song singing

We went to the playgroup today and he started to pay attention to the leader during the song singing session, it all started from last week that he would stop a little and get involved instead of running around crazily. He is still a little behind in some areas, his fine motor skills are not as good as some younger kids, he can't sit still in a chair for a little longer, sitting down and do craft is almost impossible for him, wont use a spoon or fork for more than 10 seconds, won't sit still and watch people paint or use a pair of scissors, doesn't kick a ball. He runs really FAST, so fast that Andrew would complain or make a fuss when trying to catch him in a large park, it's not easy. On the other hand, he knows a few nouns and some action words, good enough for him to read simple things so I have started him on a Dr.Seuss book today. There is no equivalent books in Chinese unfortunately. I have seen him walking down 3 steps in the park this afternoon HANDS-FREE! He is still left-handed, has not swapped hands or I am not sure if he will. He is particularly interested in playing with trains with rail tracks with ramps or bridges and tunnels, large pretend-play toy like little-people with slides. He has not played with the knob puzzles much for the last two weeks. He has come to the stage when given a wooden knob puzzle and the loose pieces, he will finish it very quickly and hand the finished board out to me or someone, saying "ta" or "do-tse"(thank you). Those knob puzzles can't keep him occupied anymore. I am stuck with at least 15 of those wooden board puzzles and each one won't keep him still for over a minute. I wanted to get him a playtable with rail tracks such as Thomas and I asked a few shops but they say those imaginative plays are for three years plus.

walking the baby

He woke up at 7:45am, I decided not to use the stroller or jogger today. I took him out to the shopping mall around 9:30am/10am which was after his breakfast and quiet play. We walked together to run my errands post office and library, followed by the park. He almost fell a few times, shouted and cranked a few times but easily resolved by giving a biscuit to his hand. Then we walked home to have lunch, followed by quiet play and nappy change. I manage to drag his wake time till now which is 1:15pm he is absolutely tired lying down on the sofa, relaxed and floppy, so I carry him flat to his cot. I hope he will sleep more, this is the only break I have during the day.

150+ spoken words, 20.75 mths

I updated my diary and the list of spoken words that he has been using, my list has over 150 spoken words not including the ones that i dont understand, sequence of numbers in other languages and meaningless dialogues. For the first time tonight I thought i understood the meaning of 'wat-dat', i had always thought he said 'water' but when offered a cup of water he would swat it away, in fact he was trying to say "what's that?". At the park he says 'climb up' when climbing up the stairs or the bars of the slide, he says 'weeeee' when sliding down, he knows what a slide is, he says 'more weeee','bye bye weeee' etc... Also, for the first time i showed him a flash card asking how many cows there are, he answered correctly "two cows". Amazingly he knows plurals without anyone teaching him. He knows one baby and two babies. He still doesn't kick a ball - we have already got many balls including footballs !!!

Shapes and colours

Jasper knows very well quite a few shapes and colours. He knows and says red, blue, yellow, green, black and white. We have a toy with different-coloured balls (all same sized balls) and same-sized holes with different colour rims, he matches the same colour ball to the corresponding hole. Other kids would just put any ball/s into any hole/s.

He can say circle, oval, square[pronounced as 'where'], diamond['dime'], heart, triangle[tryo], rectangle[rec-ngo]... he thinks a pentagon, hexagon and octagon are diamonds because when he points at the glittering stone on my finger ring I say diamond. He has started to attempt to POINT at his own body parts when named(thats something new), funny thing is that he can say the names of my(or others') body parts long time ago. Yes! He's got the idea of the song 'head shoulders knees and toes'.

I have managed to hold his hand walking all the way from home to the shopping mall and back without too much trouble. The stroller is only used for when he needs his afternoon nap away from home. I still currently own 4 strollers (2 are in storage), they all have different functions for different terrains, blame the australian lifestyle. The strollers I use most now is Steelcraft swiftlite because i drive more often than jog, this lightweight umbrella semi-recline stroller is great for the carboot or public transport, but it doesnt go on grass or pebble roads. If i go off-road I still stick to the Pedigree.



I now go to playgroups with Jasper 3 mornings a week, swimming once a week on sundays. The playgroups are just doing us great because I can keep him occupied until lunchtime, then he would doze off after lunch. If I dont take him to playgroup I wouldn't know how to entertain him for the whole morning. As he is getting more energetic than ever, my plan was to go to playgroups five mornings a week (possible next term starting May), but that means i have to organise my work better than ever.

simple sentences, dumplings at restaurant

Jasper is well into two-word sentences or very simple sentences. He says things like 'car up', 'car go', 'want XXX', 'bye-bye XXX', 'hi XXX', 'big XXX', 'blue XXX', 'on top', 'door open'.... Something else interesting happened, i had taught him the written word "eyes", then showed him a piece of paper with the word "yes" written on it. He made a mistake and said 'eyes' instead of 'yes'. Took me a few seconds to figure out where the 'eyes' comes from, he prefixed the word he saw with an e and thought 'yes' looked like 'eyes'. He seems very interested in reading and recognising words. I taught him the dialogue [how old are you?][I'm one] in both languages, I doubt he understands the meaning of it. He is still not quite at saying three-word sentences, the most he can say is 'bye bye happy sun', 'bye-bye big ball'. He can just about sing the alphabet song when lead. Can count from 1 to 20 in two languages, can count from 1 to 100 with some help when after each digit *9. He pretends to jump but can't lift both feet off the floor yet. He seems to love playing trains on wooden toy tracks with ramps and tunnels.

This afternoon I walked him from home to the train station and I brought along my stroller folded up. We were holding hands walking together and I had my wrist strapped to his security harness in case he shoke off my hand and ran away (which he does all the time). He got very cracky just before boarding the train so I sat him in the stroller, he then dozed off to la-la land before the train even reached the next station. He woke up 2.5 hours later (just in time!) when I was just about to start enjoying my dumplings at the famous dumpling restaurant, I sat him on the highchair and he started munching away the dumplings - his afternoon tea, I then bought a carton of 300ml fresh milk from the nearby 7-11 convenient store for him.

He normally yawns a lot around 10:30am-11:00am but I manage to stretch his morning wake time till after lunch, and he now takes only ONE nap after lunch, so it's just one nap a day, bed time is always 8:30pm and he has been waking around 7:30-7:45am for the past few weeks.

The letter "W"

For the first time he pronounces the letter "W" correctly today. He can say a sequence of alphabets which I have been trying to record as a .wav file using my camera and he still occasionally misses a letter or two. When I sing 'old macdonald had a farm' and then he would sing E-I-E-I-O. Comparing with other kids his age, he is a little overly energetic and wouldn't sit still in a chair even at the singing session in the playgroup, he would struggle to wriggle away even when I sit him on my lap, this guy is always on the run, wandering about or even crawling around occasionally. The only time he sits quietly in a chair for over 5 mins is when he eats or playing board puzzles. I have tried to introduce him to playdough but he hasn't undertood it yet, in fact he tried to eat the shapes.

More toys

Another month has elapsed and I now have one-month worth of pictures and video clips yet to be loaded onto my computer but I simply haven't got around to do that. A friend of mine bought me a 1GB memory card which allows me to take enough video clips without changing cards but I notice some dramatic slowness in registering pictures with the camera. I can film the whole swim lesson with that card with space to spare. I bought more puzzles/toys for Jasper today because he moves on from toy to toy too quickly and I don't have enough items to keep him entertained even though I have two big cupboard worth of toys being rostered from time to time. I now have over 10 wooden peg puzzles and he solves each board within 'seconds' (not minutes). I went to the early learning centre this afternoon and the lady suggested I move on to normal board puzzles without the knobs. I bought him a shape stacking toys to help him count, train his fine motor skills and colour matching. Also bought quite a few normal junior jigsaw puzzles for him to try out. He is proficient in counting from 1-20 in both Cantonese and English, and can count from 21-29, 31-39, 41-49, 51-59... when lead. Normally when I say 81, 82... he would continue the sequence up to _9 and then stops there, it happens for both languages. He has just started to form 3-word sentenses by saying 'bye-bye happy sun'. I draw a sun on a doddle board he says 'sun', I then draws the eyes on the 'sun' he goes 'happy sun', then I wipe away the pictures he says 'bye bye happy sun'. He has continued to show interests in recognising written words in both languages. He also knows the names of his farm animals in both languages, he is very fun to be with and I don't miss the newborn time at all. I have tried to teach him pronounce his name "Jasper" but he would either say "Jas" or "per" and not together... he has some awareness of colours as when i ask him to fetch a blue stacking cup he was fine with it. He says "ware" for "SQUARE" and "tri-ngo" or "tri-o" for "TRIANGLE", he knows his oval, star and circle already. It has been so many months down the track he is still pronouncing star as "DAR", biscuit as "BI-KIT", he also pronounces HELLO as A-yo. As for cantonese, many words are still a little off tone. I need to brush up on the names or greek prefixes of more complex shapes and volumes so I can teach him.

Jasper at 20 months

Took him to the healthcare nurse for a checkup, his fontonelle hasn't closed up yet. Not much increased in weight gain it fluctuates around 12.5 kgs, he has gained quite a lot in height since 12 months. He speaks mostly 2-word sentences now, typically 'want this', 'want that'... eg "yiu nai nai" (want milk), "yiu chai toe" (want puzzle), "yiu po po" (want to be picked up or a hug)... he is also very good at kissing people's cheeks.