focus
most times, I underestimate the little one. I thought I knew what I was doing as his mother.
but he surprises me.
the baby was born at 34 weeks. the PD had said to not worry so much if he wasn’t meeting his milestones, to give him about 6 weeks, give and take, since he was out much earlier than expected. And so I did. But I couldn’t stop comparing.
Ollie could do this at this age. Ollie was already doing that.
I diligently calculated the days/weeks where he should be hitting the milestones. I was also pushing him a little harder. Come on, little guy, you can do it! I cheered him on, I made sure I was putting in extra effort to help him with his milestones of flipping, of crawling, of sitting.
But this fella chose to do it the other way around.
Give him tummy time and he could flip to his back, but he just couldn’t flip from back to front. He could crawl, but he was crawling in circles. Not forward, not backward, but in circles. More often than not, I would find him facing in a direction 180 degrees away from where he first started. He pulled himself up before he could even crawl. He preferred rice to porridge, which meant we started him on rice way earlier than Ollie did.
His first words were mama, and byebye daddy. Now it has expanded to more and nightnight. His teacher? Both Ollie and I, but mostly Ollie. He doesn’t speak much but he observes. And I missed out on that until lately. He had been watching his older brother put on shoes for school for a good 4 months, and he has picked it up. He follows his brother to say bye to Donald every morning at the gate. He would have picked up baby sign language a lot earlier if I had been a little more hardworking. He imitates us pointing at the menu and babbles in his baby language as though he is making an order too.
I was definitely happy he picked everything up so quickly now, especially when language is a barrier. I love my little hugs and kisses from him, and oh man, he is one cheeky fella.
Sure, he has his moments, his issues with fluffy things (sigh..gotta work on that one) and anything that makes his physical look any different (fingers covered in paint, chocolate..etc). These little things, which we brush off so easily, can send him into a meltdown. With fingerpainting, I have found that he needed to be in his comfort zone and..well, his older brother around him before he was okay with it. So anything that is done on his highchair tray is perfectly fine. The fluf-feh thing..we tried at Ikea but no go. He still isn’t liking it. You should see him avoiding it like a plague. Feet on grass is a no go too! Aiiee. I think sand is gonna be a major no-no at this rate.
How to make you into beach hunk, my baby??
I tend to brush his emotions off a little too easily, seeing that is how I did it with Ollie over situations like if they fall over..etc. I do give QT a lot of cuddles and hugs and make sure that he is loved as much as his brother is. But damn, this guy can really bear grudges. Send him off to stay at my mom’s for two nights and he doesn’t want me after! FML. Okay, maybe I sounded diff cos I had already somewhat lost my voice..but surely, you can smell me! =( Same thing happened when he stayed over another night, though this time he took like 5 minutes of squirming before he “forgave” me.
Wah liew..not easy ah, this guy.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, having a second kid, is a lot easier cos you have more experience and you know what to expect. But it is also a lot easier to miss out on the needs on for the second one cos he is younger. This realisation has made me put in more effort to spend more quality time with him especially now that he is napping lesser, and we got more waking time to spend with each other.
Time to bump up the activities and reading!