The Solar System

Typical Sunday II

Didi can feed himself! :D

So cute his "ohh" :)

Both kids dancing to the hit song!

Neighbour Sharon zehzeh

This is the first time I see xuan being so sociable! Even with her cousins or children of my friends, I've never seen her warm up to another child so quickly before.

As we came home from grandma's place, I saw the girl standing outside her house, so I suggested playing bubbles, hoping that she'd join us. As usual, didi welcomed her first. Then when they got bored of bubbles, I asked didi to take out his ball, and xuan took out one of her own too, and they started playing just like that!

So no one played ball with didi in the end...poor thing

They made faces

and started all the huggy-feely

xuan started holding her hand. So sweet!

唉，没人和我玩……

*quote from one of his fav book 《我会做家务》*

Luckily they started to play with the spray bottle, and didi could participate again.

Didi kept spraying himself, and cos he was touching the floor before, his face turned black when he wiped his face. Yikes! Had to go bathe and miss the fun. The two zehzehs (cos xuan refuses to be a meimei) started spraying the wall and cleaning it with their palms. I commented that the wall is dirty, but actually, they proved with their clean palms that, the wall is clean! :S I asked them to spray their hands after touching the wall, so they started cleaning parts of the wall and then spraying their hands, like it's a game.

Didi wanted so much to join in the fun that he ran out naked, though he already do that all the time :P

So we invited Sharon into the house and the girls started playing with xuan's new "mushroom house" (will upload photos later) while didi read his own books. Xuan didn't even play or share her toys with Hanmin, the boy staying just next door the last time he came over. The little session ended when Sharon had to go back home for supper.

It was so entertaining, just sitting there and watching the girls and boy running up and down for nothing. When I was with the toddlers class in a childcare centre 2 mths ago, kids would start chasing me if I start to run. Anywhere! Such simple fun, such innocent joy. Had a sudden urge to have another girl, but controlled the thought with "She can always play with Sharon now if she needs a girlfriend" :P

Happy Birthday Melody!

I am three years old!

"New" classmates. She still talks about her old classmates. I have yet to hear her refer to her current classmates. She was the only girl among abt 10 boys. Now there's one more younger girl, and a few more boys.

I think she managed to blow all the candles by herself! So far, instead of "huu~" she is still going "fff~". A budding flautist? :) 笛子的口型不容易的勒~

不再是两岁半了！:):)

Favourite books

They both started with these:

I remember reading and talking non-stop to Xuan (2mths) for an hour on this book:

These are bought by my mom, cos I didn't know what books to buy for babies.

Then I bought these, which they love squeezing:

Seems to be a hot fav with the toddlers at the childcare centre too:


This was a gift from Teacher Ros, xuan and chern's infant class teacher. Xuan was loving books by 7mths (Children's Day) so teacher Ros bought this for her. So nice!


It's now one of didi's fav cos he loves shapes.

And this too:

Both xuan and chern's fav out of the whole series. Xuan, because these the some of the earlier books that I introduced her to, and thus she's more familiar with them (I'm starting to read to her the other books)

And didi likes these 2 cos as u can see on the far right, these are the ones with 2 of his fav shapes- "ball ball" and "gar (star)". I'm not sure why he doesn't really read the one with the seastar though (can u spot it?)

Some of the books that didi is reading currently:

And these are xuan's fav:

I like this one too cos the pictures are so detailed that I can talk for 10min on this cover page alone.

Books in the car, plus some hard cover Mr Men books.

And their ultimate favourite--
...because there are so many pictures of food they are familiar with inside?

Pretend play

I wished I had recorded longer, just to see how much she is concentrating at "providing" for her doll. Her pretend play and stories are getting more detailed. She often come up with dialogues for her dolls. She would say things like "小青蛙你在这里等我哦。""你自己跌倒了啊？""Hello Kitty说，我要去上班了。" I encourage this by talking to the dolls or objects along the road myself. We also often wave byebye to the mrt that passes by from the stadium, I used to do that with her, now I do it with didi :)

A fruitful play session

Didi is able to throw even better than xuan. Sometimes when she throws, the ball goes vertically up. Anyway guess it's quite impt to teach them that throwing must be from a slight distance yah?

Xuan can spell her name! By memory of course. I bought the Julia Gabriels Zoo Phonics cd and she loves it. By singing the song she is already picking up phonics. But of course it helps that I attended the intro lesson conducted by Julia Gabirels herself. Basically I should model the pronunciations myself, and do some extensions of each letter.

Few weeks ago, Mama So picked up a fridge box at our bulky rubbish area, and transformed it...

Now it's their play area! :) I'm pretty slow with the "colouring of the wall", though, cos I'm pasting them one piece by one piece, and I'm not too sure what activities to put on the walls...

Neighbour

The little girl was having her dinner outside her house (i.e. her father was trying to feed her while she ran around. Such a common scenario) and my little boy decided that this zehzeh is friendly enough to play with. They started playing with chern's basketball and they played more more than half and hour! Who says young toddlers can only engage in solitary or parallel play?

There are 4 kids below the age of 5 on my level, another one who's P6 I think? and an older zehzeh who's in sec sch (so prob won't ever play with us). Although Xuan's not as sociable as Chern, I have a feeling our corridor's gonna be quite happening in the few years to come :)

Chern's Ikea trip

Mama So had the chance to bring little boy to Ikea and just run around, at his own pace. Shopping trips with toddlers/kids are so much more enjoyable when you let the child, instead of the shopping list, lead you.

Skills upgrading

First practise cutting...

then practise sweeping...

and Mama So doesn't have to do a thing (except to antagonize over how much faster it would take for me to sweep it up myself)~