Long overdue review with PD

Jan's supposed to do her 1-year-old review with the PD but being the procrastinating parents (papa's fault), we just conveniently waited for the appt with the NUH PD today. It was actually fixed more than 6 months ago and we had absolutely no clue if she's due for any vaccine - faint!

So, at 13.5mths, Jan's vital stats are (drum roll)
Height - 77cm
Weight - 9.6kg (the blur parents actually thought she weighs barely 9kg)

Hmmm... she actually belongs to the 75th percentile! Thank God for the growth :)

The PD went on to perform some developmental milestone checks. Cheeky Jan started blowing at the light that the PD used to check her eyes, thinking that it is a candle! Faint! Nonetheless, the PD was quite impressed with the number of words that Jan could speak!

1. Papa
   
2. Mama
   
3. 爷爷
   
4. 奶奶
   
5. 外婆
   
6. 舅舅
   
7. 电视


8. 眼镜


9. 美美


10. 姐姐


11. 抱抱


12. 怕怕 (taps her chest when she's scared)


13. banana (one of her favourite fruits)


14. apple


15. pear


16. baby


17. lion
    
18. star (her favourite song - twinkle twinkle little star)


19. bear (her favourite soft toy)


20. hair (pulls her hair while she says this)


21. nose


22. ear


23. taxi


24. car


25. tortoise


26. cheese


27. please


28. men-men (she still can't say amen)

She can also recognise some words and say them as well:

1. Mmmm


2. Ooooh


3. Aaaah
   
4. Ssssh


5. duck

We've been letting Jan play with stacking cups and she's been quite good at it. She would also automatically start clapping, singing and dancing when she hears music. Maybe she's musicaly inclined?? She enjoys putting her toys away too! Other than taking a looooooooong time to finish her milk (sometimes, it takes her an hour to finish her milk feed!!), she's relatively easier to care for now that she's older and able to communicate her needs.

Looking forward to better days ahead!! :)

Jan Hits the Road!

We were originally waiting for Jan to master her walk without support before taking her on a road test, but then one day I had an ah-ha moment--for safety sake, I would still hold her hand when she's walking, so why wait?

As such, a few days ago, Jan started her first steps outside the house.  Indeed, one small step for man, one giant leap for Jan-kind (haha...more like for the parents)

Anyway, one interesting development is Jan started associating her shoes with the phrase "美美" (i.e. pretty).  The reason being that when we first put those shoes on for her, we pointed to her that the shoes were very pretty.  As a result, she would go "美美" when we mention her shoes.

Back to the main topic, Jan's walk outside the house progressed quite rapidly.  I started with a short walk on the corridor outside the house, and in no time we started bringing her for longer walks downstairs.  I think she has grown to like walking, as at times she would be tugging me around instead of me leading her.  Looking forward to her walking even more steadily!

Jan’s first steps

For a long while, Jan has been walking around, but she always need to hold on to something, like to her toy car or to a chair.  Because of that, many of us had made wrong predictions of when she will be able to walk unassisted.  Jan just seem to be delaying that milestone again and again, and we concluded that she found no value in that new skill, since walking seemed so much slower than her crawling (come to my house one day and leave the kitchen door open…before you can catch your next breath, she would have emptied all the kitchen cabinets).  In fact, she crawls so much that I think she clocks at least 1km of crawling every day!  Anyway, on Jan’s not walking, I wasn’t too anxious as I was dying to have a kid running around in the house yet.

Above: Jan’s photo taken in late May of her pushing her toy car.  She also likes to push the dining chair and sometimes the stand fan…

One day before her birthday, Jan took her first and ONLY unassisted step…*sigh*…was she trying to do the minimum so that her parents can proudly wear the “kid walked before one” badge?  Over the past few weeks, we coaxed her to take more steps.  Now she has achieved a 800% improvement.  Impressive ya?  That means she doubled every week!  At this rate, she will be able to walk 4,503,599,627,370,496 steps when she reaches two!!! (ok, bad joke.  But if you are laughing, then you are not any less geeky than I am)

Exploring the new bridges

We went to explore the bridges connecting HortPark to Mount Faber.  Before I went, I thought: two bridges, no big deal.  Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised.  The bridges helped create a very nice trail, and better still, this trail is close to my place!

The trail was also very stroller friendly, so we would highly recommend it to families with young children.  Even if you don’t fit this category, it is still a nice trail to walk, run and maybe blade??

We started at HortPark (along Alexandra Rd) and ended at Mount Faber.  The drivers caught a cab back to the starting point when we got to the Henderson Waves Bridge.  The only trouble with starting at HortPark is that there is a steep climb when you are about to reach telok blangah HILL park.  So if you want to avoid, you can try to drive up to the park and find parking there.  There aren’t a lot of lots but we spotted a number of vacant lots.  I guess many people didn’t know about those parking spots.

 

I recommend doing a picnic on Henderson waves!  Go early in the morning or near sunset time

Check out all the photos on our web album.