Bonus post only cos I felt the need to document the days that is just the both of us a little more before #2 comes along. The monster is growing so quickly in front of my eyes.
We spent the day a little differently today. The night before, I removed more of Ollie’s pile of toys in the living room and put it away. Because we had been interacting so much with each other lately, I thought, this kiddo doesn’t need that much toys. And he sure as hell didn’t miss them when they weren’t there this morning.
Ollie assisted me by holding the fruits I was taking out of the fridge to juice. He took an orange and ran off to “chop” it with his wooden knife. He imitated the sound of the juicer as it pulverised the fruits. He sat next to the fridge identifying alphabets (D, U, K) and occasionally bothered Thomas whom he affectionately calls “dhor-doo” whilst I was juicing. Cleared up the stuff and we had a snack together, him choosing to sit on my lap instead of his highchair.
He then wandered into his room, and chose a Mandarin book for me to read to him, even though I offered him his favourite book. Sure, we’ll go with some foreign characters and sounds. We read about brushing our teeth. And he would imitate the boy in the pictures.
We did our usual “hiding under the blanket” thing before his nap and he knocked out for about an hour before crying slightly cos I wasn’t at his side when he woke up. He saw me through the glass in the bathroom. I grinned at him and he stuck out his tongue at me before grinning. Cheeky bugger. Laid down with him on the bed again with him. Then I listened to him identify the objects he could verbalise in the room. TV. Towel. Pants. Two pants. Top. He is drawing the links between numbers and objects. Cool bananas.
He sat with me at the computer as I was trying to select some photos for printing. He pounded away at the calculator and the disconnected keyboard whilst sitting on my lap. Then I had to tempt him with fingerpainting to lure him out of the room. “Painting!! Painting!!” He yelled whilst holding onto the huge sheet of paper I handed him. He throws the paper on the floor and rushes to the cupboard that holds all the goodies of fingerpainting.
Damn. He does know what the hell I was talking about. I was going to compromise with crayons instead of paint..We settled on using one colour instead of eight. Haha. We didn’t have enough paper anyways. But he loves his fingerpainting sessions. He waited for me to spread the paper out. He would sit patiently as I squeezed the tube of paint on the paper or on his palms. And he would go mad with it.
To get him to end the session (we were running out of paper and paint), I told him we would go swimming. Right. It was pouring outside and we are going swimming. Double right.
This mama here dug out Ollie’s tub from the storage space beneath our bed and filled it up. I told Ollie to wait and sit on the paper whilst I filled it up. To give him credit, he waited for a bit before I heard the pattering of feet towards my room. He watched on curiously before he got the idea that he was going to get a soak in the tub. Haha..he couldn’t wait to get his diaper off.
I spent probably about 20 mins watching him soak and play in the tub, splashing away, pouring water out of the tub with a toy cup and bowl. He was engrossed in his task. I asked him if he was ready to come out of the tub and I got a resounding, “NO.” Darn empowerment.
It was a different kind of afternoon for us. And I reckon he enjoyed it. Time passed by fairly quickly. Ollie was more keen to pick up new words when the activity he was doing was novel. Tub. Cup. Bowl. Painting. Paper. He can identify more alphabets now, though he associates some of the alphabets more with words than the letter itself. (i.e., sees the letter “V” and says “van” instead of “V”).
Till the next detox week of fun. =D