20091127 Kate read the alphabets

Kate is inspired to read out the alphabets after watching Leapfrog's The Letter Factory infinite times. And nope, she does not know phonics. She knows those alphabets form the word 'armadillo' because mommy told her so.

20091126

Kate's first time on the circle line... carried her and showed her the dark tunnel in front of the driver-less train....

20091122

Posted this pictures cos she look so cute..it is very difficult to capture solo pictures of her nowadays... this is taken when we are on the bus on the way to the library...

literally consuming knowledge from a book...

20091121

Went to the ranch Home @ Dempsey Hills

apetitizer.. cake... the staff, upon hearing that Kate might not like mousse, cut a smaller piece as sample for us to try first, so that we will not be stuck with a big piece of uneaten cake if the gal was to reject the food.  Good service!

main course.. pasta (of course!).  Not bad.

dessert... Ben and Jerry's.... she preferred the m&m's toppings than the ice cream.

Cheyanne, who now happily calls me Auntie after the last time I played with her all kinds of kiddy games in the middle of North Point...

 

Keondre and his mommy... smart boy...

 

20091115 Kathleen is 3 years old!

Kathleen is 3 years old!  Had a small celebration at yeye's place.

The Barney cake papa bought from Prima Deli. The small pair of hands holding the Ericsson hp camera belongs to Kate.

Cutting the cake. This year, Kate did not bawl when everyone is focusing on her and singing the birthday song, but her eyes are red (trying not to cry). She managed to blow out the candles with help.

20091108 science center

Mommy got some omni theatre tickets and so off the kids they go to Science center....

In front of the moving dinosaur...

 

the 'chop'.  Janice chopped hers on her forehead... :P

The kids playing at the tree house.....

 

Omni theatre show - Under the sea.  Luckily papa did not come along, for the show that he wanted to watch, Space Station was replaced by Under the Sea wef November.

 

 

The seats are abit cramped.  But I guess they are normal cinema size, but mommy cannot know for sure cos she has not been to a cinema in years!

Mommy had pre-warned Kate that there will be a 'big TV' and it will be dark.  So when the lights were dimmed, she turned around and smile at mommy and said 'don't worry', indicating that she is not scared of the darkness.  Brave gal!

There are a few 'eating' scenes, but the kids aren't afraid.  In fact, they are more scared by the adults who screamed during those scenes!

Despite the darkness and 'long' duration (40minutes, long for hyper tots), the kids did not asked to leave the theatre (we are seated in the middle of the row).  But Kate keep pushing the seats in front, and then disturb

三姨姨 who was seated at the front (the counter staff kindly split us into 2 rows so that we can get seats that are not so up front) by lowering her head next to hers and then smiling, or turning sideways and smiling at Auntie Beth.

The initial plan was to wrap up the day at the water play area at the Science Center.  But it started pouring around 4pm+ and the water play area was closed.  So the kids loiter around Science Center till 6pm and then grab a bite at Jurong East before going to 婆婆's place for dinner.

20091105 dancing queen

dancing in Yoshinoya to its piped music.  Rare footage since nowadays she prefer to be behind the camera.

20091101

impromptu pic taken when kate was watching the tv while lying on the floor (yes, cultivating bad habit). so sweeettttttt ;P

20091017-20091018

Deepavali, so off we go to the Istana which Kate has never visited before!

In front of the main gate. We reach there around 10am+ and there was no queue.  Note that each of us have our own camera...ahehhhee

The weather is quite warm though which shows (notice that there are quite a few grumpy Kate shots)

Running up to the central/center gate

Parrot show courtesy of Bird Park.  You have to donate a minimum sum (for charity) to take pictures with the birds.

This shot is taken by Kate using her ericsson.  Not bad....

The Japanese 'garden'

Kate's shot of the water plant just below the water which cannot be seen in the above picture.

Kate's favorite part of the Istana - the temporary playground.

A baby size see saw (guess who is 'thick-skinnedly' see-sawing with her!)

swing.... mommy does not understand why so many neighbourhood playgrounds do not have swings.

Kate called this the 'baby slide'.

Ahhhh.... mommy's favorite part of the Istana.  The big tree which can be climbed upon. :) Mommy climbed the same tree decades ago...ahhahaha

Main building

The fountain

Look at the city skyline behind...

Kate got excited when she saw this toddler height traffic light.

She took a picture of each traffic light (there are two, each facing the opposite direction, as can be seen in this picture)

Taking a picture of the guard at the main gate.  There is another guard at the other side of the gate but he has not have a rifle.

Kate's eye view.  Mommy wondered what will happen if Kate gave him a kiss but decided not to try it since, after all, he has a rifle.

Imelda Kate trying out shoes at Bugis Village some time later after we went to the temple...

Later that evening, mommy took out a package of Nutri-tea, and poured out half, and want Kate to share the remaining half of the packet with Papa.  But one sip of the tea and she got possessive, insisting on finishing the whole pack and did not share with papa.  She even pose for the camera with the drink.

Next day, kate went for a swim with her new water gun which she enjoyed very much.! :)

20091014 mommy's thoughts

This is the mommy's thoughts that I have been wanting to blog for ,like, one month.

Let's first talk about something that just occur to me.
I was looking down at my keyboard and i saw the URL for safe use for HP keyboard.. the URL ended with the word 'ergo', which reminds me of my ergo carrier. Which I have not used for a long time because even with the ergo, Kathleen is simply a tad too heavy though she is at the lower/lowest percentile of the MOH weight chart for kiddos. Of course I am still carrying her, but the way of carrying is different, not as snuggled as the ergo or cradle carrying which I used to do when she was younger. Miss that kind of carrying.  Of course she still likes to be carried that way (cradle style). Sometimes she will ask me to carry her, but will lie on the floor/mattress, and just wait for me to scoop her up into my arms and carry her to wherever she wants, as if she is still a little baby that needs to be cradled. And she will have a 'secret' smile on her lips.
Then now let's talk about other things. I went to the child care one afternoon about a month ago to pick her up, and her teacher feedback to me that 1) she wants to try everything 2) sometimes she will repeat whatever the teacher says.
Re the 'try everything', I have to say its the same at home. Nowadays, she can insist on taking off (ok, wiggling off) her clothes, including her panties, by herself. Sorry mommy, your help is not required. If I ever just helped by tugging it off by 1 inch, she will pull it up again by that 1 inch (to undo my action), and then continue to try to take off her shoes. She also wants to be the one to press the pump of the shower foam onto her hands during hand washing, and during bath, after pumping out the soap, she will be one that create the lather and rub it all over her body. During hand washing, she have to be the one that turn off the tap. If mommy turned off the tap, then she will turn it on again, so that she is (officially) the one turning it off.

Then toilet flushing - she has to be the one pressing the flush button, which, right now, is too hard for her to do. So you have a stinko toilet bowl, a kid insisting on pressing the flush button (unsuccessfully), and a mommy who is waiting for an opportunity to put her much stronger finger on the button without the kid noticing so that the job can be done and over with.

Before bedtime, she will let me on the tap for the water to fill up her mug for brushing her teeth. But she has to be the one unscrewing the cap of her toothpaste and then squeezing out the toothpaste onto her toothbrush. She is learning how to gargle btw, but most of the time she just end up drinking the tap water.

Sometimes when she wanted to add colostrum powder(?) into her milk, she must be the one opening the fridge, taking the colostrum out of the fridge, and close the fridge (which she forget to do sometimes). She will then climb up the stool which is placed next to the kitchen top, and then insist on unscrewing the cap of the bottle, and then she will try to scoop up the colostrum, pour it into the milk bottle, and stir. Then she will screw the cap back on, open the fridge dor, put the colostrum back into the fridge, before closing the fridge again. If papa ever walk in and close the fridge door for her, she will make alot of noise and insist on reopening and re-closing the fridge door again.

Determined/stubborn little kid.
On a good mood day, I will be amused by this little gal and her want-to-be-an-adult actions. But on tired days and when running out of time, I will be very frustrated that a simple act can take x times as long because she insisted on doing it on her own and her way.

Now on the 2nd comment given by the teacher. In the past 2 months, there are 2 other people giving me feedback that she repeats what they say. Alot of people know that, to a certain extent, her speech is not as fast as her peers. But what people will notice, if they ever try to have a conversation with her, is that she repeats after them sometimes. She 'echos'. There is a term given for it - its called echolalia.
Just a brief intro here, echolalia has 2 types - immediate (see Polliwogs example below) and delayed (echoing a few hours/days/weeks later). Alot of webpages associate echolalia with autism, but some typical children (using the word 'normal' here will not be fair to the other group of children) also exhibits echolalia as they learn the human language(s).
A few months ago, after the muscle-abusive (for me, at least. It was super fun for the kids) time at Polliwogs, one of the mummies has asked Kate 'did you enjoy yourself?' and she just look at her blankly and echo 'enjoy', and I have to explain that she does not understand the word 'enjoy'. Which, of course, makes me sound like a sadistic mommy which never let her have any fun.  How did you teach a child the meaning of enjoy?  No one ever tell me teaching language to a kid is that tough.

So when does she echo?
- when she does not understand what is being said/asked
- when she is trying to give a affirmative answer (eg, "do you want milk?" "milk")
- repeating favorite phrases (eg, "auntie beth goes home","por por close the door").
- when she is stressed/tired (eg, echo-ing '1-2-3 up' which is the message I gave before I heave her up, instead of 'mommy bao bao')

She has already shown alot of improvements since her pre-playgroup days, and is now able express much more. Just the other day, I told her about a pending dinner appointment, and then it rained. And I told her 'its raining'. And then she surprises me by replying 'cannot go', being able to express her concern that we will not be able to go out for dinner due to the rain. This could be a conversation that happens daily in a household with a 3 year old, but for me, its just starting. And with more coaching and social interaction, she will do just fine.

20091011 papa's birthday...

Its papa's birthday! Makan at Jack's Place.

Kate playing with the sugar packets and her 'personal' camera (mommy's retired handphone)...

Birthday cake....

Singing in public .... Kate in a fake low rough (male?) voice.... can anyone hear what she is singing (answer at bottom)?

Answer : its the national anthem!

20091004 moove....

20091003 bathtime

Kate batching her soft toys, one by one, using a mooncake box as a bath tub.  Basically re-enacting the shower queue that she encounter everyday in school.

Nowadays it is very difficult to take decent pictures of her so less blogging....

p/s this pics are taken with mommy's new Samsung Jet.  Keep getting blur pictures.... *shake head*

20091002 more lantern fun...

20090928 Mommy's thoughts

Kathleen has been attending childcare for 3 weeks.

A usual schoolday for her will start when papa woke her up and drove her to her childcare.  As they are usually in a rush, Kate will only have her breakfast in school.  Usually papa will try to stay with her till after her breakfast, but sometimes he will have to leave before that if he has a early meeting to attend.  Kate will stay the whole day at the childcare till 5pm, and that is when the school bus will take her to my mother's place.  As my mother lives at the edge of the housing estate furthest away from the childcare, the bus journey took more than one hour.  By the time which Kate was already cold from sitting in the air con bus.  So after the few days, we notify the teachers to add on one layer of long sleeve jacket for her before she board the bus, and now her hands are not so cold at the end of the journey.

My mother will cook dinner for her and me, and accordingly to my mother, she will not speak much when they are alone.  I will go direct to my mother's place after work, and Kate will come to the door when she hears the door opening, and will give a wide smile, declaring 'Its mommy!' many times when she see me.

My father (her 公公)will burn the joss sticks during the evening, and that has become her new routine of some sort.  She will insist that the two of us followed gong gong around the house as he walked to the different altars around the house, and we will have to  拜拜 to the different altar with him, a simple routine that bonded her slightly to her 公公.

Sometimes her papa will come and fetch us home, on other days, we will take public transport home.  Usually we will reach home between 9.30pm to 10.30pm, after which we will have to prepare for the next day, and Kate will try to play as much as possible before bedtime.  Which means bedtime is also delayed as she will refuse to sleep until past midnight.  The new arrangement also means that we have less time for story book reading, and we have been visiting the library less often, and sometimes, the borrowed books remain untouched.

After the first few days in cc, she keep repeating the word 这个 (this), which I assume is learnt when her assistant teacher Mrs Chua, keep asking her if 'this' (bag/shoes/water bottle) is hers. :P

Her childcare always start the day with the singing of the national athem, and saying the pledge in both English and Mandarin.  After the first few days, she began to sing the chorus of the National Athem, off key and with the wrong lyrics of course, when she is at home.

She also regressed abit, and started to use gestures (bringing her pinched fingers towards her mouth with a 'ummm' sound) to indicate that she wanted to eat, which I assume, is because the teacher does not understand her when she said that she wanted her milk, and she is unable to have direct access to food.

My sister and I thought we noticed a slight increase in chattiness.  And she sang louder nowadays too :P Her vocabulary had increased, as she learnt new phrases such as 'pass urine', 'swallow' (imagine at Taka, and she keep shouting 'Auntie Beth pass urine' loudly when my sister's helper went to the washroom).

But with childcare, she also have to deal with the other children, with 'fighting' for toys and to shower instead of bath.  The former gave her nightmares which she will cry 'give me' 'give me', and the later will make her shout 'dunwan' as she is afraid of water coming down on her from the shower head.  At the beginning, she will toss and turned and rolled around almost the whole night when she sleep, and shouting out 'give me' or 'dunwan', or cry.  Those are trying nights, as both of us (her papa and me) have to work the next day. A mommy friend told me that her girl's childcare teacher told her that the nightmares will last from 2 weeks to 2 months.  2 months!!!!  She also developed a fear of bathing, and will refuse to bath (bath, not shower) nowadays.  

She has also become more clingy to me nowadays, and now, all the activities have to be done by me, including hand washing etc which used to be done by papa.

Since she started on cc, the adults has been more tired as we travel more on the road, sleep later, and (for her papa) wake up earlier.  Poor Kate also have to withstand 3 additional journeys everyday (from home to childcare, from childcare to my mother's place, and later from there to home), on top of suddenly being transported to a new environment.

Around the same time, I also started developing back pains.  Not the usual ones, but nowadays my back is very stiff, with pains radiating down the legs, sometimes with numbness on the legs, and the waist will weak and 酸 by the end of the day.  Sitting is now painful (and mine is a desk-bound job) and certain position brought pain too.  Kate's papa suspected that I got ankloysing spondilytis (choy!) while my colleague said that the disc of my spine are disintegrating (choy too!).  The GP suspected that the bone is pressing down the nerve, but X rays taken by the polyclinic showed nothing, and the doctor there said most probably its a muscle strain that will recover on its own.  I insisted on a referral to the hospital but the earliest date I can get is in November.  

Meantime, I have to delegate some of the jobs to papa, as when the pain is bad, I am unable to hold onto Kate tightly (eg in the carpark when she always like to dash into the road) nor carry her.  He is never in favor of having a sibling for Kate, and the new responsibilities (sending Kate to school, bringing us back) and uncertainties make him even more firm in his decision.

So I guess there goes my dream to have a bigger family, and Kate will remain an only child, unless my goddess send a few hassle-free, lawful kids my way. :P

20090919 playing with lanterns

大姨姨 bought some paper lanterns for the children to play with.  This is the first year that Kathleen has her hands on a paper lantern.  Previously we only allow her to play with battery operated lanterns.

A beaming Kate holding her lantern, which is the first one to be lit by 大姨姨.

Charlie joining in the fun.

A peek into her lantern....

大姨姨 busying lighting up the rest of the lanterns

Yuan yuan 表哥.  This cool gor gor later drop one of his milk teeth at the Takashimaya Mooncake fair on Sunday and just coolly put the tooth into his pocket and continue with his activity.

All the kids.  The area behind them is cordoned off for lift upgrading.

Having fun walking around a pillar....

Janice, who is older, is more concerned about setting up her own candle structures than joining in the fun...

20090907 Babycenter article on toddler mispronounces words

Extracted from

http://www.babycenter.com/404_should-i-worry-that-my-toddler-mispronounces-many-words_69451.bc

A 2-year-old will typically mispronounce just about any word. Most toddlers can say "p," "b," and "m" sounds easily because they can watch your lips and see how the sounds are formed. Consonants such as "k" and "g" are tough for toddlers, because they're produced at the back of the mouth, and your child can't actually see how to make the sound. Producing a "t" instead of a "k" is a common substitution and is nothing to be worried about unless your child is still doing it past the age of 5. Other sounds that may present difficulties for your child between now and the time he turns 3 include



* "r" pronounced as a "w," such as "wabbit" instead of "rabbit"

--> oh yes.. "mommy woll" when she is talking about rolling.

* "l" pronounced as a "w" or a "y," such as "yeg" instead of "leg"



* "s" lisped as a "th" sound, such as "thun" instead of "sun"

--> "thool" instead of stool. "nake" instead of snake.


* "sh" pronounced as an "s," such as "sip" instead of "ship"



* "ch" pronounced as a "sh," such as "wash" instead of "watch"



* "g" pronounced as a "d," such as "dame" instead of "game"



* "v" pronounced as a "b," such as "ban" instead of "van"



* "f" pronounced as a "p," such as "pish" instead of "fish"



* consonant blends such as tr, dr, sl, sn, sm, st, bl mispronounced by leaving one of the sounds off ("stop" becomes "top" or "sop")



* consonants in the middle of words left out, so "baseball" becomes "bayball"



* words with more than one syllable shortened or simplified, so "Emily" becomes "Memmy" or "Emmy"



Sometimes the difficulty in pronunciation has less to do with a particular letter sound than with the organization of the word itself. For example, your child may say "Dadda" or "Daddy," so you know he can make a "d" sound, yet he pronounces "dog" as "gog." In fact, he's mispronouncing it because the "g" sound comes right after it. Since the "d" is pronounced in the front of the mouth and the "g" is pronounced in the back, saying "dog" requires some tongue gymnastics that may be hard for your 2-year-old.

20090905

Had wanted to bring Kate kite flying but the wind just does not like mommy (nor her kite).  So mommy and Kate walked along some fields and ... what is she poking at???

aaahh..its some shrivelled, wrinkled mimosa flowers and leaves... Kate have some fun searching for the mimosa leaves and then poking at them just to see them closed up....

After that, she went to the elderly corner near her home and have fun with the equipment again....

 

20090904 first day at child care

Today is Kate's first day at child care.  Papa and mommy brought her over, and stayed with her for breakfast, and then papa left for work.

Mommy stayed with her for a while more,and left when the teacher brought the whole class to the playground area as Kate had insisted that mommy sit with her during lesson time.

Here is a picture of Kate sitting on the floor while waiting for the rest of the class to be finish putting on her shoes.  A very beautiful shot, I might say, as it show how her super straight hair fly all around her (she was sitted below the fan), and the little bit of apprehension that is shown on her face.

Mommy went for a hair cut, and she went back during naptime.  The teacher told her that Kate had behaved relatively well, cried abit during shower, but have finished her lunch and managed to fall asleep with the rest of the children.

p/s the name of the child care is deliberately left out :)

20090828 Janice's birthday

Kate in her new dress bought by Auntie Xiaowen...

It is Janice 表姐's birthday the next day so 姨姨 bought a small cake for celebration.  This is Kate sitting with 大姨姨 while waiting for the cake to be ready...

Lighting up the candles....

The cake is designed by Janice herself...

Posing with the cake... what's with young kids and that index-finger-in-the-air pose???