balancing act

As Val grows older and more cognisant of the dos and don'ts, he's also pushing the envelope more and more. He KNOWS when he shouldn't do something, but does it anyways to see how I'd react. He holds his spoon out and goes "oh no, no no no" but still flings it down with gusto. He wants to see what i'd do. These days I try all ways.... from stern warnings, to strong eye contact, to holding him back, to light smacks on the hand or the bum. Sometimes they work - especially the eye contact thing. I learnt it from the Horse Whisperer himself. (really!) But still, i think discipline's really a balancing act - how much is too much? Spare the cane and spoil the child? or smack the kid and hurt his ego? There was one night, i was frustrated with him - - he had been awake since 2pm and was still going about like a dynamo at midnight -- I shouted at him loudly. His reaction? He laughed, he giggled, he chortled even. He thought it was funny. @#$%^&&*** Parenthood - tough job

why is he so shy?

The boy @ Let's Take A Walk Dec 2008 (Gosh time does fly!)Photo by Linus Long

Val is literally a "long" or dragon at home and a "chong" or worm when he's outside. He screams, he runs, he chuckles, he does all kinds of weird stuff at home but once he's outside, he's usually "too" well-behaved - to the extent of being timid. He hides behind my legs to peer at the world ; when bigger kids brush past him or take his toys he bawls; he seems scared of so many things when we're outside. i dun mean being at the beach or at the mall when he's still essentially interacting with us, but when we're at someone's home and there're other kids, he really becomes another person. It takes him a loooong while to warm up - usually when i'm about to leave (yes, his engine takes that long to warm up!). The only explanation is that he really doesn't have enough kiddie company during the week, so i really have to bring him out to places with more kids. 2 weeks ago, just being in Go Go Bambini was enough to freak him out - - the hordes of screaming kids at OTT decibel levels just didn't do it for him. I remember once we were in Vivocity and there were loud announcements made by the DJ - Val hated that to the core. He much preferred being out in the open. Today at JH's house, he also refused to be indoors, much preferring to kick a ball in solace, fleeing to me once a stranger came up. He even cried when an older boy tried to hug him. HARUUMPH..... Guess we really need to help him socialise more. Right now, there're plans of sending him to a 2-hr daily playgroup when he hits 18 months....

our lil mime actor

i'm pleasantly surprised by the benefits of sign language, even my parents have cottoned on to the advantages of a toddler being able to express himself - he hardly cries because he can actually tell us what he wants with his hands and eyes, and by making lots of expressive sounds. recently, he has also invented new signs for the things he wants but can't say - - e.g. for crayons and pens - he signs with his hand how we would sign to waiters asking for a bill - you know, like clutching a pen and signing something. yesterday he told me that he wanted something on the desk by vigorously blinking his eyes and then putting his hands in front of them. When i figured out that he meant the camera, he was quite delighted. And of course, he never fails to tell me when he wants his milk - now that sign he is very proficient in making. in fact, i have a suspicion that he's now jus making the "milk" sign for fun, rather than when he really needs the breast. My mom calls the breast his opium. it's true - when you occupy him with things to do, he never asks for "milk" but once i am alone with him and he is not doing something, he leaps onto me, signing vigorously for milk. i try not to oblige but when the lil bugger actually adds on a sign that looks like "please" how can i say NO? haha.....see, We've trying to get him to sign "please" and "thank you" - by doing it ourselves whenever we ask him to do something - so must lead by example right....

anyways, a quick update of what he can say now (more for my own benefit as i haven't been keeping a real journal)

Truck - - says "tuck"
buckle - says "tiak"
car - - goes "booo booo"
thunder --- goes "brrrooom" with fingers in the air
cat --- says "mao" - his first chinese word!

***funniest****
"OH NO..." - - yes yes, he actually says that... with a really nasal accent that totally mimics my dad. it's super hilarious cos my dad always go, "oh no, no no no" with Val


other gibberish
wawabu -- we suspect it's from a chinese song he often listens to "wa wa bing" (meaning toy soldiers)
papuji - - we suspect it's mimicking my mom going "pua pua si" (fall to death) in hokkien when she chides him for spilling water on the floor cos it could make her fall to her death


no videos or pictures to show cos i've been a lazy photographer... and also the fact that it's close to impossible to snap him in action - because the moment i whip out the camera, he forgets everything else and leaps towards it.

life lessons

ONce again lil Val taught me something today: no matter how much you plan, things may not work out to your heart's desire! :-) Our family had set about making elaborate plans to visit the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden on Sunday - what time to go? who would be free? where shall we eat after? The adults were in a tizzy shifting around plans to make it one fun outing. And then Val develops a fever this afternoon after coming back from a lunch with my friends at Dempsey Hill (my gosh this is another post for another time ! i totally felt out of place at one of the eateries) - which means all our plans for the grand excursion tomorrow are chucked. Oh well.....as long as the lil fella get well soon. that's most important eh?


@Sushi Tei some weekends ago when the boy was well and up to all sorts of mischief

does filial piety count excuse my spending? tell me ...

So i went to the interchange this afternoon and had the time to stop by the telco shop. see, i've been thinking for a while to get my dad to stop his pre-paid phone cos it costs so much each time we call him. So i found out that if i got a new line under my name for him, it would cost only $9 a month for him. COol right? money saving right? so i went ahead and got him a new Nokia phone for $48 plus a sim that cost $26 - totalling $77, and then upon walking out, went DOH! i spent ! how? yikes?

So my question, dear friends, does it count if i spent out of piety? ;-)

maybe he really can read...?

leafing through nature
Originally uploaded by tumbleweeed

i bought a doodle pad - one of those with a magnetic pen and you scrawl on the white board and then erase everything with a button - when Val was few months old. sometimes, i just pick it up and scrawl pictures or write words for him. maybe 2 months ago, i wrote 'ball' and kept showing it to him. Obviously due to his Ball infatuation, he had no problems pronouncing the word. In fact, it was clear that he wasn't reading the word - just associating the doodle pad with ball really. cos, occasionally when i pick up the doodle pad, he goes "ball" already. Anyways, so yesterday, i decided to just write the word 'dog' , and guess what he went 'dot'. I thought i heard wrongly, and wrote 'ball' and he went 'ball' and then so on and so forth. So thanks to "My Baby Can Read" videos, i am quite sure that Val can now at least differentiate between 'ball' and 'dog' he may not even understand what these symbols mean right now, but he sure can tell the difference. It's an interesting start - cos according to the researcher who made the series, the first 50 words are the hardest to pick up, but once that happens, the baby's vocab simply accelerates, soaking up new words all the time.

I don't harbour big dreams of him becoming a genius and neither do we hothouse him at all - he watches the videos only once a day or sometimes twice a day after his baths. My only hope is for him to discover the same joy of reading as i did when my sis and i were given a few dozens of second-hand Enid Blytons during our primary school days. I am a staunch believer that if one is comfortable with words, and books, you can never be a real loner. I was always at ease with being on my own - solitude was never about loneliness cos i always had the worlds of acclaimed writers to visit. Ah.... reading. Love it!

err.... the fiscally impossible update

okay i 'fess up. yes, much to the delight of those laying bets on the sidelines, it would seem that the odds are definitely against me. i was boobytrapped yesterday into spending. (yeah yeah blame it on others you say) but truly! it all started out as a perfectly innocent idea of tagging along with my mom and sis to the mall - mom had to make glasses, while sis had shopping to do. for more than an hour, i was being the good girl - just window shopping , i even resisted the temptation to make new glasses, reminding myself to delay the spending till april.... and then when we were about to leave, the instigator (aka Sis) asks me to treat her to a coffee. Being the generous person i am (*cough*) i agreed without thinking. Sure, why not? So we headed for a cafe (all this while i must have been hypnotised or something). Then we all sat down, and then, i suddenly remembered that the instigator has a Dome card with really good deals - and then in a flash, i had agreed to also sign on to be a Dome member - dishing out ......$80 ... wait wait..but in return, i got $43 worth of coffee credit, $30 of vouchers, plus five or six more food and beverage vouchers. good deal right... i mean, i was going to fork out at least $20 for 3 cups of coffee and cake.. so why not go the full monty right? haha... right....... whatever. so that said, i now have a grand total of $100 to donate to a charity once easter is over..... please people, stop laying traps for me! ;-P

learning curve

Val's been on a steep learning curve this week, so i have been told by Grandma. The most significant would be that he is now indicating that he would like to learn how to put himself to sleep on the bed unassisted, i.e. without us carrying him in the ERGO and rocking him to sleep. Grandma says for 3 days now, he has insisted on tossing and turning around on the bed at nap time to try to go to sleep. He would try to shut his eyes close very tightly and lie down on the bed trying to nap but normally he would fail. Then after a lot of lolling about and whining, he would finally fall asleep. But today, somehow, after an hour of the sleeping attempt, he was still wide awake and frustrated so it was back into the Ergo again to rock him to sleep. I'm really proud of his attempts and hope that he will continue to do so over the weekend while he's with me... hmm.....

the other significant achievement would be that he has finally decided that he will now sign MILK MILK again with his hands! Yeah! YEAH! YEAH! so now, he promptly signals MILK whenever he sees me and i always try to nurse him if we're at home and if he's had his meals first. and suddenly too after this, he now signs "rabbit" as well! But he only puts his little hands up till his ear level instead of on his head to indicate the long rabbit ears. Cute. Oh, and a self-invented sign for "Scared" . he's a little drama king - ever since he learnt the concept of "scared" (he puts his hand on his chest and pats himself) , he kept going around being "scared" of everything - from the neighbour's dog barking, to people talking to him. Oh, and that poor neighbour who cut his hair a second time? Val bawls at the sight of her - he goes "scared scared" with his hands frantically whenever he sees her now. :-)

On the speaking front - Val has finally progressed beyond "ball ball" he nows goes "butt!" when he sees a bus, "tuck" when he reads the book with trucks and tractors, and of course, his new favourite word is now "dog dog" - and may i say *brag*, like the word "ball" , it is PERFECTLY pronounced ;-P it's funny cos sometimes in the middle of his sleep, if he hears the dog barking, he would rouse, sit up, point outside, go "dog dog" and then tumble back to sleep. Aiyah. he's so cute. i love my lil man.

another observation - i dunno where he learnt this - but he teases people. he would blink his eyes and tease us with it, knowing his eye blinking attempts are so comic. Then recently he learns to pretend to give you something, and then runs away with it, cackling with laughter. nobody taught him this. so where did he pick it up? grandma asked, with some concern today, whether he might become a lil bully in school - since he loves to tease people. hmmm..... only time will tell. we just have to teach him properly - draw out his boundaries for him.... ah... parenting... complicated.

fresh air #2

Yeah. i did it again. This morning, i managed to drag my tired ass up Fort Canning Park again. I was soooo tempted to just say "another time" but decided to just get out of the office and go for a morning walk. It wasn't as cool as the first time, since i was about 15 minutes later than last week's jaunt. But it was just as nice and refreshing going up the steps and circling the mound briskly. I saw a little squirrel scurry up a tree... a black moth flitter up the stairs.. and of course, the endless chorus of the cicadas made me think i was in a forest. Nice. Are you also minutes away from a brisk walk or a quick swim from your office? Do you feel tired and listless during the week? I highly recommend a 20-minute break from the routine to get your blood pumping, rejuvenate your mind, and just let the stress out. Better than Yomeishu i believe. It's free too.

lent part #2

call it an impulsive move: i broke my lenten promise without even realising it until seconds later. and it was for the silliest thing. something that i usually DON"T even buy. arrgghhh... guess what it was? drumm roolllllll......

A box of Magnum ice cream on promotion! Comes with a free ice bag! Plus five sticks of solero ice-sticks too! For just $20.

My eyes must have glazed over the moment the ice cream sales woman flashed me a picture of a Magnum. Perhaps it was the past two days of "abstinence" that just got me silly. But there i was, without a moment's hesitation, i went "yes yes yes, i'll get it" and then realised, oops i did it.... and it was just way too pai-seh to tell the woman i didn't want it anymore. So there. Yup. $20 bucks spent and wasted on fattening and unhealthy MAGNUMs no less....

so that means $20 will now be pledged to a charity - i haven't decided yet. it's silly really. not the pledging - but the buy. so impulsive, so irrational. so dumb dumb cos this morning i was going to buy a bag from Bloom - run by Diana based in Siem Reap - and then told her i was on this no-shopping thingie and then tonight i splurge on bl***dy ice-creams! Arggh....

but boy, these 2 days have been quite challenging and interesting in more ways than i expected. First, there were all those 20% discount vouchers for TopShop and Karen Millen passed around the office - they expire before my 40 days so i had to pass them up. Then, i chanced across the cutest key chains at a mall going for $2.90 but i managed to walk away. This morning, i walked past Starbucks and was so tempted to have that warm blueberry skinny muffin.... aw.... nope, i gritted my teeth and plodded on. I have bought some Old Chang Kee fishballs though - but for subsistence really cos i was so hungry going home. And then, the MacAddict texted me this morning that a cheaper version of the imac is now on sale! What shall i do???? Chewing my fingernails already. Aw........ and the IT show's next week......

Gosh.. i never guessed that i was so addicted till now.

MY BABY CAN READ! ..... not

Here's Mr SmellyBottom Lay with his daily fix of the news. He has, at the tender age of 14 and some months, formed a studious habit of studying the papers, many times each day.



Here he is again. Making some humanly contact with the beings around him to express some disgruntle that he cannot seem to find that piece of news he is hunting for.



Finally....... he finds that thing he is looking for...BALL BALL! Yup, the sports pages are his favourite read. :-) cos he sees grandma reading the papers everyday. One day She had graciously lent him the sports section to browse on his own - and what can we say? The rest was history. He is officially in love with the inky smudgy prints and he flips through them quite a few times a day to find the elusive rounded objects. Talk about a positive influence! Maybe the lil man might just grow up to be a sports journo? Hmm....

wabbit

Val's first close up encounter with a wabbit - he only has those "touch and feel" books with a black wabbit on the cover that he sayangs. So upon sighting the real thang, he runs and hides behind my legs to peer at the furry thing.


he makes lots of high pitched excited sounds "hnh...hnh.... hnh...." and begins yabbering away in his lingo


he decides that Sugar's orange cage is waaay safer to tackle... goes over boldly and begins walking around with it... FYI - we don't know Sugar or her master.... just complete strangers on a beach but this fella went around carting Sugar's box like it was his.


finally the lil man musters up the courage to stroke the rabbit and is delighted with the experience. A little ang moh girl nearby goes "it's a wabbit!" and Val suddenly bursts out crying and runs away. *DUH* i have no idea why!

for Lent

and so it's Lent again... a season to reflect and think of all our past doings... and certainly i've got plenty to think about though this blog isn't quite the space to discuss those matters. anyways, the priest asked us today to think about of what we would give up for the next 40 days in preparation for Easter. That set me thinking of how $ can really change our way of life and i asked myself if i could possibly NOT BUY ANYTHING for the next 40 days.

i remember how during those days when i'd given up a full time job to volunteer - how even a cuppa coffee meant a lot to me. $4 for a cuppa was unimaginable. I ate at home a lot, and met up people after having my meals, and even left singapore for 4 months to backpack cos that was a cheaper option than staying here. when you have little to spare, you tend to think more clearly i believe. there's less clutter in the brain - less options, and thus what you need to do is clearer. now that i am earning an income again and being in the city that never stops shopping and selling, suddenly i feel the breathlessness of being caught up by a shopping bug again.... now i find myself surfing the net looking at computers when my trusty G4 is still plodding along; i pick up a handbag online cos it's on sale; and i can now afford organic stuff when previously i just closed my eyes and picked the cheapest on the shelf. Sigh....this jungle bunny feels like an animal unleashed in shopping galaxy. Thank the stars for the values of thrift that's been programmed into my system so i haven't gone TOTALLY berserk swiping those cards. i know of people who max out their credit, and deplete their monthly income on a regular basis. For me, it goes back to how one's brought up i believe. My mom was uber strict with us growing up - if we wanted something, we had to save up for it, and we never got to buy it at the first encounter. that was usually a good test of whether we really wanted something bad enough. i try to practise that principle as much as i can. and so , if i DO try the ambitious task of abstaining from purchase for the next 40 days, this principle would be something to rely on.

I thought about whether i should be writing about this online cos we really should not broadcast to the world what we plan to do but thought the online record would press me to stick to it cos of public accountability issues. So there you have it: i am now saying that i will NOT buy/ consume anything unneccessary for the next 40 days till EASTER is reached.

i've drawn out some rough guidelines to this abstinence.

1. it starts on monday 0000 hrs (which means i have one more hour to shop!)
2. it excludes daily subsistence such as lunch, but it DOES include designer coffees and expensive meals such as sashimi, steaks, lobster, anything consumed in a restaurant (unless i am made to go because it is part of a family outing cos it would be rude otherwise no?)
3. it excludes necessities such as tissue paper, sanitary pads, toothpaste but i am limited to buying generic ones nothing branded
4. it excludes my $100 zara vouchers because they expire in April! (not using them would amount to waste ya?)
5. it excludes magazines i buy for work purposes.

Specifically this means:

1. i will not buy another new pair of shoes
2. i will not go to the IT show that starts in mid march
3. i will opt out of restaurant meals as much as possible without becoming the most anti-social person around.

All that said, may i stress that i really am not a spendthrift, ALSO i know that i really should not be doing this only at Lent but make it a daily practice. but hey, baby steps are a great way to start.

ONE LAST THING:
if i should falter, i will put aside the equivalent sum spent and donate it to a charitable cause. ;-)