It always astounds me when I read with you at night for bedtime. You're now reading quite advanced books and have been able to phonetically sound out words since you were 3 years old. You taught yourself to read and we're amazed at how effortlessly you do it.
Here are some videos of you reading at 3yo
3 years 2 months
3 years 6 months
At first we thought you memorised the words in the books but Daddy tested you by asking you to read backwards, which you did very well. You also make sure we read every single page, if we miss a page, you let us know right away!
You're also very good with your numbers. You were able to count to 100 at 3, you're now adding and substracting in your head. You learnt all the months and days of the week at 3 as well, so we couldn't trick you on your routine.
A funny video of you at 4y 5m counting when you were pumped full of sugar and needed to sleep. This was at Aunty Mandy's birthday I think.
These past 5 months have gone so fast with you. I know I've missed quite a few updates since you were born but the more I procrastinate to do a good job with photos and videos of you, the more likely that there won't be any updates. So I'm going to put my thoughts in here when I can so that these memories slowly build up.
My smiling chubby baby, you are such a joy to the whole family. You smile all the time, whether it's eating, playing, being held. Oh how you love to be held. We have to hold you ALL the time so I don't have any time to do anything. I spend your naps carrying you around, so right now you are sleeping while I carry you. I have to stand up and type on the laptop bc you don't like people to sit down while being carried. Such a little fuss pot! Though we all do this willingly because your giggles and smiles when you wake up are so precious. You are very sneaky though bc when you wake up, you stay so quiet in the carrier so that we carry you for longer. No tears at all when you wake up.
You are now 5 and a half months. Yesterday you rolled for the first time! I captured it on video and will post here.
You also started solids at 4.5 months old and you LOVE your purees, it's a dream to feed you. I took this video this morning because you kept smiling and laughing as I was feeding you. These are the foods you've tried:
- sweet potato, peas, carrots, apples, cauliflower, pumpkin
You seem to love the pumpkin and sweet potato best, so I try to mix it with the other veges.
You slept through the night 2 nights ago...and haven't done it since. You slept from 7.30pm to 5.30am and oh my boobs were so full. You might have slept longer but we had a huge storm in the morning and the thunder woke us both up. Thankfully at nights you are happy to sleep in your basinette after the feeds.
You must be around 8kg now, you were 7.4kg at 4ish months. You have the sweetest and gummiest smile. You look like you might be sitting up on your own soon, probably from all the practice sitting in your baby chair to eat your solids.
The first 6 weeks were the absolute hardest. Your cried A LOT. Probably because you couldn't feed very well on my boobs. It was a struggle for both of us and so painful for me. I persevered but was tempted to give up on each feed because your latch wasn't right and every time I fed you, it felt like needles being stuck into me. At 6 weeks, you suddenly didn't need to be held to sleep and I managed to sleep a bit more than 1.5-2hours at a time. I was so sleep-deprived the first 6 weeks! I don't know how I survived. But since then, it got easier and easier. You know feed well, sleep well and growing fatter every day.
We try to follow a bedtime routine for you but it's hard to juggle on some days. Lucas has been lovely and reads Good Night Moon to you sometimes. He doesn't even need to read the words, he's memorised it from us reading the same book to him when he was a baby.
I know this post is out of order, so I'll go back and write another post with your first few months with more videos. It's much easier to link to the youtube videos that I have been uploading rather than the photos. Oh, photos! You did the cutest professional photos at 4 months! I will definitely upload those on here!
You've been looking forward to opening all the presents under the tree and everyday you would ask me if it was time to open the presents yet. It was no surprise once we gave you the go-ahead to open the presents, you did so with great gusto! I'll upload some videos showing you in action later. For now, I'll upload some lovely family photos we took around the tree.
Isaac was so excited to play with you! Hopefully next year you guys will be able to make the most of all the Thomas train sets we have at home.
We had a few friends and family over today to celebrate your birthday. You had such a wonderful time being centre of attention, running around in your cute train conductor outfit and eating lots of sugary food that you are not normally allowed to eat!
Here are some photos from my SLR, there are more photos and videos on my phone that I haven't uploaded yet.
Another wonderful Christmas spent with family. We put up the Christmas tree a week before Christmas and surprisingly, you did not try to open the presents under the tree! Here is a rare photo of you with the Santa hat on, you were not as cooperative as you were last year...
We spent Christmas Day with Grandma & Grandpa Tran. Aunty Yvonne cooked a yummy roast and after lunch you got a huge surprise!
Here's a video of you in action with your new wheels!
Exhausted from all the excitement of Christmas Day.
Your favourite past-time: collecting all your trains and lining them up.
We spent Boxing day at home with a BBQ. There were lots more presents for you (all Thomas-related of course!) We even had Aunty Katrina and Uncle Dan joining us via Skype on our TV - love technology!
Giving Grandma a kiss
All the presents waiting to be opened!
Here's another video capturing the day:
I took lots of videos this year to make these iMovies, so don't have as many photos compared to last year.
Here are some more non-iMovie videos of you opening presents - love your squeal of delight when you see it's more Thomas!
Sorry Lucas - I missed your 20 month sticker photos! Something kept coming up and we just never got around to it. We have lots of photos this month though from our holiday to Vanuatu. You're such a funny boy, I want to record all the funny things that have happened.
Things you love:
- the ipad! Oh my gosh, Daddy and I have to spell out the word 'ipad' now because if we say the word, your ears immediately perk up and you ask for it. You are an absolute pro on it, you've found all the games I tried to hide in folders and you figure out how to play them without us teaching you. We had no choice but to give you the ipad during dinner time at Vanuatu, otherwise you would be so disruptive and throw your toys on the ground or complain loudly. Without fail, one of the waiters or guests would walk by and see you tapping away at the screen and they would remark at how smart you are. Same thing happened on the flight back, an old lady actually brought her friend over to watch you play because they couldn't believe you knew what to do. We're giving you an ipad-detox right now that we're home because it's too unhealthy to be so fixated on the ipad.
- you sing along to quite a few songs now, it's so cute that you can carry a tune even though you can't quite say the words. Songs that you like - wheels on the bus, there was a farmer who had a dog and Bingo was his name, alphabet song
- speaking of words, you love to say 'No'. You say it all the time. It's like you're going into the terrible two's already! You love to push boundaries, you ignore us if you don't want to listen and you're very unpredictable!
- Thomas. Oh my gosh, how did I forget to mention your crazy fan addition for anything Thomas! The last 2 nights, you fell asleep hugging a Thomas book. You would refuse any book but Thomas. If we take the book from you before you've fallen asleep, you would cry and demand it back. It's hilarious watching you hug such oversized and heavy books to sleep! You also insist on wearing clothes with Thomas on it. On the weekend, I was dressing you in summer clothes but you spied a long-sleeve Thomas hoody. It was too hot to wear the hoody but you refused to let it go. So I compromised by letting you hold the hoody while I put a short-sleeve shirt on you. You continued to hold the hoody throughout the car ride to the local shopping centre.
- whenever a song comes on that you like (particularly the theme songs to children's shows) you will wiggle your bum and move your shoulders. You also do the shoulder wiggle when you eat something that you like, it's like you can't contain your delight and have to do a little shimmy to express your happiness.
- you have this uncanny ability to recognise our car. We try to trick you with other black cars but you somehow recognise which one is ours. Daddy and I were at the shopping mall the other week and were having trouble finding our car, you had actually spotted it before we did after we walked right past it. You excitedly screamed, "There! There!"
- You're fascinated with belly buttons, especially your own. Now that the weather is warmer, I've been dressing you in t-shirts and shorts, so you love to pull your t-shirt up and point to your belly.
Sleep:
- Earlier this month, we learnt a trick that would put you back to sleep when you woke up in the middle of the night. Previously I would wake up bleary-eyed whenever you cried and usually ended up carrying you into our room to sleep because you would refuse to sleep. One night, I was so tired that I used our baby monitor and used the intercom function to tell you to go back to sleep. To my utter amazement, after I said, "Lie down, Lucas. Go to sleep" you immediately laid down and went to sleep! I thought it was a fluke but it happened the next night. I called it my, "voice of God" trick. Whenever I used it, you would look around a bit confused and then immediately fall to the crib and go to sleep. You're getting a bit smarter now so it doesn't work during the day but on the occasion when you wake in the middle of the night, the "voice of God" still works.
Eat:
- You're so fussy and only like Asian food. We had lots of trouble getting you to eat the food in Vanuatu because they did not have any Asian options, so we had to order risotto practically every meal for you.
- Favourite foods: miso soup, yoghurt, watermelon, vanilla milkshakes, french fries
- At restaurants, you take your bowl and very loudly say 'BOWL!' to the waiters, your way to express that you want food NOW! It's funny and a bit mortifying.
- Your signal to us when you no longer want to eat is to close your eyes and move your head around, it's as though if you don't see your food then you don't have to eat it. Or you will pretend like you want to fall asleep by rubbing your eyes so that your hand is in front of your mouth and we can't put get the spoon near your mouth. You've actually been doing this since we first started feeding you but I didn't remember to write it until Daddy reminded me.
Play:
- Trains, cars, anything with wheels!
- Thomas. Anything that has Thomas on it.
- You still love books, especially Thomas books.
Say:
-You have your own language and babble away to yourself all the time
- You're still not saying very much though you understand everything we say, including Chinese words from your Grandparents
- English words: No, book, more, there, da da (Thomas), bus, wow (and it is expressed as Wow!), hi, hello, bye, shoes, choo choo (train), vroom vroom (car), bowl, yesh (yes), bah (for smoochy kiss)...that's all I can think of for now
- Still not saying mummy or daddy :(
How cool are these little gifs - I just found the feature on the blog!
I booked a photographer to take some photos of us when you were 16 months old. I was hoping to capture the milestone of you walking. Unfortunately, you didn't start walking until a week after the photo shoot! That's ok, we got some lovely winter photos of you all rugged up and doing our favourite things like reading and playing with bubbles. I love your smiles and even your frowns!
