7-Month Itch

Yes, I've written my last blog exactly seven whole months ago.

During these seven months, many many things have happened and/or taken place. Many a times, I've clicked on "Create Post" and after typing for a while, I found myself being distracted by other things and never got to complete them.

May be the 7-whatever-period-it-might-be itch is really true.

So here I am.

Quick summary of what has happened so far:

• my first maid decided to go home, cos I refused to let her buy a handphone
• got 2nd and present maid
• tried sending Mayenne to childcare; pulled her out from Modern Montessori after she came home with a flipped and bleeding fingernail (no one from the school even realised it)
• house-hunting ended with a high note
  
• manage to secure a class for Mayenne at GUG, and she loves it
• met a car accident in our own car (thank God Mayenne was not in it and for Chester's fast reaction, such that the only damage is to the car)
• did some soul searching for the greater good
  
• went for a wonderful holiday at HK/Macau
  
• aircon at our current place broke down; need to invest in a new set
  
• found the ID to do our new home
• Mayenne can narrate the whole alphabets, and most numbers between 1-100
• she can also handle a 40 piece jigsaw puzzle
• sing Burung Kakak Dua
  
• and cry when she saw Mickey shoo-ing Pluto away as he was disturbing little baby red bird (we guess Mayenne felt sorry for Pluto, cos after we told her that Mickey will go look for Pluto and apologise, she was smiling again)
  

Hopefully the next post will not be in July.

Her First ABC Recital

Ah
Beeeee
Ker
Duh
Eeeeee
Fffff
Ger
Hash
I
Jer
Ker
*mumble*
Mmmm
Nnnnn
Ohhh
Peee
Ker (again)
R
S
Tuh
Oooo
Vuh
*mumble*
Actsh
Where
Zzzzzz

Mayenne's recital of the ABC this evening while lying in bed, and all from her memory and on her own. Bravo!!!!!

The Official PoPo Day

While today may seem like any other day to some, today is an important day for my mum, cos Mayenne can finally call her Por Por!

The day started just like any other day, Popo brought Mayenne to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and in between the foamy toothpaste and toothbrush in her mouth, she faintly said those magical words (at least to my mum's ears), and without cue.

Mum quickly rinsed her mouth and asked M to say again..... yup it's "Por Por!" alright. I can imagine my mum squealing in delight. And she was still grinning ear to ear everytime Mayenne calls her.

We better work harder on "Gong Gong", Mayenne, or else someone's gonna get super jealous..... =)

Bilingual

We noticed Mayenne has been more vocal over the last few weeks, eg started making comments on the show she's watching, on the moving bus next to our car, when she's playing her toys etc. Unfortunately it's still all gibberish which we can't understand.

Two other things that she loves to do:
(1) Counting things: she will point to the items one by one, saying "beeh! beeh! beeh!", with each "beeh!" representing a number.

(2) Reading: she will turn the book facing outwards (like what teachers will do when sitting in front of the class), and read to you. When it comes to reading, she's more dramatic, making different sounds to represent actions (eg Gingerbread running away -- she reads with a higher pitched voice), and different sounding words, as though she is reading in a language that we don't understand.

One evening, she was reading her ABCs again: eg A ... apple, B.... ball, C....cat, D.... dog, E....egg, F.... ffff (the -ish couldn't come out of her mouth), G..... ger (trying to say 'girl').

When it came to H, there was a picture of a horse, and she went: H..... MAAAAAAH! (mandarin for horse).

=)

Bonding

Due to some bereavement over at my sis-in-law's side of the family, my niece Cherese got to stay with my Mum, and Mayenne had to chance to bond with Baby Cherese.

From what we observed over the last few days, Mayenne has developed a very caring personality, and is sensitive and considerate towards Baby Cherese.

At the beginning, when we asked Mayenne to "sayang" Cherese, she wanted to stroke her face. But we were afraid she may not be able to know the extent of her strength and hurt Cherese in the process, so we taught her to stroke Cherese's leg instead. Now without asking, when she sees Cherese, she will "sayang" her leg.

But one evening, Mayenne was having her dinner and Cherese was lying in the rocker near Mayenne. Then Mayenne reached out to stroke Cherese on her face. We all jumped up, but eased a little as we saw how gently Mayenne touches Cherese's face.

"A bit more to the right please.... yeah, that's it!
Uhhh..... thanks for the scratch!"

In one of the afternoons when my Brother came over to visit Cherese, Cherese was sleeping and my Mum and Brother were talking in that room. Suddenly, Mayenne went into the room and "Shhhhh-ed" them, complete with a finger to her lips, and then walked out of the room.

I can't help but feel that my baby girl is all grown-up now.

A Day in the East

It has been a while since Ches and I caught a movie. Ok ok, it hasn't been THAT long (may be a month back), but for a movie buff like me, watching dvds at home sometimes just doesn't cut it.

Ches mentioned he was booking the tickets online before we leave for his Gramma's place in Bishan for lunch. I told him any movie was fine, and the plan was to watch it at GV at J8 or Eng Wah at Jubilee AMK for convenience.

Being the designated weekend driver, I took the wheels and Chester, sitting next to me, then murmured, "I think we need to go Tampines for the movie."

"Wha........?"
"I think I've clicked on the wrong cinema button when booking. We are watching at GV @ Tampines Mall."

That was totally "un-Chester" as he is usually doubly careful when it comes buying things online. But I guess it was a blessing in disguise as I would then have the opportunity to check out the new Tampines 1 Mall and the new Uniqlo outlet there (can't remember the last time I was at Tam-pines for shopping).

Taken was a commendable movie (see Ches' review) but I soon got bored of the shopping. So we headed out to Ikea for our standard chicken-balls meal, ie chicken wings and meat balls.

While we were enjoying our food, another family settled at a table behind us, believed to be with extended family members ie grandma, their baby and 2 other adults. The baby was seemingly happy to be seated in the baby high chair. The Mum went to wash a bottle, and someone else went to get the food. The rest were seated at the table.

The food and drinks soon arrived and they placed it on the table. Next thing I heard was a loud wail and I spun my head around. To my horror, I saw the baby's hand in a cup of hot coffee which was carelessly placed right in front of her. And being so little (may be 6-7 months), she didn't know how to remove her hand despite the burning pain she felt.

The Dad saw and quickly removed her hand from the scalding coffee, but by which time, the baby's fingers and all the way to about a third of her palm were already sorely red. What really pissed me off was that the Dad actually said (in Mandarin), "Who asked you to put your hand into the coffee? Now you know what is the meaning of HOT", and simply took a tissue to wipe the coffee off the baby's hand.

Shouldn't he, at the least, seek first aid to have some burn/scald ointment to relieve the pain? The poor baby was crying but they didn't seemed to care and all of them dug into their food. The Mum came back and asked what happened, and then carried the baby to try to calm her down.

Chester may have the movie "Taken" live in his mind for a while, I am trying to forget this horrible scene I witnessed.

"M" for More Magical Moments

Reached Mum's place today a little earlier and she couldn't hide her excitement. She grabbed hold of Mayenne and asked, "What does M stands for?"

"Maay-yannn!!!"

She may not be able to say a lot of words, but my dear princess certainly knows her name!

The Alphabets

It's exactly 2 months since my last blog.... have been busy, tired, lazy....

Anyways, there are many things to update, mostly on Mayenne, but this one stood out:

We have been sending Mayenne to Shichida Method for more than a year now, and one of the segments in class was phonics, and it goes: "A" says "ah-ah-apple", "B" says "buh-buh-ball"and so on.

We have also been reinforcing that training at home, and we recently found out that Mayenne can say the following:

"A" says "ah-ah-apple"!
"B" says "buh-buh-ball"!
"C" says "ker-ker-car"!

Then she skips to:
"E" says "eh-eh-egg"!

Then she skips to:
"O" says "orh-orh-orh luak"!

I think she is trying to say "owl" but it came out oyster egg.

Who's Your Mommie?

I can't remember the day I started asking Mayenne to call me Mommie, but she will simply either look or walk away. I can't help but feel jealous that she always volunteer to call "Pa!" when she sees Chester.

Sometime last week, she mastered "Yeh Yeh", ie Ches' dad. Still no "Mommie".

I continued to stick my face in hers and ask her to address me at every opportunity I had. Today, at my mum's, she finally managed a "Mama" (and quite clearly it wasn't "Mam Mam" as in for food).

Woohoo!!!! I'm sure "Mommie" will not be too far away.

Me & My Cheeky Baby Girl

Question and Answer

For those who have been following my blog, you would have read about my concerns on Mayenne's linguistic skills, which seemed somewhat delayed as she couldn't really say many words at 20 months.

I am very sure she knows how to pronounce the words, but she just simply refuse to articulate them. But our persistence paid off.

One day she was watching Dany & Daddy (one of her favourite cartoons). The short clip shows one item and asks the Daddy in the show to pick the correct item from a list of 3 other that has some correlation with the 1st picture.

The first picture was a chicken, and when the picture of the egg came, she quietly said "Eeeg!"My mum asked her to repeat, she refused.

After hearing my mum's narration of what happened, I picked up a card showing a picture of an egg, and she exclaimed 'Eeeg!' A few days later at a breakfast, I gave her some eggs, and she volunteered "Eeeg!" again.

There you have it: Egg - her second word which we can get a respond via a question. The first was 'nennen' (milk).

I am hopeful that more will come real soon.

Mayenne's 2nd CNY

A year ago, Little Mayenne at 8 months was clueless about the excitement, loud noises and colourful deco.

A year later, a little Bigger Mayenne at 20 months can appreciate CNY a lot more. Here are some pictures to show her enthusiasm.

She wants to Lo Hei too.

Mayenne the Kungfu Kid
(and endorsing Robinsons)

Learning Lion Dance

With Gonggong, Popo, Jiujiu and Jiumu

With Yehyeh, Mahmah, Gugu and Guzhang

The "Death-Defying, Traffic Stopping" Stare

To fellow drivers out there, or even to those who sit at the front passenger seat: have you ever encountered people who cross the roads, where and when they are not suppose to (that's why I don't categorise them as "pedestrians"), midway on the road, they will turn to look straight at your car to give that "I-am-crossing-the-road-so-you-betta-slow-down" look?

I mean, Hello??!!! If I want to cross a road despite on coming traffic, I will try to cross it as quickly as I can and get out of the traffic's way.

But NOOOOOO..... these people still take their own sweet time to cross and continue their stare while they are strolling. And if you choose to horn them, they will make a lightning switch to a "Hit-me-if-you-dare" glare. AND you are lucky, you'll also get a nice wave in the form of a finger gesture.

Unbelievable.

3G

The 3 Generations

Milestones

As adults, we mark milestones as important points in time when we achieved something we set out to do, or attained significant goals and/or memorable events.

For Mayenne, milestones are set everyday, and Mummy and Papa cannot be prouder.

Given that it is already the end of 2008, it may be good to take stock of the wonderful things that Mayenne can do now, at 19 months:

• identify all her upper case alphabets, A-Z
• identify 50% of lower case alphabets (eg still need more work to explain to her that letter "l" is not number "1")
  
• know numbers 1-10
• can arrange in 1, 2, 3 in order
• can group colours together, eg lime green and leaf green
  
• can identify shapes, like circle, square, triangle, star eg
  
• recognises at least 150 songs and find the words to the song in the correct song book
• toilet trained (except for bedtime)
• take simple instructions, like give something to someone, keep a toy, bring your shoes here etc
• can do a forward roll on her bed

TO BE CONTINUED......

Power Talk

Nope.... not promoting any telco mobile phone package.

I'm referring to the "5-minute Impression", which The Shichida Method advocates. They say that you just need to spend 5 minutes to talk to your kid, right after (yes after) they have fallen asleep.

The Shichida Method aims to develop a child's right brain via flashcards, imaging etc. Research has shown that in the first few minutes after a person drifts into dreamland, while the physical body is totally resting, the mind is still active. Just like how coma patients cry when they hear voices of their loved ones around them. And messages conveyed during this time are said to be the most well received as there are little disruption and the mind is 100% focused.

You can talk to your child about anything, but it is most effective if you encourage/praise them in words of the things they have done well and tell them to work towards achieving certain things that you would like them to do, eg if a kid refuses to give up his pacifier, tell him he is a big boy and will not need his pacifier anymore; or if the child is not feeling well, tell her that her body is fighting the viruses/germs and she will feel a whole lot better the next morning. While it is unlikely that we can see results immediately, but it is believed that there will be some improvements, even just after a few sessions. Allow me to tell you our personal experiences.

We use the "5-minute impression" with Mayenne and we were surprised with the success we had: we weaned Mayenne from her pacifier at 16/17 months without much trouble; she started to walk after we encouraged her (she was crawling and cruising for quite a few months) etc.

Due to work commitments, this exercise was kind of forgotten, until recently, Mayenne starting drinking a lot less milk (for no obvious reasons), and has been waking up in the middle of the night, wailing (sometimes sounded frightened, sometimes angry and frustrated). Chester then reminded me to revisit the "5-minute impression" again.

So one night, I told Mayenne how great a kid she is, and how Mummy and Papa is so proud of her. I added that (1) it is important for her to rest well, and as such, she will need to sleep through the night without waking up. (2) If she needs to wake up in the middle of the night because she's hungry, then all she needs to do is to drink more milk before she sleeps. (3) She will not fuss too much, trying too hard to fall asleep, but instead will doze off within 5 minutes after being tucked in bed.

The first night, she slept through and I had to wake her up for breakfast at 7.30am. The following night, she emptied her milk bottle. On the 3rd night, she tossed and turned a bit when I laid her down, but then a quick turn to her side, and she's zzzz, all within 5 minutes straight.

Coincidence? I don't think so. Some people may think this is all baloney, but I am a believer that it works and it is a powerful avenue for parents to connect with their children.

Why don't you give it a try? If it doesn't work, you don't lose anything, but if it works, it will do both your child and you good all round.

P.S. apparently this works for adults too, so ladies, after your hubbies hit the sack tonight, go up to his ear and whisper to him how great a hubby he is and tell him what you want for Christmas. May be, just may be, he will finally buy you a gift that you like.

Good luck.

Photos - Mayenne's, of course!

Papa has uploaded photos of Mayenne on his blog, and given the lazy, I mean busy, person I am, you are invited to view what Mayenne has been up to recently.

http://musicphotolife.blogspot.com/

Memory & Melody

There must be at least 300 songs in the stack of CDs (in English and Mandarin) we bought for Mayenne to listen to. These CDs were bought at different times but they all each come with a book containing the lyrics to the songs and some descriptive pictures.

We rotate the playlist everyday (at my mum's) so as to give her variety and hope that she won't get too bored with one particular CD. 

Now, if you were to play any track from any CD, Mayenne would be able to pick the matching book, flip to the right page for the song, and she's so confident that she's gotten the right answer that she will point/stab at that page till you say "well done!".

Can't wait for her to start singing .....

Do you understand?

Last Thursday was our 7th year wedding anniversary, and my mum has kindly agreed to take Mayenne that night so that Ches and I can try recall what happened over the last 7 years over a nice dinner by the river.

So starting from last Monday, I explained to Mayenne on our way to Popo's house in the morning, that she'll have to stay at Popo's house on Thursday. I did the same on Tuesday, explaining that one day has pass and it's 2 more days before the sleepover. She looked like she was listening to me but I was quite sure she didn't understand me cos there are so many new words and concepts, like Monday, Tuesday..., staying over etc.

On Monday to Wednesday, just like any other morning, she will eagerly want to get out of the car and into Popo's arms. On Thursday, I told her one last time in the car that the day we spoke about has arrived. After the car stopped, she simply refused to get out of her car seat and turned away from Popo and resisted her attempts to carry her. We had no choice but to force carry her and that led to some degree of wailing, but she cooled down after a while.

Looks like she did understand me after all.

The Day I Found Happiness

Tomorrow marks the 8th year I married my most wonderful hubby, Chester.

Can't really believe it has been 8 years (well, technically it's 7 cos we registered our marriage in 2000 but had our customary a year later). But like what they say, time flies when you are having fun!

Happy Anniversary Darling! xoxoxox

The Hole-iest Question

Why do guys like to wear their socks till there are holes in them, and continue to wear them until they are taken away by force (usually by someone who cannot stand it anymore)?

Some say they are comfortable. But are they really? It's quite hard to imagine sections that are thinned out from abrasion with the shoes being comfortable, and won't your toes stick out of those holes?

My dear hubby was guilty of it. I used to dump those socks which were comparable to swiss cheese (in terms of the number of holes, not the smell!!). But in some dark corner of the drawer, you can find a pair or two snuggly stashed away, hoping that I won't find them. But that was in the past. With my routine checks, I'll ensure that my man has new fresh socks to wear every time.

I found more conclusive evidence that men like to wear holey socks: in 2 separate client meetings I had, I was joined by 2 different male colleagues for each of the meetings. You know how some offices require you to remove your shoes before entering? Well, these 2 customers of mine happen to have this requirement.

Taxi fare to customer's place : S$12.60
Facility amount to be discussed : S$5m
The look on your colleague's face when he knows he needs to remove his shoes when he has holey socks : Priceless

Both of them kept on apologising profusely to me, saying if they knew, they would have worn "their good pair". At the end, one of them made me look the other way and removed his socks altogether; the other one was more creative: he tried to pinch the material surrounding the hole, and tried to hold the hole between his toes. I think he suffered toe cramps thereafter.

Enough said about this w-hole issue.