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The little guy began asking WHY very early, before he was even two. Most of the time, I am being grilled on the most mundane things.

Me:”Let’s go home now”
Thaddeus:”Why must go home?”
Me:”Because its late”
Thaddeus:”Why is it late?”
Me:”Because the moon has come out”
Thaddeus:”Why the moon has come out?”
Me:”Because it’s night already”
Thaddeus:”Why is it night already?”
Me:”Because the sun has gone to bed”
Thaddeus:”Why the sun has gone to bed?”
Me:”Because its late already”
Thaddeus:”Why is it late already?”
Me:”…..”

You get the drift?

Sometimes he would try to answer the questions himself by starting the next sentence with BECAUSE but is unable to complete his sentences properly most of the time, with the BECAUSE hanging in the air…

It really takes a lot of patience to field his WHYS especially when you have to crack your head to answer a string of questions you know will lead to nowhere. Yet I know its important to be responsive and encouraging in this phase, so even I feel like pulling my hair out and run screaming in circles, I smile and try to think of coherent answers to the one million and one WHYS!

But there are instances when it’s really legitimate WHYS and I don’t really have answers for them. One case in point, Talia started ballet lessons and the little man simply does not understand why he has to press his nose against the glass every time to see his sister and a bunch of cute little GIRLS having fun inside a room with a huge mirror. SIGH!

He would wail:”Jiejie goes to ballet class. Why didi cannot go ballet class?” Glupz! call me conservative, but I am not looking forward to putting him in a tutu, at least not NOW! and i think his interest stems from the fact that he wants to join his sister in everything now! So we stopped bringing him along when Talia goes for ballet.

And lately, the WHERES and WHAT HAPPENEDS has reared their heads too! We would be laughing and he would demand to know what happened. How do you explain a joke or what’s happening on TV?

He would also fight to repeat his day to me just as his sister is accounting to me the activities of her day. And two kids speaking at the same time and trying to understand them both at the same time is not easy.

He also has quite a sense of humour, albeit kiddy style! He chuckles easily when he finds something funny and would announced either “funny mummy!” or “funny jiejie!” and most frequently calling himself funny by declaring “funny didi!”

Funny boy!

This is one for the albums for sure, one of the many oh-so-cute pictures I am going to whip out for her wedding picture collage!

This may sound really lame but one of the keys is to start YOUNG! There you go! Once you know this, you are really off to a great beginning!

1. To start, we need to have good warm-ups so we don’t hurt ourselves unintentionally and ruin our chances of being a tennis star! NO NO!

Good job there for the little girl who is really serious about her training and warming up vis-a-vis the little guy who is just doing the bare minimum!

The little chap trying a little bit more but not quite there yet!

Finally pulling up his socks and trying harder!

2. To feel really comfortable holding a tennis racket! I mean you would need to pose for shots with your racket all the time, wouldn’t you! Enough said!

Balancing is important!

Learning to smile while holding the rackets!

3. Practise, practise, practise!

Practise with BIG balls erm balloons…

Practise with smaller balls!

Practise without balls!

4. Lastly, we don’t become tennis stars overnight so humility is obviously important. What could be a better lesson compared to picking up balls to cultivate that!

The husband and I are avid fans of board games, from the traditional Monopoly and Risk and Cluedo to European ones like The Settlers of Catan, Ticket to ride, Ark of the Covenant etc and we wanted to start the children young.

The children’s aunt gave them Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry for Christmas and the children had such a blast playing it.

In this game, the children create traffic chaos as they match vehicles type and colours. Its for 2 to 4 players and the age guide is for 4 years up but Talia had no difficulty understanding, playing and enjoying the game even when she was only 3 years old. Didi needed a little bit more help to be a courteous player (its ALWAYS his turn and he likes to hoard cards!) The game encourages observation and matching and develops basic strategic play.

After that we were always on the lookout for more board games. During a trip to Isetan we noticed a whole range of pre-schooler board games by this publisher Clementoni and picked up another game Ahoy! Me Hearties!

By the name, you would probably guess its a game with a pirate theme.

Its a pirate counting game and pirates raced around the board collecting coins for their treasure chest. The one who gets 10 coins first wins.

Even the little guy has no difficulty playing at all. He spins the wheel, moves his character piece around the board, counts his coins and places them in his chest! (All while even chomping down papayas!)

Its really good family fun playing together!

It has been a hectic hectic week for me last week. I took all five mornings off to bring Talia and Thaddeus to Julia Gabriels holiday program at the Forum. I did this last December as well but couldn’t get Talia into a class because it was full! It’s not cheap mind you! 1 kid for 5 mornings of 2 hrs each is about $300, putting 2 kids in set me back by $600! Yet I will have no qualms doing it again! Simply because the program is great, the teachers are good, it’s great bonding for me and the boy (his class must be accompanied), he gets to socialise and chat up girls and Talia gets to enjoy fun activities during her school holidays!

The boy went to Playclub and I signed the girl up for “I love reading”. Since I can’t go in with Talia, I was not quite sure what she did during her class, but she came back with some art and crafts, some writing exercises and she told me there was storytelling as well.

The boy’s Playclub program started with some warming up and toys playing on the mat before there were welcome songs and good morning songs sung. The children were taught to keep the toys back while singing the Cleanup song. That really was great. Now whenever I want the children to keep their toys at home, I start singing the Cleanup song too and it works. I like the energy levels of the teachers as well. There are three teachers, one head teacher and two assistants. I think JG has the most number of teachers in a pre-schooler class of this sort. For some other alternatives that I’ve been like Zoophonics, its only one teacher. Some other competitors like Growing Up Gifted and Bibinogs, its only two teachers. Oh! another thing is the classroom size, JG’s simply has the largest one by far.

Building blocks!

After that the children were straightaway launched into their art and craft activities. I think it makes sense as the children are most alert now. The theme for the week was The Seaside so the children were taught to recreate a beach scene on the the paper plate.

This time round, just 6 months on, it was a vast difference from how he fared when he was just 17 mths old. He virtually needed no help from me and was able to do most of the crafts himself!

The little guy was very focussed on painting his sand.

After the craft, it was storytelling time. He was also able to just sit by himself right in front of the teacher to savour the story without fidgeting. One thing about this boy is that he has quite a long attention span and is able to do things on his own for a pretty long time.

Listening intently to the story.

After that it was snack time. JG provides the food and water as well (but I guess with that kind of fees, that little bit of biscuits and cheese or sausages and fruits is nothing! bleh!). The children were encouraged to eat on their own and to drink from cups independently as well. I was surprised little Thad was able to drink his water without spilling at all. And after eating, they were encouraged to bring their little plates and cups back to the serving table as well.

Munching!

And its playtime after that. This is the other perk of JG. They have a huge play area complete with slides, play house, play kitchen, little cars and scooters of all kinds. The JG at Evans Road is even better as the play area is outdoors, so the children could even indulge in water play and sand play!

toot toot!

We spent 4 mornings in the classroom and on Wednesday, the whole class went to Sentosa to truly experience the beach. That, I was a tad disappointed. The parents and children were simply left to their own devices. There were no group activities at all so I guess a little bit more planning on how the children could enjoy the beach better would have been better.

Even so, it was no doubt the little guy enjoyed the excursion. He made several trips to the water edge to collect water with his little pail and squealed when his feet was covered with water and half submerged in sand!

Thaddeus digging away at the sand!

The week just flew by. Class would end at 11am and I would drive everyone back home to have lunch and then I leave for work at 12.30pm. Oh! i forgot to mention, on Friday we went to this free interactive play CAT sponsored by JG at the Forum as well at 1pm. That simply was fantastic! Truly entertaining! If you have a child between 1 to 4 years old, you gotta bring them there to see this! Even this old kid here was enthralled!

So its adiós until the next December holiday program!

Oh! this is like so many other run-of-the-mill vids posted at youtube - your kid singing twinkle twinkle little star! But its memorable for ME not because well, I am the mum (that counts too) but because I saw how he progressed until he sang this fully at 21 months old. He has been singing as early as 12 mths, doing his tuneless little tunes and progressing to recognisable tunes with unrecognisable words, to gaps with some recognisable words and some unrecognisable words to this! What a work in progress!

Then from the vid, you can see a blackened wound at the back of his left hand. He burnt his hand from I-dunno-where! (see him checking out the wound in the midst of singing). We think he must have tried to touch the soup pot in the kitchen and gotten the huge blister! OUCH! What really bothered me was that no one noticed the blister until I got home from work and saw the blister! The helper said she remembered a particular loud session of wailing right after lunch but did not see anything amiss! The grandmother who was at home also did not noticed anything! I guess an accident is an accident and there is no one to blame but honestly this again just reminded me there will be no one who is as sensitive and careful and alert as a mother, even a scatterbrained mother!

Thaddeus: “mummy! bao bao!” (struggling to climb into my lap while I am eating at the dining table)

Me: (after ignoring him for a while) “wait didi! mummy is eating now, carry you later okie?”

Thaddeus: (not giving up) “MUMMY! BAO BAO!”

Me: *chomp chomp chomp* (makes necessary soothing sounds while wolfing down lunch)

Then he said the most shocking thing to me!

Thaddeus: (in a half sob) “why mummy don’t love me anymore?”

I was so shocked I didn’t know how to respond! How do you explain to a 22-mth old that refusing his demands doesn’t mean I don’t love him anymore?

DO this!

This is the word that the little boy has taken up recently. If he is angry with you either because you asked him to do something he is unwilling to, or that he can’t get his way, he will stop in his tracks, pause for a little while, then with his index hand, point at you and say BOMB! in what he must consider one of his own most formidable expressions!

We have stopped him and told him he’s not allowed to do that! (isn’t that like swearing in baby language!) and right after he will gesture with his finger but no BOMB! will come out from his mouth but you can literally hear the word going in his head!

When he does that, it is actually quite funny to watch but we have to be careful not to laugh right in front of him. After admonishing him quite sternly, we have to turn away to stifle our smiles because he looks downright darn cute when he says that!

At 21 months now, he is talking almost in short sentences most of the time and loves to parrot after everything his sister says. He can count to twenty but frequently missing out fifteen and sixteen. His favorite mandarin phrase is 小熊刷牙 from this 小熊 series of mandarin books that I bought. His rendition of twinkle twinkle little star is almost perfect with all the words in. However my appreciation of that drops several notches when he wakes up at 4am to sing till 6am! All our sanity is kept by reminding ourselves what we will give 20 years later for him to want to sing to us in the wee hours of the morning!

Kev has very fond memories of this seafood chi zhar place at the end of punggol. so after Ikea at Tampines, we thought we would go check this place out again. That food place has shifted into punggol club or something and the food wasn’t so fantastic. There are boats anchored there but the water was dirty and so don’t think we will be going back anytime soon.

Yeah! we are leaving!

Ahh! talking about Ikea, we saw this new play kitchen set there that we thought if we didn’t already have our little tikes one, we would probably buy for ourselves. Anyway, Von, take a look and see if you like what you see, if ok, we will get this for Marissa-ann!

Ikea kitchen set

This post is really a post made up of bits. The Saturday before the March holidays started, I brought both kiddos to this Act 3 thingy called Child Size, which was held at the old Parliament House.

The session started with a mass story telling session right where parliament seatings used to take place. The storyteller was an excellent matronly lady with perfect Queen’s English spinning one interesting tale after another. But because I arrived quite late, the children had to sit way at the back but still they were absorbed in the stories, even the little boy.

After that we were split into groups and marched out into the sun into an adjoining building where a bibik was sitting on stage waiting for us to settle down. Our group had about 15-20 children. The bibik (until now I can’t quite decide if “she’s” really a woman or a man cross-dressing to be a woman! muahaha) sang songs and play games with the children. When she invited children to go up the stage to sing a song with her, Talia, possibly the youngest child there, put up her hand and said “ME!” so loud that the bibik asked her what’s her name and how old she was! hehe! Anyway, she happily trooped up the stage before the bibik had to use lures of sweets to get the other children up!

Up on the stage

After this, another woman with a young malay assistant came into the room with loads of musical instruments, drum, baraccas, triangles and the children essentially had a jamming session.

Talia and Thaddie enjoyed themselves tremendously.

After that we were marched back to the main building where on one side, paper cut-out dolls with cut-out clothes were laid on the table…

Paper dolls

and on the other side, to make stuff out of cardboard.

Doodling away…

I was still worried that didi may not like it but to my surprise, he enjoyed every activity as much as his sister.

And this is the first time I took both kids out on my own. After the session, we walked along the river to Raffles Place mrt. The children were literally squealing and running and admiring everything, wanting to touch everything and calling out “mummy!” almost everywhere but I never felt more blessed as I look at their little backs running around.