2nd Semester At Kindermusik

This is Charlotte's 2nd semester at Kindermusik. Some of her classmates had graduated from this class to another class for children >3years old. I think there are only 3 of us left in this class but we definitely have many new comers since the past few weeks.

As I mentioned in my earlier update of Charlotte's progress at Kindermusik, she continue to show good progress week after week. Her teacher called me last week (Pat took Charlotte to class last week) and told me that she sang in the class! It was not a surprise to me because she always sing with me but it is a nice news to hear from her teacher. Last Monday, Pat was away for business trip again and I took Charlotte to class this time. We were kind of late because Charlotte insisted to wear her own dress when I was changing her to get ready to class. I spent a good 10min with her struggling with her dress, sigh! Well, we were in time for "Our Time Hello". Charlotte took a drum from her teacher and sat down with me like an expert. She was happily playing along when the song started. Then I heard a soft "hello hello" from her! Heh heh, my heart raised a little :)

There was this activity where all of us formed a big circle and the teacher put a drum in the middle. The game was to sing a song and at the end of it each kid gets to beat the drum 3 times. So the game started and Charlotte was at the left of her teacher. I thought ok, Charlotte gets to beat first. However, the teacher decided to give the 1st chance to the boy on her right. That means, Charlotte will be the last one to get to do that. I was very worried that she would make noise and throw her tantrum because she has to wait for her turn. So, I was explaining to her that "Charlotte must be patient, the game is to take turn and so you must wait for your turn". She listened and nodded at me.

The game started, I was crossing my fingers because we had almost 10 kids that night! Charlotte participated, sang happily each time the game started again without a single sign of frustration. Finally, it was her turn. We sang, ran around in the circle and it was her turn to beat the drum. She listened to the teacher telling her that she has to beat it 3 times. She then took the drum stick over from her teacher and did it every beat as skilled as she is! That night I came home with a big smile on my face :D

Of course, I told Pat the very next day. I told him the whole story over the IM and I asked "such a good girl hor?", he just replied "Yes", period. Well, that's his usual self but I know he is very happy to see the ROI (heh! heh!)

So, what did we get this semester? It's a new theme: Wiggles & Giggles and the new activity set looks like this: (2 activity books, 2 CDs, 1 pair of sandblock and a cute transparent bag)

We have now graduated from Away We Go, the theme for the 1st semester.

(2 activity books, 2 CDs, 1 pair of harmonica and a paper toy bus)

Shoes, Glorious Shoes...

How many pairs of shoes does a girl/lady/woman need?

I remember my mom and I used to have so many shoes in the house. There was this big and tall rack where my dad used to store his business inventory but it was converted to a shoe rack just to cater the space my mom and I needed to store our shoes. Once, my mom hired a new maid from Indonesia and her first question to my mom when she entered the house was: "ini rumah jual kasut? " (are we into shoes business?) I think you can imagine just how many pairs of shoes we had at home for a Queen and a Princess :D

Now that I have a princess of my own, I just can't help but keep getting shoes to match her outfits. She has walking shoes, dress shoes, sandals, sneakers more than what I have/had at her age. I was gathering all her shoes the other day, trying to keep away those she has already over grown and while doing so I thought I should just blog about shoes that she has before the age of 2.

First Steps...

Growing, Growing and Growing...

Coming Soon...

Pat and I were talking about his brother's wedding coming in Mar next year. Everyone in the family is hoping that Charlotte can be the flower girl by then (not that she is the only girl in the family but she is the youngest!). Thinking, thinking, thinking...suddenly it struck me that she doesn't have a white color dress shoes! We need to get her that to match her flower girl dress, and hubby said "yes". Yippee!!!

Well, I will definitely post an update when we finally bought that white color dress shoes. Stay tuned :)

Nice Matters Blog Award

Blog Award? Wow, this is something new to me and I am really happy to receive my very first award from Siew Hooi and Cheah Wei: Nice Matters Award!

Want to know what this is about?

"This award will be awarded to those that are just nice people , good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!"

Find out more here

I'd like to send this back on to Siew Hooi, and pass it on to Joyce, Jin Miin, Wooi Sin, Pei Sze

little note to you: Thanks for inviting me to the blogging world. I found my new circle of friends here!

My Heritage Look Alike Meter

We always wanted to find out who Charlotte resembles more. Sometimes, people on the street said she looks exactly like daddy. Other time just the exact opposite. Though this is not a big deal but it will be interesting to find out.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine forwarded this interesting website and I was finally able to do the test based on some kind of intelligent facial scanning technique. I was very excited about it and quickly picked a few photos and uploaded them. However, it was also disappointing when I ran the first test. The result said "Charlotte looks equally like mom and dad"! It's like not telling me anything else differently from what I have been hearing from others.

Then I tried again using clearer and bigger pictures. The result?



Finally, one straight clear answer we have been searching for!!!

Try it out yourself: http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/look-alike-meter.php

Little Shopping Queen

These pictures were taken when we went shopping at Gap Kids at Q-Mall over the Merdeka weekend. I was shocked to see the way Charlotte browsing through those dresses hang on the rack and especially impressed to see her act like a pro!

Also, she has learned that mommy is definitely going to measure a dress/shorts/t-shirt on her when I picked up one. She will automatically lean forward and raise her head slightly for me to measure it on her... LOL!

Of course we didn't go back empty handed...

Practice Make Perfect!

Charlotte started to show interest in putting on shoes herself since we got her this new pair of dress shoes. It is easier to put on compared to her Adidas sport shoes. She has been practicing, wearing it and taking it off over and over again. She did that at home whenever we are getting ready to go out, and she did that in the car. She actually did that the entire journey from Bayan Lepas to Gurney once!

She did that again last Saturday and I managed to capture the process of her putting on her own shoes...






Tada!!!

First Time to Penang Hill

It's a school holidays this week and many of Charlotte's cousins are back to Penang. Christopher and Rachel are back and of course Kimberly, Emily, Samantha, and Joyce are visiting to Ah Ma's house more often this week. Charlotte is very happy and excited with all the cousins and Koo-Koo around.

Last night, Rachel's mommy suggested to go to Penang Hill and have dinner (steamboat) at the Bellevue Hotel. Both Pat and I went home early to get ready and we arrived at the foot hill around 6.00pm. There, Charlotte was very excited to see the pigeons up close and personal...



We then took the 6.30pm cable car and headed straight to Bellevue Hotel for the steamboat dinner. It was a very extraordinary experience for us (we didn't know there is a restaurant serving steamboat at Penang Hill, and apparently it has been there for a long long time). The steamboat is set out side of the restaurant, over looking the city view. It was spectacular especially when all the city lights were lighted up later in the evening. It also has a big garden where Charlotte enjoyed running around while we were having dinner.

The steamboat is using the traditional charcoal method and it took a long time to boil. Charlotte was hungry and she couldn't wait for the dish to cook but started to scoop and feed herself with just white rice. I brought along Charlotte's feeding bowl (with the suction on the bottom) and it helps to hold down the bowl while she's eating. She was half full when the dishes were finally cooked. I gave her a few fish balls and tou foo, cut into small pieces and let her use the fork to feed herself (key learning from the recent KL trip). I learned something new about Charlotte this trip too - As I was trying to feed her the soup with my spoon she rejected it and Brenda told me that she wants to drink from the bowl! So I believed it, I brought the bowl closer to Charlotte and she drank it like an expert and finished it without getting her dress wet! Though she didn't have much but at least something to last her until her bed time "nen nen".

We took the 9.00pm cable car down. Charlotte had her "nen nen" on the way back and she was already in dreamland by the time we reached home.

Short Trip To KL

We decided to spend the weekend in KL last week taking the advantage of Pat's business trip arrangement. We drove down to KL on Saturday morning and our original plan was to depart early in the morning so that we will have more time in KL. Of all days, Charlotte chose to sleep in that morning! She usually wakes up in less than 15min if no one is sleeping beside her. Everyone woke up early and we were all busy packing and getting ready. We didn't keep to extraordinary light foot steps or talking in low volume because we want Charlotte to wake up so that we can get her ready too. However, she was very sound asleep even though I kept her bedroom door opened. It was about 8.30am when we have done all our packing but Charlotte was still asleep! I had no choice but to wake her up. So I went to her room and sat down beside her. She woke up and smile at me, then pointed to her pig pillow and bolster and said "pig pig"!

Here was my conversation with her:

me: do you want to go kai kai?

Charlotte: (nod her head) pig pig, bring

me: huh? you want to bring pig pig?

Charlotte: (nod her head again)

me: bring 1 only? (and I take the bolster)

Charlotte: (point to the pillow) pig pig

me: you want to bring both?

Charlotte: (nod again)

*pengsan*

Then I gave her milk and bath her, it was about 9.30am when we finally depart. Since I'm not bringing Brenda I had to drop her to my mother's house at Paya Terubong. So, we went to Paya Terubong and only official finally depart for KL at about 10.30am. *sigh*

I bought Charlotte a mini "char siew pao" and a small piece of "koh kuih" (nonya kuih) from the Air Itam market. She finished the whole char siew pao and half of the koh kuih! She slept for awhile along the way and had her milk again when we were about reaching KL. Both Pat and I were very hungry and we decided to go straight to IKEA and have lunch there.

IKEA was having a big sales and it was the 2nd last day before the promotion ends. It was so crowded and the parking is full everywhere! We were so very hungry and after driving 2 circles around IKEA and no single parking lot was spotted, Pat decided to park illegally as we saw there was a perfect space right in front of the IKEA entrance :p

We went straight to the IKEA restaurant on the 1st floor but that place was full of people and it was a long queue at the food counters. While waiting...

Daddy: Charlotte, give daddy a kiss please?

Charlotte: (kissed daddy...)

We waited for about 15min in the line and we ordered the family menu which consist of
- 20 pcs meat balls
- 2 bowls of fries
- 4 pcs chicken nuggets
-4 jelly jelly pudding
- 4 drinks

Yes, it was a lot and I warned Pat that we might not be able to finish everything and don't count on Charlotte to help because she just had milk. We then found ourselves a comfortable seat around the children's corner and Charlotte went on to explore the play area. The first thing she said when she saw the children's corner was "wow!" and this was something we found out about a month back, her new expression when she is impressed :)

Of course, my immediate task was to feed Charlotte even though I was starved. Any additional solid she takes is always a bonus to me :) She did eat quite a bit (2 pcs chicken nuggets, 1 meat ball, some fries and to my surprise we actually finished everything except the jelly (it tasted like coloring...)

We then headed for shopping at IKEA but Charlotte fell asleep (her 2nd nap of the day was stretched a little) before we finished our shopping. Luckily we didn't really have a shopping list for IKEA, so we browsed through everything rather quickly and only bought a few things.

Then we drove straight to the Traders Hotel at Ampang (next to/behind KLCC). It was about 6pm by then and we were stuck in a jam for a bit. I gave Charlotte milk again as I anticipated late dinner. Charlotte woke up when we were about to arrive at the hotel. She was refreshed and charged and was very excited when we arrived at the hotel.

Charlotte got attracted by the nicely designed bathroom, she went checked out the bathtub and told me "pom pom"! Funny thing I noticed was Traders Hotel gave out lollipop as a welcome gift instead of flowers (Isn't it a business hotel? They gave out lollipop for business travellers :p). The lollipop is placed on a towel in the bathroom, but Charlotte showed no interest on it at all :)

We had a quick clean-up and unpacked before we headed to KLCC for dinner and call it a day. One bonus staying at the Traders Hotel was they have buggy service to transport their customer to/from KLCC. Charlotte got very excited sitting in the buggy and she kept waving to the people on the side walk along the way :D

The next day, we went to explore the park right next to the hotel as we noticed the children playground from our room located at the 16th floor. It is the Taman KLCC and it has a big children playground, jogging tracks, "public swimming pool" (pool like we have at Youth Park in Penang) where children play in the water from the waterfall (eeeeeeewe....). Of course for a paranoid mother like me I did not allow her to play there but I could tell from Charlotte's eyes that she envy those children playing there ...

We then went to have lunch at the famous Ampang Yong Tau Foo. It was so crowded and I thought it was a bad idea because it is difficult to handle Charlotte at warm and crowded places like that. The original store that we wanted to go was really packed and we had to change plan to the one next door. We managed to get a place and quickly ordered our food to minimize the risk of getting Charlotte annoyed. I was praying quietly inside for Charlotte to take at least a little bit of the Yong Tau Foo otherwise, she will miss her solid for lunch. My prayer was answered! she loved the fish balls (quite a big one) and ate 2 fish balls in total. I cut it into small pieces and let her used the fork to feed herself. I think she was more excited to use the fork than the food actually.

We spent the rest of the day at KLCC again.

(good idea to keep children entertained at Isetan children's floor)

(our last buggy ride)

Charlotte and I flew back on Sunday night on MH1166 at 9.00pm. The flight was delayed until 9.30pm before it took off and Charlotte fell asleep right after took off. She slept all the way, woke up for only a short while when Brenda carried her over when we arrived at Penang airport.

Fun Time At Kim Kim Place

Charlotte sometimes goes to her Kim Kim house especially when her grandma has some other commitments. She loves to go to her Kim Kim house because

reason 1: she has 3 body guards (her cousins Solomon, Isaiah and Abraham) there to play with her and keep her entertained.

reason 2: her Kim Kim has boxes and boxes of toys in the house and at the garden outside of the house and she allows Charlotte to play with all of it. Imagine, neighbours thought it's nursery when they first moved in because of those Little Tikes Play House, Slides, bicycles, Drawing Board and etc at the garden...

reason 3: she gets to eat junk food :p

For me, I love to send her to my sister-in-law too because:

reason 1: Charlotte drinks the most amount of milk whenever she is there. She loves to drink milk together with her KoKo Abraham. Two of them will lie down side by side, and drink together. Of course, Abraham KoKo has to drink slower then he normally does otherwise Charlotte will stop when he finishes his.

reason 2: my sister-in-law is a SAHM and her youngest son Abraham is only 6years old. I have high confidence in her expertise and experience in raising kids. So, I'm less worried when Charlotte is there.

reason 3: my sister-in-law loves Charlotte very much and treats her like a queen in the house and her KoKo all have to give in to her per their mommy's instructions (heh!)

Kids Learn Fast!

We bought Charlotte a train set (Thomas & Friends) a couple of months back because we noticed that she was very fascinated by the set that her cousin Christopher has when we visited him in May. She loves to play with the train but not on the track. She likes to ask us to let the train run in between her legs. This is how she asks - first she pointed to the train to ask us to turn it on for her. Then, she will stand with both legs wide apart and point to us to let the train go between her legs :D

She used to have 1 remote controllable car, it was a model car of Smart for 2 that we bought it from ToysRUs but that only lasted for 1 month. We didn't throw it away since it was quite expensive but Charlotte wanted us to turn it on every time she sees it. We tried to explain it to her that it's already broken but she couldn't understand and made a lot of fuss. So, we decided to buy her a new one. We went to TESCO a few weeks back and saw there was a kiosk selling all the remote control model cars and so we got her one with lights on the wheels when it is turned on.

Some time last week, she sat very quietly by herself and was flipping around with her car. I didn't know what she was trying to do and so I observed it. She turned the car upside down, looked for the red button and turned the car on! Just like how we always do when she asked us to turn on the car for her. But she is still learning to use the controller unit. I then asked her to turn on the train set because I was very curious to know if she knows how to do that. She did it too!! I'm really impressed by how fast kids pick up new learning.

Just last night, she did that again and I managed to capture a short video clips of both...

Progress at Kindermusic

Charlotte started her music lesson at the kindermusik 5 months back. She started as a very shy and closed little girl but her progress is rather significant...

During the initial lessons, most of the time she just lying down facing the wall or hiding behind me all the time, ignoring all the happenings around her. We thought it was a mistake signing her up at such an early age but the teacher kept telling us to be patient. She said she has seen many kids started out this way and they did just fine in time. They need time to observe and to get themselves comfortable with the environment and making friends with others, especially for the only child of the family.

We use the "lead by example" strategy to encourage Charlotte to participate. So, sometimes it is very tiring jumping and running around especially after a long day at work however we saw great improvement from each lesson. She is also learning many other disciplines and skills besides music like sharing and letting go of an instrument when it is time to return. The teacher will give out musical instruments to each of them and to the parent too but it is only for 3-5min. They will have to return it to the teacher and move on to the next activity. I was very worried that Charlotte will throw her tantrum when we asked her to return the instruments because she probably hasn't have enough of it for that short 3-5min but to our surprise she behaved rather well in this area. She walked up to the teacher and put the instrument back into the box gently. The teacher always praise Charlotte because she never throw the instruments when returning it :)

One big challenge is to make Charlotte hold hands with other kids when it comes to a circle activity. Charlotte didn't like to hold hands with others and I had to carry her with me in the parent circle while other kids were holding hands running and dancing with the music in the children circle. Maybe she has yet to master her coordination skills and this activity could be dangerous for her. I realized Charlotte is very conscious of her safety when we were in KL with her cousin Christopher few months back. Once, she was sitting in Christopher's stroller and Christopher was trying to push her around in the house. She totally didn't like the idea and only allowed adults to push her. She finally agreed to hold hands with other kids and did the activity together 3 lessons back! That's when we realized that she has developed more confidence in making her steps too!

At the end of every class, the teacher will sing a goodbye song and that's when all the kids will go and give teacher a goodbye hug. The teacher will then give out a good boy/girl sticker to the children. Charlotte refused to hug the teacher but just a waive of goodbye from far. We tried to bribe her with the sticker but obviously that didn't work out. The teacher fully understood Charlotte's behaviour and patiently waited at the end of every class, hoping Charlotte will eventually run towards her and give her a goodbye hug just like all the other kids did. Finally, Charlotte gave her precious hug to her teacher tonight and she was the first one ran towards the teacher when I told her it's time to say goodbye!!! Both the teacher and myself were very very happy to see this :D

A Battle Half Won

Another tough battle with Charlotte tonight simply because we were trying to feed her the medicine the doctor precribed. I took her to another round of visit this morning since she didn't really respond to the medicines given on Friday by Dr Jessica. She had fever again last night around 2.15am and she couldn't sleep very well throughout the night due to the blocked nose and cough. Instead of 3 bottles of medicines, we came back with 1 additional bottle of antibiotic (sob! sob!).

Brenda told me that it took her 1 hour to finish feeding Charlotte all the medicines in the afternoon. We had to do that again after dinner, but before her bed time nen nen. Since daddy is not around, obviously mommy had to play that creative distraction part. Luckily, I have 2 new Baby Einstein DVDs from Joyce and Jin Miin. However, it only managed to distract Charlotte for the first 2 bottles of med. No major struggle and no throwing up too. Unfortunately, she got smarter when it came to the third bottle and that was when the battle started. She struggled, screamed and cried! She held me very tightly with all her tears, sweat and the mucus from her nose all over her face. I could almost hear her said "please mommy, no more medicine, please!". My heart broke seeing her suffering like that, I felt so helpless but had to continue the process.

We finally got all over it about 1 hour later, I could see she was really tired with all that struggling, screaming and fighting over the medicines. She fell asleep in my arm while I was feeding her milk later. I carried her to her room and gave her a big kissed on the forehead. Thank God that her fever had broke too.

I'm praying that she will be better tomorrow morning and be her cheerful self again.

Busy Weekend

Charlotte was supposed to take her 1st JE jab with Ethan last Friday but when I went to pick up Charlotte from my SIL (sister-in-law) place she told me that Charlotte has developed cough and slight fever. My heart sunk when I heard that because first it has been quite some time since Charlotte's last visit to PD due to sickness, secondly we had appointment with Ethan and Dr. Jessica on the JE jab. We proceeded to GMC per planned but for her cough and fever instead of jab. Dr. Jessica told us that it was probably due to viral infection :(

Charlotte is very difficult to feed when comes to food. This includes medicine if I didn't mentioned this in the picky eater post. She will struggle, cry and throw-up almost 99% of the time when it comes to medicine. Dr. Jessica proscribed 3 medicines for her this time, Rhinathiol for cough, Poralamine for running nose and Panadol for fever. Luckily Brenda is very good at handling Charlotte and we all play different role when comes to medicine time. Daddy is responsible to creatively create distractions to quickly divert Charlotte's attention after the medicine is pumped into her mouth, otherwise she will soon throwing it up. Of course I want to make sure that the dosage is correct so I am responsible to prepare the medicine. Brenda is responsible to feed Charlotte (the toughest part) and I am helping her to hold down Charlotte at the same time. Sounds like a battle? You bet.

There were a couple of prearranged agenda for the weekends, Beatrice (one of my very first motherhood friends) was back from Ipoh with Ryan and Reese and we were suppose to meet up for lunch on Saturday. Unfortunately, I had to go without Charlotte as I was worried that it's contagious to Ryan and his 3 months old baby sister, Reese. Joyce and I were also talking about swimming on Sunday since many couldn't make it for the play group this week. Obviously we had to cancel that.

Charlotte is still coughing and has developed running nose since last night. Her fever is mild but it comes and goes with no consistent pattern, that worries me the most.

It was a very tiring and busy weekend, all revolves around medicine and food. Charlotte is already a picky eater and it is harder for me to feed her food/milk when she is sick. She rejected all solid for the last 2 days and only took 2-4oz of milk for every 3 hours lag. She is definitely loosing weight. Daddy is away again and I pray that Charlotte will be alright by the time daddy is back.

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!)