art garden bug
can anyone say “growth spurt” fast enough?
the monster surprised me by repeating “soup” or rather “oop” when I offered him some. Talking more? Hell yeah!
I have learnt to not doubt him when he points out or identifies something. On a few occasions, he pointed in a direction and identified something. I couldn’t see the said object or item and had said to him, “are you sure you saw it?” or “there’s none!”, only to realise later that there was the said item. I forget I am not at toddler height.
Ollie has surprised me with following my instructions to the T, or just the fact that he comprehends what I am talking about, like asking him to place his toy cups into his toy bin where “the cookies” are (toy cookies). It would have to include a lot of association with what he had been playing with and such. But he gets it, and he imitates how we have put away his toys into the toy bin. Remove tray, open bin, put cups in, close bin, oops lid is upside down, flip lid, close bin again. Now..if only I can get him to put away his toys after he is done with it. haha.
Ollie also gives us directions. It has caused a few eye-rolling between Donald and I. In order to pat him to sleep whilst carrying him, he would pull on our glasses and say “off”. He recognises that we would need to remove our glasses to sleep…so no such thing as pretending to sleep with him without glasses on. His way of waking up is to make sure we wake up with him as well. He would hand us our mobile phones, and open up our glasses and give them to us whilst we are still groggy and trying to wake up. The latest one? He doesn’t want to be pat to sleep, he will sleep on his own in his bed. BUT, he will point to the nursing chair, “ask” mama to sit in it, and he will lie down and settle himself to sleep.
Whaaaat. Where did all of this come from??
He is slowly switching to a one-nap a day routine. The first day he did it, he stayed awake for 7 hours after his first nap of 30 mins. Right. When Donald came home, Donald said Ollie didn’t even look remotely sleepy. Hah. Having said that, the monster crashed out in less than 30 mins after he was put to bed. It did seem weird to put Ollie to sleep so early, cos it meant we had more free time in the evening. But it also meant the house was quieter in the evenings. Meh. I am pretty glad that he is sleeping so early though. He sleeps longer hours, but still wakes up in the middle of the night, probably due to his cold & cough. But at least he sleeps till 7am. That is almost 12 hours of sleep. Coupled with the naps, he will be sleeping about 13 – 14 hours a day. I’m pretty happy with that. And he has a much better temperament with more sleep seriously.
I had a thought whilst watching him playing with his Lettersaurus. May be I had been too hasty in buying those flash cards for him (which are still unopened and somewhere). Different kids have different learning styles. Whilst some kids do better with flash cards (which I see as rote learning), I find that Ollie learns more through interactive play. Kinda like me, somewhat. We learn through experience. He picks up things faster through actions and touch. He can do all the actions to ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider’. He does the action when he asks for song requests, says “up” & “down” (he will bop), dance when he says the word “dance”.
The haze hanging around Singapore lately has Ollie and I bored to tears staying at home. We were cranky on the first day. Gaah. It was yesterday, through playing pretend buses with Ollie that I realized, hey, staying home and playing isn’t that bad after all. I just had to be more involved than usual. He was looking at me, wide eyed, as I said, ” come on, Oliver, let’s take a bus! you need to tap the card here *points to the hand held fan*”. He did indulge my request though, and we were busy tapping away, eating “pizzas” and “cookies”, together with “milkshakes”. Today, we “visited” the zoo. We had animals puzzle pieces placed in different corners of the house, coupled with the corresponding foam alphabets. It was pretty cool and I reckon we had fun, cos we did get stuck at the dino “exhibit” for a while with Ollie playing with his Lettersaurus. Haha.
Us at the “zoo” and Ollie with his “Mr. Grumble-smile”
I’m loving this phase. But I need to work on the interactive play. I still procrastinate, and I guess that is what makes the both of us bored. It requires a lot of effort to keep up the entertainment level and that is what tires me after about 30 minutes of it. I really gotta salute child entertainers man. Phew! May be this haze thing isn’t that bad after all. It is teaching this mother and child a thing or two. =P
On another note, I have started baking again. I couldn’t take a toddler out to get some bread in the haze, and I ALSO couldn’t get Donald to buy too many things from the store (him and grocery lists just don’t work out). So, I ended up baking a loaf of milk bread using a simple recipe from a magazine that I used to subscribe. The recipe calls for a starter dough called tang zhong. I had also previously bought a recipe book featuring asian / Chinese sweet buns. I haven’t gotten a chance to slowly figure out the book, namely cause it was all in Mandarin and I couldn’t figure out some of the ingredients. Soo many nice recipes for bread but argh..the Mandarin is killing me. May be when I have more people to eat the bread/buns, I will start baking those. Haha. The bread came out nicely, though I think I would need to proof it longer so it is not so dense and yeasty at the base. Meh. Ollie loved the bread though. Gotta say it was an ego booster to hear him asking me for more “bed” (bread).
Just in case you are wondering, bed is “bid” in Ollie-speak. =P
Baked a cake for my cousin for her birthday celebration yesterday too. Was looking around for a decent strawberry shortcake recipe. Found one on Daily Delicious and decided to modify it slightly cause we didn’t have any strawberries. It ended up being a Blueberry Charlotte Shortcake.
Blueberry Charlotte Shortcake
The sponge fingers were a last minute addition only because we had some lying around and I needed something to hold the cream in. hahaha. But I reckon it looked pretty nice, no? Hmm, I think I will need to bake some cinnamon rolls soon. I have been thinking about them allll week.