Brush Teeth

After many attempts of getting Charlotte's pearl whites brushed, she finally willing to let me do the task when I introduced the children's toothpaste to her. I was a little hesitated to use the toothpaste for many reasons including the concern of Charlotte "eating" it, also because Charlotte's taste buds are a little unique I was just worried that introducing the toothpaste might totally banished the teeth brushing idea if she doesn't like the taste at all.

Toothpaste introduction turned out well on one fine Saturday morning about a month ago. I usually be a full time mother during the weekend and I decided to try the Kodomo Lion children toothpaste with strawberry flavor that I bought many weeks back. I brought a cup of drinking water and invited Charlotte to start the activity. I told her she must not swallow the toothpaste, and I role played with her to show her how to spit out the water, with my command "ah pui!". After a few try, I think Charlotte got the idea and she was really excited about spitting out the water as I said "ah pui!". Then I put just a tiny dot of toothpaste on 2 tooth brush, 1 for Charlotte and 1 for me (to help her). It went on very well and I managed to brush her teeth almost completely.

This continue on Sunday and of course the next thing to do was to tell Brenda to continue the effort during the weekdays. It continued to went on very well as I checked with Brenda almost everyday after I came back from work.

The interesting thing happened last weekend. As usual, I prepared the drinking water and took Charlotte to my bathroom to get ready for bath after I brushed her teeth. Everything went ok and I started to brush her teeth. However, when it was time to rinse and spit out the water Charlotte decided to swallowed it! She smiled at me and said "swallow" after she did that (sort of like getting permission). Of course I said no and told her she must spit out the water, it's dirty water. I let her do again after a few more brushing, but again she swallowed it!! This time she also said "swallow" but it was a little louder and with a little more determination. I know I was at the loosing end. If I stopped her from doing that, she will not let me brush her teeth anymore. So then I quickly dipped the tooth brush into the water to rinse off the remaining toothpaste and let the battle continued with brushing and swallowing the water *slap head*

Nowadays, she is not just swallowing the water but she also suck on the toothbrush (toothpaste) right after we put the tooth paste on it. Although I know it is fluoride safe and sugar free toothpaste and it is perfectly safe to use on young children, I still feel uncomfortable see to Charlotte sucking the toothbrush with toothpaste on it.
Before I was a mother, I never knew it could be so much tricks (sometimes bribes) to do just to get a toddler to complete a single task. I am learning my way to be a good mother, everyday.

Bean Bag

4 years ago we bought a king size bean bag when we stayed in the States. It is about 6 feet in diameter and about the height of my hips when it is fluffed. It is just a perfect size for 2 adults and Pat and I used to enjoy our midnight movies on that bean bag. But it has been hiding at one corner in our living ever since Charlotte is born.

Last week, Pat decided to move out the bean bag from the corner when I was busy cutting Charlotte's hair. Of course Charlotte got very excited to see such a humongous "bed" in the middle of the living room and jumped right on it when she finished her hair cut. She explored the bean bag quite a bit and she got very comfortable with it not too long after.

I was all sweating and wet (I did Charlotte's hair cut while she was playing in the small pool at the porch) and really needed a bath. So I quickly sneaked upstairs to clean up myself as she was happily exploring the bean bag. When I was all done and went downstairs, I found Charlotte got so relaxed and enjoyed herself lying on the bean bag watching her favorite Monsters Inc. while munching the apples that Brenda just cut for her. (Oh btw, she is now calling her auntie as "auntie Brenda". Isn't that sweet?)

The bean bag has become her movie watching "couch" since then. Sometimes she even asks both Pat and myself to join her. She giggles as 3 of us cuddled up on that bean bag, it feels so warm and cozy. Totally worth the $$ we spent, so much then before :)

See how she enjoys it?

Hairdo

Do you remember the little girl in the Monsters Inc. movie called "Boo"? Yes, that's something I want to blog about in this post.

It has been quite awhile since we last bought DVD movies mainly due to our busy work schedules and I realized that Charlotte is getting bored with most of her old movies that we have been playing everyday. We went for DVDs shopping a few weeks back and got her some old cartoon movies but we have yet to introduce it to her like Finding Nemo, Shark Tale and Monsters Inc. Her favorite is Monsters Inc. and since then we have been playing everyday.

Side track a little bit, when Charlotte was very young, she used to let me tied-up and pinned up her hair with those very nice hair clips that I bought for her. However, as she grows she gets very curious about things that I put on her hair. She will pull it out every time I put them on. Since then, I have been keeping her hair short as it is be very untidy without those hair clips.

One night I happened to ask her if she wants me to tie up her hair just like "Boo" while she was watching the movie. Almost immediately she got very excited and said yes. She sat down very properly and let me do the work, and tada!!!

That night, she kept her new hairdo throughout the entire movie and until she went to bed :)

But I just cut her hair last Sunday as I don't want to take the risk of fighting with her to get her hair done during Chinese New Year. I had to cut it now to allow it to grow a little bit and look natural in the next 2 weeks. I'm sure she is going to be a pretty China doll in her new cheongsam that grandma bought for her ;)

"Stop!"

Charlotte is definitely talks and communicates more now than before. She also is picking up more vocabulary and also starts to build sentences. This post to going to capture 2 most unbelieveable incidences that I encoutnered by talking to Charlotte this week.

When she was 15-20months old, she walked to our room and pushed open the door when she woke up in the morning. When she was somewhere between 20-24 months old, she stopped walking to our room but she was waiting in her room (still lying down) for us to greet her good morning. I usually will go check on her once I got myself dressed up for work but before I go downstairs for breakfast. She was happy to see me when I peeked at her door. Now she is at the terrible 2 stage, everything's changed. She wakes up every morning (or most morning) crying and she cries even louder when we go greet her. We practically spent 5-10min to calm her down and let us carry her downstairs.

When we are ready to leave the house for work, she objects and doesn't want to go to MIL's place. She'll say "no MaMa house, home D". We then spend another 5-10min to persuade and get her into the car. When we arrived at MIL's place, the drama starts again. It will be another 5-10min to get her down from the car. The journey from our house to MIL's place only take 5min but the entire process sometimes takes us 15-20min. The story doesn't stop here. Brenda told me that Charlotte is a handful to manage throughout the day too. Sometimes, she doesn't even let Brenda go out of sight, otherwise she would cry and cry and cry...

So on Wednesday night, I decided to take time and talk to her a little bit. I started by telling her

My Banana Girl

One of Charlotte's favorite Baby Einstein is Baby Da Vinci. She knows how to point and say it to us correctly when we ask her where is her head, shoulder, knees, toes...I tried to teach her the same in Mandarin too but it has been awhile. I remembered she used to get herself confused with "头" (tóu, which is head in Mandarin) and "Toes". I believe she still is but I have not test it on her for quite some time now.

Last night, we went dinner with my parents and she was with me on the front seat on our way there and on our way back home too. I had this short conversation with her...

me: mommy needs to speak in Chinese with you already, if not you cannot understand KongKong and MaMa.
Charlotte: (looked at me, blanked)
me: In Chinese "吃饭" means "eat rice" (well more like have a meal). Charlotte say 吃饭 (chī fàn)
Charlotte: (pause for awhile) Sit front! (this is what she says every time she asks to be seated on the front seat)
me: What? 吃饭 become sit front? *slap head*
Charlotte: (pretend to laugh too. Believe me, she is good at that)

Then she saw the moon and pointed to me
Charlotte: moon!
me: Yes, that's the moon. Moon is "月亮". Charlotte say 月亮 (yuè liàng)
Charlotte: (pause for awhile too) Yang Yang................KoKo (she was referring to her cousin Isaiah, his Chinese name is Lee Yang, she calls him Yang Yang)
*double slap head*

me: Do you want to go to KoKo's house tomorrow?
Charlotte: (nodded her head)
me: When I ask you "do you want" that is 要不要 (yào bù yào)
Charlotte: ...
me: Charlotte 要不要睡觉? 睡觉 is sleep
Charlotte: NO!
me: Oh, this one you understand? 要不要睡觉?
Charlotte: no!
me: say 不要 (bù yào)
Charlotte:...

Looks like I really need to start to communicate with her in Mandarin. Good luck to me :)

Aeroplane, Snowman and Christmas Trees

Dec 29th, I took Charlotte down to KL to meet up with Pat. So I told her the night before that mommy is going to take to go on an aeroplane to go see daddy, she smiled.

I woke up early on Saturday morning, making sure I had all the necessary (milk, diapers, bottles, pacifier, medicines and etc) packed. I dressed Charlotte appropriately to sleep the night before because I know she usually didn't want to get changed in the morning. Our flight is at 9.05am and everything was as planned. We arrived at the airport and after checked-in was around 8.30am. I took Charlotte to walk around so that she could see the aeroplane up close. She was very happy and couldn't wait to be boarded.

Finally, boarding gate is opened and we were boarded smoothly. Charlotte got her own seat this time and she was fascinated. However, not too long after suddenly she said "want air-plane d" (don't want aeroplane already), "home d" (go home) and she really want to exit the plane. Uh oh!!

I didn't know what triggered her but I don't think she was scared the flying thingy. Anyway, I tried to clam her down and told her that we are going to see daddy, aeroplane will take us there and daddy will be waiting for Charlotte. Luckily she nodded. I started to pray that Lord help me and help Charlotte to go through this quickly and easily.

When we were about to take off, I decided to pull down the window shield just in case Charlotte is scared if she notices the height. Unfortunately, this triggered her curiosity. She wasn't aware of the window shield but once I did that, she actually wanted to play with it. We were taking off and she can see everything outside clearly, including the height. I tried my best to explain to her that we are flying, just like the one she sees in the Barney video. Cars and trees are becoming smaller, and soon we were above the clouds. Thank God that she accepted the explanation, and she sort of understands what she is experiencing.

She then discovered the seat belt. She asked me to show her to lock and unlock the seat belt. Luckily it was just a short distance flight and it wasn't too much turbulence. She was happily playing with the seat belt, learning to fasten and unfasten it repeatedly.

You must be thinking did she pinch her fingers at the end? Me too thought she pinched herself, that's why I stopped the video. No, that expression was because she didn't manage to get the seat belt unfasten, phew!

If you noticed in the video, there was a man sitting beside Charlotte (yes, Charlotte prefers the middle seat). Not long after we took off, that man fell asleep. Charlotte noticed it and turned to me and said "mommy, eyes close d" (ha ha!). As we were about to land, that man woke up and Charlotte said to me "mommy, wake up d". (LOL!)

We stayed at Royal Bintang, it's really a very strategic location to stay if the objective is to shop and eat. The Christmas decoration was amazing at the entire The Curve and Ikano Power Center.

Later that evening, Rachel CheChe, Irene KuKu and Uncle Peter came to meet us and join us for dinner at the Italiannese. Charlotte also received a Double Dancing Barbie dolls from Irene KuKu as Christmas present.

Who is that cow girl!?

We planned to shop at 1-U the next day before heading back to Penang unfortunately, Charlotte wasn't very much into shopping mood but more interested in walking up and down stairs/steps. So Pat decided to go straight back to Penang after breakfast, and there goes my Tony Roma's too :(

On our way back, Charlotte probably had bad dreams and she woke up crying hysterically. We were barely half way on our journey back home. She vomited the full 6oz of milk that she had about an hour ago. Worse thing was, I was carrying her with her facing me. When she vomited, I could see a big fountain of milk came toward me (eewwww....) and my whole body was covered with half digested milk (eeeeeeewww.....). We had no choice but to stop by the side and get changed (yea, in the car). Probably it was the bumpy road plus Charlotte just had milk not too long ago, all that motion might have upset the stomach.

Thank God that the remaining journey was smooth and Charlotte took another 4oz of milk as we were reaching Penang.