Is She Potentially Musical?

We noticed that Charlotte picks up new learning often from songs that I have been singing it to her (or with her) since her birth. Ever since we registered her to the kindermusik she has developed even stronger interest in music. She also able to recognize musical instruments like piano, guitar, xylophone, drum and also she is easily attracted by musics and songs. We can get her to sit still (for quite awhile) especially in the car if we play her favorite CD and sing along with her.

In "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" I wrote about her first accomplishment in the attempt of singing and later I also discovered that she is also able to do the very same for some of those songs that we have been singing it to her day and night. MIL also told me that Charlotte likes the Chinese New Year songs very much. She is now very good at this particular song "招財进宝" by catching the last word "宝" every time this phrase come up. I heard it myselft when Charlotte sang it the other day, it was really cute (LOL!).

One of Charlotte's favorite interactive muscial DVDs at her grandma's house (besides the CNY songs VCD) is the Hi-5. Last week, I went to pick up Charlotte after work as usual. She was watching the Hi-5 and Brenda told me to pay attention to her as the song "Feelings" coming up. I was very pleased to see her following the actions and movement together with the gang as they sang the song. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera with me. Otherwise, I could have recorded that moment.

Just yesterday, I found out that she actually picked up the alphabets song "ABCDEFG" from the Leap Frog Magnetic Letter Set that I got for her from my recent business trip. I was a little disappointed when I first introduced it to Charlotte. She didn't pay attention and not attracted by the letter name and sound when one alphabet is attached but she prefers the letter song and keep playing it over and over again! Yesterday evening, I was sitting with her in the kitchen and watching her playing with this toy (as it is attached to the fridge). She did the same thing again, put one alphabet into the slot and instead of pressing on the letter to learn the name and sound she pressed on the song button and started to sing along and dance with the music too! She didn't get all the 26 alphabets obviously but she was able to complete each phrase with the last 1 or 2 alphabets. She sang the X, Y, Z the loudest and with the most accurate tune! I don't think she knows what those really mean but it is like she memorized it each time the song is played and finally she is able to sing along! She has such a sweet and wonderful voice and I have to say she has the mommy's gene (hehe!).

There was another discovery tonight, as usual she will choose her favorite movie to watch each night before bed time. She chose the "Happy Feet" and happily munching the cereal bar. She sang together with all the little penguins when they were attending Ms Viola's singing class. I can hear a very soft "da da da da..." and she got the rhythm right! The most interesting part was, she stood up and dance when she saw Mumble starts its tapping. I managed to get a video clip on this, check it out...

Picky Eater

While chatting with Pei Sze this morning, I took the idea of blog about how picky Charlotte is when comes to food. The intention of the chat was to find out which are the good play schools to send Charlotte to before Brenda goes home at the end of year 2008. Somehow, we touched on food and our chat went on...

When it comes to food, Charlotte is way far behind other kids around her age. I always pray that Charlotte would be soon like Hin Lerk, Bryan and even young little Ethan and Ching Ern every time I read their mommy blog about food they enjoyed and self-feeding skill they have developed.

I don't know where to start about this, maybe I should begin with Charlotte's milk consumption. Her milk intake was never more than 6oz. Most of the time (maybe 90% of the time) she only finished 4oz. I still make 6oz for her every time hoping for that 10% chance.

Charlotte stopped taking porridge around her 14th or 15th month, she prefers rice. Not only porridge, she doesn't like cereal, oatmeal, or any kind of food that is semi-solid including papaya! We started to feed her rice for lunch and dinner, with another meat and soup as side dish. She doesn't like fish and used to throw-up each time we feed her fish. Also, she refuses the same dish/soup at dinner if we already feed her at lunch. This is also applicable for her favorite food and vitamins, don't think that I can keep repeating it day after day, it is not even meal after meal. I bought a bottle of multi-vits for her from my recent US trip. It is Gummy Bear multi-vits for children. Prior to this, I bought the multi-vits from Amway. Charlotte took for 1 week and totally refused it after that. Then I bought the Appeton multi-vits, it also lasted for only 1 week. She loves the gummy bear multi-vits and I thought bingo! Now (after1 month), she will still ask for it but she only chew for fun and spit it out.

I tried all sorts, pastas, noodles, steam egg, fried egg, steam fish, fried fish, cheese, crackers, yogurt, grapes, apples, cantaloupe ...If she accepts the food, I can get her to finish it with a lot of patience and run around. She takes average 1hour to finish 1 small bowl of rice. Sometimes, she even decides no solid for the day but only milk!

Once I thought, maybe it's my cooking! Then again, she behaves the same way with her grandma's cooking, restaurants, hotels, kopi tiam...I also thought if I let her explore feeding herself maybe she will find fun in it and eat more! Bad idea, she hardly put anything in her mouth but only played with the food and made a lot of mess!!!

Patience, patience and more patience is the only way to get her eat. My only worried now is what to do when she goes to school...

Favorite Book

We bought Charlotte many books but she didn't really enjoy reading them even though we tried to spend quiet time reading together with her. Just recently, she started to show interest in books maybe because her daddy brought her to Borders very often when I was on business trip. She has this favorite book that she wants to take it everywhere she goes - "My Peekaboo Fun".

One night, I took out this book that we bought her quite some time ago and started to go through the objects shown on the pages. I flipped through the pages, pointed out to her each object and tried to associate the object with song or movie character that she knows. She picked up really fast, in just one night she learned almost 80% of them.

She is able to name some of the objects and point to others that she is not able to pronounce it. The funny part is, she will ask me to sing the song that I associate it with the object every time she spotted it. For example, if I ask her "where is the spider?", she is able to point to it correctly but she will then start to do the "itsy bitsy spider..." sign asking me to sing that song to her.

Can you spot the spider?

Her favarite now is the earoplane, she will point to it and say "pane! pane!" and started to stretch out her hands and move side-to-side like the flying action. That's because I associate it with a song from the Barney Sing-Along

Me: oh, we are flying in the earoplane looking out the window, watching the clouds go by...

(Charlotte doing the flying action)

Me: flying in the earoplane looking out the window up so very ....

Charlotte: high!!

(both hands stretched up high)

Another funny action that Charlotte does is about the snake. When I first thought her about the snake, she always replied with "kick!". I told her no kicking but run whenever she sees a snake! Now she points to the snake and shouts "run!" and make the running action which is really cute!

Pocoyo!

I took Charlotte for a hair cut last weekend. As usual, she cried and refused to let the auntie cut it. So, the auntie had to do it very quickly while Charlotte was screaming and struggling. Later, I realized that the back was not done nicely and it was obviously uneven. So, I tried to trim it while Charlotte was watching her favorite movie. It became so short that makes her face looks really round.

I think she looks like the female version of Pocoyo...

Separation Anxiety

Ever since I came back from my last business trip, Charlotte has been acting like a super glue to me. She wants me to be at close proximity with her at all time. If she is watching her favorite movie, she wants me to sit by her side. When she is playing, she wants me to play with her. When we are out at the mall, she wants me to carry her (not the maid, not the daddy). She doesn't allow me to leave her for just a second, like going to the washroom, or kitchen, or anywhere else otherwise she will just burst out in ear piercing cry. Imagine that I have to sneak out just to have a bath, and even that I could hear her crying in less than 1min after I went away. I tried to tell her in a proper manner like "mommy is just going for a shower, ok?", "mommy is going to wash hands only, you can still see me at the kitchen" and her response is always "no!"

I was messaging with Jin Miin this morning and she told me this is "separatiom anxiety". I came to realize this too after the 1st week that I am back. Charlotte is trying to keep her eyes (hands and legs too) on me so that mommy will not "disappear" again.

Play Time!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

"star" was one of those very first few words that Charlotte picked up around the 8th month but I didn't realize that she has gone further from just knowing this one single word.

Since I was very tired for the last few days, Pat helped me to pick up Charlotte from MIL's place after work. However, I always greeted Charlotte at the door step when her daddy drove her back. I could see her big smile from inside the car when she saw me waving at her. I greeted her the same way for the last 2 days but the difference was she noticed this one bright, big star in the sky right above when I picked her out from the car. She repeatedly saying "tar! tar!" (it's "star" without the "s") and keep signing with her hands, that's asking me to sing to her the "twinkle twinkle little star" song. So I sang to her while she did the signing throughout the entire song.

Yesterday morning, she walked into my room and as usual made a lot of fuss especially when we were all busy getting dressed for work. So, I asked her to lie down on my bed and look at the starts I pasted all over my ceiling. She got very excited when she saw that (she must have forgotten it) and started asking me to sing again! I sang but I was surprised by this great milestone that Charlotte has achieved!

Me: twinkle twinkle little...
Charlotte: tar!

Me: how I wonder what you...
Charlotte: are!
(very surprised by this so far and I continue...)

Me: up above the world so...
Charlotte: high!

Me: like a diamond in the...
Charlotte: kai!
(my goodness!!!)

Me: twinkle twinkle little...
Charlotte: tar!

Me: how I wonder what you...
Charlotte: are!!!
(she clapped as if a big accomplishment!)