, Jet; K for Kite; L for Ladybird; M for Money, Monkey; N for Net; O for Orange; P for Pencil; T for Tiger; U for Umbrella; X for Xylophone, Y for Yvette (and she is close to spelling her own name soon); Z for Zebra.  What is missing from the list are Q, R, S, V & W; I almost never hear her telling me anything about those letters at all. It’s time to learn more word both in English and Chinese.

For Shapes, she could identify Circle, Square, Diamond, Oval, Star, Heart & Triangle.

For Colour, she could identify Orange, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Pink, White & Purple.

For number, she knows 1-10 in both English and Chinese and now I have to teach her identify them in correct sequence (this applies to the letters as well).  11 to 20 was introduced to her just before two weeks from her second birthday thru a puzzle.  There is one number for sure, she knows number 29 very well.

To me learning is all about progressing consistently. And The child must not only know their stuff in front of us, they must be confidently able to express themselves clearly to everyone.

Coming to potty training, I am glad she is consider potty trained. She could tell me she need to pee and poop. She is able to wake up in the middle of the night to pee as well. However, I do have occasionally miss in between the month and I hope she will be better.

Her diet now consists of 3 meals and breakfast is always not on her card. She never likes to eat breakfast since she was no longer a baby. She can take up to two tablespoon of rice with meat and vegetables. She used to dislike meat, now she’s totally fine with it especially chicken and one of her favourite food is Chicken Rice. As for vegetables, her favourite is carrot, corn, cauliflower and mushroom.

As for her health, I don’t think she got a very robust immunity system and sending her to childcare that will bring her more damage to her health than expected. So beside the multi-vitamin and Fish oil, I am planning to give her Sambucol to boost up her immunity.

So what will be the Major Challenge ahead?

• Manage her sleeping disorder and train her to sleep timely by her own… (And well I guess still in my room unless she already knows how to get up to pee.)
• Encourage her to walk. For the past 3 months she is exceptional clingy in term of walking. She no longer likes to walk as much as she was when she started to find her leg to walk. She always wants to be carried. It is a pain at my neck now!
• Encourage her to eat more by her own. Although she know how to feed herself (remember I pen down how she can feed herself the whole cup of corn without dropping it), but she never a foodies and could go without food. A day back, she was self-feeding herself yogurt too. I am pretty sure she could do it but still this area is a bit tricky for me.

• Ensure she develop a habit for reading. Oh well, I didn’t read to her when I was pregnant. I didn’t read to her at her tender age from 0 to 1 year old. I only started when she transit to toddler. So, it quite a journey for us seriously. But still, I always believe it never too late to develop and cultivate a good habit as long as you willing to put in effort! Wish me luck, okay!!!
• Sending her to child care and manage separation anxiety. I think this is a big task for both of us.
• Lastly, weaning her off my breast. My boobs need some rest for sure after in operation for 2 years. This going to be the toughest!!!

Finally, any plan for number two? I guess not, at least, not in this half a year. I wish for a boy but I got a name for girl, most likely I will name her as Elaine. (I have many good experiences with people having this name!) Oh what am I thinking… But please don’t give me a TWIN! (I almost had gotten a Twin in my last pregnancy!!!)

About Our Child’s Immunity System

As HFM Disease on the rise, all mothers will step up to ensure our child’s cleanliness is well control of. I receive an sms from my friend who her child gotten HFM recently. And I feel sad for her. It’s really not easy to be a mum in this fast moving society.

Here our Exchanged SMS:

** She seeks second opinion on HFMD because she didn’t see the common signs for HFMD.

Friend: Went for 2^nd opinion. Doctor say it doesn’t look like the ‘classical’ HFMD as there are no obvious blisters or ulcers but will have to treat it like one since there are rashes and a slight fever. It could still be one of many stains of the virus. She was put on a nebulizer for her cough.

ME: Aiyo poor child!

Friend: She has croup cough also. When she coughs she sounds like a seal! Not nice at all. And she can’t sleep at night. Last night was the only night she slept for almost 12 hours. She has never slept for more than 10 hours at a time since birth. She was completely exhausted.

ME: You need to ensure she breathe well. Cos that can easily lead to bronchitis.

Friend: I know. She has been having a runny nose for more than 2 weeks too. It’s one viral infection after another. The worst thing is I’m also starting to feel sick. Sigh. I wonder if her diet doesn’t give her enough nourishment to boost her immune system. She’s now refusing drinks too. So difficult, I feel like crying.

Oh dear, I am thinking. I quickly picked up my phone to call her.

I told her it is perfectly normal for an active toddler to fall sick and YOU mother here (*smile* thanks) tell me the same too. I shared Yvette only sick once in her first year but the only Medical Leave she applied for was due to Bronchitis. And moreover, we have constantly exposed our child to classes, where some sick child might be there too. There is no way; we can fight against virus in the air! They are so contagious!

I also suggested she hire temp help such as nanny if so happen both she and her helper were down. I told her to drink plenty of fluid and take Vitamin C to keep her immunity system going. I keep my finger cross on receiving any more “BAD” news from her.

Isn’t hard to be a mum in this fast moving society?

Many mummies work. When they work, they will send their child to childcare and this will become a constant test on a child’s immunity system. The child will fall sick due to fatigue; being hanging around with sick child (most child care policy on letting a sick child to attend school is normally no fever, not having croup cough and no more running nose with plenty of mucus). With that, they generally will fall sick.

Coming back to Yvette, I don’t have a good record for her in her second year.

In her second year, she was down with:

• Running nose when the haze is back in Aug 09
• Having Fever due to Teething in Aug 09
• The teething fever lead to infection and she fought for 72 hours
• Virus attack in Oct 09 which lead to vomit and diarrhoea.
• She goes Merlion in March 10
• She has low grade fever due to teething in Apr 10

Even after discounting the fever due to teething, she was sick for 5 times including this round. (She is having running nose and coughing now). Not a good record har?

Well, on the account that she attends 3 playgroups with JGC and one swimming lesson on Friday; I will like to give a pat on my shoulder. That not a bad record after all.

Managing our child immunity system is always one of the top priorities. As Yvette is not a foodie, I constantly need to ensure she eat properly, sleep timely so that her immunity system will be robust. I also do give her multivitamin and fish oil to boost up her immunity. And now, I also practice the 5-seconds rule on food dropped on the floor. In the past, I do not allow her to pick up food on the floor to eat even at home, now I started to believe little germs will help our child to grow. And hopefully it really does! However, as I mentioned earlier, virus is always in the air waiting to invade. It’s definitely not an easy job to keep our child healthy.

Don’t you agree?

Present

I know my girl has grown up!

Today, Daddy needs to work for a couple of hours leaving us at home. While waiting for Daddy to come back to attend the Birthday Party together, I wrapped up the present together with Yvette.

Although in the past, I have been wrapping present in front of her, she is only interested in playing with the wrapper, the tape and didn’t express her thought and feeling.

Today, she is different.

As I pulled out the toy and put them on the wrapping paper. I saw her expression changed. She was urging me not to wrap up those toys by pulling my hands away. As she did that to me, I explained these are toys that we need to give away as a present because we were invited to her FRIEND’s birthday party.

She SEEMED to understand.

There was sign of unwillingness, but she didn’t stop me for wrapping up them up.

After I have completed wrapping them, I held her hand and write down ome words on the present and started to explain to her again.

She be aware of these toys will be giving away, she kept holding them and refused to give it to me.

I let her have it for a few good mins and when I eventually got it from her, and told her the same thing again, she seemed to be able to LET GO.

Oh my, I am glad she knows she have to share! I am glad she knows she have to give away something she thinks is her. I hope her generosity will remain within her as she grows!

P/S: We attended the first birthday party for the 2010.