2y9m - An update on our cheeky monkey

You've grown so much and are so talkative now! Your vocabulary has improved a lot. Daddy and I are constantly surprised at the things you say. You're a little monkey with a strong and cheeky personality.

One day, you decided to make this little piggy face. The more we laughed, the more you made the face! You only did it for one day and then haven't done it since! Lucky I have photographic evidence.

You're still crazy about all things Cars. In fact, you insist on wearing a Cars t-shirt every day. I've bought so new Cars t-shirts in the last couple weeks as we can't keep up with the laundry. Your favourite train is still Gordon. In fact, we pack a "train bag" every time we go out and you always put a Gordon train in there.


Development:
- Counting to 100...and beyond! At night, we turn on a turtle light that beams the moon and stars on the ceiling. It's a routine that you want to count all the stars before you go to sleep. So each night, we count up to 100, though when you really don't want to sleep, you'll count 101, 102.... Suffice to say, it takes a long time before you fall asleep!
- A few months ago, you surprised us by counting backwards!

- You know how to spell your name. You know that Daddy is called David and Mummy is called Pauline. I'm trying to teach you to memorise our address and my phone number. You remember which bus numbers we catch to go to school.
- "Oh dear..." "Oh my goodness!" and the ever funny one that I'm sure you picked up from us, "Oh my gawd.....!"
- You love singing the Alphabet song and the Thomas song. Yesterday I got a cute video of you singing the Thomas song at breakfast.
- You know lots of colours in both English and Chinese
- When we ask you to speak Chinese, you'll start reciting the numbers. Grandma says you can count quite far in Chinese as well. Such a smart cookie.

Daycare:
You still cry when you drop you off for school. In fact, you sometimes start complaining before we even reach the door.
"I want to go home! I want to see Mummy! I don't want to go to school"

I'm told you calm down after a few minutes and happily play the rest of the day. I love picking you up from daycare because you're always so excited to go home! You'll shout loudly: "Bye everyone!" and run to get your shoes.

Here's a video from last month when I picked you up (2y8m):

Daycare pickup (2y7m) - look at that big smile!

Daycare pickup (2y5m) - I love capturing your reaction when you see me.

Just for fun, this was your reaction to seeing us when we picked you up from your first day at daycare:

Alpaca farmstay at the Hunter Valley

We drove for 2 hours to Hunter Valley to stay at an Alpaca farm for 3 days. Mummy is starting a new job so I thought it would be nice to take a few days for a family trip and to also celebrate Daddy's birthday. I booked a farm stay thinking you would enjoy seeing the farm animals. The accommodation also looked quite nice with a 2 bedroom cottage overlooking the water. In the morning, I tried to prepare you for our trip to the farm. This was your lackluster response:

Never mind, I thought once you got to the farm, you would be really excited about seeing the animals.

We arrived in the afternoon to a beautiful view of the water in front of our cottage.

Here's the cottage where we spent 3 nights.

Our cottage in the background

We  went to feed the alpacas. You were quite scared at first and so was Daddy. The alpacas were quite aggressive when they heard the rattle of the bucket with the food.

2 years + 3 months: an update

Your vocabulary has improved so much these past couple months! You're at such a cute age right now. Here is an update of your likes, dislikes and funny stories:


Favourite toys:
- You've expanded your interests beyond Thomas and are now crazy about all things from the Disney Pixar Cars movie. You especially love the purple car, Holley Shiftwell.

Actually, you love anything purple!

Of course, you also like the main characters Lightning McQueen and Mater.

Gordon is still a favourite and because Gordon has the number 4 on his train, you also point out number 4 whenever you see it, especially when you see a car license plate with the number 4 on it!

Favourite activities:
You love to play with cars and trains. You love going to the park. Here's a video I took on Mother's Day this year.

Funny sayings:
- You have the cutest way of introducing yourself to people.
Lucas: "Hello friend! My is Lucas". Check out the video below when I caught this exchange!

- You also like to say bye to everything! Bye house! Bye car! Bye shopping centre! Bye bus!
- When you say "See you tomorrow" you also like to shake the other person's hand.  Such a polite boy!
- You have an incredible sense of direction. You recognise the way to the 2 shopping malls and also the 2 routes back home. You're always directing us: "Shopping centre this way!"

Favourite foods:
- Tempura
- Teriyaki
- Miso soup
- Anything Japanese!
- Yakult
- Yoghurt, as long as it has Lightning McQueen on it. You call it "car yoghurt".
- Milk
- Ice cream! You're always opening the fridge and asking us to get you ice cream, even for breakfast!

Your dislikes:
- Bath time. As soon as you hear the water running, you run to close the living room door.
- Childcare - you're still crying in the mornings when we drop you off. Though we're told you stop after a couple of minutes and you have fun the rest of the day.

Favourite songs:
- Wheels on the bus
- Ten in the bed
- Baa baa black sheep

Here's a video I took of you on the baby monitor. You woke up from a nap and was amusing yourself by pulling all the books from the bookshelf and reading/singing for ages.

You can now count to 20. You know so many colours, you can even distinguish between the colour brown and tan!

You're such a cheeky monkey and so much fun to be around!

Videos from the last few months

Here are some videos of you dancing and singing:

You love shouting 'Hooray' everytime this song comes on!

And one from the archives - happy baby pose at 25 weeks (5 months). How fast you grow!

Tummy time at 33 weeks (6 months) - what a little chubster!

21 & 22 months: videos galore!

I recently got a new iPhone with plenty of storage, which explains why I have so many videos of you now! I've also been obsessed with making iMovies, which are so easy and so much fun.

This was the very first iMovie I made, a compilation of your dance moves whenever the Thomas theme song comes on.


This was a video I made of you playing at our local park. You make so many funny expressions!



A video taken during bed time of you counting 1 to 10. Aunty Mandy says you sound like Gollum! haha


Singing Twinkle Twinkle

22 month sticker photos

I took these photos with Daddy this afternoon (a week later than your usual sticker photos). You were laughing and having fun playing with Daddy outside so I ran into the house to get the big camera. Love these photos that I captured. You have such a cheeky personality!

Love your big smiles

Your "I'm dobbing on Daddy" face

You're only 2 months away from turning 2! This year you have developed so much. Your verbal skills in particular have improved this past month. Just today at lunch, you wanted water and said, "more please". Daddy and I were so surprised! You like doing things at your own pace though. When Daddy and I asked you to say "please" again, you refused. You have quite a stubborn streak! You are still ga-ga crazy over Thomas the Tank Engine. You are collecting quite the stash thanks to your generous Aunties, Uncles and Grandparents. You could listen to the Thomas theme song day and night and love singing the song.

Aunty Katrina was saying how you seem to have 2 Thomas t-shirts in rotation, that's because you refuse to wear anything that doesn't have Thomas on it! If your Thomas t-shirts are in the wash, you'll deign to wear one of the other characters but even then you have a pecking order. First you'll wear James and if that isn't available, you'll agree to wear Percy. The carers at daycare say you have quite a quirky personality and grow very attached to things. Last week, I went to collect you from daycare and the carers said they had to specially wash and dry the t-shirt you were wearing because you spilled milk on it and they wanted to change you but you refused to change into the other non-Thomas t-shirt that we packed in your bag. I now pack one of your little toys to take to daycare  because you like the comfort of having something familiar with you during the day. I always find you still holding your toy at the end of the day.

You've really regressed in your sleep this past month. It seems to have coincided with me weaning you earlier in the month. I've been trying to replace the bonding experience with extra cuddles at night but you are now demanding I hold your hand until you fall asleep. This also means when you wake up in the middle of the night, you want me to hold your hand til you fall asleep again. These days I just end up sleeping on the floor next to your crib because I'm so tired. We need to sleep train you again but now that you're older, you seem to be more scared of being alone in the room so I'm hesitant to do the cry it out method with you. We'll just have to take it slowly.

This is what happens when we ask you were your belly is

 New words that you've been saying this month:
- Lots of Thomas characters, in particular 'Gordon'. It looks like Thomas has a new rival now. You are loving any pictures or books with Gordon in it.
- paper, please, car, train, home, up, down, ants, straw, sticker, juice, rice, bowl, blue, shoes, hello, flower, oval, bye bye (or dai dai as you pronounce it), water

Sticker video:

More photos below:

21 months: talking and more videos

You're very vocal these days and communicating so well. Here you are doing your little Thomas wiggle:

You don't like interrupting your play time to have a bath and then going to sleep. In fact, you would rather clean up your books than have a bath!

We can't stop laughing when we hear your cute "No's":

This is how you say your good-byes. You've picked up the "pound it" motion:

Some photos from daycare. You got dressed up as a dinosaur and played with the blocks:

 Playing with your lego:

At the local library. You're wearing a Thomas t-shirt, Thomas jacket, holding a Thomas train and somehow found the one and only Thomas DVD on the shelf. Talk about obsessed!

Click to see more videos:

21 months: little smarty pants

You have picked up on so many new words this month! It's amazing how quickly you can repeat back new words to us. You're also very good at memorising the Thomas & Friends characters and able to associate them with their numbers. Here's a video of you pointing to the different characters underneath the numbers as part of your bedtime routine:

You're also learning to count:

You absolutely love singing the Thomas theme song:

You have really random vocabulary and have picked up the words: oval and flower

This is a funny video of you being upset because Daddy took your iPad and wouldn't let you play with it anymore:

17 months: Nursery rhymes

You love for us to sing nursery rhymes to you and now you're also humming along and doing actions and sound effects.

Your bum wiggle never ceases to make me laugh.

Recently you've been wanting to drink from cups rather than use your sippy. This is one way to keep you amused at a restaurant.

17 months: if you're happy and you know it

You love clapping along to this song. How cute you are and so happy whenever you hear this song :)

We went to a bday party last week and you were once again enamoured with Clara...

I captured your funny walk:

[From the archives] 10 months old: good morning

14months: singing old macdonald

Your favourite words are: ba, ga and variations thereof. Here's a video I just took of us playing outside and singing 'Old Macdonald had a farm'.

From the archives: newborn videos

I was looking back on some videos I took of you at the newborn stage. It's amazing how much you've changed.

5 weeks old: at this stage you still weren't able to hold your head up, focus your eyes or control your hands. You were already talkative though!


7 weeks old: singing and laughing, one of my favourite videos of you:


9 weeks old: Daddy thought it would be funny to tickle your nose. I must admit, it was pretty funny.

Week 47: My smart cookie

You've learnt to touch your head when I ask you, "Where's your head?". Your comprehension skills are improving so much!

We did some gardening today and you were helping Daddy gather up the leaves. Kinda.

Week 47: Videos galore

We got a new dining table the other day and we celebrated by letting you dance on it.

You're still wobbly on your feet but you sure like walking (or bouncing) around. This video was taken before your haircut.

You're such a cheeky boy. Grandma is feeding you dinner and you're laughing as she teaches you Chinese. You look so handsome with your new haircut!

Week 35: Settling into our new home

We moved everything in last Friday and are slowly settling into our new home. We finally got internet access! I can update this blog.

Here's a video I took yesterday of your grandparents helping you learn to crawl. It's so funny the way you complain about them making you reach for your toy.

Here is another video I took on the weekend of you making a new sound, "ne ne ne". You only make this noise when you're annoyed.

I've got lots of photos to upload including your 8-month sticker photos. Will post in the next few days.

Week 29: More gurgling and toes

You did your sing-song gurgling again this morning while doing your new trick of reaching for your toes. Here's a video combining your 2 new skills:

We went for your regular checkup at the baby health clinic today. I found out you've grown 4cm in 3 weeks! We last measured you at the medical centre 3 weeks when we got your immunisations. You're now in the 50th-75th percentile for height. You also weigh 8kg, which surprisingly is only in the 25th-50th percentile. I thought you were chubby for your age but you're actually below average in weight!

I also started nap-training you today. I want to stop the habit of you falling asleep while feeding you, so I'm following the traditional routine of: Sleep-Eat-Play. I made sure I fed you first, then we went downstairs to play. I put on a nursery rhyme CD and sang to you. After you digested a bit, I gave you some tummy time. You've started doing the swivel on your tummy, moving almost 360 degrees as I moved your toys just out of your reach. When you started rubbing your eyes, I took you upstairs, changed your nappy and put you into your sleep sack. I held you while singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (an easy song that everyone knows, so hopefully others will be able to put you to sleep). I turned on the white noise app and put you in your crib while you were still awake, gave you a few pats, sang Twinkle Twinkle again and gave you a kiss on your forehead, saying "Good night sweetie". Then I left the room.

Week 28: Watching TV and your hairstyle makeover

You love to watch children's shows but I limit how much TV you can watch. I turned on the TV for about 5 mins and then took this video. You started complaining as soon as I turned the TV off, it looked like you were complaining about not having the TV on because you kept looking in the direction of the TV. This video makes me laugh because it seems like you are responding to what I am saying.

Your hair is growing longer, it looks so funny with those few strands at the front. I couldn't resist giving you different hairstyles while we were playing.

"Mama, what did you do to my hair?!"

"This style looks better"

Daddy said the mohawk makes you look chubby....haha

Week 27: Gurgling video and summer outfit

You started making gurgling sounds this morning, sometimes it sounded like you were singing! You had a lot of fun experimenting with these new sounds.

These are the first photos I've taken of you sitting on the bed. You look so grown up! Daddy said I should spike your hair up instead of parting it to the side.  I must have parted it by accident after I washed your face this morning. Your hair hasn't grown much these past 6 months...I wonder when you'll need your first haircut? :)

Grandma and I took you out for a trip to the city yesterday. The weather is getting warm so we dressed you in these cute short overalls and deck shoes. Check out those chunky legs! haha

From the archives: Daddy playing with you at 7 weeks old

This is Daddy's version of playing with you when you were 7 weeks old. I can't believe how much you've fattened up since then.  I love looking at these old videos of you. It's hard to believe you were so small (and quiet!) haha