Little life saver

Nicole and I were having a dip at the pool. I thought I wanted to play a trick on her. I pretended to faint, expecting that she would come and save me. Truely, she was panicky and she tried to grab me by my arm. Instead of "saving" me, she put her little pointer near by nose to check if I was still breathing and this was followed by a loud scream.

Nic " MUMMY! You are not dead. You bluff me! "

Me " hahaha, Of course I am not dead. I could have just fainted but still breathing for sure!"
Nic " I dont want to play with you anymore!"

She swam back to the steps, leaving me behind for frightening her :(

I must confess that I am very proud of my little girl as she is able to swim on her own now (free style and breast stroke) though she would not do it without any adults around. To a certain extent, she is still afraid of water but she can swim if she really has to.

Ethan can read!

Ethan brought back 2 books and some flash cards from school. Below message was noted in his communication book :

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Ethan has leanrt to read these 2 books and he can recognise all these words when asked to point. He loves reading these 2 books to me and his friend, Joshua. You can ask him to read to you too. Ethan is doing very well.
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I am very pleased to know that he is progressing well. Learning from experience, objectively, I think Ethan has learnt to "memorise" the books instead. Well, whatever it is, my little boy has made good progress and I am truly very proud of him :)

Naughty Nicole

I was trying to put Ethan to bed while Nicole was supposed to be practising the new songs with Papa. When I was out of the bedroom, I saw Lawrence playing the oldies instead.

Me " Lawrence, Nicole needs to practise, not you."
Lawr " She is tired. She is taking a break"
Nic" No, I am not tired. Papa wants to play his own songs"
Lawr " Nicole, You said you wanted to take a break"
Nic " But I can play now"

Knowing my cheeky cutie pie, she was all out to get papa into trouble and to save herself from getting a earful from me! (because Papa splashed water on her earlier, though unintentionally)

Double birthday celebration

It was a double birthday celebration for Popo and Jeremy. First time both celebrated their birthdays together. A very memorable and happy event indeed. The kids loved the pizza and banana chocolate cake while the adults enjoyed an assortment of appetizers and some western style Shanghai Noodles.

Nicole as always stole the limelight by making herself the centre of attraction ie. dressing up in her princess dress and insisting on cutting the cake with popo :)

Healthy breakfast

Nicole's favourite Scramble egg with Cheese, tomatoes and mushrooms. Her breakfast completed with a glass of orange juice and a serving of yoghurt.

Jie-Jie and Ethan

Jie-jie and Ethan, as described by the artist.

I think the coconut trees are cool and the cyclist appears a little overweight :)

Smelly fruits

Since a young age, Nicole has acquired a liking for durians somehow. I simply don't understand how a little one like her could cultivate a taste for durians :). She would freeze and drop everything she is doing at the sight of durians.

Cheeky Ethan

Cheeky Ethan wee-ed in his motorized car and quickly got up to inform me.

Ethan “ Mummy, I wee wee. I wee wee”
Me “ Did you? Where? Did you use the potty? ”
Ethan “ No. Ethan wee wee in the car! Over there”
Me “ Oh my goodness!”
Ethan “ ya, Oh my goodness"

:) :)

An observant boy

Little Chub has grown to be a very observant boy. He is highly sensitive towards our tone of voice and he knows he should behave when his jie-jie is being disciplined for ill behaviour. I was casually drawing some circles on his art block and I added 2 dots and a concave curve representing the lips and immediately he pointed out " Circle is happy. Oh Yeh!"

Quickly, I drew another circle with 2 dots but with an opposite curve.

Ethan " Circle is sad now. Oh no!"

I just couldnt help giving him one big hug and kissing him on his rosy cheek. He is the most beautiful creation in my eyes. :)

A "green" baby :)

Quite a while ago, Ethan's teacher wrote a short update on him.



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Ethan is a cheerful boy and he is a fast learner. During the morning assembly, Ms X asked a question " Children, what can we do to help save the environment?" Only one response was received, from amongst some 30 kids, aged between 24 months to 6 years old, Ethan being the youngest of the lot.



Ethan " take MRT and take big bus"



Everyone clapped upon hearing his remark and all the teachers gave him a big tight hug for his excellent input. We all love Ethan very much. He is such a joy.

Unquote



I was more than pleased upon reading the update. My little boy has grown up and he is also well trained to do his part to save the world from further pollution :)

Cheeky Nic

Lawrence was casually chatting with Nicole.

Lawr " Nicole, you are such a big girl now. Soon, you will have your own friends to go out with and I guess you wouldn't want to play with daddy and mummy anymore"

Nic " Ya, you are thinking what I am thinking of too"

Lawr " What?"

Nic " haha, I mean, you are NOT thinking what I am thinking of"

See how cheeky my little cutie pie is.

Poor baby Chub

It started to rain really heavily during the wee hours. There were lightning and thunder. I was awoken by the thunder and so was little Chub. He started crying and he crawled towards me.

Ethan “ ah mummy, ah mummy. Ethan is scared of thunderstorm”

He climbed up onto my bed and insisted on sleeping ON me. He literally rested his head and half his body on my chest. His weight almost got me suffocated :(. I tried to move him back to his own bed after he had fallen asleep again but he woke at the slightest movement.

Ethan “ No. No. Ethan is scared of thunderstorm. Mummy, hold my hand”

So, I ended up watching him sleep soundly next to me while holding on to his little hand. I could only "re-claim" my arm after he was fast asleep again and let go of his grip. It was a very sweet moment though it meant a tiring day ahead as I barely had any rest.

Updates on Chatty Chub

Chubby has demonstrated a higher level of maturity in many areas in the recent 4 weeks.

Chub is able recognise 80% of the alphabets, when asked to point. At times, he would volunteer to point at the alphabets in the book and make the sound accordingly. Chub is one who wants to move on once he has learnt them. He dislikes being asked things which he already knows. When this happens, he would give all sorts of responses just to "get even" with the person asking. :(

He is also able to point at words (without the pictures) and pronounce them. This is purely by memory. E.g. cow, car, apple, ball etc.

More interestingly, he is able to do "spellings".

Me " Ethan, how do you spell banana?"
Ethan " B-A-N-A-N-A"
Me " good job. how about coconut?"
Ethan " C-O -C-O -N-U-T"

Me " What is T-O-M-A-T-O?"
Ethan " Tomato"

and many more.......

Colours and shapes are within easy grasp of Chub.

Chub is able to recite the dialogue in the cartoons which mesmerise him.

Ethan " Map says " oh no!""
Ethan " Dora says " we can do it""

His latest collections of nursery rhymes :

- Happy Birthday
- Barney's song
- I am a little teapot
- Twinkle twinkle little star
- Incy Wincy Spider
- The wheels on the bus
- Oh macdonald
- Alphabet song

and many more which he learns from play school which I dont even know of :)

Chub is one little happy baby and it is such a joy watching him play :)

Nicole's writing skills

Time flies. Looking at Nicole, it just dawned on me how much she has grown over the past 6 months. She has formed such a personality of her own, though I must confess a lot is still genetic, e.g. rather opinionated, a better word for being stubborn. :()

I have been encouraging her to write short journals and she loves the idea that I can pin her work up on my office wall for all to see. My office wall is truely and fully decorated by her masterpieces. She is able to write complete sentences of up to 15 words each though she still needs a little help on the spellings of certain more complex words. Right now, I guess I just need to work on her writing style by introducing more creative ways of writing the same message.

A note on her Chinese writing and reading skills. Her teacher commented that she has strong appetite for words recognition. She is able to recognise all 20 to 25 new chinese words, right after her one hour lesson. I am glad that we started exposing her to more than 1 language since young and it is bearing fruits now. Regrettably, I have stopped introducing Malay words to her and she is losing the language skill gradually. Well, I hope she can pick up a third language easily in the future with her strong language foundation. :)

Choosy Chubby

It was dinner time. Rose carried Ethan to the dining table to gather his share of the dishes. There were 1 veg dish, 1 chicken dish, 1 steamed fish and 1 bowl of soup. As Rose tried to scope some fish meat into his bowl, Chub started screaming and turning his head away!

Ethan “ No! No! Auntie Rose, no fish ok? No fish ok? ”

The adults simultaneously broke into laughter upon hearing his remarks!

Ethan has fish almost everyday. On other days, he would be served beef or chicken and occasionally pork. I guess he was really tired of it. So for the following 2 days, Ethan had fish-free meals! Overall, Chub is a happy baby who loves to eat and that probably explains his size :)

He is over 90cm in height and weighs a good 15kg, for a 25 month old toddler.

Breakfast with a scenic view

Despite the non air cond setting, Nicole was all for Riders' cafe. She loves watching the horses and she loves the breakfast even more!

Nicole ate 90% of a full adult serving of breakfast cum a a glass of fresh lime juice! I was amazed by her good appettite.